Latest / Tale of The Manticore, a Dark Fantasy Dungeons & Dragons Audiodrama / S3E07b Interview with Trevor Devall

Transcript

S3E07b Interview with Trevor Devall · Tale of The Manticore, a Dark Fantasy Dungeons & Dragons Audiodrama

• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Hi. This is John, creator of Tale of the Manticore. Today,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: for the first bonus content of season three, I'm delighted
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: to share with you an interview I did with Trevor
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Dvall of the hugely popular and influential Me Myself and
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Die YouTube channel. As many of you will know, Trevor
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: is also the creator of the new similar RPG, The
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Broken Empires. During our chat, we talk about his experience
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: and advice as regards solo RPGs, and also about his
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: new game. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: as I did. Much thanks to Trevor for coming on
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: the show and talking about his craft and now for
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: the second time on Tale of the Manticore.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the show. This is way overdue, Trevor.
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: The last time we were in touch was back in
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: my season one. I'm in season three now and my
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: seasons are two years long, so it's been like three
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: years I think since you came on to play a
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: Dwarf in Chief for me, and I got to say
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: thank you so much because at that time I was
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: kind of just starting out.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: I think I was about seven eight months in.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: I was going around begging hat in hand, for people
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: to come on and do vo work for me. You
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: and Professor Dungeon Master both answered the call. I'm sure
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: that it helped tremendously in the growth of my show.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: I'm in your debt.
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: I can't wait to pick your brains about all things
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: Broken Empires and also solo RPG. So we're talking to me,
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: myself and die right now. Has your approach changed either
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: in major or minor ways, including lessons learned along the way?
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Do you do anything differently now than from season one?
• 1:52
  Speaker 4: Oh? Yeah? I mean how long have you got to
• 1:56
  Speaker 4: listen all the Yeah?
• 1:58
  Speaker 5: So when I go back and I look at episode
• 2:00
  Speaker 5: from season one now, which isn't often but es personally
• 2:02
  Speaker 5: now with the Broken Empires, I have to go.
• 2:03
  Speaker 4: Back and check the lore I've already established and then
• 2:07
  Speaker 4: you know.
• 2:07
  Speaker 5: Uh, but when I go back, I'm like, oh boy,
• 2:10
  Speaker 5: that is so primitive. It is so primitive. But at
• 2:12
  Speaker 5: the same time, I think that's also what gives it
• 2:14
  Speaker 5: its appeal, especially in season one.
• 2:16
  Speaker 4: Is it it's just it's just raw. It's just me
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: and a couple of.
• 2:18
  Speaker 5: Cameras and some toys booming, some dollies around the table.
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: So that was cool and that was really raw and
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: authentic and nice.
• 2:25
  Speaker 5: But then as time went on, I thought, you know what,
• 2:28
  Speaker 5: I want to bump this up a notch. And every
• 2:30
  Speaker 5: season I would bam, bump it up a notch, bumb
• 2:32
  Speaker 5: it up. And so season two the big thing was, Ooh,
• 2:35
  Speaker 5: I got the I got the Dolly cam now, so
• 2:37
  Speaker 5: I had the camera going back.
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: And forth and everybody was like, oh, does he do it?
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Uh?
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: And then you know, I would change the background of
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: this sat a little bit.
• 2:46
  Speaker 5: And then season three was a completely different set, and
• 2:48
  Speaker 5: then I added a bunch of more cameras, and then
• 2:49
  Speaker 5: season four it just got bigger and bigger and bigger,
• 2:52
  Speaker 5: to the point where like, if you look at the
• 2:54
  Speaker 5: production value of Season four, now it's really like.
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: Epic Hollywood shot in terms of its music and effects
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: and everything.
• 3:01
  Speaker 5: So it's got further and further away of I'm a
• 3:04
  Speaker 5: guy playing a game at a table in front of
• 3:06
  Speaker 5: a camera.
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: More towards I'm doing a big show.
• 3:08
  Speaker 5: But in fairness to myself, I always intended to do
• 3:11
  Speaker 5: the big show. It is I didn't know how to
• 3:14
  Speaker 5: finesse that to make that work. So I guess the
• 3:16
  Speaker 5: thing I've learned the most about it is. With all
• 3:19
  Speaker 5: of the bells and whistles of the production and all
• 3:21
  Speaker 5: that stuff, that's all fine and good, But in the end,
• 3:24
  Speaker 5: what people want to see is me interpreting the oracle
• 3:28
  Speaker 5: and rolling with the situation and interpreting the dice to
• 3:33
  Speaker 5: see what happens with the characters, because in the end,
• 3:35
  Speaker 5: that's all anybody really cares about.
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: Honestly, just like when you watch a.
• 3:38
  Speaker 5: Movie, you don't care about how well it's shot, unless
• 3:41
  Speaker 5: you're like a film director. Yeah, what you care about
• 3:43
  Speaker 5: is do you have a connection with the characters?
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: Do you feel for the characters? Are you are you
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: with them on their journey?
• 3:49
  Speaker 5: So in the end, all the bells and whistles don't
• 3:50
  Speaker 5: really matter, especially to the solo gamers, because if they're
• 3:53
  Speaker 5: coming to the channel, they're probably coming there to get
• 3:55
  Speaker 5: a sense of how, you know, a solo game might play. Sure,
• 3:58
  Speaker 5: and so to the season one is kind of the
• 4:01
  Speaker 5: best because it's as close to their experience as you
• 4:04
  Speaker 5: might get on my channel.
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: Anyway, right right, And of course you're figuring it out
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: in season one to some degree, Like obviously by season four,
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: the pacing is faster, the tempo is faster, and I
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: imagine that comes from a place of your confidence because
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: you know what it looks.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Like now on the other side, whereas when you.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: Start, well, there's a lot of experimentation stuff like that,
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: and you're kind of, you know, go through the growing
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: pains and whatnot.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I think there's a tough question.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: But does the medium affect your methodology or does the
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: medium effect the way you play the game? Like is
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: doing it for a camera very very different from doing
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: it alone at your.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: Desk for fun.
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great question.
• 4:47
  Speaker 5: You know, as the man said, the medium is the message,
• 4:49
  Speaker 5: and that's that's true.
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: There's been you know, people.
• 4:53
  Speaker 5: Over the years have said, well it's it's great and everything,
• 4:56
  Speaker 5: but you always know that the main character is not
• 4:59
  Speaker 5: going to die.
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: Well, well that's not true.
• 5:04
  Speaker 5: But I understand why people feel that way because what
• 5:06
  Speaker 5: they see is a polished production and they assume, oh, well,
• 5:09
  Speaker 5: Trevor's never gonna let the story get derailed. But I
• 5:13
  Speaker 5: run the show exactly as I run a game for
• 5:16
  Speaker 5: my friends, which is I don't know the story.
• 5:19
  Speaker 4: All the story is is what happened after we're.
• 5:22
  Speaker 5: Done, and we look back and say, oh, I guess
• 5:24
  Speaker 5: that was the story, So I don't know where it's
• 5:26
  Speaker 5: going to go. I have no idea what challenges and
• 5:29
  Speaker 5: obstacles the character's going to do with. But but all
• 5:31
  Speaker 5: of that said, knowing that it is a show does
• 5:33
  Speaker 5: put way more pressure on me because the fact is,
• 5:37
  Speaker 5: you know, you can't pull a ned Stark execution very often.
