August 28, 2024 • 40 mins
Join us in this exciting episode of Dragons Book Lair as we dive into the mechanics of the new Table Top Role Playing Game based on the Frith Chronicles that Chad has come up with! 🎲✨ Eric, Scott, Shami, and Chad come together to discuss the intricate details and innovative mechanics that bring this beloved fantasy series to life. Whether you’re a fan of the books or a TTRPG enthusiast, this discussion is packed with insights and behind-the-scenes looks at how the game is taking shape to bring this to life. Don’t miss out on this deep dive into the world of Frith Chronicles! You can find us on Facebook and join in the conversation. I want to mention the Frith Chronicles Wiki as a great resource for fan art and information. Thank you to Dan Mackison as the editor! If you have any questions you want me to read on our podcast please email us at frithguildpod@gmail.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Before we begin our review of World Serpent Arcanist, Eric and Scott thought it a goodidea to visit with Chad, a Shami Stovall fan and frequent visitor to the Capital Station
Discord server.
Chad has been working on an idea for a Frith Chronicles roleplaying game, which she wantedto share.
In addition, Shami Stovall herself was invited to join the guys for her thoughts on theidea.
(00:21):
So, without further ado, here are Eric, Scott, Shami, and Chad.
Well, we're recording, so.
Yeah, we're recording, so it should kick in hopefully here in just a minute.
So anyways, just getting things kicked off here.
Welcome to the Firth Guild podcast.
I'm your host, Eric.
And today we have a couple of guests on, you know, the author of the Firth Guild or theFirth Chronicles series, Shami.
(00:49):
It's me.
Shami.
And we have today with us, Zerza as well.
Zerza Discord.
Again, if you want to, if you want us to call you Zerza, Chad, I hope whichever you wantto call us today.
Either or works.
Zerza online, Chad as a person, whichever.
(01:11):
And today we're coming on to kind of discuss the, Chad's been working on a tabletop.
game for the fifth Chronicles and basically in this world that Vardin is and kind ofshowing us what he's got and kind of walking us through everything that he's put together
and we're looking for some definitely some positive things coming out of it if there's anysuggestions or comments that kind of thing, right?
(01:39):
Yeah.
And any way to expand it or any confusions that he creates?
I'm not
The most familiar with as far as like tabletop gaming goes, I've, personally have neversat down for a tabletop game.
Part of the reason why I definitely want to Shami on here too because I know shedefinitely has so it's kind of that like I just want to make sure we have someone that
(02:04):
knows what they're talking about Technically John and I made an entire tabletop gamesystem And it's a D10 system And the nightmare Arcanist book is semi -based off of it so
It's funny that people would be reverse engineering a game system based off of a gamesystem that I wrote a book on.
(02:29):
But I have an entire game system.
It is complicated.
It is not for people that just want to sit down and make a goofy character and then do alittle goofy things and then never think about it again.
Because John and I really, really like tabletop games.
And John is very, very, very
(02:50):
very skilled at making game systems because he's like in love with numbers.
If he could have children with numbers, he would have children with numbers.
You know what I'm saying?
Like that's how much he really likes numbers.
So and we've played it for years.
In the game, in the actual tabletop, there are we just call them animals of pure magic andthey talk just like in the Arcanist books.
(03:16):
You
bond with them, sometimes you have to do something for them, sometimes not.
The trials of worth in the books were more formalized than how we have it on our tabletopgame because not everybody wants to, we don't want to grind the game to a halt for
somebody to individually go through a trial of worth, if that makes any sense.
(03:37):
Like that just slows down the game.
we didn't, on the actual game itself, most of the time what happens is that you have toget them somehow, usually through some...
Adventure that everybody can participate in and then you got them and now you can bondwith them on the tabletop game that I did make we had categories of animals of pure magic
(03:57):
and I used those categories in the Arcanist books so There were animals obviously Wecalled them shrubs, but they were any creature that was based off of a plant We had
puppets which are any animal of pure magic that can bond to you physically.
So the nightmare is technically a puppet type
in our tabletop game.
(04:18):
It's the same with the Reaper.
Reapers were also puppets.
Anything that could bond with you, really.
And then we had mythic creatures, which were weapons, like a sword or a gun or somebullshit like that.
There were enigmas, which are more like pure energy and do pure energy things.
I ended up adding an enigma to the Academy books in the fourth book.
(04:44):
Lucian's daughter is bonded to an enigma.
