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Session Zero University - Running a Successful TTRPG Kickstarter with HomieAndTheDude · Session Zero Heroes | TTRPG Actual Play Adventures & Improv Storytelling

• 0:00
  [MUSIC PLAYING]
• 0:03
  Welcome students to Session Zero University.
• 0:19
  My name is Professor Rainier, one of the many teachers
• 0:23
  here at the university.
• 0:24
  But for right now, I am your orientation representative.
• 0:28
  Here at SCU, you will find a variety of professors
• 0:32
  well-versed in the realms of tabletop role-playing games,
• 0:35
  offering you their insight on every facet of TTRPGs.
• 0:40
  Perhaps you'd like to take a home brewing class with our potions
• 0:44
  professor, or join in on a role-playing class put on
• 0:47
  by our theater department.
• 0:49
  Be sure to take all your required general education
• 0:52
  classes like character creation 101,
• 0:55
  intro to world building, and NPC voices for beginners
• 1:00
  to help round out your education.
• 1:02
  There are also plenty of electives and intramural
• 1:05
  opportunities to add some fun and diversity
• 1:07
  into your everyday schedule.
• 1:09
  So get out there and learn.
• 1:11
  Whether you're hoping to graduate with a degree in DMing
• 1:14
  or playing, it matters not.
• 1:17
  There is always room to grow at Session Zero University.
• 1:24
  Awesome.
• 1:25
  Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of Sessions
• 1:27
  Zero University.
• 1:28
  Of course, my name is Skyler.
• 1:30
  But you guys have heard from me plenty.
• 1:31
  I'm super, super stoked to have two very special guests with me
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  today.
• 1:36
  Odie and Tom.
• 1:38
  Am I saying that right, Odie?
• 1:39
  Yeah, dude, you nailed it.
• 1:40
  That pronunciation was perfect.
• 1:42
  Absolutely perfect.
• 1:43
  We've heard "Bod High."
• 1:45
  We've had old manner of stuff.
• 1:46
  Old manner of stuff.
• 1:48
  That's a wild "Bod High."
• 1:49
  That's an interesting point.
• 1:53
  From the Homey and Dude podcast, as well as the Kickstarter
• 1:56
  campaigns, which we're going to dive into, we've got Sky's
• 1:59
  Efforts, we've got the Wandering Tavern,
• 2:01
  and soon we're going to have the Scorching Basin, which
• 2:03
  I'm super stoked for.
• 2:04
  So guys, welcome to the show.
• 2:06
  Super glad to have you.
• 2:07
  Thank you.
• 2:08
  Thank you for having us.
• 2:09
  We're super stoked to be here.
• 2:11
  And we've been following your stuff for a very long time.
• 2:15
  I'm typically the one running our Instagram bits here and there.
• 2:18
  And so I've been keeping up with your guys' stuff through all
• 2:21
  of that and enjoying your content from afar for a while.
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  So it's a pleasure to be on and to be chatting to yourself
• 2:26
  as well, Skyler.
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  Absolutely.
• 2:28
  Well, that's awesome.
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  I really appreciate that.
• 2:30
  That's super sick.
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  So it's the beauty of the TTRPG really coming together
• 2:35
  and supporting each other and just making some really awesome
• 2:38
  stuff, for sure.
• 2:40
  Oh, yeah.
• 2:40
  It seems like we've been in each other's orbit
• 2:43
  for a couple of years now.
• 2:45
  Absolutely.
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  Reaching out to each other for various things.
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  And it's really cool to meet each other today.
• 2:50
  Absolutely.
• 2:51
  Yes.
• 2:51
  Yes.
• 2:52
  I was super stoked to be able to see you guys face to face
• 2:55
  finally outside of just watching the podcast and everything.
• 2:59
  So it's super cool to be together.
• 3:02
  For today's topic, Session Zero University,
• 3:04
  we're trying to help teach people things and share
• 3:07
  information amongst TTRPG content creators.
• 3:10
  And today we're talking about running a successful Kickstarter
• 3:14
  campaign.
• 3:15
  You guys have done so far two and a third one coming in, right?
• 3:18
  The Wandering Tavern, which I mentioned before.
• 3:21
  And that one--
• 3:23
  and I think it's important to note that to top it off,
• 3:26
  the Wandering Tavern was like 1,500% funded.
• 3:29
  Sky Zephyrs, over 500% funded.
• 3:32
  So it wasn't just like, we did it.
• 3:34
  We got funded.
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  It was like way beyond.
• 3:36
  Five times, 15 times funded.
• 3:38
  I think that's insane.
• 3:40
  That is so cool.
• 3:41
  And within the TTRPG space, there's
• 3:44
  a lot of people putting content out there.
• 3:45
  And you don't want to get lost in the oversaturation.
• 3:50
  So the fact that you guys were able to shoot so far ahead
• 3:53
  of your goal is incredible.
• 3:55
  It's mind blowing.
• 3:56
  Super cool.
• 3:57
  So with that being said--
• 3:59
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 4:01
  Yeah, well, so I got to ask, both of these projects,
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  what was the inspiration that sparked you guys to create them?
• 4:09
  What made you guys want to do--
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  Wandering Tavern's got a studio ghibli toned to it.
• 4:15
  Wara Sky Zephyrs.
• 4:17
  It's very really cool mechanics for--
• 4:19
  and the funny thing is, I've actually
• 4:20
  had multiple people come to me and say, hey,
• 4:23
  how can I run ship combat?
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  Or how can I run some Skycraft combat?
• 4:28
  And I was like, dude, I got exactly the thing that you need.
• 4:31
  And I just sent a straight over to your guys' website
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  and over to the content there.
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  And they're like, yo, this is going
• 4:36
  to save me so much time and effort.
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  And I said, exactly.
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  But what was it that really inspired you guys
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  to want to make this content specifically
• 4:43
  and put it out there through Kickstarter?
• 4:45
  Before you go, both.
• 4:46
  We need to send Skyler some commission checks
• 4:49
  for all those referrals.
• 4:50
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 4:52
  Exactly.
• 4:53
  We'll get you hooked up after this.
• 4:57
  Oh, you guys have already done so much for us.
• 4:58
  You're good.
• 5:01
  So on our end, basically Tom and I, during lockdown,
• 5:05
  decided to start making the podcast together
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  and start doing a couple of things
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  that we would do, which was our live streams
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  and then we would do our podcast.
• 5:14
  And we were loving doing that.
• 5:16
  And it was a good time.
• 5:17
  But then, basically, Tom discovered
• 5:19
  acquisitions incorporated.
• 5:21
  But the old crew, where it was Chris Perkins running it
• 5:25
  along with Michael Hulick and all of those--
• 5:29
  what's his name?
• 5:31
  Jerry Holkins, Patrick Ruthfuss, again,
• 5:34
  legendary person who now is revered.
• 5:38
  And we were just stunned by the level of creativity,
• 5:41
  the sets that they were doing during their live shows
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  at PAX and things like that.
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  And just like, we were watching it in the reception
• 5:49
  from the crowd.
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  They shout, green flame.
• 5:51
  And everyone's like, green flame.
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  And that just was-- it transfixed us.
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  We were just obsessed with that for a little bit.
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  And we loved it.
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  And so I became a GM for us.
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  And we started running things.
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  And we were like, holy sugar.
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  D&D is incredible.
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  We were like, it's an amazing way to tell stories
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  and to be immersed with your friends and your family
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  in something really, really fun.
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  We also are big movie fans.
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  Like, we're big consumers of video and TV content as a family.
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  And we have been since I was a young kid.
• 6:28
  And so for us to be able to tell some stories that we've
• 6:31
  been wanting to tell, that we've been talking about
• 6:34
  and speculating about, and all this stuff for ages,
• 6:37
  meant a lot to us.
• 6:39
  So then we were so lucky back when--
• 6:41
  this is an interesting thing.
• 6:44
  So back when Twitter was not bought by Elon Musk,
• 6:47
  it was this stunning, safe space for TTRPG creators
• 6:51
  specifically.
• 6:52
  And the community was thriving massively.
• 6:55
  Like, we knew so many people who were doing like incredible
• 6:59
  with Twitter followers.
• 7:01
  And we're getting loads of their content kind of viewed
• 7:04
  and things like that, all before the Elon Musk
• 7:07
  kind of situation happened.
• 7:08
  And some people brought us into the community.
• 7:11
  They introduced us in while we were doing our podcast.
• 7:14
  And we started interviewing TTRPG people.
• 7:16
  And we started kind of just establishing ourselves
• 7:19
  in the space a little bit.
• 7:20
  And we had some very early help from some incredible creators,
• 7:24
  people like Underground Oracle, who
• 7:26
  make some of the best supplements out there.
• 7:28
  People like Dungeon Glitch, who's been here there
• 7:32
  and everywhere in the early days of the D&D space
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  and is an absolute legend.
• 7:37
  David Tilstra, who is freaking everywhere now as well.
• 7:41
  You can see him on so many incredible shows.
• 7:44
  These people were super kind to us
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  and brought us into the space.
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  And we just fell in love with it.
• 7:50
  And we were like, we want to create something here.
• 7:52
  We want to give back to the community
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  because all these amazing people have been so gracious to us.
• 7:58
  And so I had a world at the time that was called the Sky Realm.
• 8:02
  That was all based with Floating Island.
• 8:04
  So imagine like an avatar, the Blue People avatar,
• 8:08
  not the last airbender.
• 8:11
  Yeah, you know the floating mountains up in there.
• 8:14
  I think they call them the Hallelujah Mountains or something
• 8:16
  like that in the movie.
• 8:18
  Very heavily inspired off of that.
• 8:20
  So each of these mountains had cities on them,
• 8:23
  people living there, and just kind of existing up in this layer.
• 8:27
  And we ran awesome campaigns there.
• 8:30
  We had an amazing time.
• 8:31
  But one thing that was impossible for me was the fact
• 8:34
  that I have this beautiful airspace.
• 8:36
  It's so like we've got so much expandable,
• 8:39
  like explorable territory,
• 8:41
  and there's no freaking good rules to run any air travel
• 8:46
  or anything in that space.
• 8:48
  And you know, there's things like people online had made Wild Jammer
• 8:52
  and there was old versions of Spell Jammer that existed.
• 8:55
  There were Star Wars 5E.
• 8:57
  You know, there was all these different mechanic systems.
• 9:00
  You know, there's a little bit in Descent to Avernus,
• 9:02
  little bits there that you could kind of pull together
• 9:05
  to make kind of a Frankenstein system for vehicle travel.
• 9:10
  And we just got fed up of that basically.
• 9:13
  And we're like, we want to make something.
• 9:15
  So I started developing Sky's Effors
• 9:18
  and the vehicle mechanic system there.
• 9:22
  And got to a point where I don't know what happened.
• 9:26
  The guy who helped us write it, Tony, who was a good friend of ours,
• 9:30
  we were all just hanging out.
• 9:32
  And I think one day we were just like, should we like...
• 9:35
  People are going to want this.
• 9:37
  Like, this is awesome.
• 9:38
  Should we try and make it into a book
• 9:39
  and get it out to the community kind of thing?
• 9:42
  And when we have that conversation, Spell Jammer came out like
• 9:48
  maybe a week or two later.
• 9:51
  And it was just terrible and it was so bad.
• 9:53
  And so we were like, OK, I guess that's the sign.