• 5:41
  Speaker 5: You know, you get away with that once in a show.
• 5:44
  Speaker 5: You start to do that more often, people die. They
• 5:47
  Speaker 5: tune out because it's like, well, I don't want to
• 5:48
  Speaker 5: get invested with these characters because they're all dropping.
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: Dead all the time, right, yeah, yeah, So I have
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: not yet had a character die in the show.
• 5:54
  Speaker 5: That doesn't mean it can't happen, but it is a
• 5:57
  Speaker 5: balance between like what is for the show versus what
• 6:01
  Speaker 5: is best for the authenticity of the game, and that
• 6:04
  Speaker 5: is tricky. Luckily, I've never been dealt a situation where
• 6:08
  Speaker 5: I had to deal with it, like, I never had
• 6:10
  Speaker 5: a situation where the dice killed the character outright and
• 6:14
  Speaker 5: then I had to There was moments that approached that.
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: Certainly, but we see that in the show.
• 6:18
  Speaker 5: You know, there was an episode in season one, I
• 6:19
  Speaker 5: think it was episode ten, where Simon and company were
• 6:22
  Speaker 5: trying to they were fighting these cultists in the town
• 6:24
  Speaker 5: of Fundatrres. This giant title wave is coming in and
• 6:26
  Speaker 5: the whole thing is this ticking clock.
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: And there's many moments in an episode where you can
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: see me going, Oh, we're all gonna die.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Distress is real.
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: Distress is real.
• 6:35
  Speaker 5: So that does happen, but it never happened to the
• 6:38
  Speaker 5: point where I really had to deal with that. And
• 6:41
  Speaker 5: to tell you the truth, I'd like to say that,
• 6:43
  Speaker 5: like in season four, if Veil got killed now, because
• 6:46
  Speaker 5: the season is still ongoing, I haven't done a new
• 6:47
  Speaker 5: episode months because of the kickstarter, but I like to
• 6:50
  Speaker 5: believe that I Veil got killed now that I would
• 6:52
  Speaker 5: honor that and just pick up the story as you do,
• 6:55
  Speaker 5: Ala Georgio R.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: Martin.
• 6:56
  Speaker 5: Right, just because ned Stark dies a spoiler alert because
• 7:01
  Speaker 5: that dies doesn't mean that the story doesn't, because yeah,
• 7:05
  Speaker 5: I know, and as it turns out, Darth Vaders Luke
• 7:08
  Speaker 5: Gonwarker's father hard to believe. I know, I know, but yeah,
• 7:13
  Speaker 5: it does have an effect and I have to be
• 7:14
  Speaker 5: careful with it.
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: But I've never really been tested, so I hope I
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: never do. Right.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: Do you have a thing like in a table game?
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: You might have I don't know, two or three combats
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: in a session, but you know they're mook combats and
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: they're low steaks. But in a season where you may
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: only have eight, ten, twelve episodes, do you think, well,
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: they've all got to be a little bit like higher stakes,
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: more critical, which makes the game like a bit deadlier.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: I'm asking because that's what I find what I'm doing it.
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: Do you find that, like, would you put in like that?
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: You open the door, there's three goblins in there. It's
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: like it's almost a foregone conclusion, or at least the
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: stakes are low.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: Would you use that or would you just go nope?
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: It's all big all the time.
• 7:58
  Speaker 5: For me, my style is the same as the style
• 8:01
  Speaker 5: in the show. I believe that a goblin with a
• 8:03
  Speaker 5: dagger is as much of a deadly threat potentially as
• 8:07
  Speaker 5: anything else.
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: So I don't I don't believe in minions, I don't
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: believe in moos. I don't believe anything like that.
• 8:11
  Speaker 5: So anytime that blades are drawn, there's a chance of death.
• 8:15
  Speaker 5: Otherwise it's not it doesn't feel real to me, right,
• 8:18
  Speaker 5: It's It's like, that's why I'm not into superhero stuff.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: But I'm not.
• 8:22
  Speaker 5: Into which is ironic because I play so many superheroes
• 8:24
  Speaker 5: for Marvel and on TV and cartoons. But but in
• 8:27
  Speaker 5: terms of my game stuff, I don't. I don't have
• 8:30
  Speaker 5: any interest in superhero stuff. That's why I don't have
• 8:31
  Speaker 5: any interest in five E because five V is ultimately
• 8:33
  Speaker 5: a fantasy superhero game really add its core, and there's
• 8:37
  Speaker 5: no real threat to the characters unless the GM really
• 8:40
  Speaker 5: tries the dollar out. So for me, the default is
• 8:43
  Speaker 5: deadly threat all the time. Yeah, and that's scary. That's
• 8:46
  Speaker 5: scary when you're doing the show in the format that
• 8:48
  Speaker 5: I'm doing it right right.
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: This is a question that's sort of a follow up
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: to that same idea of having the medium influence the gameplay.
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: I know, I know you do like featureless great playing,
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: but would you play game if there was no.
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: Audience, not a full game like I do in the show.
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: Mostly I don't have time.
• 9:09
  Speaker 5: And also for me, solo role playing as it existed
• 9:13
  Speaker 5: for me before I did the show was an exercise.
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: It was an exercise in learning a system.
• 9:18
  Speaker 5: It was exercise in teaching myself a combats like that's
• 9:20
  Speaker 5: what that's exactly what featured This great plane is is
• 9:23
  Speaker 5: exactly how I would teach myself a game when I
• 9:25
  Speaker 5: bought it, I would say, Okay, I've got Black Jay
• 9:27
  Speaker 5: of the Paladin and he's fighting an orc. How does
• 9:29
  Speaker 5: that look in this combat system? When I would play
• 9:30
  Speaker 5: it up. So it wasn't a lot of it wasn't
• 9:32
  Speaker 5: dialogue and moments of drama.
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: It was just mechanics.
• 9:35
  Speaker 5: The only time I came close to that was when
• 9:38
  Speaker 5: years ago, right around the time that I first discovered
• 9:41
  Speaker 5: the Mythic GM Emulator. I was so impressed with it,
• 9:43
  Speaker 5: mostly as an adventure design tool because I was like,
• 9:46
  Speaker 5: this is fantastic. That was the time in my life
• 9:49
  Speaker 5: as a GM when I was really into this idea
• 9:51
  Speaker 5: or I started to become into the idea of I
• 9:54
  Speaker 5: don't want to know what's going on and I don't
• 9:55
  Speaker 5: want to know the story beforehand. So this was this
• 9:58
  Speaker 5: beautiful tool that harnessed my imagination to allow me to
• 10:01
  Speaker 5: not have to know anything as a GM.
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: So it's great, so free.
• 10:05
  Speaker 5: So I discovered the saying was that this is so cool,
• 10:07
  Speaker 5: and you know, the author was talking about this solo
• 10:09
  Speaker 5: role play. I was like, well, I don't really know
• 10:10
  Speaker 5: what that is, but boy, this tool to you know,
• 10:12
  Speaker 5: come up with stuff.
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: It's fantastic.