So they're really rare in our tabletop game like super rare to find an enigma So I made itsuper rare in the Arcanist stuff But this is what I'm talking about all the the Arcanist
books that are all based off my tabletop game But they're just they're made for a book asopposed to a tabletop gaming session Like the yin and yang forces of the world that
(05:06):
correct balance.
Those things are all fun to me They're not fun in a tabletop game.
But yeah, so I feel like
What I would need to see with your system is like how many dice are we rolling?
Like are these add six, add 10?
Are these like add six dice?
No, it's two your number rolled.
So it's like if your base is a six and you add two, then you need to roll an eight.
(05:32):
Okay.
So like vampire and then it's a difficulty check.
Yeah.
More, more on that line.
There are things I had for adding dice, but they were more specific.
Like for action economy things, typically, you know, your creature, your Eldrin and yourperson would have different things.
You'd have your different dice, but for action economy, the benefit of like a nightmare orReaper bonding, I had the idea of just you get to, try to be more successful while you're
(05:59):
doing, you have a higher chance of actually doing it, but you lose having an entire secondturn basically.
Or some abilities like in the terrors, I
have at a Dyson or somewhere I believe or on one of them.
I can I mean I could show you guys like one of the creatures from our games if you want.
(06:27):
Yeah.
I don't know if that's interesting or if anybody is like whoa that's what I definitelywant to see is some bullshit from Shami's game.
It'd be interesting to see because it's kind of like a circular thing of game went to bookto make games.
Yeah.
But I can show you, I can put it in the dock if you want.
(06:48):
Now this is just, I searched my computer and just typed in puppet, this is the first onethat came up.
In our tabletop game we do all sorts of timeframes.
So sometimes we play like a space game, where we have magic and space.
Or sometimes we play in like medieval periods or sometimes we play on Earth because whythe fuck not?
(07:10):
You know what I'm saying?
We just do whatever we want whenever we are having fun.
I can show you what we have and then you can delete it.
Again, you don't need to keep it.
I don't care.
So all the creatures in the game have their own stats.
They have strength, dexterity, stamina, charisma, manipulation, appearance, perception,intelligence, wits.
(07:31):
They all have different magic typings and creature typing.
So in my game system, we have 12 types of magic.
the type of creature, what rank it is.
The creature ranks up the longer it's bonded to you, which is exactly how I do it in thebook.
But you know, the longer that it's bonded to you, the more it gets older, the better itgets, you know, supposedly.
(07:52):
I also had ways in the tabletop game to force it to evolve.
And what I mean by evolve is just go up ranks.
Like the star shards in the books, star shards come from the skies.
They're basically pure magic.
In our tabletop game, you could get
these types of shards and you could force feed them to your creatures and it would autorank them up.
(08:14):
Because again, we're playing a tabletop game.
don't got time to wait for this guy to just level up himself.
There was also magical abilities you could learn as the mage basically that could speed upthe growth process.
So if you were a soul mage who was really, really good at magic, you can make it so thatyour creature grows 10 times as fast.
(08:37):
So while everybody else's ages at a normal rate, yours ages like really, really quickuntil it hits maturity and then.
So the Nexus games is more heavily based off of our actual tabletop game.
Playing in the Nexus is like playing our tabletop games, like with the arbiter and allthat other kind of stuff.
Him bonding to Blaze is like, is like what would happen in one of our games where, andthen he had an egg.
(09:03):
We, we love, love, love.
the randomness of finding animal -appear magic eggs and then it can hatch into anything.
So that joke about it could be a blender was a joke from one of our tabletop games.
Like, man, it could be anything.
It could even be a blender.
So I contemplated having a blender in the actual book, but it's not quite as cool.
(09:24):
You know what I'm saying?
my Relic Keeper just made of blenders.
Yeah, blend made of blenders.
I really love the Relic Keepers.
I think they're cool.
Well, the formatting is wonk here, but if you're familiar with vampire, these things willlook familiar.
If you're not familiar with vampire, I can just go through them.
It's name is That first page is actually very close to what...
(09:48):
So my current iteration is maybe in the like 20s or 30s of general ideas.
This looks very close to like my first few because vampires was one of my earlyinspirations for it.
Yeah, so this is a D10 system and we just wholesale took a lot of the D10 system fromVampire because it's really, it's fun and we like to roll shit tons of dice.
(10:14):
Like the more dice the better.
If you roll like 40 dice, you feel like a baller.
You know what I'm saying?
So that's the kind of stuff we do.
Anyway, Hazmat is the name of the creature and protective measures is her title.
In Vampire you have natures and demeanors, but we hate demeanors so we got rid of them.
