Latest / Tale of The Manticore, a Dark Fantasy Dungeons & Dragons Audiodrama / S4E01b Interview with Zeb Cook

Transcript

S4E01b Interview with Zeb Cook · Tale of The Manticore, a Dark Fantasy Dungeons & Dragons Audiodrama

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: The following podcast is intended for a mature audience. Listener
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: discretion is advised.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Hey, folks.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: You know, I wasn't intending on making a bonus episode,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: and certainly not so close to the start of the
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Season 4 premiere, but opportunity knocked, and I answered. If
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: I had a chance to talk to a living legend,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: I wasn't going to pass it up. Some folks say
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: that you should never meet your heroes. Well, that may
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: be the prevailing wisdom. But it isn't true if your
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: hero is Zeb Cook, game designer extraordinaire. That's right. Somebody
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: pinch me. Because I got to talk with THE Zeb
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Cook about game design and his new adventure, The Afterlife
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: of King Niren.
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: My guest today is a living legend and an Origins
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: Hall of Famer with an incredible career. He's made or
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: had a hand in making some of the most beloved
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: and iconic RPG games and supplements ever, including the D
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: & D Expert Rules, the AD & D Players Handbook
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: and DMG, Planescape, the Isle of Dread, Dwellers of the
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: Forbidden City.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: And many, many more.
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: And if that weren't enough, he's also a novelist and
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: a video game designer. It is my enormous pleasure to
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: be talking today with the prolific and talented Dave Zeb Cook.
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: Hi, Zeb. How are you doing today?
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: I'm doing fine. It's a very happy morning. I'm lying.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: It's raining here right at the moment.
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: I'm so happy to have you here. But let's jump
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: into it. I know your time is valuable and I
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: won't keep you for too, too long. Let's talk about
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: as a career game developer, what inspires you in games today?
• 1:45
  Speaker 4: What other games maybe have inspired.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: You the most? Oh, wow. I play all sorts of games.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: People always say, like, well, how do I become a
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: game designer? Kind of a question, right? And, I mean,
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: I started out playing board games and horror games and
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: hard games, all this, whatever. All this sort of stuff.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: So I play all sorts of games. I get annoyed
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: when people say I'm a game designer, but I only
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: play this stuff. Like, I only play role-playing games as well. Yeah.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: You've got to like expand beyond so you can start
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: seeing like, oh, there's a really interesting idea or a
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: mechanic or something that I can do something with. The
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: only ones I don't play are sports games. Me too.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: But for when it comes to role-playing, though, a lot
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: of it is also a lot of reading. You know,
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: obviously fantasy, science fiction... History. History is a really great
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: thing to read because history is weirder than you think. Right.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Especially when you start getting into all the little trivia bits.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: And then you just kind of get all that into
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: a great big pot and let it distill. And then
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: every once in a while, like, oh, hey, I can
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: do something. I can do this. So I guess for
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: a long time, I have actually been working in video games,
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: but I haven't been doing really much straight out of
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: you know, tabletop RPG design and writing, partially because I
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: got kind of worn out off the team.