• 10:14
  Speaker 5: And at the same time, I got together with a
• 10:16
  Speaker 5: few a bunch of strangers online on some forum and
• 10:19
  Speaker 5: we basically took a thieves World approach where we would
• 10:22
  Speaker 5: all use the Mythic Gym emulator with a system of
• 10:26
  Speaker 5: our choice. Somebody who's using gerps, I was using Savage World,
• 10:29
  Speaker 5: somebody else was using who the hell knows what. But
• 10:32
  Speaker 5: we were all running our characters in a shared world,
• 10:34
  Speaker 5: and so we would play the adventure solo and then
• 10:38
  Speaker 5: we would write it up in whatever form we wanted,
• 10:39
  Speaker 5: and then we would post that, and then people would
• 10:41
  Speaker 5: look at that and they would say, oh, I think
• 10:43
  Speaker 5: that kind of connects with the thing I did in
• 10:45
  Speaker 5: my game. So gradually you had this world developed. I
• 10:48
  Speaker 5: think it was called dal Dar Like. It was unapologetically
• 10:50
  Speaker 5: we were inspired by youth. And it was super cool
• 10:54
  Speaker 5: because we were organically creating this entire world from solo roleplay.
• 10:58
  Speaker 5: So it was all these people individually playing and all
• 11:00
  Speaker 5: working towards the same goal.
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: It was really, really, really neat.
• 11:03
  Speaker 5: But other than that, I don't do it at all
• 11:05
  Speaker 5: because I don't have time.
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I've got friends here. I played run games for
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: and play with.
• 11:10
  Speaker 5: I've got friends in Vancouver and so I got people
• 11:13
  Speaker 5: in groups.
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: You know, Yes, it's kind of ironic that you don't
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: really play so well outside of the show, but people
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: would probably come to you for advice all the time.
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: How do I play solo on my own with you know,
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: with no show?
• 11:26
  Speaker 5: There are way better people to give advice than me
• 11:29
  Speaker 5: when it comes to song, Way, way way.
• 11:31
  Speaker 4: Better people to give advice to me.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: I think what I learned from you really was how
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: to interpret that oracle. I'm one of those that part
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: of the audience. I was like, this is oh, I
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: love this part. Watching somebody interpret an oracle to me
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: is always a treat. It's so brilliant, right, kind of
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: really came up with an innovation.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: I don't want to say game changer because that's too cheesy.
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: But it really is truly innovative and kind of genius.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: And I just found out it was based on the taro,
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: which I didn't know until very recently.
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: I thought, that makes total sense. How did I not
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: see that before? But yeah, that's that's how it is.
• 12:06
  Speaker 5: I would unapologetically use the term game changer because it
• 12:09
  Speaker 5: literally was the change the game for me. You know,
• 12:12
  Speaker 5: it was I had no idea that this was possible.
• 12:15
  Speaker 5: And again, just just as a tool to design adventures,
• 12:19
  Speaker 5: it's just magnificent, you know. And I'm not talking about
• 12:23
  Speaker 5: the other stuff. I'm not talking about the adventure crafter.
• 12:25
  Speaker 5: I'm talking about the core mythic GM emulator, the first
• 12:29
  Speaker 5: edition that I used for years and years, the old
• 12:31
  Speaker 5: blue book that on its own was just like, yes, amazing.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: Let's see.
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: I wanted to ask you also, what is next for
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: your show? I mentioned nothing for a little while, but
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: because you've got some other things going on. But when you, uh,
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: you know, when you saddle up again, what direction does
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: the horse go? I guess you're finishing up season four.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: Do you have an idea of how many more episodes
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: there are?
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: Do you?
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: Do you see the end or is it a total
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: question mark in terms of how long it will take,
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: where they're going, what's going to happen?
• 13:02
  Speaker 5: Well, right now, I kind of left the show right
• 13:07
  Speaker 5: at the beginning of what I would call the third
• 13:09
  Speaker 5: act if you were going to get that on there,
• 13:11
  Speaker 5: which I don't normally, but I can see the end.
• 13:13
  Speaker 5: In fact, there's a very strong case to be made
• 13:16
  Speaker 5: that the next episode will be the last episode, right,
• 13:19
  Speaker 5: just because everything's ramping towards that ending. Now, everything's driving
• 13:22
  Speaker 5: towards that final resolution whatever. It is. One of the
• 13:26
  Speaker 5: things I learned from iron Sworn, which again I shouldn't
• 13:30
  Speaker 5: say that I learned it from Ironsworn, but iron Sworn
• 13:32
  Speaker 5: certainly reinforced what I already knew this idea, and I
• 13:36
  Speaker 5: will say this the way that iron Sworn took the
• 13:39
  Speaker 5: concept and mechanized it in a very very specific way,
• 13:42
  Speaker 5: and that was the concept of vows, right. All that
• 13:45
  Speaker 5: was you've always got a thing, you're driving towards You've
• 13:48
  Speaker 5: always got a thing. So in season two, I feel
• 13:50
  Speaker 5: like season two is probably the most cohesive of the
• 13:53
  Speaker 5: seasons of my show, because it was always driving towards
• 13:56
  Speaker 5: that end goal, right, and so you could feel it
• 13:59
  Speaker 5: coming towards the end, and when Aarn was, you know,
• 14:01
  Speaker 5: getting closer to his quarry and discovery. There was a
• 14:04
  Speaker 5: lot of side quests, but they were always coming back,
• 14:07
  Speaker 5: always coming back to that. So that's where I'm at
• 14:10
  Speaker 5: now with season four, is we've had the big reveal
• 14:13
  Speaker 5: or one of them anyway, that drives back towards what
• 14:17
  Speaker 5: very much feels like a climax, But how that goes
• 14:21
  Speaker 5: that chubby.
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: For the dice to decide. So if I had to guess,
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: I'll tell you.
• 14:26
  Speaker 5: There's another unique thing about this is that you know,
• 14:28
  Speaker 5: I did season four specifically because I wanted to use
• 14:30
  Speaker 5: it to test the system. Well, the system has evolved
• 14:33
  Speaker 5: radically since since season one, so some of the stuff
• 14:36
  Speaker 5: that you may have seen in early episodes of season
• 14:38
  Speaker 5: four is quite different, like the travel system. The travel
• 14:41
  Speaker 5: system was was still kind of clunky and awkward and
• 14:45
  Speaker 5: a natural. Well, I've broken all of that down and
• 14:47
  Speaker 5: kind of come back to something. It's still the same
• 14:50
  Speaker 5: concept and it still has the same basic precepts, but
• 14:53
  Speaker 5: in terms of its execution, it's a lot smoother now
• 14:55
  Speaker 5: and it's more in line with the freeform creation that
• 14:58
  Speaker 5: I'm kind of known for.
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: So part of me is.
• 15:00
  Speaker 5: Like, while I should really take the opportunity to show
• 15:03
  Speaker 5: the viewers a little bit more of where the game
• 15:05
  Speaker 5: is now in the ladder or in the last episode
• 15:08
  Speaker 5: or two of the show, and that would mean necessarily
• 15:12
  Speaker 5: drawing it out, but I don't want to artificially do that.
• 15:14
  Speaker 5: So again it's this balance between I want to do
• 15:17
  Speaker 5: what's best for the show, but I also want to
• 15:19
  Speaker 5: do what's best for the game and just.
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: Be authentic to the game. So it's it's that whole
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: thing right now.