(10:35):
But natures at least tell you a little bit about the creatures personality.
So the nature just says defender.
In Vampire you have to like roleplay this kind of thing and you can get points up and downif you do it well.
We kind of kept some of that but not really because it's not quite as fun.
It's pretty limiting.
(10:55):
So we only keep the nature just basically to tell you this
This creature has a defender type nature.
She likes to defend people.
The primary magic magics are Meta and Storm.
And those are from our actual, like we just made all this type of stuff wholesale.
It's the 12 magics.
If you have read my next Nexus games, they're all in the Nexus games.
(11:16):
Meta is a really, really rare magic.
And Storm is about water, lightning, all this other kind of stuff.
Meta is usually about, it's the magic of magics.
So.
She's genderless, but identifies as female.
It's a puppet, so you can wear it.
Its talent is basically how good of a creature it is.
(11:36):
So the higher its talent, the faster it ranks up and the more ranks it can have.
So strong is pretty good, not the greatest.
It gets plus 40 % growth and plus two maximum ranks.
And currently, she's ranked five.
So.
Here we don't have who the master is, who she's bonded to, or what her growth rate is.
this is probably, we were probably playing a game and Hazmat was already rank five whensomebody found her.
(12:00):
Right?
Because her old master died and just so I can, my Arcanist books, you can second bond tosomething.
So there she is.
And these are all our stats.
You can see, you know, if you played a video game, I feel like you know what this means.
She's really tough, but not super duper strong, right?
(12:20):
And but and she's intelligent so if you scroll down just like in vampire they had talentskills and knowledges to Differentiate what the hell you could do There you go, know what
I'm saying in vampire they had like a blood system where you can spend your blood to dointeresting magical things we just used a mana system and Every magical creature has mana
(12:44):
that they can do stuff with That's it
Willpower, the higher you have, the better you resist mental attacks.
If you just scroll down.
That's a physical description of what she looks like.
And then if you scroll down again, this is where all of her magical abilities are.
And they just fucking, they just tell you, you know what I'm saying?
Hazmat can speak and understand every non -magical verbal language.
(13:07):
She can communicate telepathically with anybody up to 300 feet.
All of her occult is considered auto for soaking.
She can breathe underwater.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, whoa.
And if you scroll down one more page, this is the benefits of merging with Hazmat.
So Hazmat can spend a round, two mana to merge to her master once merged.
(13:29):
Master gains half of all Hazmat's stamina.
So currently she has six, so get plus three stamina, half of her manipulation, half of heroccult.
All Hazmat's survival, all her magical abilities.
So you as the mage gain the ability to breathe underwater, have telepathy.
They live and die as a single being just like in my Arcanist books And I think if youscroll down just a little bit more you can see the picture that's used on our character
(13:55):
sheet That's what she looks like because she's like a high -tech Hasmat suit like a high-tech nightmare.
You know what I'm Yeah, exactly So in our tabletop game if you bonded with hazmat, youknow This is what you would be getting and so obviously if you bonded with her and she
merged with you you you become tougher and cooler
(14:19):
It was a lot more on the individual, like the mage.
So in my Arcanist books, it's a little bit more about like what kind of creature you bondto.
But in our tabletop game, could bond with like, you could bond with many, like all thetime.
Like we've had people that have like 14 creatures.
So closer to the Pokemon inspiration.
Yeah, yeah.
Much closer to the Pokemon inspiration.
(14:39):
The soul mages had the ability to make their creatures grow faster, but the wild mages hadabilities to bond with tons and tons of creatures.
So if you were a soul wild mage, not only could you have a shit ton of creatures, but theywould all grow and be faster, like better just in general.
And we had a lot of people play those types of builds where they might as well have been aPokemon master because they were just in the background with like 30 creatures, you know,
(15:06):
and they're all gigantic.
The soul magic had abilities to make a creature that would normally be, you know, maybeyou had a horse.
I don't know why you would do this, but soul magic had like abilities and wild magic too.
had a magical abilities where you can make them gargantuan so you could have like a normalhorse but then you could have like a gargantuan horse you know what I'm saying and trample
(15:27):
all your enemies and bullshit like that or just run faster yeah but so I hesitate to bringall this up because that's clearly not what happens in my Arcanist books you know what I'm
saying like you you can't really use our tabletop game to duplicate an Arcanist book andfeel because
our game is a little bit too cuckoo -cachoo.
(15:50):
I reigned it all in to tell a coherent story because that's yeah I got close to lettingthe crazy out in the Nexus games because the Nexus games is more what you would see in our
tabletop games.