• 9:57
  Like, you know, if what's here going to burn it, then we've got to give people something.
• 10:03
  And so Sky's Effors told us to place like that.
• 10:06
  We had no idea what we were doing.
• 10:07
  Like there was...
• 10:09
  And Tom and I are people who learn as we go.
• 10:12
  We're the fail type.
• 10:15
  I'm a skateboarder.
• 10:16
  So my whole life and we're both martial artists and things like that.
• 10:19
  You know, we've been learning through failure our entire lives.
• 10:22
  And so for us to come to this space, we just kind of just winged it and just went for it
• 10:29
  and tried to learn as we went.
• 10:30
  And we had huge help from people like Nord Games, Chris at Nord Games.
• 10:34
  Shout out to him.
• 10:35
  And other amazing folks like Sly Flourish, Mike Shea, who's just an absolute legend
• 10:41
  and believed in us at the beginning as well.
• 10:44
  People like Rune Smith, an incredible creator who again, gave us a chance to promote with us
• 10:50
  and help us start understanding the marketing machine going on here
• 10:53
  and how to kind of position ourselves and all this kind of stuff.
• 10:58
  So people were just, again, so kind to us, offered us so much advice.
• 11:03
  And we went to Sky's Effors with very low expectations.
• 11:07
  And we came out, you know, stunned with the support that we got and were blown away.
• 11:12
  And it was enough for us to bring on some more people to come and work with us.
• 11:16
  And then from there, basically during Sky's Effors,
• 11:20
  the Wandering Tavern actually is a airship in Sky's Effors that originally existed in Sky's Effors.
• 11:27
  Right.
• 11:28
  People loved it so much that we were like, oh, we'll build you an STL.
• 11:33
  We'll make you like a printable version of the Wandering Tavern, which was awesome.
• 11:37
  And then from there, we were like, man, everyone really loved it.
• 11:40
  So we just turned it into something.
• 11:42
  And the beautiful thing we did is technically the Wandering Tavern could be used perfectly
• 11:47
  in conjunction with Sky's Effors because there's characters in Sky's Effors who are
• 11:52
  older in the timeline, I guess, of it.
• 11:55
  But then in Wandering Tavern, you have like young Don Leon or as he's known in the Wandering Tavern,
• 12:01
  Leon Klaw, you know, same character, both books, younger version, older version.
• 12:07
  And there's this synergy between the two books that we started seeing.
• 12:11
  And we started the first one was written by, you know, two fake writers called
• 12:15
  Gellmer and Saffa who were making a Sky Travel Guide.
• 12:19
  The second one is written by Amelia, who's a traveling journalist who's exploring the
• 12:24
  Wandering Tavern because she became fascinated with it as a child and wanted to go and explore
• 12:30
  and find it.
• 12:31
  And so I don't know, it just made sense.
• 12:34
  The Wandering Tavern kind of fell in our laps.
• 12:37
  And thankfully my writing partner, Emily, who is a straight up badass, like a straight up
• 12:44
  killer when it comes to writing lore and writing extensive worlds that are packed with juicy
• 12:52
  little crumbs that, you know, and this is the thing.
• 12:54
  I'm the mechanics guy and I'm also the continuity guy.
• 12:59
  I make sure that everything works within the laws of the world that we built and, you know,
• 13:03
  come up with the bigger overarching kind of things where she's like, you know, in the
• 13:07
  Wandering Tavern, she designed the Spider Quest that we've had so many people message
• 13:12
  us about and be like, the Spider plot hooks is incredible.
• 13:15
  I love shrinking my characters down and letting them explore.
• 13:18
  And we're like, that was a throwaway idea that we just that Emily was like, I want to include
• 13:24
  it.
• 13:25
  And we did.
• 13:25
  And it's one of the most amazing things there.
• 13:27
  So Emily elevated our book level and our quality and just the amazing work that we do
• 13:34
  tenfold.
• 13:35
  And so that was it.
• 13:38
  We got to the Wandering Tavern and we had changed our marketing strategy pretty heavily
• 13:43
  into we were no longer going to be running any sort of Facebook or corporate advertising
• 13:48
  during the campaign.
• 13:50
  We remember that.
• 13:50
  Yeah.
• 13:51
  Slowly promoted through creators and things like that.
• 13:55
  And so that began developing our marketing strategy a little bit more and changed how
• 13:59
  we now position it going into this next one and how we want to help the community with
• 14:06
  this project simultaneously.
• 14:08
  And so, yeah, dude, that's been the journey.
• 14:10
  It's been it's been a wild journey and it's it's been hella fun and Tom and I have been
• 14:15
  lucky as hell to work with each other and to do this together as father and son and with
• 14:19
  our friends and our artists who we've been working with for four years, our layout artists
• 14:23
  who we've been working with for four years, our editor who's been with us for two years,
• 14:26
  our team, some of which have been with us for five years.
• 14:29
  And it's all those things of like, we love these people.
• 14:32
  They're family now.
• 14:33
  And this is very much a family affair for us.
• 14:35
  So, you know, this journey has been filled with opportunities that we've been lucky enough
• 14:42
  to be able to grasp in the moment and then also a sprinkle of luck outside of that as well.
• 14:46
  Realistic.
• 14:48
  I think that's always got to be in there just at least at least a sprinkle, right?
• 14:51
  Get a little bit of room.
• 14:52
  So that's awesome.
• 14:54
  Wow.
• 14:54
  That's incredible.
• 14:55
  And like you said, you know, having that perfect opportunity pop up to publish it when Sky Jammer
• 15:01
  is really, really failed and being able to kind of jump in with something that works so much
• 15:07
  better.
• 15:07
  I mean, that's perfect, right?
• 15:09
  You're creating or the demand was there and then you provided what people wanted.
• 15:14
  That's awesome.
• 15:14
  So, you would mention, you know, both of you kind of have this sort of we're going to figure it
• 15:19
  out as we go, we're going to fail and then we're going to pick ourselves back up and we're going
• 15:23
  to keep on going and we're going to adjust throughout the process of those first two
• 15:28
  campaigns.
• 15:28
  What would you say was one of the biggest things that you had to learn or you had to
• 15:34
  even readjust between the two of them and then hopefully even take into the scorched base and
• 15:40
  stuff, you know, coming up?
• 15:41
  You go first, Tom.
• 15:43
  Yeah, I think, sure.
• 15:44
  So, I think with Sky's efforts, we just didn't know, I guess we didn't know what we didn't
• 15:53
  know, right?
• 15:54
  So, what we were doing is just grasping for how people do things or kick starters.
• 16:01
  Right.
• 16:02
  So, we brought in Nord Games who Bodhi mentioned as almost like a consultant for us and as part
• 16:08
  of that, they advised us on how to do Facebook ads and really helped us with that and they put
• 16:14
  us in their newsletter and they gave us more advice on, you know, kind of reaching out to
• 16:19
  different people and so we followed the instructions basically because that's all we knew.
• 16:25
  And it definitely took us to a certain place but along that first campaign, I guess I just
• 16:32
  started feeling uncomfortable with, I guess, first straight away just giving money to Facebook.
• 16:39
  It didn't feel great initially and also the conversions were a little bit
• 16:47
  like uncertain.
• 16:49
  We didn't really know how much we were converting from Facebook so both of those things started
• 16:53
  getting us to think like how much do we need these guys and the answer was, well, I guess a lot
• 17:01
  because everyone uses them.
• 17:03
  Like if you go to Facebook right now and you are, you know, you've ticked TTRPGs as your
• 17:08
  interest, well, you know what's coming up on your feed.
• 17:11
  It is new books from big players continuously, right?
• 17:16
  And the reason they do that is because it works.
• 17:19
  It just does, it works.
• 17:20
  But, you know, we kept having conversations about men.
• 17:25
  It is, seems to be the only way to do this and no one else is doing it a different way.
• 17:30
  But is there something else we can do and that just started getting us to think about, okay,
• 17:37
  we know a couple creators, could we possibly extend our network and build out a different model?
• 17:47
  And that's what we started exploring.
• 17:48
  And it wasn't because we failed with Facebook.
• 17:51
  Facebook did what it does.
• 17:53
  Like it returns.
• 17:54
  There's some marketing formulas that say you should get, you know, about, I don't know,
• 18:03
  between two and three times what your investment is on ads.
• 18:08
  And we got that.
• 18:10
  We definitely got that.
• 18:11
  But we just wanted to try something else.
• 18:16
  And so with the Wandering Tavern, we reached out to our network a little bit more.
• 18:21
  So again, some of the OG friends that we had were there, but we also then built out
• 18:27
  a larger network of people.
• 18:29
  So, you know, continued shout outs to people like D&D Shorts took a risk on us.
• 18:35
  Cinderblock Sally took a risk on us.
• 18:37
  And on and on, like Deficient Master was there.
• 18:40
  Zack the Bold was there early days.
• 18:44
  And this was before he was like Zack the Bold, but he was a rocket ship even back then.
• 18:51
  And so we then built out our network to, I don't know, maybe about 15 creators.
• 18:59
  And we thought, okay, well, we might have something here.
• 19:03
  So we have really, really invested a lot of time.
• 19:08
  You can't do this by, you know, with one email or something like that.
• 19:14
  You have to just build relationships.
• 19:15
  So we've been to GenCon the last two years.
• 19:18
  We've gotten to meet people over the course of a long, long time, months and months and months.
• 19:23
  And, you know, we have countless calls just like this.
• 19:27
  It seems like weekly and have become friends with a lot of people in the community.
• 19:32
  And it has served us really well.
• 19:33
  And so we are looking to support them and they're looking to support us.
• 19:39
  And it seems it just feels a lot better than giving money to Zuckerberg.
• 19:42
  So whether it works or not, honestly, Skyler, we don't know if we don't know if this next one's
• 19:46
  going to work.
• 19:48
  We feel good about whatever happens because we like the direction we went in.
• 19:53
  So we're okay with what the outcome is going to be on this one.
• 19:56
  Yeah.
• 19:56
  And I think what I would say is with kick starters in general, if we just take a step
• 20:01
  back and look at kick starters in general, what I would say to the audience is,
• 20:04
  I'm thinking back to before Sky's efforts.
• 20:08
  And I think there's a feeling, because we certainly had it of like, if you just run a
• 20:15
  kick starter, like maybe magic will happen.
• 20:17
  You know, maybe like something, you know, you're on kick starter, you're on the platform,
• 20:22
  people are going to see it, people are going to like, you know, this could, this could blow up.
• 20:26
  It could, and the message I would give to everyone is, unless it's some sort of fluke
• 20:33
  product that does, I've never heard of one in our sphere, but you're going to get out of your
• 20:40
  kick starter pretty much what you put into it. And that's, that's a pretty consistent formula
• 20:46
  that we've seen over the last two. And the other thing I would say is, as much as you put into
• 20:52
  the creation of your product, you have to put at least that much into marketing that product.
• 20:59
  Agreed.
• 21:00
  So those are two things that people might overlook in the audience.
• 21:03
  Right.
• 21:04
  Yeah.
• 21:04
  I'm glad you mentioned that. Yeah.
• 21:06
  Because a lot of people think, oh, we've got something really cool here.
• 21:08
  And you might, I'm not saying you don't. But yeah, if you're not, if you're not sharing it,
• 21:13
  right? And there's a little bit of a differentiation when it comes to things with like an IP, right?