• 15:24
  Speaker 5: If I had to guess, I would say that the
• 15:26
  Speaker 5: next episode will be the last one and it could
• 15:29
  Speaker 5: happen to ice.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: Which is the beauty of course.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: And if I were to say something like season five,
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: is it like A can either confirm nor deny situation.
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: At this moment.
• 15:39
  Speaker 5: If you were to suggest I was to do a
• 15:40
  Speaker 5: season five, what I would say is that I'm really
• 15:43
  Speaker 5: eager to get back to the table, but with something different,
• 15:46
  Speaker 5: Like I think my next thing is going to be
• 15:48
  Speaker 5: and I don't want to say series, but my next
• 15:50
  Speaker 5: thing is going to be hitting Rangers of Shadow Deep
• 15:53
  Speaker 5: or Shadow Velve.
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: It's not Shadow Dark, that's Kelsey's game anyway.
• 15:58
  Speaker 5: It's it's a fantasy mini's game, but it's got this
• 16:00
  Speaker 5: cool story to it. And I did one episode for it,
• 16:03
  Speaker 5: this werewolf thing on the Channel, which was so much
• 16:05
  Speaker 5: fun and I always wanted to get to it. So
• 16:08
  Speaker 5: I think that's gonna be next for me is once
• 16:10
  Speaker 5: what's the Broken Empires is is sent to the printers
• 16:12
  Speaker 5: and I can take a breath. I think that'll be
• 16:15
  Speaker 5: the next thing is Okay, let's dive into something completely different.
• 16:18
  Speaker 5: I think that's what's neck in terms of season five.
• 16:20
  Speaker 5: In terms of the narrative of the show, I don't know.
• 16:23
  Speaker 5: I mean, honestly, there wasn't gonna be a season four.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 16:25
  Speaker 5: When I did season three, for me, that was like,
• 16:27
  Speaker 5: that was a perfect ending. Now, there were those cliffhangers,
• 16:30
  Speaker 5: you know, post credit scenes in season two, in season
• 16:33
  Speaker 5: three that suggested that there was something else happening. But
• 16:36
  Speaker 5: I would have been fine to just let that go
• 16:38
  Speaker 5: because season three wraps up in this beautiful little bow.
• 16:42
  Speaker 5: So I didn't want to do season four. But then
• 16:43
  Speaker 5: I thought, well, there is kind of a cool story
• 16:45
  Speaker 5: to tell about Vail here, and that's an opportunity to
• 16:48
  Speaker 5: take me into a completely different part of the world
• 16:50
  Speaker 5: in a completely different feel and cultural flavor and setting.
• 16:55
  Speaker 5: And also it'll be an opportunity to do something cool
• 16:57
  Speaker 5: and test the game in the show.
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: So that's why I did it.
• 17:01
  Speaker 5: But at the beginning I was very scared of it
• 17:03
  Speaker 5: because I was like, because I'll tell you something, man,
• 17:05
  Speaker 5: the worst thing you can do as an entertainer is
• 17:08
  Speaker 5: not know when to get off the stage. And so
• 17:10
  Speaker 5: to me, season three was like take the bow and leave,
• 17:14
  Speaker 5: always leave them wanting more.
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: Right, So at this point it depends on season four ends.
• 17:18
  Speaker 5: If it ends as epically as I hope it does,
• 17:20
  Speaker 5: then you know, I'm not going to say that's it,
• 17:22
  Speaker 5: but the idea of doing another season the way I've
• 17:24
  Speaker 5: been doing them, it's a tremendous amount of work and
• 17:27
  Speaker 5: a tremendous amount of creative energy I have to put
• 17:29
  Speaker 5: into it, and I do love it, but there's so
• 17:31
  Speaker 5: much more going on now.
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: I don't know, I don't know.
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess this is a good time to pivot
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: into talking about Broken Empires then, because this may be
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: a real career changing time period for what it is
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: a career changing time period for you, and I imagine
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: a lot of your time is going to move over
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: here now and you're going to be Trevor the game
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: maker instead of Trevor the video maker.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: You'll probably be doing a bit of both.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: Sure, but I'm guessing the focus of your attention is
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: going to shift or has already shifted. At what point
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: did you think, I know that you've probably had this
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: game building over a long time, as you sort of
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: pick your best mechanics and put.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: Together the thing that works best for you.
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: But at what point is it, like, I'm making this
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: now as a product to put into the world. When
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: did you know like, oh, this isn't going to be
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: for me, this is going to be for them.
• 18:25
  Speaker 5: Well, I guess the idea of putting it together as
• 18:28
  Speaker 5: a thing that other people could play came in twenty
• 18:33
  Speaker 5: twenty three at gen Con, which was the first time
• 18:35
  Speaker 5: I was there. I'd never been a gen gun before,
• 18:37
  Speaker 5: and I was brought there by Columbia Games, which was great,
• 18:40
  Speaker 5: but that's first time I met a lot of the
• 18:41
  Speaker 5: other YouTubers like Ben Milton of Quested East and Kelsey
• 18:43
  Speaker 5: Jyn and Professor dam all those people, and that was
• 18:46
  Speaker 5: a wild experience all on its own to be sort
• 18:48
  Speaker 5: of welcomed into that community when people knew.
• 18:50
  Speaker 4: Who I was and they were like, oh my god.
• 18:52
  Speaker 5: I was like, oh, I didn't think anybody paid attention,
• 18:54
  Speaker 5: but turns out that did. So. At one point we
• 18:58
  Speaker 5: were having dinner Kelsey and Ben and I and Ben said, so,
• 19:02
  Speaker 5: how's your subscribers right now? And I told him I
• 19:04
  Speaker 5: was At that time, I think I was at like
• 19:06
  Speaker 5: twenty five thousand or something so respectable, but nothing in
• 19:09
  Speaker 5: terms of YouTube subscribers, Like, I'm a drop in the ocean,
• 19:12
  Speaker 5: right still am I think I'm only at thirty seven
• 19:14
  Speaker 5: thousand or something, but small but dedicated audience.
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean we are a niche in a niche
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: in a niche in.
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: A niche exactly exactly. So he said to me how
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: many subs apps now?
• 19:24
  Speaker 5: And like I said, I think it was about twenty
• 19:26
  Speaker 5: five thousand. And he said, oh, that's really good man.
• 19:28
  Speaker 5: He said, so what's next?
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: And I said, I don't know. I'm just keep doing
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: what I'm doing.
• 19:31
  Speaker 5: And he said no, he said, you have twenty five
• 19:34
  Speaker 5: thousand people who are basically a captured audience who are interested.
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: In what you have to bring them.
• 19:41
  Speaker 5: So your next step is to write the book and
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: sell it to them because they want they want that
• 19:46
  Speaker 5: from you.
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: And I said, a book about what?
• 19:48
  Speaker 5: He said, it doesn't matter as long as it's authentically
• 19:51
  Speaker 5: you and has something to do with the game obviously. Yeah,
• 19:54
  Speaker 5: he said, as long as as long as it's authentically
• 19:56
  Speaker 5: you and it's something that you feel as valuable, and
• 20:00
  Speaker 5: they're gonna want to support that because they're already your
• 20:03
  Speaker 5: core audience.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, so.