It was like it's over the top you know in terms of like there's giant dragons there thereare mages all over the place trying to kill you there's magical
(16:15):
creatures, maybe you're in a world that's like a horror show, you know what I'm saying?
But that was always fun for us.
You guys have seen basically how the sausage is made.
I understand that Chad is making his game wholesale, you know?
And I like the levels, the level up system in Vampire.
(16:38):
We got rid of that in our game, but in Vampire, everybody had disciplines.
And you can level up your discipline.
And I think that's what you're kind of doing to make the evocation manipulation andaugmentation, right?
A little bit closer and give it more of a two people could have the same creature and godown different paths with it.
(17:00):
I just, these were the first, like I wanted to get at least like three per row for what Ithought they'd be in there, but I eventually will probably add more.
but, that way, you know,
you know, everyone with a nightmare, they can do this like, no, if they don't care about,you know, hurting their allies or not, they won't, they won't be able to prevent it.
(17:22):
I did.
Even like two weeks ago, I was going to try to put passives in there, like the passiveabilities.
And I thought, eh, I'll just give them their own little different section.
One of the things I read, one of the books I read that sorta gave me an idea for modifyingit.
If you ever read the dungeon Lord series.
(17:43):
their random like bulk experience for buying stuff that did guide me is it the seriesthat's literally called Dungeon Lord or is it a Dungeon Lord?
Dungeon Lord with I haven't read the Dungeon Lord book but I have read some Dungeon Lordbook he stopped writing it part way through it's very sad yeah okay very good book very
(18:04):
good stops at a very big cliffhanger and then he grew bored and left
But so the idea was sort of in that same vein as like vampires where, you complete thisscene, you get this much experience, you do these extra things, you get that probably even
have the gaining experience just for showing up for the session just to get people to wantto actually show up because that's so hard nowadays.
(18:33):
Yeah, that's true.
It's always the curse of tabletop gaming.
The more people you have, the less likely you're ever going to meet because
None of your schedules can ever align.
that?
We struggle to get just our two schedules aligned.
Right?
Shoot.
You know, one of us will be going on vacation and be like, okay, let's do two episodesthis week and then we won't record next week.
(18:56):
But then the week following will be good.
then like, like this week we're like, okay, well, it's how I'm going to be on vacationnext week.
Like we'll record on Tuesday instead of Thursday so we can do the live stream on Thursday.
All this juggling so many vacations you guys that's all they're going to say is that theycan take vacations So have you have you play tested this at all chatter is this Beyond
(19:30):
trying to do things in my own head.
No, it's very hard to find people to bounce ideas off of I got you
You don't have your own John?
You don't have somebody who's married to the numbers?
I have two cats and their response to everything I say is, leave me be, I'm sleeping.
(19:51):
Or I just want to stare at you from across the room.
probably some scritches, some catnip demands.
Or I'm going to break down this door.
Hello, goodbye.
I just didn't want you to have a door closed.
How dare you try to do something without me?
Which if you've seen on the Discord, the small cat I have, the white one, she can breakdown some of my doors.
(20:14):
It's actually kind of terrifying to have one just burst open.
She's a mature mimic.
But so small.
But she's so small.
I think she weighs like seven and a half pounds.
Also, just to give you like an idea of how much John really likes numbers.
(20:39):
Those ranks on the our animals of pure magic so like with hazmat They mean something likereally tangible and what I mean by that is is that every time you go up in a rank from 1
to 10 you get to stat increases and Four or six skill increases I can't remember exactlybecause I don't have my rule books and stuff in front of me But that from ranks 1 to 10
(21:07):
More stats, more skills, and it's numeric.
You can count them, basically.
You can tell what rank of creature you have by counting up all the stats and skills.
And like every other rank you go up, you get more abilities, depending on the type ofcreature you have.
And then from 11 to 20, it's half that.
So you get one stat and half the skills, right?
(21:29):
So again, you could count what rank creature you are because of the ranking.
And John came up with like this entire system of how many points of growth you get per daydepending on how powerful a mage you are.
So you you might need 10 points for it to go from rank one to two.
And if you're an E rank mage, you only get one point a day.
(21:51):
But if you're an A rank mage, you give 100 points a day.
You know what I'm saying?
So technically your creature ranks up from rank one to two like two seconds after bondingto you if you're an A rank mage.
That kind of thing.
Like, John, John really, really, really, really, I can't stress this enough, guys.
Really likes numbers.
Does he have a favorite number?
(22:13):
John's?
Do you have a favorite number?
Do you have a favorite number?