• 21:18
  Like a popular, like we saw Avatar Legends really kind of blew things out of the water
• 21:22
  from the TTRBG space because they were, they had the name recognition of Avatar the Last Airbender.
• 21:27
  And not to say they didn't do marketing, of course, and they made an awesome product. But
• 21:31
  that definitely helps skyrocket you forward at least a little bit when it comes to marketing.
• 21:36
  But yeah, I'm glad that you mentioned that. It's not that easy for just everybody.
• 21:40
  You've got to really put a lot of work and a lot of effort into it.
• 21:42
  So 100%.
• 21:44
  I think as well, I'll add to a couple things Tom said.
• 21:47
  You know, we feel like Tom said, this is a gamble for us. We feel really comfortable,
• 21:53
  though, morally with what we have decided in terms of working with the community.
• 21:57
  And, you know, giving, you know, for people who don't understand, you know, we're offering
• 22:02
  creators, you know, that they could get a chance to promote and put loads of effort in in the same
• 22:06
  way that we've put loads of effort into the product and things like that. And then we just
• 22:09
  want to split whatever that person brings in with them. We want to be able to continue keeping
• 22:14
  creators who are getting, you know, for lack of better terms shafted by YouTube at the moment
• 22:18
  because of how bad the algorithm is and how little they're willing to pay creators. And,
• 22:23
  you know, whether it's Instagram or TikTok or YouTube or, you know, even just other sponsors
• 22:28
  and things like that. So we want to really just try and help creators. And, you know,
• 22:32
  we're not sure if everyone's going to get the bang for the buck, but we're going to try and at
• 22:36
  least help as many people as we can and just try and spread the love to people as one.
• 22:41
  Tom's exactly right. Like I'll give you an example straight off for it.
• 22:44
  Everyone, I'm sure everyone here has heard of the ridiculous online store called Timu or Temu
• 22:53
  or whatever the hell it's whatever. Yeah. Their products and them as a whole are just trash.
• 23:00
  We had like it's it's it's it's awful, right? But their marketing hits so wide and so far.
• 23:10
  And it's so like a lot of it is like catchy song stuff that like, you know, for people who
• 23:16
  stim regularly or like, you know, just locked in, you know, and so there that's the thing. Marketing,
• 23:23
  if your marketing is incredible and your product is wack, you can still sell a whack product with
• 23:28
  incredible marketing. But that's the thing that is is then the the job of us as the third party
• 23:34
  creators is to make sure that you market your ass off. You get it as far as you can. And then
• 23:40
  you deliver a product that is at minimum, at minimum what you promised, a freaking minimum.
• 23:47
  Then you have to like, in my opinion, and that's what, you know, we try and do is like,
• 23:52
  you know, we've so on the Kickstarter page, we've mentioned a bunch of things within this book,
• 23:56
  we've mentioned, you know, all the stuff that you're going to find in here. But even then,
• 24:01
  you can't see the true depth that we've gone to here. You know, each faction chapter is like
• 24:07
  30 to 40 pages of that you can use within in your world, you know, whether it's stuff that you
• 24:14
  want to use for that faction or Pete, like modularize it and use it for other things.
• 24:19
  We've given you so much depth in this that no one will get to see from the Kickstarter page
• 24:23
  that we've got or from the, you know, advertising that people are doing, you know, it comes down to
• 24:28
  that's the secondary thing of once we deliver the products, the reception coming back of people
• 24:33
  being like, wow, I'm stoked about this or like, oh, I ran this and it was really fun or, you know,
• 24:38
  we've had we have channels in our Discord server where people can come and share stories from their
• 24:44
  sessions and their campaigns, you know, and epic moments and discuss whether they think the BVG
• 24:49
  is actually a bad guy or whether he's justified, you know, all this kind of stuff. And so, yeah,
• 24:54
  for us, it is that combination that marrying the two things together. But it and for us,
• 25:00
  we chose, we chose to just make friends with the people in the space and try and help those people.
• 25:05
  That was that was our choice is we we love so many of these creators like, you know,
• 25:10
  ArlendTrick who helped us write a huge chunk of the Scorch basin. He's now an incredibly good friend
• 25:15
  of mine. Me and him send each other voice notes almost daily. We call each other at least once a
• 25:20
  week. We play Magic the Gathering online. Like he's he's my homie. We are like close friends now
• 25:26
  because of this, you know, and that's that's what we are appreciating about this space and trying
• 25:30
  to just help our our friends and what we call because ever since I was a little kid, my close
• 25:36
  circle of friends and Tom and Tracy, we've always known as the Familia. And and so for us now,
• 25:44
  the creators that we've expanded to all the people in our Discord server, those who follow our
• 25:48
  newsletter or, you know, watch our YouTube videos, whatever, it's all just Familia, dude, we're just
• 25:53
  it's family. That's all it is, you know. And that's so awesome. That's where we're at at this point
• 25:58
  with with that. Yeah. Tom, a great a great mention of what we had to shift between the two because
• 26:04
  God, it was and it really took us as well through the OGL stuff and all of this to gamble on some
• 26:12
  of this stuff and to trust that, you know, we could also help the community back and trust
• 26:18
  ourselves, trust them. And it was a big trust process it felt like for everybody. And I think
• 26:24
  that's just what we're trying to do is is prove that also other companies like the big names that
• 26:29
  are out there, you know, the the I mean, probably not the Hasper as let's be real. But you know,
• 26:35
  the Paisos, the Mage and presses, the Cobalt presses, the, you know, the chaos, you know,
• 26:40
  people like that, if we can prove that this model works and we can keep the community alive by working
• 26:46
  with content creators, then actually, there's no need to give Mark Zuckerberg money or Google
• 26:53
  money or, you know, YouTube ad money, you know, like, we can keep it in the family. That's the
• 26:58
  whole point, you know, is keep it in the family. I love that I'm what I'm hearing is almost kind of
• 27:03
  a story in and of itself, right? We love our fantasy stories. We love sort of the hero's journey
• 27:08
  kind of stuff. I'm hearing from you guys this this overarching theme of bringing together the
• 27:15
  community, right? You guys are all these scattered warriors from across the lands coming together
• 27:20
  and then standing up against these sort of big corporate companies trying to sort of dictate
• 27:26
  how everything works and and sort of become dictators in and of themselves, right? This is
• 27:31
  my system and you're going to follow my system and you guys are the warriors standing up against
• 27:36
  this system and saying, no, this doesn't have to be how it is. We're going to find another way
• 27:41
  and we're going to come together to do it. And I love that. That's really cool. That's so awesome.
• 27:45
  We found we found a couple fun ways to do that. So one of the ways with and I think
• 27:54
  Bodes, maybe it might be good for you to just introduce the the headlines of Scorch Basin and
• 27:58
  then we can talk about how we have done a couple, what I guess what I would call alternative
• 28:03
  collaborations across a couple different areas of creators. But maybe we'll give
• 28:09
  we'll give the audience a little bit of just a kind of a headline of what Scorch Basin is and
• 28:15
  then we'll dip into some of the behind the scenes stuff. Yeah. So I mean, we've tried to innovate
• 28:21
  with this book. We've tried to, like Tom said, allow collaboration in a multitude of different
• 28:26
  ways and bring as many people on to work on this as possible. So we have over 100 creators who are
• 28:34
  some of your favorites from around the the TTRPD sphere doing voiceovers for NPCs in the book.
• 28:42
  So you will find throughout the book QR codes that will allow you to scan quickly, take you to a
• 28:48
  YouTube video and you can quickly listen to what that character might sound like. You get a little
• 28:52
  flavor of who they are and what they're kind of like from these incredible videos from, you know,
• 28:58
  some of the most amazing people in the space. Not to mention then we've worked specifically with
• 29:04
  four incredible creators who are also really close friends of ours that we absolutely love.
• 29:09
  I mean, they've written what we're calling like DLC expansions for the for the book. Basically,
• 29:15
  these are things that you can add to the Scorch Basin to make it even more fleshed out full,
• 29:20
  give you more options. So we've got two adventures, one that's like a war boys mad max mixed with
• 29:27
  eldritch horror kind of vibe. We we have a moral spiritual quest for protecting a sacred land that's
• 29:37
  very heavily like Dune inspired and Fremen kind of inspired from Dune being done by another one
• 29:43
  of these. So we've got Zach the Bold making that first adventure. We've got Skyler ADHDM
• 29:47
  doing the second one. We've got Cinderblock Sally making a bunch of myriad of creatures. I think
• 29:54
  it's like 30 creatures or something to add to the setting as well to continue to flesh it out
• 29:59
  further. And then we have the amazing deck of DM things, Cole, who has written out an incredible
• 30:06
  roster of items that are super lore based on the stuff that we've written and things that will
• 30:12
  expand to give your players even more loot to kind of like find. So, you know, we've got these
• 30:17
  voiceovers, we've got these collaborations. I at one point during the creative process, I get I get
• 30:23
  these weird hyper fixations when I'm writing stuff that like I fall into little wormholes for a
• 30:28
  little bit. And one of them was like, I wanted to make some languages for the scorch basin.
• 30:33
  And I was like, I just got a little bit obsessed with it for a little bit of time. So we came up
• 30:38
  with a brand new like font and writing style for what we call sand common, which is your native
• 30:45
  speaking tongue at your D&D table. That's whatever sand common is for you basically. And then I
• 30:51
  invented two other languages, one that is uses more Morse code, but instead of doing dots and
• 30:57
  beeps, it's like a rhythm based language that you do by like striking your chest, clicking your
• 31:01
  fingers and humming certain notes basically. And finally with that, the big one, and by the way,
• 31:08
  I chose Morse code, because it's internationally like understood by many, many people. And also,
• 31:14
  it's starting to become used for accessibility for people who have had things like strokes and
• 31:19
  heart failure and things like that. So it's a big accessibility thing. And, you know,
• 31:23
  teaching folks about that is something that we're passionate about. And then the other one that I
• 31:28
  did was it's called Imana. And it's based on American sign language. And so basically using
• 31:36
  the language we've taught, we're trying to teach people what is called like basic signing, the
• 31:42
  basic like alphabetizing of sign language. We chose American sign language, because it's a
• 31:48
  one handed sign language so that it can be done, you know, almost predominantly with one hand.
• 31:52
  And we were super thankful because there's an amazing company here in the UK called Apame
• 31:58
  Limited, who are one of the premier, you know, deaf and hard of hearing, like accessibility groups
• 32:05
  that support people and offer, you know, translators and people who can teach the language, things
• 32:11
  like that. And they graciously provided us with someone who helped us actually make a video
• 32:17
  of all the signs and to teach people. So not only will you be able to see them in the book,
• 32:22
  but you'll actually be able to learn it online with someone who has done an instructional tutorial
• 32:27
  and all this kind of stuff. So we really have tried to go bigger and better. I mean, we've also
• 32:33
  got an add on. This is not been spoken about anywhere else. So this is a beautiful little teaser
• 32:40
  for your listeners. We have an add on where you can get yourself a one shot playing the
• 32:46
  Scorch Basin, a PDF with it with the legendary B. Dave Walters running the session for you
• 32:55
  and six other people. So, you know, we're trying to just collaborate with incredible people and
• 33:02
  we're, you know, we've got a soundtrack in the book. We're just trying to work with a lot of
• 33:06
  different people to make the book just crazy, basically. And yeah, that would be further
• 33:12
  into the collaboration of how we're trying to bring creators into this process with us.