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I can imagine.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: But then lately, I've kind of had this idea of
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: bopping around, kind of trying to figure out, like, well,
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: if I were to do a campaign setting, what would
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: I want to do that would kind of separate out
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: a little bit from all of the other 10 billion
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: campaign settings that are out there? And the problem is,
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: in the last... You know, five years, the number of
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: campaign settings, it feels like they've grown exponentially. For sure.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: And so it gets harder and harder to try and
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: figure out, like, well, where's a spot to fit? I
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: have a great love of folklore and also old simple systems.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: And so kind of lately I got into helping playtest people. uh,
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: the necromancer game. It's an old OSR set of rules
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: that being not old, new OSR set of rules. Um, and, uh,
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: so kind of said, Hey, these might be fun to
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: design something for. And so then I was like, well,
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: what can I design that would be interesting? So I
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: started looking at, um, trying to create a setting that
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: would feel kind of historical, but not. And, uh, settled
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: on this, uh, setting that kind of is the first
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: thing that is being used for the kickstarter thing i'm
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: doing the the afterlife of king neron and you know
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: it's this idea of you're in this quasi kind of
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: romano british kind of period see that's it that's the
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: historical nerd in me part coming out but where it
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: leans a lot more into old old folklore stories and
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: weird stuff as opposed to just ah you know There's
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: a bunch of guys with swords beating on each other.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: And then actually then started creating a campaign setting around
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: a world that is, you know, also kind of like
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: has some strangeness so that the world of the five courts,
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: I don't know what the final name would be. And
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: the idea is that there's a central kind of a
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: place that is the human realm, as it were. And
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: that's where most of the adventuring that you'll do would
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: take place. But then there are these other worlds that
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: kind of lean into that idea of, you know, you can't,
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: they're not geographically directly connected. They're more like, you know,
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: you do things and then you kind of transition into
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: this other kind of space. So the court of the
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: north is like the world of the elves, the homeland
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: or whatever the elves are. But you don't just go there.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: It's like, How do you get there because it becomes
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: part of the adventure? What's the process you have to use?
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: And then each cardinal direction has a different kind of world.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: You go to the West, which is where this adventure
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: primarily takes place, going to the realm of the West.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: And that's where the Witch Queen kind of rules. And
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: it's how do I transition into that world? How do
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: I get back out of it? And so it allows
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: us to do kind of like these more high fantasy
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: kind of things in this and in the central court
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: space as they kind of infiltrate and invade and explore,
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: all that sort of stuff. And it lets me kind
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: of play with a lot of old folk tale kind
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: of things. I could go on forever about this, probably.
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: I don't mind. I have a million questions.
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: When you're designing something like The Afterlife of Niren, and
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: you're thinking of this adventure before, you know, fingers hit keys,
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: are you thinking, I'm going for a vibe, or I'm
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: going for a certain play experience? What are the beats
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: that you're trying to hit when you're, as a designer,
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: when you have an idea that you want to get out?
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: A lot of times these days, yeah, I'm definitely going
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: for kind of a story kind of a thing. I
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: don't You know, doing open sandboxes, a lot of times
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: I'm designing things to run at conventions these days. Yeah, okay.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: And it's, you know, you've got a four-hour window and
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: you want to do something like, hey, I want to
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: give them something that gives them a feeling of start
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: and a clear, hey, we get to this and we
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: have accomplished something. Right. And so a story kind of thing.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: so yeah, that, and then I, I do like to
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: kind of dress it up with that, with a vibe.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: What's the feel of this thing going to be? What's the,
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: you know, how is it, how is this going to be,
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: you know, a little bit more memorable? How can I
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: give them, and when they're doing a convention thing, my
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: focus is how can I give them a good experience? Right.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: How can I, how can I build something that will, they'll,
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: they'll be able to feel like, wow, I had fun. Yeah.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: And because, you know, they're, you know, they're there to,
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: have a good time. And, you know, my job is
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: to make sure that they're kind of entertaining. Sure. So
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: it's hard to build real campaign background in that sort
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: of stuff because, you know, you've got four hours here,
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: here's some characters, we're going to go do something. And
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: actually like the modules that I've been doing all kind
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: of that grown out of doing stuff for commitments to like, okay,
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: I got to write something for a convention. And when
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: I write something for a convention, it is literally often
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: one page of notes. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Yeah.
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, very famously, it's hard to accomplish all that you
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: want to in such a short session, isn't it?
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and every time I run them, it seems like
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: the first time I'll run something, I often have no
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: idea where it's going to actually go. Right. It's like, okay,
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: how is it? Here's my end. This is kind of
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: what I want. And then about halfway through, I discover
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: there's a story plot in there that I didn't even
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: realize because the player started doing something. So then it's like, okay,
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: this adventure is now completely different. Yeah.