256 he says No, Is there a reason John Kuhn I know it divides into something is that aprime number?
(22:34):
It's it's two to the two to the two.
Okay.
That's why I remember there was something about that one that number stuck out Yeah SoJohn says that it can that number the 256 can be divided multiplied it
Multiplied and fucked with in many ways and that's why it's the best number So there yougo you got his favoritest number ever but yeah, like I said He he went way way way out of
(23:03):
his way for our system It's just it's it's so much it would overwhelm you guys if I showedyou well They'll like magics and stuff like that.
It's not it's not appropriate for a stream
We would be here for several hours.
Make a very long movie explaining it.
It's silly.
(23:23):
One thing I was going to include in this was almost directly just taken from it, the boonsand flaws of vampires.
Yeah, boons and flaws are great.
They're fun.
They can do some weird stuff in there, like, you know, just to help your character.
Inspiration for things like that would be like, have a permanent wound.
You could be like Ilya and not be able to see out of one eye for
(23:46):
Very specific reasons, but be but but also gain like, you know, two or three points for itfor buying stuff and have some.
need to figure out the numbers for it, but have some kind of cap for how much you canactually get as a total.
Maybe you only be able to pick like a couple in each or something.
But also stuff like if you pick a baseline of, you know, like in for most people have likea tier three, but you're like, just want like a tier one.
(24:12):
You get extra points for that to to be able to spend on.
whatever boons.
Yeah.
That's fun.
Some of merits and flaws that we have are things like you can be bonded to an extracreature just as a baseline.
So every mage in our game, you can bond with one creature.
(24:32):
But you could take a merit to bond with like two right out the door.
And then if you became a wild mage, this is how we got people that had like 15 creaturesbecause they would take all of the
all the merits in the beginning so they could bond with tons of creatures and then they'dtake up wild magic and then they could bond with more creatures and then they'd make
themselves magical items, know, like the trinkets and artifacts type of thing and thearcanist to bond with even more creatures and and then they'd just walk around with a
(24:58):
fucking zoo of fucking - I mean, if you like animals, why would you not like an entirelike army or zoo that just follow you around?
Yeah, well
Also in our tabletop game, just like in the Nexus games, if you're bonded to a creature,they can always retreat into your shadow.
Like that's a small pocket dimension for familiars, basically, your Eldrin.
(25:22):
And so what was really funny is the guy who had 14 dragons, and they were all likegigantic, and they could just come out of a shadow at any second.
And we did have a lot of funny moments where we're like in a building, and then he wouldbe like,
I bring out my creature!
It was like, I got the building, it's gone, it's smashed!
(25:43):
The whole town is fucking destroyed.
He busted out all of his gigantic creatures right here in middle of nowhere.
When the room isn't big enough, summon dragons.
funny.
So John, I'm Ted, four little minutes for four letter names, all the same.
(26:09):
lord.
now do you have kind of like a, like a start, a starting sheet for your game yet?
not a, not a proper one.
No, not really.
I was working on, I was working on, this one looking at all the things and, sorta, sortadidn't make the actual sheet as I had an vision for it.
(26:30):
But generally the only thing that actual characters would have would be like HP and.
list of items and the number of wounds they have, because I was going to use HP andwounds.
And that way you can have the bigger numbers with healing and make it actually feel good.
But wounds are like permanent damage that you can't really heal from.
(26:51):
Most of the actual character sheet would be, I guess, contained in the creature one.
Whenever you whenever you get your creature, you'd be handed your like two or three sheetsof paper on that, if that makes sense.
The nightmare was the one I was focusing on when I had more ideas for it.
Cause I wanted to get it ready for this in some amount of time.
(27:11):
When I first mentioned it like two, three weeks ago.
you haven't done the like Rizzle or anything like that?
No, sadly.
I have a guy at work that I've gotten to start reading the series and that is hisfavorite.
So when I told him I was making a creature, he's like, you made the like, no, sadly, no.
Yeah, that one's, that one's one of my favorites too.
(27:32):
There is a surprisingly lack of.
ferret myths like magical ferrets and any sort of myth and I really really like ferrets soI had to that was one that I had to make myself I appreciate that Nicola thinks that he's
the main character as well
I love how sassy, his name just popped out of my head in Astra Academy.
(27:58):
Reeve.
Yes.
I love how sassy Reeve is just like, I swear.
Like you guys will do what I say.
I am the teachers.
You know, the teachers, Eldrin, the teachers Rizzle, you will listen.
I have authority.
I like Meetback mainly because his name's Meetback.