• 20:05
  Speaker 5: I thought, oh, well, okay, so we talked a little
• 20:07
  Speaker 5: more about, you know, the incredible difficulty in getting that
• 20:11
  Speaker 5: off the ground and with kickstarters and the recoupitment of
• 20:14
  Speaker 5: investment and blah blah blah blah blah all that stuff.
• 20:16
  Speaker 5: But as I walked away from there, as I got
• 20:18
  Speaker 5: back home, I was actually super inspired. I was like, this,
• 20:21
  Speaker 5: this is an opportunity to bring people something that I'm
• 20:25
  Speaker 5: deeply passionate about, which is and it didn't have a
• 20:28
  Speaker 5: name at the time, but now it's called sim Light, right, yeah.
• 20:31
  Speaker 5: And what that meant was I love detailed games in
• 20:37
  Speaker 5: the ways that I like the detail. Like, for example,
• 20:39
  Speaker 5: you could look at Pathfinder two. Path Fighter two is
• 20:40
  Speaker 5: an extraordinarily detailed game, but it's not detail that I'm
• 20:43
  Speaker 5: interested in. Their detail is about mathematical balance and everything
• 20:48
  Speaker 5: is sacrificed on the holy alter of balance, and to me,
• 20:50
  Speaker 5: that's dull. I get very bored by that.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 20:52
  Speaker 5: What I mean by detail is detail of resolution that
• 20:58
  Speaker 5: helps the GM paint the picture instead of you know,
• 21:00
  Speaker 5: my classic example is you don't hit the orc for
• 21:03
  Speaker 5: five hit points. You stabbed the Orc in his right forearm,
• 21:06
  Speaker 5: which causes him to cry out and pay and drop
• 21:09
  Speaker 5: his sword.
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: That is what I'm talking about.
• 21:11
  Speaker 5: So I was always inspired by games like HarnMaster and
• 21:14
  Speaker 5: rune Quest and now Mithris.
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: These were, you know, the simulationist games. That really all
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: I mean when I.
• 21:20
  Speaker 5: Talked about simulationists, I mean it's it's more gritty and
• 21:22
  Speaker 5: it's more more detailed in terms.
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: Of its combat resolution basically.
• 21:26
  Speaker 5: But I didn't want to do just another simulation this game,
• 21:28
  Speaker 5: because I'm so inspired by all these other.
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: New games too, Like The One Ring was mind blowing
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: for me.
• 21:33
  Speaker 5: The idea that they were the first game that I
• 21:35
  Speaker 5: ever ever found that was able to mechanize social interactions
• 21:39
  Speaker 5: in a way that was both free flowing and satisfying
• 21:43
  Speaker 5: and made sense.
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: So not both three. That was all of those things,
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: and it blew my mind.
• 21:48
  Speaker 5: And then their their their journey system, their travel system.
• 21:52
  Speaker 5: They came up with a system that works beautifully for
• 21:54
  Speaker 5: Middle Earth. So it doesn't necessarily translate to other games,
• 21:56
  Speaker 5: but it was beautiful for Middle Earth.
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: And I was so inspired by that stuff.
• 21:58
  Speaker 5: I was like, well, what if I was to all
• 22:00
  Speaker 5: of these pieces from these games that I've played, and
• 22:03
  Speaker 5: I've played like hundreds of them over the years I've
• 22:06
  Speaker 5: been I've been doing this for forty some years.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 22:08
  Speaker 5: So yeah, my friend now who's now my sort of
• 22:11
  Speaker 5: designer and production coordinator for this whole project, he said,
• 22:14
  Speaker 5: only you can do this, he said, look at it.
• 22:17
  Speaker 5: You do the Sage's library where you talk about all
• 22:19
  Speaker 5: of these games you've played in run over the years.
• 22:21
  Speaker 5: You are so well versed in all of these different
• 22:23
  Speaker 5: mechanics and different genres and different feelings and atmospheres and
• 22:26
  Speaker 5: different techniques of playing and GMing.
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: And different styles.
• 22:29
  Speaker 5: He said, only you could do this, to take all
• 22:32
  Speaker 5: of these things and to cherry pick the pieces that
• 22:35
  Speaker 5: you like from all of your years of experience and
• 22:37
  Speaker 5: see if you can make them work together. And so
• 22:39
  Speaker 5: I was like, oh, well, now I gotta do this,
• 22:41
  Speaker 5: you know. And so it's been a nightmare.
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: In many ways. It's been a nightmare because you.
• 22:49
  Speaker 5: Look at something and you could say, oh, yeah, that's
• 22:51
  Speaker 5: easily going to work in here, and then you put
• 22:52
  Speaker 5: it to the table and go, oh, yeah, that doesn't
• 22:54
  Speaker 5: work at all. So this is the past year and
• 22:57
  Speaker 5: a half has been. It's the hardest thing I've ever done,
• 23:00
  Speaker 5: for sure.
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: It is. I mean, baby steps, man, Oh my.
• 23:05
  Speaker 5: God, it's it's incremental, tiny, little half an inch step
• 23:09
  Speaker 5: forward every day as I tear out what's left of
• 23:11
  Speaker 5: my hair, trying to figure out how to make these disparate.
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: Pieces work together.
• 23:15
  Speaker 5: But yeah, gradually it gets closer and closer and closer.
• 23:18
  Speaker 5: And so right now the book is in kind of
• 23:21
  Speaker 5: great shape, like we were just we had a meeting
• 23:23
  Speaker 5: right before this about where the book is, and like,
• 23:26
  Speaker 5: there's a few rough edges in the magic system that
• 23:27
  Speaker 5: I'm still trying to you know, iron out a little bit,
• 23:30
  Speaker 5: but other than that, it's it's.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: There, like oh nice, feel good.
• 23:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah, But like I said, I'm so in it now.
• 23:36
  Speaker 5: I can't see the forest for the tree. So I
• 23:38
  Speaker 5: haven't been able to stand back and look at what
• 23:41
  Speaker 5: I have throught. You know, I haven't had a chance
• 23:44
  Speaker 5: to look at the creation and appreciate the work I've
• 23:46
  Speaker 5: put into it, because all I can think is in the.
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: Deadline, gotta get it to the customer. It's gotta get it.
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: It's got to play test, got right.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: Is there a part of the process that has either
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: been like surprisingly difficult or surprisingly fun that you that
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: because you're probably doing all these things that you haven't
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: done it before. I don't even know, because I haven't
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: done anything anywhere near the scale, but I imagine there's layout
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: and artists to deal with, and editors.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: And this and that and the other thing.
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: Any surprises along the way in terms of what's being
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: fun or like a total.
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: Headache every day, both good in bad surprises.
• 24:23
  Speaker 5: I think probably the best surprise that I've found is
• 24:26
  Speaker 5: that the level of support that people are willing to
• 24:30
  Speaker 5: give to something if they believe in it. Yeah, and
• 24:33
  Speaker 5: I don't mean just the five thousand or forty seven
• 24:36
  Speaker 5: or however many people there were that bought into the
• 24:38
  Speaker 5: project and the case starter, but I also mean all
• 24:40
  Speaker 5: of the people that have come forward to help me
• 24:42
  Speaker 5: with advice or you know, like I can go to
• 24:45
  Speaker 5: anybody that I've made contacts with in the business and say, hey,
• 24:49
  Speaker 5: can you tell me how the whole tariff thing works
• 24:52
  Speaker 5: on imports from different countries?