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: So it develops through iterations of actual real-life gameplay.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and that's kind of different from
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: how we used to do it at TSR a lot
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: of times, because at TSR we had to churn out
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: so much stuff. Right. And we did it so repeatedly
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: that we got to the point where we could kind
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: of say, okay, I know how this all will fit.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: I know what will happen. And you would literally kind
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: of like, talk to someone, the other designer, say, okay,
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: now you walk into a room, you've got a standard party,
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: and you see this, what would you do? And then
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: I go back, oh, okay, I didn't think about that.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: And you do that for like that, for the details.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: And we didn't have a lot of time then to
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: play test actual, a lot of things. You know, if
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: things got played two times maybe or so, that was
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: actually pretty good. Sometimes it was like, hey, we wrote it,
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: we never really actually replayed it at all.
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: Listen, I want to get back to what you had
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: talked about before.
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: If the goal is for players to have fun at
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: the table, when we get into the afterlife of King Niren...
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: what does that fun ideally look like? Because there's fun
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: and then there's fun. Is it laughs and high fives?
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: Or is it a deeper emotional kind of experience that
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: you're hoping that this game will provide?
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, with Niren, it's basically, sometimes you do the fun,
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: and it's like, yeah, there's going to be a bunch
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: of jokes, and someone will have a good time, and
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: all that stuff. I've done ones that turn into pure comedy,
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: and those are great. But this one was more about weirdness.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: First off, the setup is... You're kind of starting at
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: what would be the conclusion of many other kind of adventures.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: It's the giant battle between the army of King Niren
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: and the forces of the Witch Queen, and you're running
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: around trying to do stuff. But that's the start of
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: the adventure. The giant battle, and then at the end
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: of it, Niren is dead.
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: I read that you have to go and find his body.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you have to fetch his body off the battlefield
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: after the battle. Fortunately, your setup can be certainly close
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: to it. And you try to give you some big
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: climatic moment that you can do there right at the
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: start to kind of set that stage. And, you know,
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: plus it gives you Claire's good activity and everything. But
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: then the next part is you need to take this
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: body like weeks travel to a specific location. where it
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: must be buried before a certain time. And there's no
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: real explanation of why you have to do this, but
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: you have to do this. And that journey takes you
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: kind of into enemy territory because that's where you have
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: to get it buried. And as you're going, strange things happen,
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: which I don't really want to go into too much,
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: but kind of strange things happen and you're faced with
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: some challenges and Like I was talking about, you know,
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: how do you get into the West? You have to
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: cross over into the West. How do you do that?
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: And there are some specific ways, but, you know, you're
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: crossing over in an evil land. So it's not friendly, happy,
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: easy ways. Yeah.
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: I can see the potential for a lot of action.
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: Is there a horror element as well, or do you
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: go more into just strangeness?
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: I think it's more strangeness than horror. There is some
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: potential for some minor kind of like, you know, and
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: I'm not, I'm not, I'm not a, I'm not a
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: baby horror fan, so I'm not, you know, it's not
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: gore or anything like that, but there's old school kind
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: of like, Ooh, strange, unnatural things are happening. Um, but
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: also that strange and natural thing, as, as, uh, Bill Webb,
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: when he was reading it, it's like, Oh wow, this
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: is also a huge potential for comedy too. So, so
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: there's a little bit of a chance to mix it up.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: And that, you know, part of that journey is also, um,
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: basically it's text crawling for a while. Yeah. So you
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: never know quite what will happen as you go through that.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: And I kind of like that when you're playing. Even
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: as a GM, I kind of like, okay, oh wait,
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: I have an encounter here. I got to figure out
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: what's going on. But, The whole point is to get
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: to a build to a climax point so that when
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: you get finally to the end, you know, get to
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: your location, assuming that you didn't screw up horribly, but
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: you have opportunities to do along the way. But when
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: you get finally to that location where you have to
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: do this, there is this climatic kind of code. Incidentally,
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: all of the forces converge at one point kind of thing.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: But it becomes then this big climatic thing that you
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: have to do and stuff gets done. you know, stuff
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: about what you're doing starts to get revealed about and
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: buy and all that sort of thing. So, you know,
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: hopefully it's fun.