(28:23):
Yeah, he's great too.
See, all the whistles are perfect and they're on perfect little way.
Such big personalities in a tiny little form.
A fluff.
I'm sure Nicolay would be very disappointed that none of us said that he was the best one.
I don't know if Nicolay's ego would be able to handle that blow.
(28:46):
He would just disintegrate us.
He hides the bodies of anyone who disappoints him.
Working on this obviously are you gonna build out every single Eldrin that you want tohave included in the game?
So eventually I'm gonna have like how she mentioned for hers tags to creatures and havethose as sort of like general rulings instead of spelling it out on each individual
(29:10):
creature 50 times across all of them, but if it I will eventually add out I'd like tobuild every creature one of the reason I'm waiting for the bestiary have more exact
definitions for a lot of them
Based on the few you've shared, can kind of guess at how to translate them into a gamefairly well.
(29:32):
And even for like true forms, go for that one.
It's sort of one I extrapolated.
And I was probably going to stick with a Pokemon reference where you have to level them up99 times to get their true form.
They'd be like a level 100 at that point.
gain some specific like for
Golems you have to feed them like 99 units of that metal or something over time or for thevirtue type ones some system of just giving people a certain number of points for very
(30:06):
specific actions and when they Reach the right number they get their true form Stuff likethe aura we're gonna be basically expensive like feats or skills you could buy with
experience like you know if it costs 20 to buy
a level up to your magic, it'd be like 50 or 60 and you could get things like your Tearsof Aura.
(30:31):
which I actually have on him, like the forest, the calm and the mastered get better usingit over time, but you basically have to invest a lot of points into it.
And then as far as like objects and magic, the imbuing that kind of part of it, how
Just thoughts on it, not necessarily like trying to put you on the holy on the spot of.
(30:54):
so that one would also be sort of like the, or you have to get the skill and.
Intent intention is someone would be teaching you and then you'd have a reason to spendpoints on it.
But ultimately, you know, spend whatever specific amount of experience to learn the skill.
And then you kind of like how the magics you have the list of things you would get a skillthat is, you can invest, you know, you can work with different.
(31:20):
materials you can have like a better guaranteed success for using more star shards stufflike that.
Okay.
And then weapons would work the same way.
Like, you learn how to use small swords and you can get like jumping attacks or parriesand stuff like that.
So exciting.
(31:40):
Like you said, I've never played a tabletop game before, but I really, I really like thisseries.
I'm not sure if you guys can tell or not.
Yeah, do you?
You've never mentioned that before.
No, not at all.
Definitely not mentioning it to coworkers or trying to convince people into reading this,you know, my family, that kind of thing.
(32:05):
Hey, I appreciate you.
I also really like the series.
That's probably more important.
That is a benefit of it.
It has a ton of my favorite stuff in it, you know what I'm saying?
Obviously I'm a huge fan of things like Pokemon, Digimon, but I also really really likejust adventure fantasy.
(32:33):
I really really love the world basically, like having really unique locations that allfeel like fun and magical in and of themselves.
I have a stupid history degree so I have to use it somehow.
I base a lot of the cities and the cultures off of really fun, interesting real worldcultures.
(32:55):
So, you guys, I'm sure you all remember the Chasm City, you know, where the first TyphoonBeast had died, right?
And there was like a big gorge.
That is based off of a real world city where they built two halves of the city across likea giant Chasm.
(33:16):
And I always thought that was really
I mean, I thought it was stupid to be frank because feels like you're gonna die, but Ialways at least thought it was very cool to look at and it would be very interesting to
live in a city over a gigantic pit, but you know, you would be a tourist, but not buy ahouse there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I would, I would look at it, you know, Instagram, a couple of pictures of me near theedge.
(33:42):
You'd probably like a, there's one YouTube where I watch and his favorite phrases,geography is everything.
So he tries to turn everything into like a geography lesson.
okay, yeah.
I'm just saying, Frith Chronicles is definitely, definitely all of my things that I lovejust wrapped into a ball.
(34:02):
But alright, so so moving from check, go ahead, chat.
no, I'm good.
I am better at answering questions that I am spewing information out.
So questions are better than rambling for me.
So moving forward with, with your tabletop, kind of like, where's your next step?
I know you're talking about getting most things written down or at least typed out.
(34:26):
So that way you have something to look back on that kind of thing.
Right?
A lot of it is, I think.
The more creatures I specifically build, the more specific mechanics that I can put onpaper.
A lot of things I, because I don't have anyone to bounce it off of, usually it's just inmy head bouncing around throughout my day.