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: Does that mean? Or I can say, I.
• 24:55
  Speaker 5: Can say, so, did you did you sell miniatures as
• 24:58
  Speaker 5: part of your package? And if so, how did that work?
• 25:00
  Speaker 5: Or I could say I'm having a hard time figuring
• 25:03
  Speaker 5: out how to balance this particular mechanic against this other thing.
• 25:06
  Speaker 5: And universally people have said, oh yeah, let me help.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: And some of them are your competitors.
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: And some of them my competitors.
• 25:13
  Speaker 5: But that's that's the great that's a great irony, is
• 25:15
  Speaker 5: that it really is a case of the rising tide
• 25:18
  Speaker 5: lifting all boats.
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: Uh huh uh.
• 25:20
  Speaker 5: There's there is no competition on what we do, not
• 25:22
  Speaker 5: really because and certainly there's no competition what I do
• 25:25
  Speaker 5: because my game is is I hesitate to say this,
• 25:29
  Speaker 5: but it really is kind of unlike a lot of
• 25:31
  Speaker 5: things out there, because there is no game that takes
• 25:34
  Speaker 5: the detailed simulation of what I'm doing and mixes it
• 25:37
  Speaker 5: with a lot of new school ideas and procedural stuff.
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: From these new games.
• 25:42
  Speaker 5: Because it's got the DNA of so many games in it,
• 25:44
  Speaker 5: so it becomes a holy unique thing. But so in
• 25:47
  Speaker 5: terms of competition, like I look at like Kelsey, for example,
• 25:50
  Speaker 5: she did Shadow Dark, theoretically we're in direct competition where
• 25:53
  Speaker 5: both RPG designers trying to sell a game, but Shadow
• 25:56
  Speaker 5: Dark and Broken Empires are about as far from each
• 25:59
  Speaker 5: other as you can get in terms of the type
• 26:01
  Speaker 5: of game.
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: It is, right, So it's it's been fantastic there.
• 26:05
  Speaker 5: Some of the more difficult surprises have been just the
• 26:10
  Speaker 5: overwhelming amount of creative labor it takes.
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: To accomplish this.
• 26:15
  Speaker 5: I knew it'd be a lot of work, but I
• 26:17
  Speaker 5: didn't know. I thought I knew, okay, but no, this
• 26:21
  Speaker 5: it is. And I'm not lying when I say this.
• 26:23
  Speaker 5: There is not a moment that I'm awake that I'm
• 26:24
  Speaker 5: not working on the game. Even if I'm sitting with
• 26:27
  Speaker 5: my wife having dinner. Right away, I'm like, wait a minute,
• 26:30
  Speaker 5: should the wound ib at E twelve? Now, No, it's
• 26:31
  Speaker 5: gotta be an, it's got to be a deten that
• 26:33
  Speaker 5: it's twenty four seven. So she knows, thank god. She's like,
• 26:36
  Speaker 5: I get it.
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: Just just pick your game. Just I'll help you whenever
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: you want.
• 26:40
  Speaker 5: But it has been just an exhausting amount of work,
• 26:43
  Speaker 5: and we are just at the beginning here, Like, there's
• 26:46
  Speaker 5: so much we have to do between now in March,
• 26:48
  Speaker 5: which is our kind of projected date to send it
• 26:50
  Speaker 5: to the printers.
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: But I got a lot of help. I got a
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: lot of help.
• 26:53
  Speaker 5: But I got great people on board, Like I reached
• 26:55
  Speaker 5: out to Tan, I reached out to Sean Tompkin. I
• 26:58
  Speaker 5: reached out to Jason Lutz, who's the uh Crater of
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: the Perilous Wilds, which is a supplement I use a lot.
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: And I said, you.
• 27:04
  Speaker 5: Guys want to come on and help me, and they said,
• 27:06
  Speaker 5: sign us up. So now I've got all these giant
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: like giants of the industry coming on board, working on
• 27:12
  Speaker 5: the solo section, working on the random tables for me,
• 27:15
  Speaker 5: and the stuff they're giving me is just like, oh,
• 27:17
  Speaker 5: it's it's like this massive burden off my shoulders because
• 27:19
  Speaker 5: I don't have to do any but because it's already
• 27:21
  Speaker 5: done so perfectly and I could just you know, put
• 27:23
  Speaker 5: it in the book.
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: So it's been fantastic that way.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: That that sounds amazing.
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: You're gonna be a fixture on the con circuit instead
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: of being like a VIP.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: You're gonna be manning a booth, aren't you. I don't know.
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: I don't think that's a step up.
• 27:36
  Speaker 5: That's an upgrade because that means I have to work now,
• 27:39
  Speaker 5: you know, before I can't walk around, but.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: Wait, I have to buy my own dinner?
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: What exactly? Yeah, it's gonna be.
• 27:48
  Speaker 5: It's gonna I think it's gonna be a wild ride
• 27:49
  Speaker 5: over the next couple of years because we're hoping to
• 27:51
  Speaker 5: deliver the game in people's hands by October of next year,
• 27:54
  Speaker 5: and then from that point, Yeah, then it becomes taking
• 27:57
  Speaker 5: it to the cons and trying to you know, run
• 28:00
  Speaker 5: games for.
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: People and selling it.
• 28:02
  Speaker 5: That whole thing that you do it is it's at
• 28:06
  Speaker 5: least a five year plan going forward, for sure.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: My next question was going to be, like, because my
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: audience is pretty well verst in solo play, and so
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: it's like that niche within a niche within a niche thing,
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: and I'm sure that there's quite an overlap between my
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: audience and your audience. I wouldn't be surprised in the least.
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: So my next question was gonna be is there anything
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: for the seasoned solo player that you would like to
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: know about the Broken Empires? Well, if Sean Tompkins and
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: Ton of pidget Arc are having a hand in it,
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: that is something certainly worth knowing.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: Is there anything that we should add to that? Yeah.
• 28:40
  Speaker 5: Something that Sean said to me in this process really
• 28:43
  Speaker 5: blew my mind. And this this actually weirdly reveals my
• 28:46
  Speaker 5: ignorance and naivete when it comes to the solo oplank thing,
• 28:48
  Speaker 5: because I had it in my head because it is
• 28:50
  Speaker 5: a very complex game compared to like it's there's ain't
• 28:54
  Speaker 5: no rules like OSRHU. It's stuff, There's there's complicated parts.
• 28:58
  Speaker 5: The goal is to try and make those complex parts
• 29:00
  Speaker 5: move as quickly as possible.
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: Right, That's the holy grail. But I've said that.
• 29:04
  Speaker 5: From the beginning that sim light means that you know,
• 29:07
  Speaker 5: on the spectrum between detail of resolution and speed of play.