• 33:16
  And such diverse elements of creators too. That is so cool. I mean, everything from
• 33:21
  earlier you would mention, you know, the STLs and things like those lines for the ships and
• 33:25
  things like that from the previous projects. And then now we're all the way to the whole QR code
• 33:31
  to have voice actors and sort of a portion for their characters. That is a cool concept. I
• 33:37
  personally have never even thought of before, but it makes so much sense. Give me, let my players
• 33:43
  sort of visualize this character. Here's some character art. Here's what they sound like.
• 33:48
  That's insane. That is such a clever idea. And then all the accessibility stuff that you're adding
• 33:53
  in to kind of give them even more of a feel of the world. But then there's sort of a double
• 33:58
  side to that where you're also learning something in the meantime. That's crazy. That is so cool.
• 34:03
  I love that so much. That's awesome. Dude, you're hype about this is hyping me up, dude. I appreciate
• 34:10
  you a lot. Dude, dude, I feel very seen. I feel very seen. Thank you. As you should. Well, and
• 34:16
  again, you guys have put in so much work on this. So it's really cool to see and the creativity of
• 34:20
  this. I mean, it really speaks to the collaboration. It speaks to the teamwork that you guys have
• 34:25
  developed both between other creators and your team at Homey and the Dude is bringing all these
• 34:30
  ideas in and these concepts. You mentioned that spider side quest that was really popular. I mean,
• 34:36
  something like that that came from one of your team and ended up blowing up. It's so cool to be
• 34:41
  able to collaborate with people like that and to see returns on that. You know, man, that is,
• 34:47
  I'm stoked. I'm super stoked. I know I'm kind of getting a little bit off here, but no, that's
• 34:52
  fantastic. I actually had on here, obviously, talking about Scorch Basin and kind of getting
• 34:57
  an idea that what was it about? Because obviously, this kind of has like a Dune Mad Max thing. Is
• 35:05
  it the popularity of Dune that's kind of been rising up with the movies coming out that really
• 35:09
  sparked that idea? Because you had mentioned earlier, you know, with Sky's Efforts and stuff,
• 35:14
  that you kind of hit a point where you were like, nobody else is doing this well. And that kind of
• 35:18
  helped push a lot of the inspiration. What would you say for Scorch Basin really sparked that?
• 35:23
  Let's do this. I want to jump into this kind of like desert terrain, Mad Max kind of a feel.
• 35:28
  Dude, fantastic question. Honestly, so a couple things. First of all, we didn't choose the setting.
• 35:34
  Our community chose the setting. Our Discord and our Last Kickstarter people and everyone on our
• 35:41
  social media, everyone voted and it was an amazing vote between a bunch of really good options that
• 35:46
  we were hyped for every single one of those. I remember that vote. Yes, absolutely. And everyone
• 35:52
  chose the Scorch Basin and I'll tell you this. So for me, I've loved things like, you know,
• 35:58
  Princes of Egypt, you know, the old animated movie, you know, I love, you know, what's called Prince
• 36:05
  of Persia, the game, you know, what's the movie where Brad Pitt plays a pirate dude? And it's an
• 36:13
  animated one. It's like, I want to say, oh, Sinbad, Sinbad, you know, like, there's all these like
• 36:19
  incredible things that I used to love as a kid. And then growing up, you know, I've obviously
• 36:24
  then read Dune. I've watched all the Mad Max movies. I've also watched the old David Fincher
• 36:30
  Dune. I've watched the new Dunes, you know. And so when we chose the desert setting, first of all,
• 36:37
  we were already kind of hyped on that one already. We'd already come up with the name and we're a
• 36:41
  little bit further down the line. And, you know, I'm also a big fan of like the desert settings
• 36:46
  in Star Wars like Tatooine and Jakku and these various gorgeous like desert settings that are
• 36:53
  so interesting and so full of depth, but also so barren at the same time. Yeah, yeah. Awesome.
• 36:59
  First of all, Dune and Mad Max are just the giantist of wells of inspirational material
• 37:08
  that you can pull from. And there's so so much in there. And me personally, I love a saying from
• 37:13
  Brennan Lee Morgan, which is a GM is only as good as the obscure references they make.
• 37:19
  Okay. Yeah. One of my favorite sayings ever and it really resonated with me. And so my whole
• 37:24
  technique with things is I just I pull on my vast knowledge of content and I mishmash tropes
• 37:31
  together. I mash things that I loved about things and I take little pieces. So for example,
• 37:36
  the Scarra in the Scorch Basin, they're this warrior group of predominantly women based off
• 37:44
  of the Amazonian women of Themyscara from DC Universe. However, I mixed in a lot of the Spartan
• 37:52
  and Roman kind of ways that they fight. They use spear and shield. They use shield walls and things
• 37:59
  like that when they're in combat. Their way that their political system is taken from a strength
• 38:05
  based situation that I heard about from somewhere else. And so I pull all these pieces together
• 38:10
  and we create this beautiful tribe of warrior badass women that have like actual learnable
• 38:16
  fighting styles that you can pick up as a player and this deep rich lore of how they actually
• 38:21
  convert things into water. If you really want to like learn about it, they're super interesting
• 38:26
  people with this history that stems back to the first surface dwellers. You know, it's
• 38:30
  it's a it's a deep, deep level of stuff. So for me, it was the opportunity to build things out
• 38:36
  like that and to explore a world where I love Dune. I love how Dune is so fantasy and so science
• 38:44
  all at the same time. I'm such a fan of that. Also, I'm a metalhead. I love metal music. I love
• 38:51
  getting angry. I love skateboarding and getting mad at my skateboard and throwing it on the ground.
• 38:55
  So Mad Max made a lot of sense, you know, driving fast, getting crazy, shouting about
• 39:00
  shit and just being a wild, you know, a wild being who's out in the ether. So I just loved it.
• 39:08
  Now, I will be a thousand percent honest with your listeners. Of course, we factored in the fact that
• 39:14
  Dune 2 was coming out and, you know, we also knew Mad Max, not Fury Road, what's Furiosa was
• 39:21
  coming out as well. We knew that these IPs were going to be somewhat in the in the popular eye,
• 39:26
  especially considering how well Dune 2 did and everyone falling in love with, you know,
• 39:31
  that that styling and all of that kind of stuff. Yeah, of course, that was something we considered.
• 39:37
  And it's something that we consider, you know, when we talked about Studio Ghibli, you know,
• 39:41
  wandering tavern really could have gone any way. It could have been super grimdark. It could have
• 39:46
  been super like high fantasy and weird and wonderful. And it could have been, you know,
• 39:52
  any spectrum of fantasy that we wanted to. But we chose Studio Ghibli because we resonate with it.
• 39:58
  We love like, dude, Spirit It Away was my first ever introduction to anime ever. And it blew my
• 40:06
  socks off when I was like six years old and just shaped a lot of my like also loving that hero,
• 40:12
  like the heroine of Chahiro being so badass and being able to do everything and she was just
• 40:19
  awesome. And so I just fell in love with Studio Ghibli. And yeah, when Boy in the Harrow was coming
• 40:24
  out, we're like, it just makes sense. Like the timing makes sense. And so yeah, definitely a
• 40:30
  combination of the two of just like, I love those IPs. I love exploring that space. I love bringing
• 40:35
  in new things from other IPs to just mutant make it all up. Yeah, mix it all up into a melting pot
• 40:41
  of random stuff. And yeah. And of course, there was also a marketing conversation with Tom and I
• 40:47
  of what would make sense in terms of being like, if we're if if saying Studio Ghibli worked for us,
• 40:53
  a discovery that we found, then maybe saying Dune and Mad Max might also work for us and things
• 40:59
  like that 100. Well, it puts people in the mind space, right? And I don't think there's anything
• 41:02
  wrong with that by any means, right? If I go see Dune and I think to myself, man, it'd be really
• 41:06
  cool to run this and a TTRPG space, what's out there? And then boom, all of a sudden,
• 41:11
  scorched space and pops up in front of me. I mean, Bada Bing, Bada Boom, that's perfect. We're there.
• 41:17
  And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. That's spot on what I'm looking for. So
• 41:21
  keywords, keywords, keywords, keywords, and yeah, all the marketing stuff that kind of ties in with
• 41:26
  it. I'm already inspired by it. I want to jump in more. That's fantastic. So so with that being said,
• 41:33
  with scorched basin, one thing that I noticed was for the previous two campaigns you guys had run,
• 41:38
  they were very focused on 5e and scorched basin going into that one. That one's going to be very
• 41:47
  system agnostic, right? It can kind of work for a lot of different systems.
• 41:51
  Was there a particular reason why you guys wanted to kind of lean into that? I know I could
• 41:55
  probably guess a few of the factors that might have come into play for sure, but I'm just curious
• 42:00
  like what your guys is thinking directly was. Yeah, dude, I think so hilariously, when you
• 42:07
  asked earlier what was the one thing that we changed throughout, my thing was going to be
• 42:13
  going from doing 5th edition stuff to doing system agnostic stuff. And it came down to the OGL.
• 42:22
  Tom and I were D&D people. We had played one module and then I had homebrewed everything that
• 42:30
  I'd ever done in D&D. The OGL happened and we were about two-thirds of the way through writing
• 42:40
  Sky's Effors. So I've written a whole mechanics book in 5e, hoping that this OGL is going to
• 42:50
  allow us to get our book to the public. And here we are being told that we might not ever get to
• 42:56
  release something that I've spent at that point probably hundreds of hours investing time into.
• 43:04
  And so we were annoyed and angry just like everyone else was. And we at that point hilariously
• 43:17
  branched out. We started trying other systems. So Avatar Legends is something we tried. We have an
• 43:23
  awesome actual play called Avatar The Last Breath that tells a lot of history that's missing from
• 43:28
  the Hundred Year War. So if you're interested in that, you can check that out. But we also found
• 43:34
  systems like Orbital Blues that is one of our favorites. We found Pirate Borg. We found Tales
• 43:39
  from the Loop. We found Slug Blasters. We found all these other incredible systems that exist out
• 43:46
  there in our, in my opinion, we only play D&D now when other people ask us to play D&D. We
• 43:52
  haven't played D&D at a home table. And I don't think we ever will again if I'm a thousand percent
• 43:57
  honest. But we just found all these other systems and they suited how we like playing,
• 44:03
  especially something like Orbital Blues that is Super Lu rules light, but really encourages
• 44:08
  like big story moments like swan songing where you like commit to dying at the end of the scene.
• 44:15
  But you get like double health and amazing things and you get all this stuff to make your your big
• 44:20
  send off incredible and your music that you chose in character creation plays. And it's this big
• 44:26
  moment, you know, that kind of stuff. And so we fell in love with other systems. And for wondering
• 44:32
  Tavern, I was like, we were afraid. The truth is this, and Tom and I are proud of this. So I will
• 44:40
  100 percent say we were afraid that we wouldn't be able to market the product well enough without
• 44:46
  5e being connected to it without Dungeons and Dragons being connected to it. We hadn't seen
• 44:52
  things like Avatar Legends yet really blow up to the extent that it did. You know, we hadn't seen
• 44:59
  the Stormlight RPG that came out last year that just like destroyed Kickstarter's like records
• 45:06
  of all time in TTRPG space and things like that. So we just weren't confident enough. So I combined
• 45:14
  the two I started writing what I what I call our system agnostic language and we included 5e stats.