(34:47):
It makes it easy.
My job's physical, so my brain needs to be occupied somewhere else anyway.
But, Do you listen to audio books?
Yes.
Right now I'm actually going through the first series to help with this, but.
I think in the past year I've gone through like 150 books.
(35:09):
get you get eight, 10 hours a day.
Listen, if I heard the book before I listened to it at like one and a half speed.
Wow.
First time I go through it at normal speed, but it fills the day.
Books don't last more than like two days, half the time, but well.
(35:32):
Yep.
All right.
And then is there anything else specifically towards your tabletop that you want todiscuss or ask about as far as mechanics go?
I know you said you're working towards more towards vampire, correct?
For, I mean, that was one of the inspirations I had for it.
I had had a few numinaire vampire, even Dungeon Lord added a little bit of it and just, Iwanted to make the system simple ish so people could pick it up easy.
(36:05):
I know it's already geared towards people who like creatures and whatnot.
So I wanted to be something that people could actually play with not needing a hundredpage rule book.
It might turn into that eventually, especially, well, the creatures would make it hundredsand hundreds, but well.
(36:25):
But I'm trying to make it simple.
So if things are complicated, I mean, my wording makes sense in my head, but translatingto other people's difficult.
Well, we'll definitely have to keep in touch and, bring you on periodically just so thatway we can hear you see your progress and kind of see what you got put down and, and see
(36:49):
where we can, Talk through things to help make, make sure it makes sense.
And definitely something looking forward to.
know a lot of people on discord on the capital station discord server.
a lot of people talk about being interested in a tabletop with the frisk Chronicles and,
I know this is definitely going be something that a lot of people are going to be excitedabout and, keep continuing to be looking after.
(37:14):
So, definitely be, definitely be excited to keep, keep in touch with you and keep gettingupdates from you.
I'll give, I'll give updates as I make like milestone improvements on it.
And if, hopefully by showing it off, can use random people as bouncing off ideas to makeit more coherent and more fluid for people to understand.
(37:38):
Yeah.
That's cool.
I like that.
Awesome.
Well, I'm going to start wrapping things up here.
We are extremely happy that we had everybody on today.
Chad, thank you so much for coming on.
Shammi, know kind of like last minute threw you out there on that, but thank you so muchfor taking the time.
(38:00):
know you just got back from LibertyCon, right?
yeah.
It was great, but you know, it's tiring sometimes to go to cons because I'm
because I'm a woman now.
Okay.
Well, I really appreciate you guys.
I appreciate you showing up.
It was good opportunity.
(38:21):
I, it's been nice.
Yeah.
I'm really glad that I didn't have to do anything.
I just ran it all and I was also here.
So success.
You weren't, you weren't a moderator.
Yeah.
I also just got to participate.
It was beautiful.
Well, we thank you again.
We thank everybody for coming on.
(38:41):
We want to thank everybody for listening and watching the podcast, the YouTube channel.
We really do appreciate any kind of feedback, whether it's just thumbs up or comments onthere.
we were almost to a thousand downloads, overall with the podcast, which is absolutelyphenomenal.
And I do appreciate everybody for listening to the podcast, whether it's the podcast orthe YouTube channel.
(39:04):
So again, really love and appreciate that.
next week we'll be getting into.
book number five, world serpent.
Yep.
We'll be getting to world serpent Arcanist and it's starting next week.
So this will be our week between books.
So again, thank you for everybody and we'll catch you guys next week.
Eric Scott, and I want to thank everyone for listening today.
(39:27):
We post a new episode every Wednesday morning at 11 Eastern, 10 central and eight Pacificstandard time.
We are on all podcasting platforms and are also on YouTube as well for video.
After the additional episode airs, we post chapter by chapter videos every day in asmaller, easier to digest format.
We do want to give a special shout out to the final member of our team, Dan Mackeson, oneof the admins for the Frith Chronicles Wiki, link listed below, and doing his best to keep
(39:55):
everything running smoothly behind the scenes.
If you want to reach out to us, you can email us at frithguildpod at gmail .com or onFacebook or any other social media.
by searching for Frith Guild Podcast.
Just to remind everybody, we have links to everything in the description below on both thepodcast and YouTube.
Before we begin our review of World Serpent Arcanist, Eric and Scott thought it a goodidea to visit with Chad, a Shami Stovall fan and frequent visitor to the Capital Station
Discord server.
Chad has been working on an idea for a Frith Chronicles roleplaying game, which she wantedto share.
In addition, Shami Stovall herself was invited to join the guys for her thoughts on theidea.