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: I'm sure it will be. And it's planned to be
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: a series.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: So it is in the sense that I'm planning to
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: do a number of modules or adventures, whatever you want
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: to call them, that are all set within the setting
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: of the five ports. But the, and this is the
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: part that I kind of came to realize right towards
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: the end of this. It's like, Instead of saying this
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: is a campaign, yet another campaign world and all this
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: sort of stuff. And nobody wants to start up yet
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: another campaign world. It's just going to happen. Oh, my God,
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: now I have to go all this. But what it
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: is more is you use it with your regular campaigns.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: Because these are stories about things that happened in the
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: ancient past. Oh, yes. I got it. And what happens
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: is the players through various, you know, and it will
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: vary quite a bit as I do these, I'm sure,
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: but through arbitrary mechanics of some sort or another, wind
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: up in the ancient past. They then become like principles
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: in some of these legends and tales that get told.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: And so the idea is that if What they do
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: can have an effect on the world, the regular campaign world. Oh, look,
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: that monster that we failed to defeat has now risen.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: later or the other part of it is how far
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: back in the past it's always very vague you know
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: we just leave this text right or they can come
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: back and go oh here's a tale that your bard
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: can learn and it's about you guys and what you
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: did and what you did a long time ago.
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: And it's you know that sort of thing So the
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: series is not, it's not a sequential thing. First we
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: do this one and then we do this one necessarily.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: At this point, they're not sequential. They're more about different
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: kinds of events.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: That you get involved in. And I'm looking at doing
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: some things that are very different from each other so
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: that it's not like, oh yeah, we're going to go
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: do another one of these things again. It's like the
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: idea is that you get to play with, the great
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: thing about setting things in the ancient past is that
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: you can do the truly high fantasy stuff. Because everybody,
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: the past was always richer with, you know, fantasy and
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: magic than whatever our campaign setting is today in some ways. So,
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: you know, you might go back and be responsible for
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: a tragic love tale. Or you might be, you know,
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: you might go back and get involved in the creation
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: of a great artifact. I haven't figured out how that
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: would work, but that would be interesting. Yeah. So that
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: you actually go back and do things that in a
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: regular campaign might blow up your campaigns. But, you know,
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: so it's kind of like it's a buffer. It's a
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: buffer from what? But then... You know, if you did
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: like go back and create this great artifact, you know,
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: players want a decent reward when they get back. You know,
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying that they get the artifact, but they
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: may get something consequential as a result of that. And again,
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: a lot of these are also based on convention things.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, they have like a number of
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: unrelated stories. Right. That are all connected by the set.
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: So you're obviously you DM quite a lot or GM,
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: I guess I should say.
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: Do you play a lot as well?
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: Actually, I've been playing more than running. Oh, yeah.
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: What have you been playing? I'd love to know.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: We did. We for the Necromancer game rules. He ran
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: like Bill ran a campaign campaign. with a lot of
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: us for playtesting, and he ran that for about two
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: years or a year and a half. Wow. And, you know,
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: because we were cashing out rules and all this sort
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: of stuff as we went. Of late, I've been mostly
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: playing in that sort of thing, because, you know, it's
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: kind of fun to be a player. It's good to
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: be reminded about what as a player I like and
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: what I want, as opposed to, oh, what.
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: I do as a GM, which is just, you know, Yeah,
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: doing both sides, I think, benefits both. If you're a
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: player and you DM sometimes, I think you're a better player.
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: And if you're a DM and you play sometimes, I
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: think you're a better DM. Just because you can anticipate
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: what the other perspective is as you go, right?