• 45:20
  It was awful. I had to do double the workload for the entire book. You know, I had to write
• 45:26
  everything is in one style of stats. And then I had to rewrite it in another style of stats to,
• 45:31
  you know, create this semblance of us still giving you D&D while also providing you with the thing
• 45:37
  that we actually believed in, which is our system agnostic language. Coming out of that,
• 45:43
  there was debates because because we wrote Skye's efforts in 5e and our vehicle builders
• 45:50
  application is in 5e. There were some debates about whether we continued 5e, whether we don't,
• 45:56
  how are we going to kind of do this. And so I said, I was like, cool, I want to go full system
• 46:01
  agnostic. I want to get away from it. I want us to make this so that anyone can play this with
• 46:05
  any system that they love. That's that's the important thing to me is the community gets to,
• 46:11
  you know, if you're a Cthulhu person, cool, come play Cthulhu. If you are, you know, an
• 46:16
  orbital blues person like us, come play orbital blues. You know, we wanted people to feel comfortable
• 46:21
  while still getting to play this setting and not feel like they're limited because it's D&D.
• 46:26
  So for this one, I developed my system agnostic language further. Now, I'm going to be honest,
• 46:33
  it's it's way better and it is easily convertible and it makes sense. The language is super,
• 46:39
  super great. Do I think I'm going to improve it for the next one? 100%. I'm going to continue
• 46:45
  refining it and I'm going to continue making it better and more streamlined and easier and
• 46:50
  all this kind of stuff because, you know, I can and I know I will. And I'll give you another
• 46:55
  little teaser as well that we've not told anyone about. We plan to post Kickstarter release
• 47:00
  our system agnostic language with an OGL for people so that people can have it completely free.
• 47:07
  And if they want to write their books in a language that then allows them to market their
• 47:11
  book to everybody, we want to be able to provide people with that ability to do that. So I'm going
• 47:16
  to refine the language further. I'm going to get it a little bit cleaner and I'm going to hopefully
• 47:22
  we'll release version one, which I imagine again, we'll get refined in the future because
• 47:26
  a big thing, as I said, innovation, we constantly strive to be better. Thanks to Tom as a as a
• 47:34
  father pushing me as a young man. You know, Tom and I both strive to be better the whole time. And so
• 47:40
  we'll just keep making it better and hopefully that will push it there. But this one is all based
• 47:45
  around a rangeband system that basically allows you to pretty much interpret almost any mechanic
• 47:51
  from our book into another system. And we've also made all of our vehicle mechanics. So we took
• 47:59
  everything we did for Sky's efforts, literally all all the main mechanics from that. And we made
• 48:03
  them system agnostic for land vehicles for this book as well. So we'll also be including system
• 48:10
  agnostic vehicles on our hat, the builder post Kickstarter as well and things like that. So
• 48:15
  we're just trying to get away from from from that D&D bug while also being like, if you want to play
• 48:19
  D&D with us, then with our stuff, please go ahead. It's your system and we support that you got to
• 48:26
  you got to run your table system. And you got to do it in the right way. So we support that.
• 48:31
  Absolutely. It's it's definitely goes back to what I was saying before, right? You're you're the
• 48:36
  TTRPG content creators trying to stand up against the big guy in this case, you know, Hasbro and
• 48:43
  some of the crazy weird stuff and unfortunately kind of stepping on some of the community trying to
• 48:49
  push different rules and kind of again be sort of a bit money grabby and stuff with all of their
• 48:54
  changes, which is really unfortunate, right? Because it has been such a big piece of the TTRPG
• 49:00
  community and really, I mean, the beginning of a lot of the TTRPG community. And so yeah, it's
• 49:05
  frustrating. But I would say it has opened up a lot of really cool doors for creators to be able
• 49:11
  to put their own systems out there or some of the other companies like Piso and so on and so forth
• 49:16
  to be able to really push their stuff and say, Hey, we're still here for the community. We're not
• 49:22
  trying to screw you guys over. So and then of course, open up these kind of systems that are able to
• 49:28
  kind of move between anything that anybody wants to play. And I think the community has been really
• 49:33
  creative in how they've handled that. And I think that's really cool to be able to see the
• 49:37
  stuff that comes out of that. So yeah, awesome. Yeah, no, it's it's super I'm super stoked to be
• 49:43
  able to see that system because I definitely have also really pushed. I mean, one of the things that
• 49:48
  we like to do at Sessions Zero Heroes podcast is explore different systems. And so yeah, I'll be
• 49:54
  super stoked to be able to kind of step out a D&D a little bit. I know we're going through that
• 49:58
  right now with our criminals violinist series. And yeah, it'll be nice to kind of step away and
• 50:03
  do something different once once we're done with a couple of things. So that's awesome. What
• 50:08
  system are you playing in that news series? Yeah, so the next series that we do also will be
• 50:14
  D&D 5e just because we've already started it. And one guy who's going to be running it instead of me,
• 50:19
  which will be exciting, really wanted to use it. But once that's done, I'm super stoked to run a
• 50:23
  Marvel Multiverse campaign. So superheroes and it's going to be kind of like a and this is a
• 50:30
  big announcement because I haven't told anybody this either. Superheroes and kind of like my hero
• 50:35
  academia style, like everybody's at school and they're learning their superpowers. And then
• 50:39
  there's some crazy stuff that'll kind of come into play and they'll have to fight again. So
• 50:42
  yeah, that's what we got. And then a bunch of one shots, bunch of one shots as well along the way.
• 50:48
  On the spectrum of superheroes, are we talking like on like right from invincible slash the boys
• 50:56
  all the way down to like, you know, like Batman, but with Adam West, what are we talking like
• 51:03
  what's what we're on the spectrum of goof to like super serious realistic like that's a good
• 51:08
  question. So I honestly, the more I jump into it, maybe it's because I've been rewatching through
• 51:14
  it. My hero academia has really come up pretty often. I love the goofy vibes of sky high.
• 51:21
  How all the superhero stuff out there, that would be sort of to a certain extent my dream.
• 51:26
  I think when it comes to some of the more like villainous stuff of dealing with villains fighting
• 51:31
  villains on and so forth, I would like a little bit more serious tone to that. I know sky high,
• 51:36
  you know, turning kid turn and turn in the superheroes into babies. And there's kind of
• 51:40
  a whole goofy revenge plot there. I'd like to go a little bit more serious like some of the stuff
• 51:46
  that we see. But yeah, I think from just the school tone of it, very sky high, very goofy,
• 51:52
  campy stuff like that. So that sounds that sounds freaking awesome. It's giving it's giving like
• 51:58
  fantasy high, but with yes, but with superheroes instead of superheroes. Yeah. That's super cool.
• 52:05
  Really always loved the idea. My hero academia does a fantastic job of sort of adding a weakness
• 52:11
  or some kind of requirement or something to superpowers. So that it's not just these invincible
• 52:16
  characters. I'm super strong. I can just punch through anything yada, yada, yada. You know,
• 52:20
  you got to do that has to eat sugar in order to be super strong or, you know, obviously you got
• 52:26
  Deku who he punches something and it explodes. But so does his arm. And so yeah, it's just kind of
• 52:31
  like I love the idea that there's a little bit of a cost there so that people aren't just these,
• 52:36
  you know, mega superpowered beings. And I feel like it kind of gets boring when you hit that.
• 52:41
  So but yeah, so I couldn't agree with that more and do that sounds freaking great. Sounds like
• 52:46
  your crew are going to absolutely love that. That's that's yeah. And it's a first take. I like the
• 52:52
  ideas. I mean, the superhero high has been tried, but it's not been done super well in many places.
• 53:00
  So, you know, my hero is one of one of the one of the few. So I do I'm curious and I think
• 53:07
  did you got you got to lean into it massively and enjoy enjoy the weird but also, you know,
• 53:12
  like you said, those limitations and stuff will make it super grounded. You can you can ground
• 53:18
  stuff and and and make it all super interesting with those. So I love that do great take really
• 53:23
  great. Heck yeah. Heck yeah. Yeah, no, I'm excited to kind of jump into it. So so
• 53:30
  one I know we're kind of coming close to time and stuff like that really quick want to jump
• 53:35
  into so obviously Scorch Basin's coming up right it's gonna what is it how many days left three,
• 53:41
  four, five three days, 17 hours, 44 minutes. I love it. 37, 36, 35, 35. And we're counting it down.
• 53:54
  It launches on Tuesday, September 2nd, 12 o'clock p.m. So lunchtime EST so Eastern Standard Time.
• 54:07
  Wow, awesome. It's coming up. It's coming up quick. So I guess from from the outside perspective
• 54:13
  because I have yet to run a Kickstarter campaign. I've got some ideas floating around. I'm getting
• 54:16
  there but I digress. What does it look like? What is that kind of like last couple of days down to
• 54:22
  the last few hours before things launch? Like what's the crazy hecticness of behind the scenes
• 54:27
  look like for you guys? Or is it not that hectic? I don't know. No, no, no it is. You got it right.
• 54:34
  Yeah dude we have we have yeah go Tom you you say some funny stuff. Again there's I want to just
• 54:41
  kind of like burst some perceptions as well of I guess people different people run it differently
• 54:49
  but certainly for us leading up to the to the launch where there's a few different areas of
• 54:56
  the business that are doing things. So we have one person on the team Ben who is looking at
• 55:03
  building basically a fulfillment system on the back end to be similar to a backer kid experience.
• 55:11
  Again we as as much as we can step away from giving our money to bigger companies and give more of it
• 55:21
  to smaller creators we want to do. So one of the ways to do that is to just fulfill ourselves. We
• 55:27
  don't we're stepping away from backer kid. I wouldn't advise that to everyone because it is a huge
• 55:31
  resource sink. You have to you have to like actually code out a back end. So Ben is working
• 55:38
  furiously to make sure that that is going to be ready for you know hundreds and hopefully thousands
• 55:43
  of backers that want their stuff at the end of the campaign. And you know we we we try to deliver
• 55:51
  things in a way that is different from the rest of the Kickstarter experience. So most people will
• 55:58
  back something let's say today and kind of set a reminder in their calendar a year from now or
• 56:06
  maybe a year and a half from now just to see where the hell the thing is. And with Sky's Efforts
• 56:12
  we delivered within nine months with the Wandering Tavern we delivered within six months and we're
• 56:16
  going to try to do better with Scorch Basin. So Ben is furiously working on that. Emily and Bode
• 56:24
  are you know working on a multitude of things. One is just kind of making sure that the finer
• 56:32
  elements of the editing of the book there's some stills a bit of layout that needs to be known
• 56:37
  in the book some project management on some of the artwork that needs to come in in the book. So
• 56:41
  they're really trying to finish the book as much as we can to coincide with as close to the end of
• 56:48
  the Kickstarter as possible so that we can deliver. We want to be able to deliver as quickly as
• 56:53
  possible. So that's happening behind the scenes furiously right now. And then the marketing as
• 56:58
  well is you know we're still looking at reaching out to creators and finding if anyone is interested
• 57:06
  in that has you know a semblance of it's maybe more than a hobby for them it's something that
• 57:13
  they're trying to do they're trying to build a community trying to build an audience. If they're
• 57:17
  trying to do that then we want to we want to support them and so still looking to find creators
• 57:22
  that are interested in and coming on board to voice an NPC or to promote Scorch Basin.