• 29:10
  Speaker 5: I'm trying to find what I consider to be a
• 29:12
  Speaker 5: happy medium. But that's gonna be different for everybody. But
• 29:14
  Speaker 5: in my mind, because of the way I play solo
• 29:17
  Speaker 5: on the show, pace is very important, very important. I
• 29:21
  Speaker 5: gotta keep thinking moving or else I lose my creative
• 29:23
  Speaker 5: train of thought. Now, I naively assumed that everybody plays
• 29:26
  Speaker 5: that way, and Sean said something to be the blow
• 29:28
  Speaker 5: of my mind, because I thought I had to go
• 29:30
  Speaker 5: into the Broken Empires with two different core engines, the
• 29:33
  Speaker 5: normal engine you would use at the table with players,
• 29:35
  Speaker 5: and then the player facing solo friendly core engine that
• 29:38
  Speaker 5: was really dumb down the moving thing. And he said
• 29:43
  Speaker 5: to me, no, no, it's the same game. But I said,
• 29:46
  Speaker 5: what about the pace? He said, solo players are not
• 29:48
  Speaker 5: in a hurry. They can take as much time as
• 29:51
  Speaker 5: they want because they don't have players waiting on their choices,
• 29:54
  Speaker 5: and I went.
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: I never even thought of that, because my solo play
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: is all about I got to get to the next thing.
• 30:02
  Speaker 4: I got to get to the next thing. So therefore
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: you gotta have a sits in the moves and this
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: one doesn't. This one's very complex. Oh that'll never work.
• 30:08
  Speaker 5: And then I was talking to Tana and I said,
• 30:11
  Speaker 5: so you know, because because Tanna said, oh, yeah, my
• 30:13
  Speaker 5: favorite game is a Role Master. And I said, okay,
• 30:15
  Speaker 5: but when you play solo, though, surely you dumb it down.
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: And and she said, no.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: Right, why would I do that?
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: Why would I do that? And I went, so, I
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: had no idea.
• 30:26
  Speaker 5: So that was a huge relief because it meant that
• 30:27
  Speaker 5: I didn't have to create two games, that I could
• 30:29
  Speaker 5: just create one game with really solid, standard kind of
• 30:33
  Speaker 5: solo tools that are designed specifically for the Broken Empires.
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: But that was a massive relief right there.
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: Right, that speaks to what we were talking about before,
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: whether you played differently with an audience there, because that's
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: where that pacing thing I think is coming from. You
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: have you have a perception of how your audience is
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: receiving your show.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: You want to give a good show.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: Therefore, tempo is up, pacing is up, there's no dead spots.
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: But as they said, when you're on your own and
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: you're playing for nobody but yourself.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: It's kind of the opposite. It's slow gaming. It's like
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: slow food, that whole fad slow gaming.
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: Sometimes I wonder if play by post has this feel
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: to it. I've never tried it, but I've always wondered,
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: how does play by post work.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: Isn't it too slow to work? Maybe it's so slow
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: it works. I don't know.
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe I mean that I've had the same thought.
• 31:26
  Speaker 5: Actually, you know, because even when I GM, my pace
• 31:29
  Speaker 5: is up, man, like, I keep things moving. So when
• 31:32
  Speaker 5: you've got a complex system that demands a lot of
• 31:34
  Speaker 5: the players because they got.
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: To know the rules too, like, come on, what do
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: you do? What do you do?
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: What do you do?
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: You've taken five seconds though you do nothing? Next next.
• 31:43
  Speaker 5: Yeah, So it's it's it's it's a whole different way
• 31:46
  Speaker 5: of doing things.
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: But it was a relief that I didn't have to
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: do that.
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, let's put the show aside and the game aside.
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: Just you what are you enjoying right now? In terms
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: of movies or books or TV or video games. So
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: we're gonna send RPGs out of the room for a minute.
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: What are you personally enjoying that you're excited about and
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: that you wish more people knew about it?
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: Something like that.
• 32:12
  Speaker 5: I have to make time to watch a show because
• 32:17
  Speaker 5: otherwise my brain will just seize up with all of
• 32:20
  Speaker 5: the RPG stuff. So I have to specifically go into
• 32:22
  Speaker 5: the media room and go, Okay, I'm not bringing the laptop,
• 32:25
  Speaker 5: I'm not even bringing the phone in.
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: I'm just gonna watch a thing.
• 32:28
  Speaker 5: And I discovered two of the greatest things I've ever
• 32:31
  Speaker 5: seen in the past few weeks.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: Let's go.
• 32:34
  Speaker 5: One of them was the Penguin on Max on HBO. Yeah, oh,
• 32:40
  Speaker 5: oh my god.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: I had.
• 32:42
  Speaker 5: First of all, I had zero expectations for the show
• 32:44
  Speaker 5: because again, got a big superhero guy and I'm like, oh,
• 32:46
  Speaker 5: they're doing another sure, And then I watched the first
• 32:48
  Speaker 5: episode of this thing, and it's like The Godfather. It's
• 32:51
  Speaker 5: just this incredible, grounded crime drama that has nothing to
• 32:57
  Speaker 5: do with superhero stuff at all. It's just about character
• 33:01
  Speaker 5: and setting, and it's magnificent. It's magnificent from start to finish.
• 33:06
  Speaker 5: And what a finish. What an ending this thing has
• 33:09
  Speaker 5: I could not wait for Sunday Nights because I was like,
• 33:11
  Speaker 5: oh my god, I see the thing.
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: So that was the first one. The next one was, uh,
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: that's got it just kind of a funny story.
• 33:17
  Speaker 5: Actually, the next one was the show that I was
• 33:19
  Speaker 5: introduced to by a friend of mine, The Offer, which
• 33:22
  Speaker 5: is a series about the making of The Godfather and
• 33:25
  Speaker 5: true story, you know.
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: And I had no idea.
• 33:28
  Speaker 5: What happened in the making of this movie back in
• 33:31
  Speaker 5: seventy three or whenever they made it, seventy one, whatever
• 33:34
  Speaker 5: it was. And this series was just fantastic.
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: That's so compelling.
• 33:39
  Speaker 5: But what was really cool about it was that the
• 33:41
  Speaker 5: actors were playing these characters in it that seemed really
• 33:44
  Speaker 5: kind of like over the top. And I was like, what,
• 33:46
  Speaker 5: Like Gmai Rabi SI's in it, and he plays this mobster,
• 33:50
  Speaker 5: this well known mobs at the time.
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: And you know, he's doing he's doing sort of this
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: kind of guy. I'm talking away like this.
• 33:57
  Speaker 5: And I'm like, is he But then I heard like
• 33:58
  Speaker 5: some interview with this dude I had a court room
• 34:00
  Speaker 5: or something and showing off the guy. I was like
• 34:03
  Speaker 5: what And then this is the best part. So I'm
• 34:06
  Speaker 5: watching the show and I'm just loving the show. I
• 34:08
  Speaker 5: think there's eight episodes, ten episodes, and one of the
• 34:10
  Speaker 5: characters in it is this guy named Bob bob Evans
• 34:13
  Speaker 5: who's the head of Paramount at the time. And Bob
• 34:16
  Speaker 5: Evans was a real character and he was this actor nails.
• 34:19
  Speaker 6: Him right, because Bob Evans was a real sort of
• 34:21
  Speaker 6: hip cat like this, Yeah, sort of. This was a
• 34:23
  Speaker 6: sort of adnoidal thing when to talk. Alis said, like,
• 34:26
  Speaker 6: I had a cold all the time. Baby, it was Bobby.
• 34:28
  Speaker 6: It's Bob Bevans here.
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: So of course I'm watched the show.
• 34:30
  Speaker 5: When I'm I'm doing Bob Evans impersonations back to Bob
• 34:33
  Speaker 5: Bevans at the show. So then the next day I'm
• 34:36
  Speaker 5: in a session for a video game and the director
• 34:39
  Speaker 5: says to me, hey, we've got this other characters like
• 34:40
  Speaker 5: ten lines.