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, the things you start remembering as a
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: GM are, am I keeping all the people at this
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: table engaged? Do I have roles or are there things
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: where various players have, you know, the opportunity to use
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: their abilities as opposed to just watching the fighters go
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: up and get ass or ass and this sort of stuff.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, trying to figure out like, Oh, is,
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: is this person over here not having fun? Well, what
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: can I do to help them, you know, to make
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: sure that they, they have a thing that they can do.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: Sometimes it's like, I haven't got a clue.
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: Sure.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: Say, how about outside of, um, Outside of RPGs, do
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: you play video games?
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: Oddly enough, I worked in video game design for longer
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: than I worked on tabletop design. Oh, my God.
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: Here's another one of these apocryphal Internet things. Did you
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: work on Fallout 2?
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: Yes. Everybody in Black Isle worked on Fallout 2. Wow.
• 19:09
  Speaker 4: That is really something.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: So I was working at Interplanet, the Black Isle division.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: which was where basically they were handling all the role
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: play and all the adventure kind of game stuff. And
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: they did Fallout 1. It was a small team that
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: had done Fallout 1. They had a very focused, obviously
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: that very focused kind of vision for it. Yeah, yeah. And...
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: And it went out and it did really well. And
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: then I realized, hey, we need to, we need to,
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: we should really do a Fallout 2 and we should
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: get it done kind of quickly. Because, you know, while
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: there's still interest momentum in this sort of stuff as
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: opposed to waiting like five years until it comes out
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: and the only way for them to do it and
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: meet with the deadline was they pretty much rounded up
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: almost all the designers on the staff and said okay
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: you're all getting a chunk of Fallout 2 and There
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: were lots of little separate stories as you explore the
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: map and all this sort of stuff. So it was
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: kind of as long as there was somebody kind of
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: like handling the main through line and making sure that
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: there was a main story that drove everything through. There
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: was a lot of opportunity for other people to just
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: kind of like, OK, I can create stuff in this
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: little town. They give you, like, you've got to give us, like,
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: four different quests that go on in this thing. And,
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: by the way, make sure that this also happens because
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: we need that space to make storylines and that sort
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: of stuff. So, yeah, we all got an opportunity to
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: work on Fallout 2 that way.
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: That sounds great.
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: It dawns on me that you must have a really
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: interesting perspective on how games, both video games and RPGs, etc.,
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: have changed over the years. Do you, what do you
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: feel about that? Are you, are you happy with the
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: direction they're taking?
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: Am I happy with it? Sure. But what I'm, you know,
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: it's going to happen in about five years. It's going
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: to change direction.
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: Probably even less, you know, it goes and looking back
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: on it. Now you can, you can see kind of
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: the cycles first, you know, there was obviously D and
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: D and it was, Oh my God, he and you
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: went out and there's lots of other things. Um, but
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: then it was like, Oh, this is too simplistic. And, uh,
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: We need more rules. We need more rules to explain
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: all that stuff. And so D & D gets more complicated.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: Then you get 3.5. And it's like now there are
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: rules for everything. And the great part is that you
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: don't have to guess. You can just go look it up.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: The bad part is you've got to go look it up. Yeah, right.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: Nobody can just say, oh, I'll do this. And he's like, yeah, okay, well,
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: this happens. No, it's like, but wait, I've got this
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: and this and this and this. And now I have
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: to like, okay. And so it changed the pace of
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: the game, changed the style of the game. And so
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: it moves away from, I have, you know, I've got
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: a handful of things I can do, right? I'm a fighter.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: I can hit things with a, with a sword, you know,
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: that sort of stuff. And anything else I want to
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: do would be kind of on the player to figure
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: out like, and the GM to kind of figure out like, well,
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: you know, what, what can I do in this space?