• 57:28
  And then you know the other thing Bodhi was doing for the last two months is building the
• 57:33
  Kickstarter page. So for for the audience out there don't underestimate it's it's your storefront
• 57:42
  and you know it's competing against hundreds of other storefronts on Kickstarter. So what you put
• 57:49
  into it is again what you're going to get out of it. And if you you know if you feel like you want
• 57:55
  to have a little bit of a budget on artwork you might want to think about how that looks on your
• 57:59
  Kickstarter page or you might want to actually build out some artwork that would feature nicely
• 58:04
  on your Kickstarter page. And you know make sure the page is edited and reads well make sure you've
• 58:09
  really thought out about the tiers. Have I have I budgeted the delivery of this product
• 58:16
  equally with how much we presume the backing could make. If we don't hit our number or if we
• 58:25
  barely hit our number is that actually going to put us in more trouble than if we you know really
• 58:31
  you know go over a lot over what our number is. So there's a lot of maths behind just making sure
• 58:40
  that you're delivering the product in a way that is actually beneficial for the business in the end
• 58:44
  as well. So to answer your question yeah four days out we're we're full tilt. Everyone is just kind
• 58:52
  of everyone's hair is on fire right now. But in an excited way we're not we're not like crazily
• 58:59
  worried. We're you know Bodhi has said at the last maybe week and a half two weeks we've put the
• 59:06
  hard work in like we have worked we've worked really really hard for the last year and a half
• 59:11
  and we're just putting you know the final flair on you know we're putting the signature on the
• 59:16
  painting so to speak right now. The painting has been you know has been the textures have been put
• 59:21
  in the frame has been built and we're just kind of putting those final little bits into it. So
• 59:27
  and then the other thing I would say Skyler is is during the campaign so some people think you
• 59:34
  know you just kind of hit the button and then you cross your fingers and your toes and you're
• 59:37
  just like waiting. And I think some people may do that but we don't we are continually just making
• 59:43
  sure that we're thinking of different ways to get our product out to people who haven't seen it yet
• 59:48
  just get new eyes on it. So there's an element of us just kind of you know metaphorically cold
• 59:55
  calling whether it's on different platforms like Reddit or Facebook or Instagram or you know just
• 1:00:03
  reaching out to people that may have some sort of interest in this case in Dune, Mad Max,
• 1:00:12
  Azure Settings you know anything like that will reach out to them and you know sometimes people
• 1:00:17
  don't want to be reached out to so that's fair but other times people appreciate it you know they're
• 1:00:21
  like yeah that's cool let me let me check it out that type of thing so yeah. Yeah I think I think as
• 1:00:27
  well I'll throw another side in. Tom's exactly right everybody goes full tilt during the Kickstarter
• 1:00:33
  and you know people like myself and Emily who are the writing team and the creative leads basically
• 1:00:38
  on this project we you know and this is that this is what people again don't realize about small
• 1:00:43
  business you have to wear at sometimes every freaking hat dude like for the Kickstarter page
• 1:00:48
  I'm the lead writer I meant to be I meant to be coming up with lore about freaking weird creatures
• 1:00:54
  and I'm learning and I've learned Photoshop over the last you know couple of months so that I can
• 1:01:00
  make sure that our images on our page look great I've been learning you know all these all these
• 1:01:05
  different things and Ben's the same Ben's been learning how to code a website so that we can do
• 1:01:10
  fulfillment and not have to involve backer kit and things like that and so you know everybody is
• 1:01:15
  full tilt but all of us will be taking time out of our work days to chip into marketing as well
• 1:01:20
  because it the grind doesn't stop when you press live on the Kickstarter but also I'll give you a
• 1:01:26
  funny little insight as well everybody we have conversations because we all work around a single
• 1:01:32
  dining table in my apartment that's where homie and the dude happens very cool it is not a it is
• 1:01:38
  not a freaking like office with a bullpen and freaking like like it's literally at a s*** IKEA
• 1:01:45
  table and chairs in my freaking dining group where we all hang out and and work and we have
• 1:01:51
  conversations about how much we're how people are feeling I know leading up to Emily is nervous
• 1:01:58
  I know Ben who is just the most placid person ever is is also you know feeling feeling excited
• 1:02:07
  but nervous as well you know we as a group you know we we also have things in in the office that
• 1:02:13
  are funny little things that we like to do during Kickstarter so we have like a Deadpool guess of
• 1:02:18
  what the final amount's gonna be um and winner gets like rounds of drinks from everybody else
• 1:02:24
  you know we have we all also each of us gets a referral link and yeah if if we are able to as
• 1:02:32
  individuals like within homie and the dude bring in any cash we also have whoever brings in the most
• 1:02:37
  cash on their own personal link gets a little like round of drinks on everybody like that kind of
• 1:02:43
  stuff basically so we have some we have some fun little things that we do um in the office for
• 1:02:48
  for goofs um because realistically when it comes to us bringing money in it's like I'm like grandma
• 1:02:54
  I'm like grandma help me it's it's it's you know it's it's all a bit of banter we we have a really
• 1:03:03
  good time with that stuff and I think you know we also joke about the fact of you know when it
• 1:03:07
  comes down to it we are you know constantly making sure we're keeping up with any comments that people
• 1:03:12
  are leaving on updates or things like that we're trying to answer questions trying to make sure
• 1:03:17
  someone is kind of available at all times so dude most of us don't sleep a lot during those 30 days
• 1:03:24
  most of us are like you know just dialed in and and also I think we're like I know Emily will
• 1:03:30
  message me at like two in the morning and be like yo we just crossed this amount like look like we've
• 1:03:36
  unlocked a stretch goal guys yeah and she's like awesome congratulations now you need to go put the
• 1:03:41
  new graphic up and I'm like oh let me just get out of bed and we get out of bed yeah exactly and so
• 1:03:46
  you know we we it is one of those things of like it's scrambly chaos but I think like Tom said
• 1:03:52
  and the best way I can describe this is for anyone who's played sports um or has you know trained
• 1:03:58
  for something like a specific like event or or something like that whether it's you know and it
• 1:04:02
  could be something like a hema event at a ren fair I'm not just talking about like your standard
• 1:04:07
  American football baseball basketball sports I'm talking about you know whatever it might be or
• 1:04:11
  if you're competing in anything that you've trained in a hot dog eating contest a hot dog eating
• 1:04:15
  contest might might even be it um if you've put hours of your life into something for us it's been
• 1:04:21
  a year and a half day in day out weekends you know evenings you know week day like all of it we've
• 1:04:28
  all been you know putting stuff aside to make this happen if we hadn't have put in those hours I would
• 1:04:36
  be more worried and nervous but I'm at a point where I'm like and I think a few of us are starting
• 1:04:41
  to be like you know it's gonna be whatever it's gonna be we tried our hardest that's all we could
• 1:04:46
  ever do was just try our freaking hardest and and try and give people something and you know everyone
• 1:04:52
  on our team has put blood sweat tears you know emotions time effort everything that you can imagine
• 1:05:01
  skin in the game it's all there and so I think at this point we're just proud of the product we're
• 1:05:07
  super proud of this book we're super proud of every individual faction of all of the NPCs of every
• 1:05:14
  plant that we've included all the new innovative things like magic systems and alchemy systems
• 1:05:20
  and new player options that are ridiculous and fun to do with driving fast to level up and you know
• 1:05:27
  all this crazy stuff that we've put in this book we're so excited to share with the world
• 1:05:33
  and we're so excited to see our friends talking about it on their channels people running actual
• 1:05:38
  plays and dude it's surreal like you know Tom and I did a panel at Gen Con about a month ago
• 1:05:44
  and it's our first ever panel we had about a hundred people there and dude we just we Tom and I
• 1:05:52
  cried you know it's beautiful like how like it's crazy that anyone cares about what a jabroni family
• 1:05:59
  is doing in Bristol UK like what what what what does it matter and I think that's what it is we
• 1:06:05
  put the work in we're proud of it we're excited and and we're thankful for every person yourself
• 1:06:11
  every other creator all of the audiences who you know whether and whether you hate us or you love
• 1:06:17
  us we love you because if you hate us then we've evoked an emotion and as creators you're
• 1:06:22
  you're you're still feeling you're taking the box for me that's enough you know and um and so you
• 1:06:28
  know whatever it is we just appreciate every single person who's been along this journey with us who's
• 1:06:33
  given us advice supported us you know we wouldn't be here without those first people that I mentioned
• 1:06:38
  in the days the David Tilsters the Mark Arcuchus the Jess and Keith's you know the the Sam Comifers
• 1:06:45
  the Ambers you know they were the people that got us here and we wouldn't be here without the
• 1:06:50
  amazing incredible folks that allowed us to to get here and dude we're ready to give you guys
• 1:06:57
  the best darn desert setting that you've ever seen with five of the most diverse factions that have
• 1:07:04
  the sickest player options the most incredibly daring and wonderful environmental things to
• 1:07:10
  explore lands to discover creatures to encounter uh it's all there it's all there and hey if you
• 1:07:17
  want to be mochadib and you want to ride a giant sand worm you do your thing you do yeah and we're
• 1:07:23
  ready for it oh that's amazing that's so cool and and just like you know both of you guys have
• 1:07:29
  mentioned Tom you mentioned earlier these are these are relationships right these aren't just
• 1:07:34
  you know people that you shot and add to and said hey can you guys repost us or whatever the case
• 1:07:38
  we've talked um you guys have talked to so many other creators and and built those relationships
• 1:07:44
  it wasn't just you know 100 people that said well I don't have anything to do right now so
• 1:07:49
  because I'm at GenCon I might as well go to this panel it was 100 people that said this is cool and
• 1:07:54
  I want to learn more about this and people that you guys had talked to beforehand and developed a
• 1:07:58
  relationship with and I kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier right you guys have have built
• 1:08:02
  this really cool community that's standing up against those villains out there the those you
• 1:08:07
  know companies that want to kind of just step on us and tell us how TTRPGs should be and yada yada yada
• 1:08:14
  you guys are standing up to those and creating your own thing and the community is coming together
• 1:08:18
  to kind of support that and I think that's that's really freaking cool dude that's really not it's
• 1:08:23
  not us standing up to it it has never been us it's always been we are standing up to it it's
• 1:08:28
  never once been Tom and I who have been standing up to it it's been we from the absolute star and it
• 1:08:33
  will always be the we um and the familiar that are that are doing it is it has never once been just
• 1:08:39
  Tom and I because there's been people the whole way and uh and so it's always been we awesome
• 1:08:46
  familiar is like the keyword for today I think I think that's perfect so awesome I love that so
• 1:08:51
  much well those are all the questions I had um again for those of you that are listening out
• 1:08:57
  there please please go check out Scorch Basin go if you're hearing this go over to the page on
• 1:09:02
  Kickstarter hit that notify me on launch save that project because the second it comes out
• 1:09:07
  you're not gonna want to miss it you're gonna want to go over there you're gonna want to back
• 1:09:09
  it and just see all the cool stuff just the little previews that we'll get to see before
• 1:09:14