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: It's kind of a smarmy guy said, I got something
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: for you.
• 34:43
  Speaker 6: So I go to the Bob Evans saying I'm doing
• 34:45
  Speaker 6: the Bob Evans say it was great, Bobby do this thing.
• 34:48
  Speaker 5: So he's okay, that's really good. So we did the
• 34:49
  Speaker 5: thing and after it's over, he says to me, the
• 34:53
  Speaker 5: character you were doing.
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: It sounds familiar. For some reason, I said, have you
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: seen the offer?
• 34:56
  Speaker 5: And he goes, oh my god, you're doing Bob Evans.
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: For as a voice actor.
• 35:01
  Speaker 5: To be able to do that, to take something you've
• 35:04
  Speaker 5: just seen and to immediately use it the next day,
• 35:06
  Speaker 5: that's like the best day ever.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, that's good. That's good.
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: It reminds me of a question that that if I can,
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: if I can get it into into into the segment,
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: I'll do it.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: Where do you find new voices?
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: You're a professional of this, but is it a case
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: that you've always had this talent in now you're just
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: using it professionally, or or is it something that you've
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: you've built as a practice and a skill and you're
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: you know, there's a quest to find new voices, new characters, new.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: New ways to deliver, because I want to know.
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: I just I'm really asking from a selfish place because
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: I need to find voices.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: But I am nowhere close to a professional.
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: I can't do accents, I can't do impressions.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: What's your advice for people who have no talent at all?
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: Well, that's a curvebon to answer your your first question.
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: The answer the answer is boat.
• 36:03
  Speaker 5: I was born with this skill, and I've also worked
• 36:06
  Speaker 5: very hard to.
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: To hone it to a fine age. But so, yeah,
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: I was born with a skill.
• 36:14
  Speaker 5: But also like I was exposed to, like when I
• 36:16
  Speaker 5: was a little kid, I was exposed to lots of
• 36:18
  Speaker 5: different accents. I grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, and of
• 36:20
  Speaker 5: course we had the BBC and the BBC would put
• 36:23
  Speaker 5: on you know, the BBC Nightly Mules who would always
• 36:26
  Speaker 5: have the BBC, you know, and Monty Pyson was on
• 36:29
  Speaker 5: all the time, Betty Hill. So I heard all of
• 36:31
  Speaker 5: those accents as a kid, and they sunk in, which
• 36:34
  Speaker 5: a lot of Americans don't really get because they didn't
• 36:36
  Speaker 5: really grow up a lot of that.
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: So for them, I don't quite understand your British accent there,
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: you know.
• 36:41
  Speaker 5: But so I grew up with with an ear for
• 36:43
  Speaker 5: accents right off the bat, and then I just you know,
• 36:45
  Speaker 5: got into it.
• 36:45
  Speaker 4: But I remember there was a time I was, I don't.
• 36:48
  Speaker 5: Know, mid career, this would probably be I want to say,
• 36:51
  Speaker 5: maybe twenty ten or something, where you know, I was
• 36:53
  Speaker 5: in a bit of a rut and I was like,
• 36:55
  Speaker 5: I feel like I'm not coming up with anything new
• 36:56
  Speaker 5: I'm really bored of my character voices. I'm doing the
• 36:59
  Speaker 5: same thing thing, spinning my wheels, you know, And I couldn't.
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: I couldn't figure out like how to break myself out
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: of that.
• 37:06
  Speaker 5: And then I was doing a session with the great
• 37:08
  Speaker 5: Scott McNeil, who's a for anybody who knows the animation,
• 37:10
  Speaker 5: they would know Scotty's name. Uh. We were doing a show,
• 37:14
  Speaker 5: I don't remember what the show was, cartoon, and they
• 37:16
  Speaker 5: gave Scott a character and.
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: Right away he started to go into this sort of
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: who is that? Not PG Barnum remember the name of
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: this character. But he was a guy.
• 37:26
  Speaker 5: He was a very famous guy in the thirties and forties,
• 37:28
  Speaker 5: I think, And what Scott's stowing this thing and he's
• 37:31
  Speaker 5: playing the character and I was like, huh. So afterwards
• 37:34
  Speaker 5: I said to him where did that come from? He said,
• 37:36
  Speaker 5: I was watching these old movies the other night, and
• 37:38
  Speaker 5: what a source they are.
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: And I went huh.
• 37:40
  Speaker 5: And so I started going back, you know, going back
• 37:42
  Speaker 5: to the old did Jimmy Cagney that's Right's he you
• 37:45
  Speaker 5: already right that these guys because those movies up here
• 37:47
  Speaker 5: were those characters here are right? And I was like,
• 37:49
  Speaker 5: oh my god, it's a treasure trove. Just you know,
• 37:52
  Speaker 5: are you to go back to the you know, not
• 37:53
  Speaker 5: the charter, but but do you know the what was
• 37:56
  Speaker 5: his name?
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: There? Events?
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: And I know all these voices, I can't name that,
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: but I didn't know all of them.
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: It's a wonderful life. What the hell? Well, you know,
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: I'm sure mister Potter, you gotta anyway. Whatever.
• 38:07
  Speaker 5: So, so all of these old actors, right, they were
• 38:09
  Speaker 5: they were just this treag controve or like the you know,
• 38:11
  Speaker 5: the Peter Laurie he was he was big, you know what,
• 38:14
  Speaker 5: the Maltese folk and we've got to so they was
• 38:16
  Speaker 5: just he was just there waiting to be seized, and
• 38:18
  Speaker 5: that just opened the floodgates and that just like reinspired me.
• 38:22
  Speaker 5: So I guess the point of that story is to
• 38:24
  Speaker 5: say that you have to find something that excites you
• 38:26
  Speaker 5: and inspires you, and once that happens, you know, you're
• 38:28
  Speaker 5: you're sort of free to play again. Because that's the
• 38:31
  Speaker 5: source of all of this stuff. It's that desire to play.
• 38:33
  Speaker 5: And honestly, it's no different from that, you know, me
• 38:37
  Speaker 5: doing character voices in a show that it is for
• 38:39
  Speaker 5: me playing the game that it is for you playing
• 38:41
  Speaker 5: the game and tells the manacor it's about finding that
• 38:44
  Speaker 5: sense of what really inspires you and drives the fun
• 38:48
  Speaker 5: for you, you know, because as long as you can
• 38:49
  Speaker 5: keep going back to that, well man, it's always it's
• 38:52
  Speaker 5: always gonna provide you assessenence.
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's well anyway, thank you so much for coming up.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: This has been a lot of fun. I get long overdue.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: How did I sleep on this? Anyway?
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: Thank you for joining me tonight I can stop recording.
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: And a big thanks to Trevor de Vallo for coming
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: on the show.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: If for some reason you have not yet checked out
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: his YouTube, Show Me Myself and Die, or if you're
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: not aware of his game The Broken Empires, please go
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: out and find these things. They are a well worth
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: your time. Trevor is both a fantastic entertainer and a
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: great source of inspiration for solo play and RPG in general.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: Highly recommend it. Anyway, We'll see you in the next
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: couple of days on the next episode of Tale of
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: the mandicor It's the Story We're Chaos. Roles