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: You know, what, what clever thing can I come up
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: with that, you know? And, uh, And then they would
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: make it up. So it was a little bit more
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: on them to kind of create that story part. As
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: it goes into the more rules and stuff, players no
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: longer think about, well, how can I do something outside
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: the rules? Because there's so many rules. I'll use this
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: and that. And so the freeform kind of nature of
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: it gets more limited. But it becomes, to my mind,
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: and this is mine, in my opinion, but it becomes
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: much more a kind of a powered, you know, how
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: do I use my, and not in the, I must
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: be the most powerful, but how do I use my
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: powers and my abilities and, and that sort of stuff.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: And I need more clarity about this power and ability.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: Hence I need another rule, this sort of thing. And
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: so you've quit thinking about what are the things that
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: I could do simply because I've got no rules and,
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: And you start thinking about like, oh, well, this is
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: what I do because I have these rules. And so
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: to my mind, some of that kind of open role-playing
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: element kind of gets constricted. And it becomes more about, okay,
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: we got a challenge. How do we use our abilities?
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: We'll beat it. Okay. And then, but then you see now,
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: then the cycle switches, starts to switch back. We slid
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: back now to the other way with Ivy and stuff
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: where it's like, oh no, you know, well, at least
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: the original idea with Ivy was like, oh no, we want,
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: we did like, you know, have more kind of that
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: role play kind of thing. Let's focus on the story again.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: Let's focus on, you know, the interaction kind of thing.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: Because when you go to the rules head, the interaction becomes,
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: I roll a die. I have this ability to persuade
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: or something and I roll a die. And then when
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: you start, you know, when you go the other direction,
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: interaction becomes a little greater. What are you going to say?
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: What are you going to do? That sort of stuff.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: And now we're seeing 5e starting to swing more into
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: Google's head. Yes, people get more in their feeds and
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: all this sort of stuff. And eventually it'll become once
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: again much more of a very rules-driven kind of a thing.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: But then you have the other market, the other games
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: out there, a lot of There are a lot of OSRs.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: You see Shadow Dark. Let's strip out as much of
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: the rules and everything as we can and reduce it
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: down to the basic principles. And, yeah, you have a sword,
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: you have a torque. Go have fun. Yeah.
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: Last night I was with somebody who was talking about
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: Shadow Dark, and they said it's kind of like a
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: simplified 5E.
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: And my response was, oh, I always thought of it
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: as a slightly more complicated BX.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: I guess it's the ….
• 25:02
  Speaker 5: And to be honest anymore, I like laying and running
• 25:09
  Speaker 5: OSR kind of rules because I don't have to sit,
• 25:12
  Speaker 5: you know, basically, especially because when I'm going up doing,
• 25:15
  Speaker 5: like I said, when you do convention games.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: I don't have to spend a lot of time teaching
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: people how to play. It's like, you know, here, here's,
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: you got a character, you roll that and you do that. Go.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: We have fun. Yeah.
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: You just bring your imagination and that's all you need. Well, listen, Zeb,
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: this has been a huge pleasure. I don't want to
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: take up too much of your time. I promised you
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: we'd wrap it up in 45. So I want to
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: stay true to my word. So let me just say
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: thank you so much for coming on the show. The
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: Afterlife of King Niren is kickstarting right now and will
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: continue to until November 19th. So for my listeners who
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: are interested in checking this out, they can Google The
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: Afterlife of King Niren.
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: That's N-E-I-R-E-N Niren.
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: And participate in the kickstarter and i think it's going
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: to be fantastic and it looks like it's already funded
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: so congratulations on that thank you so much for coming
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: on once again and this has been as i said
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: earlier a huge pleasure and a huge honor you know
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: i've been a fan of yours since i was like
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: nine years old i think thank you very much.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm happy to be here. And if you
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: ever have more questions, I will talk endlessly. Thank you, Zeb.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Well, that was an enormous pleasure. Thanks to Zeb for
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: taking time out of his day to chat with me.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: If you're interested in checking out or backing his Kickstarter,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: The Afterlife of King Niren, I'll put a link in
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: the description and in the show notes. And I'll see
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: you in a few days for the second episode of
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: Season 4, Until then, may Saberthon give you good fortune.