  the campaigns over and you're not gonna want to not have Scorch Basin once it is over right this
• 1:09:19
  is gonna be freaking amazing whether you're into Mad Max whether you're into Dune or not I think
• 1:09:24
  there's gonna be something in here that anyone can find and and really use in their campaigns
• 1:09:28
  author a final thing out there and guys if you're not already subscribed to Sessions Zero Heroes
• 1:09:35
  because look at these in what what an incredible channel you stumbled upon here today and we appreciate
• 1:09:41
  you taking the time to listen to this amazing person who gives these awesome interviews and
• 1:09:45
  does all this incredible stuff giving you ttrpg campaigns to consume aren't you guys lucky so
• 1:09:52
  subscribe follow support reach out and comment help the algorithm copying and copying the link
• 1:10:00
  in the little share thing helps massively and it takes you 30 seconds to do so continue helping
• 1:10:06
  out this incredible channel and we wouldn't be here without them so keep doing them justice
• 1:10:11
  you're so kind ah i appreciate that so much thank you so much all right we'll jump over to our
• 1:10:16
  intramural game that we do at the end of each one of these episodes we'll see you guys on the other
• 1:10:20
  side of this little transition here
• 1:10:37
  and so this one that i came up with i try to go somewhat geared towards whatever it is that
• 1:10:47
  we're talking about in the given episode and since this one was a lot about Kickstarter and a lot
• 1:10:52
  about kind of creating your own content i came up with a game uh originally it was called book
• 1:10:58
  movie game which i thought was kind of a boring thing um oh and instead changed it to fish tank
• 1:11:04
  which is kind of based off of shark tank shark crank nice so and i'm glad okay good i'm always
• 1:11:12
  worried that maybe somebody's not familiar with it but we know it yeah we have we have an equally
• 1:11:19
  ridiculously named show here in the uk called dragons den um so yeah okay yes okay let's see
• 1:11:25
  i've heard of it uh i actually i think i for some reason came across an episode when i was like
• 1:11:30
  hardcore binging through shark tank um you know like oh there's there's a whole another version of
• 1:11:35
  it and so i think i watched a couple of episodes because it's just like how do they do things over
• 1:11:39
  there so yeah again we're just trying to create um encourage storytelling encourage uh sort of
• 1:11:45
  improvisational thing that i'm sure a lot of us gms and oftentimes players are really familiar with
• 1:11:50
  so um today we're playing a game that i have titled fish tank it's based off the classic
• 1:11:56
  shark tank concept where we're each going to be trying to pitch some kind of a media whether it
• 1:12:03
  is a video game or a book or a movie or a tv show whatever it is it's totally up to each of us to
• 1:12:11
  decide and i'm going to have a whole bunch of prompts that you guys can choose from that kind
• 1:12:17
  of help leave things that way we're not just coming up with something totally random not that
• 1:12:22
  there's anything wrong with that of course um but just to kind of help since you know we're all jumping
• 1:12:26
  in here so um i just sent forth the first set so the way this will work is you've got four categories
• 1:12:33
  of prompts you got a location you've got a time period you've got a character or a couple of
• 1:12:38
  character ideas and then you've got a random prompt something that's like totally out of left
• 1:12:44
  field and the goal is you choose one from each of these categories i've given a handful of different
• 1:12:50
  options and from there you create kind of just a pitch some some kind of quick pitch for again
• 1:12:57
  movie a tv show a book whatever it is it could be even a ttrpg concept right and then uh yeah pitch
• 1:13:06
  it and i'll slap some like cool music and stuff behind it and things along those lines so um we'll
• 1:13:12
  uh we'll have some fun with it sorry i know i'm like filling the chat right now with so many so
• 1:13:18
  many prompts so i apologize for that feel free to take a quick look through those and once you feel
• 1:13:23
  like you've got some idea uh just let me know and feel free to kind of take that concept and you
• 1:13:30
  can tweak it obviously it's just sort of more of a source of inspiration more than anything else um
• 1:13:36
  and yeah yeah feel free to create whatever it is yeah this is gonna be funny this is hilarious i
• 1:13:41
  like this i love it this is this is great you did you did good with these thank you yeah
• 1:13:46
  did really some of them you might look at it and be like hold on a second here scott I know
• 1:13:49
  where you stole that from i think like one of the ones that i got for a time period is a timeless
• 1:13:56
  post apocalyptic future where the ocean is reclaimed the entire world yes i recently watched
• 1:14:01
  rewatched waterworld incredible so obviously that one was gonna was definitely gonna come up cool
• 1:14:08
  beautiful i'm uh i am i'm i'm good to go whenever you're good to go okay yeah i think i think i'm
• 1:14:15
  good to go i think i'm all set so okay i think i'm good as well got it awesome okay uh boating
• 1:14:21
  kick things off yeah my pitch uh welcome welcome sharks i'm delighted to be in front of you today
• 1:14:28
  you know uh mark you know i i appreciate you and your your ownership of the dallas cowboys
• 1:14:35
  thank you for ruining that franchise for everyone um and uh and the rest of you who are unnamed
• 1:14:40
  to people because no one actually cares uh why you're here or who you are um so um my pitch today
• 1:14:47
  is for a cinematic masterpiece this is going to storm the world and take over theaters everywhere
• 1:14:56
  here we go buckle your seatbelts because it is the year 1999 where computers and emerging tech
• 1:15:04
  are a new form of magic but that's not the only magic going on here because some of the old magic
• 1:15:12
  still lingers and seeps through the cracks of those derelict abandoned places that have been
• 1:15:19
  forgotten to time now our story in particular is going to be taking place in an overgrown
• 1:15:26
  forgotten amusement park amusement park where rides still work but are powered by these power
• 1:15:33
  normal entities that we're not really sure of because as you legendary sharks know the most
• 1:15:39
  scary thing is the thing that we imagine so we never tell the audience what the paranormal thing
• 1:15:44
  is is it ghosts is it a fart in the wind we don't know but you're gonna find out as the story goes
• 1:15:51
  and our story follows a protagonist or so we think throughout this whole thing so this person is
• 1:16:00
  an investigator who goes around uh investigating paranormal things and and trying to deduce what's
• 1:16:07
  happened in places how this old magic exists and why it permeates the cracks in the derelict so
• 1:16:15
  he is a very interesting person i think the audiences will resonate with him because he
• 1:16:20
  writes slam poetry in his little notebook that is absolutely terrible and we've all tried to
• 1:16:26
  write poetry at various different points i know you have boldy you've definitely tried to write
• 1:16:30
  some stuff for sure um and uh and so you know we all can resonate with that but here is the twist
• 1:16:40
  he believes that he has unlocked some sort of power where he can briefly become a living breathing
• 1:16:49
  shadow um and that's what his belief is so he feels akin to some of these things that he's
• 1:16:54
  investigating and stuff like that however as the story unfolds and as we learn more and more about
• 1:17:01
  this place he's not an investigator at all he's one of the spirits trapped here at the amusement
• 1:17:08
  park who died during a great disaster where the ferris wheel came loose and crushed a couple hundred
• 1:17:15
  people and he was an investigator then but now as a ghost he doesn't realize that he's not a real
• 1:17:22
  person and boom plot twist everybody loves it bloody credits roll names of famous people in
• 1:17:29
  the credits chucka de caprio in there chucka you know a jack Nicholson in there chucka you know
• 1:17:34
  a couple of you know i don't know a john travolta i don't know we can put some musical elements i
• 1:17:38
  don't know we'll see what happens but guys all i'm asking for is 29 000 million bajillion dollars
• 1:17:50
  and i will give you exactly 1.2 equity in my company what do you think it's so good that was
• 1:17:58
  amazing not bad i'm hoping to crop these up and and put these in like uh and make a real out of
• 1:18:05
  each one and if you would invest in this project i want you to comment underneath and say how might
• 1:18:11
  and what portion of that 1.2 percent you're willing to accept yeah yeah exactly what's your
• 1:18:18
  counter offer oh yeah yeah or we could pull it like the producers where we oversell it
• 1:18:22
  and just say yeah 50 percent to you 100 percent to you exactly awesome i love that that was sick
• 1:18:32
  in the in the plot twist very uh ama shaman oh shaman yes classic shaman twist he was dead the
• 1:18:39
  whole time i'm not in the house yeah the greatest insult i've ever heard in my life is you saying
• 1:18:47
  that what i just pitched was amni-staffelon that is hilarious dude i'm good dude that's so funny
• 1:18:55
  dude i honestly that is the funniest ever dude i i love that and you are so right you are what i
• 1:19:00
  just pitched sounds exactly like an m9 shaman movie and i did not realize until you said it you
• 1:19:06
  couldn't have nailed that more dude that's so funny bro i love that he's got some good ones he said
• 1:19:12
  some good ones a long way he's had some really bad ones but yeah yeah yeah yeah awesome awesome
• 1:19:17
  all right ton do you want to jump in or do you want me to jump in whoever if you're ready i'll go next
• 1:19:21
  i'll go no for it welcome sharks i am here to propose a solution to a problem that we all feel
• 1:19:32
  so we are all very aware aware of the ecological disaster that's happening right now
• 1:19:42
  both on lands and in the sea and what i'm proposing is look us as humans we are kind of interested
• 1:19:54
  in cleaning it up but when it really comes down to it we somehow keep failing on that so
• 1:20:01
  what i'd like to propose is let's recruit some animals to clean the s*** up and the way we do that
• 1:20:12
  is we put science onto this is what i'm proposing let's alter the dna the polymers let's turn it
• 1:20:22
  from a a double helix to a triple helix dna solution for the fish world out there so they're not
• 1:20:31
  eating pellet and they're not eating yummy you know different elements of seaweed and things like that
• 1:20:39
  they're eating trash and so what i'm proposing is this chemical compound i'm calling it crab
• 1:20:49
  crack and basically what you do is you just get those crabs hooked on it right inside of them
• 1:21:00
  the chemical conversion is happening and they are not just scavenging on you know little bits and
• 1:21:08
  pieces but they're into the plastic they're into the cardboard they're eating metal and pretty soon
• 1:21:16
  blink your eyes and our oceans are crystal clear again so all i'm asking like any dealer of crack
• 1:21:23
  is a little bit of an advance that i promise to pay back i'll get you i promise you i'll hook you up
• 1:21:31
  i just need some time to get this all together but look just hit me with a little mill here
• 1:21:37
  and i'll come back to you you know give me give me a few weeks i'll get my boy to come in and to
• 1:21:45
  you know move some things around and you will see an incredible return on your money so if you're
• 1:21:51
  up for it i would really really be grateful to get your investment today thank you sharks
• 1:22:02
  oh dude i'm in dude amazing i also important context for that that whole bit that tom just
• 1:22:09
  did is both my mother my fiance myself and tom are all predominantly vegetarians and
• 1:22:18
  that is so funny dude that is hilarious use it dude so funny that is that is brilliant that is so
• 1:22:26
  funny another big like twist on the on the ecological concept but i love it that was so cool
• 1:22:34
  yep let's get the animals hooked on it let's get them to be part of the solution and not the problem
• 1:22:39
  absolutely help them clean up our problem yeah that's amazing classic classic oh man outs outsourcing
• 1:22:50
  the solution is classic humans dude that's such classic humans i love it all right you guys have
• 1:22:56
  set me up for failure because those were phenomenal and i gotta i gotta bring us all together we got
• 1:23:02
  this all right bring us home
• 1:23:03
  hello sharks thank you so much for meeting me here at your show studio i'm pitching a six episode
• 1:23:16
  series because as we know from all of the disney plus stuff for some reason that works less production
• 1:23:24
  more profit imagine this an individual swashbuckler by trade forced into family debt and forced to
• 1:23:34
  smuggle spices to pay for it walking down at nightcore throbbing music in the background
• 1:23:41
  neon reflecting off of the various puddles as his foot steps in causing ripples in the water
• 1:23:47
  as he makes his way down a brand new planet that he has just landed on a dormant cosmic
• 1:23:54
  titan that floats amidst the space he's never been here before he has a job he has to accomplish
• 1:24:00
  unfortunately he's not aware that there's a law on this planet no one is allowed to speak a word
• 1:24:09
  louder than a whisper and of course he screws that up almost immediately turning this into a
• 1:24:15
  goofy ridiculous sci-fi comedy as he gets immediately arrested by the locals thrown into prison
• 1:24:21
  where they find out that he had spice and of course that's a big no-no as well so he's
• 1:24:28
  got to get himself out and of course furious hilarious endeavors pursue and that's my pitch
• 1:24:36
  again six episode series is pretty much guaranteed to make a profit whether people love it or not
• 1:24:41
  we'll just cancel it after the first season if they don't and hey you know what if we learned
• 1:24:45
  anything from netflix we might cancel it after the first season anyways so i need you guys to
• 1:24:51
  invest all the money in this because i'm a poor man uh with an idea and personally i'd like to
• 1:24:57
  keep all the profit for it so if that appeals to you guys i can get your name in the credits
• 1:25:03
  i have one question for you one important question that will decide whether i am in
• 1:25:11
  or whether i am out i'll ask away investor rhodi uh please tell me what is the who is your ideal
• 1:25:20
  star actor for the lead protagonist is part of this um this goof sci-fi space escape uh prison break
• 1:25:30
  spectacular that that we're going to be witnessing and uh furthermore who is the director you have
• 1:25:35
  pinned for this um i i'm i'm i'm envisioning a gun a a snyder possibly uh what are your thoughts
• 1:25:44
  james gun is certainly tentative uh we've we've actually been in talks with him already uh he
• 1:25:49
  would be ideal for this if we want to see it as successful if we do want to tank it and try to
• 1:25:56
  maximize profits uh we'll go all the other other places but yeah james gun would be a good one
• 1:26:01
  if we plan for success as for the main actor um you know who hasn't been used enough is is probably
• 1:26:07
  chris prat chris prat could use more more face time for sure in the media that's a nice way of
• 1:26:15
  saying that his career has been on the skids recently that's true that is true we need to get
• 1:26:22
  him more abs he didn't quite have enough abs we need more abs for chris prat he's got eight we need
• 1:26:29
  twelve yes yes a solid secondary again someone who hasn't had enough fly might uh is is dwayne
• 1:26:35
  johnson obviously uh would be a solid secondary and you have either jack black or or kevin heart as
• 1:26:42
  the likable sidekick yes absolutely absolutely yeah okay i'm seeing it i'm seeing it coming together
• 1:26:49
  now i'm in i'm in get chris prat back on the calories bat them up again and he can be dwayne
• 1:26:55
  johnson sidekick get them both oh you know i'm saying yeah we'll pull up parts and wreck chris
• 1:27:01
  prat in with the dwayne johnson oh that's a good idea parks and wreck chris prat is uh is do people
• 1:27:08
  would love to see that nostalgia flip of parks and wreck uh chris prat yeah we would we would all love
• 1:27:14
  to see that that version of him back instead of you know the polished greek god style statue that
• 1:27:20
  we that we have to now look at on screen when he comes on all the you know we uh we joke within
• 1:27:26
  some of the cast at sessions your heroes uh we all really enjoyed the the five nights at freddy's
• 1:27:30
  live action and so jokingly we always say josh hutterson is the greatest actor of all time uh
• 1:27:35
  with that being said we're not gonna partner him with dwayne johnson because after uh what was that
• 1:27:40
  journey to the center of the earth too was such a oh i can't watch it ever again i never want to
• 1:27:45
  even think about it so i can't i can't partner those two but i would love to have josh hutterson
• 1:27:49
  in there dude he is uh dude josh he's pure banter dude he's he is just pure comedy without knowing
• 1:27:56
  that he's comedy it's also it's things like when you name him pita and you spell it in the dumbest
• 1:28:03
  way ever and you're making every character sound like there's some like old new jersey who's like
• 1:28:09
  pita and you're like what is happening there right yeah poor guy poor guy's getting done dirty
• 1:28:15
  he's getting done dirty yeah that's true and then maybe just uh just to kind of continue in with that
• 1:28:19
  sort of our our groups weird obsessions we'll throw in nicklas cage maybe it'll be uh josh
• 1:28:24
  hutterson as the sidekick to nicklas cage being just absolutely nuts dude uh there might i think
• 1:28:31
  that's one of those where it's like it's such a bad idea it might work it might just work
• 1:28:37
  one of my favorite one of my favorite bits that i play with like new people when i meet them is
• 1:28:42
  like we're like i'll often ask them you know like who's who do you think the best actor of all time
• 1:28:46
  is or something like that and i will then play the bit of like it's nicklas cage he does like
• 1:28:52
  nine to ten projects a year he's the most expensive he's covered every genre poor me he's the most
• 1:28:59
  versatile actor in all history he's done everything so dude that bit always lands terribly and makes
• 1:29:07
  me laugh as they get more uncomfortable thinking that i love nicklas cage that much right i'm like
• 1:29:14
  i'm like national treasure greatest movie ever oh dude oh good dude only way to solve problems no
• 1:29:20
  lawyers no no media outlet no pr team let's go steal the decoration of independent oh steal the
• 1:29:25
  decoration yeah yeah yeah i'm right there what could be better that's awesome really throws me back
• 1:29:30
  to my favorite show of all time is community and the whole episode they did with uh abed taking the
• 1:29:35
  class of nicklas cage good actor bad actor and then he tries to figure out the answer which the
• 1:29:41
  professor told him there isn't one and he ends up going like absolutely insane and just becomes
• 1:29:46
  nicklas cage it's so good it's i yeah it's probably you you can hate nicklas cage but the like the
• 1:29:52
  stuff that comes from him and the lore or even just the movie what is an incredible weight of
• 1:29:57
  amazing talent just that movie in and of itself and the way that it's basically just a big meme
• 1:30:02
  on nicklas cage it's just it's too great it's too great dude i dude he's a gift that just keeps
• 1:30:07
  giving dude because he really is you do and and i think that's the thing that's best about him is
• 1:30:13
  he probably knows at this point um and he's like i don't know he's also one of those people that i'm
• 1:30:17
  like he might also just think he's superman and just really doesn't have any idea of of the public
• 1:30:22
  perception of him i like to think that's more the truth that he is actually working around with a
• 1:30:26
  katana and a bathrobe in his house um that's kind of that's that's kind of my my real real hope for
• 1:30:32
  nick cage but dude i think uh i think dude he's uh he's he's a master he's he's the go he's the go
• 1:30:39
  he really is he really is that's awesome that's awesome i love that uh somebody apparently this
• 1:30:46
  is like some nick cage lore is that somebody like broke in and stole something from or like his
• 1:30:51
  entire stock inside of a storage unit and he put out a statement he's like hey guys um
• 1:30:57
  if you did it i i really just want my super superman comic bag that's all i really want it that's
• 1:31:01
  like ah you know what i feel so bad because like if you only ask for the one thing that you know
• 1:31:06
  that's a boat but it's just really speaks to just kind of his his weirdness his his temperament dude
• 1:31:13
  that's that's the other great thing about hollywood is so much of hollywood is baked into the nerd
• 1:31:18
  stuff like dude if you look at Henry Cavill or dude my favorite one is vindiesel playing dnd
• 1:31:23
  oh i know i would never want him at my table but yeah i'm like i'm like bro you to to witness that
• 1:31:31
  is yes i know i know there's little clips i think he did something with i want to say he did something
• 1:31:37
  with matt mercer one point yes a long time i think you're right well i have i haven't watched all the
• 1:31:42
  way through but dude like if he's not gripping a corona by the neck and saying family every 20 minutes
• 1:31:48
  why are you here then why are you freaking here god damn it i was just gonna say i think they did
• 1:31:52
  an interview with michelle rodriguez that she had talked about she's like yeah is that his house
• 1:31:56
  one time and he's like hey do you want to see my dnd stuff she's like what are you talking about
• 1:32:00
  and he like showed her this closet just full like minis and terrain pieces and she's like
• 1:32:04
  dude you're such a nerd and i was like yeah that's so cool dude that's so cool so our our thing of
• 1:32:12
  familia is um so so we actually lived in spain and i i grew up as a kid in spain basically so
• 1:32:18
  familia is literally spanish for family but yeah um but also we we started calling our like
• 1:32:24
  inner circle of family and friends the familia as a joke on fast and furious because he's always like
• 1:32:31
  uh salute me familia you know and you're like uh okay viddie you know we're gonna drive cars
• 1:32:38
  we're family yeah yeah exactly exactly exactly we're gonna steal this safe for family yeah
• 1:32:47
  yeah that's so good awesome well we'll uh we'll definitely have to talk about a movie and tv show
• 1:32:53
  podcast in the future guys how yeah because that'll be really fun but um again for those that are
• 1:32:59
  listening seriously go head over to kickstarter find the scorch basin page um go check out homie and
• 1:33:05
  the dude podcast uh all the crazy cool awesome campaigns that they're doing over there and all
• 1:33:09
  the other work be sure to follow them because you're not gonna wait like scorch basin that's a third
• 1:33:15
  kickstarter they've run who knows what else you guys have cooked up and uh plan for the future but
• 1:33:20
  it's gonna be something freaking awesome obviously bowdo you mentioned you know working on that that
• 1:33:24
  sort of uh system agnostic rule set and everything like that that's gonna be sick so you guys don't
• 1:33:29
  want to miss out on the stuff that's coming out at homie and the dude uh you you guys want to be
• 1:33:33
  there for that so definitely head over there and check them out and guys thank you so much i know
• 1:33:37
  you guys have a lot going on right now you're getting ready for scorch basin to come out i really
• 1:33:41
  appreciate you guys taking the time out of your day to sit down and chat with me and hang out and
• 1:33:45
  talk about it equally dude dude of course and uh and everyone out there this is just the beginning
• 1:33:51
  baby we are we are here this is just the beginning um and and dude we appreciate you taking the time
• 1:33:57
  out of your life you know this this is a weekend for all of us so we appreciate you taking your
• 1:34:02
  time to talk to us as well dude thank you for being an awesome person yeah thanks go it's kicking
• 1:34:06
  out it's been awesome it's been awesome absolutely so fantastic we will see you guys next time on
• 1:34:10
  another episode of sessions for your university thank you so much for joining us for today's class
• 1:34:16
  we hope you gained some new knowledge and ideas from our incredibly knowledgeable professors
• 1:34:21
  which you can take with you to your table and implement into your games and sessions if you
• 1:34:26
  enjoy what we're developing here at session zero university then be sure to check out our lessons
• 1:34:31
  in practice by checking out various actual play episodes we have tested and recorded a variety
• 1:34:37
  of games systems stories and themes for your enjoyment from Dungeons and Dragons to powered
• 1:34:44
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• 1:34:49
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• 1:34:55
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• 1:35:00
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• 1:35:17
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• 1:35:21
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• 1:35:27
  your next class at session zero university run by the session zero heroes podcast
• 1:35:34
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