(00:21):
So, without further ado, here are Eric, Scott, Shami, and Chad.
Well, we're recording, so.
Yeah, we're recording, so it should kick in hopefully here in just a minute.
So anyways, just getting things kicked off here.
Welcome to the Firth Guild podcast.
I'm your host, Eric.
And today we have a couple of guests on, you know, the author of the Firth Guild or theFirth Chronicles series, Shami.
(00:49):
It's me.
Shami.
And we have today with us, Zerza as well.
Zerza Discord.
Again, if you want to, if you want us to call you Zerza, Chad, I hope whichever you wantto call us today.
Either or works.
Zerza online, Chad as a person, whichever.
(01:11):
And today we're coming on to kind of discuss the, Chad's been working on a tabletop.
game for the fifth Chronicles and basically in this world that Vardin is and kind ofshowing us what he's got and kind of walking us through everything that he's put together
and we're looking for some definitely some positive things coming out of it if there's anysuggestions or comments that kind of thing, right?
(01:39):
Yeah.
And any way to expand it or any confusions that he creates?
I'm not
The most familiar with as far as like tabletop gaming goes, I've, personally have neversat down for a tabletop game.
Part of the reason why I definitely want to Shami on here too because I know shedefinitely has so it's kind of that like I just want to make sure we have someone that
(02:04):
knows what they're talking about Technically John and I made an entire tabletop gamesystem And it's a D10 system And the nightmare Arcanist book is semi -based off of it so
It's funny that people would be reverse engineering a game system based off of a gamesystem that I wrote a book on.
(02:29):
But I have an entire game system.
It is complicated.
It is not for people that just want to sit down and make a goofy character and then do alittle goofy things and then never think about it again.
Because John and I really, really like tabletop games.
And John is very, very, very
(02:50):
very skilled at making game systems because he's like in love with numbers.
If he could have children with numbers, he would have children with numbers.
You know what I'm saying?
Like that's how much he really likes numbers.
So and we've played it for years.
In the game, in the actual tabletop, there are we just call them animals of pure magic andthey talk just like in the Arcanist books.
(03:16):
You
bond with them, sometimes you have to do something for them, sometimes not.
The trials of worth in the books were more formalized than how we have it on our tabletopgame because not everybody wants to, we don't want to grind the game to a halt for
somebody to individually go through a trial of worth, if that makes any sense.
(03:37):
Like that just slows down the game.
we didn't, on the actual game itself, most of the time what happens is that you have toget them somehow, usually through some...
Adventure that everybody can participate in and then you got them and now you can bondwith them on the tabletop game that I did make we had categories of animals of pure magic
(03:57):
and I used those categories in the Arcanist books so There were animals obviously Wecalled them shrubs, but they were any creature that was based off of a plant We had
puppets which are any animal of pure magic that can bond to you physically.
So the nightmare is technically a puppet type
in our tabletop game.
(04:18):
It's the same with the Reaper.
Reapers were also puppets.
Anything that could bond with you, really.
And then we had mythic creatures, which were weapons, like a sword or a gun or somebullshit like that.
There were enigmas, which are more like pure energy and do pure energy things.
I ended up adding an enigma to the Academy books in the fourth book.
(04:44):
Lucian's daughter is bonded to an enigma.
So they're really rare in our tabletop game like super rare to find an enigma So I made itsuper rare in the Arcanist stuff But this is what I'm talking about all the the Arcanist
books that are all based off my tabletop game But they're just they're made for a book asopposed to a tabletop gaming session Like the yin and yang forces of the world that
(05:06):
correct balance.
Those things are all fun to me They're not fun in a tabletop game.
But yeah, so I feel like
What I would need to see with your system is like how many dice are we rolling?
Like are these add six, add 10?
Are these like add six dice?
No, it's two your number rolled.
So it's like if your base is a six and you add two, then you need to roll an eight.
(05:32):
Okay.
So like vampire and then it's a difficulty check.
Yeah.
More, more on that line.
There are things I had for adding dice, but they were more specific.
Like for action economy things, typically, you know, your creature, your Eldrin and yourperson would have different things.
You'd have your different dice, but for action economy, the benefit of like a nightmare orReaper bonding, I had the idea of just you get to, try to be more successful while you're
(05:59):
doing, you have a higher chance of actually doing it, but you lose having an entire secondturn basically.
Or some abilities like in the terrors, I
have at a Dyson or somewhere I believe or on one of them.
I can I mean I could show you guys like one of the creatures from our games if you want.
(06:27):
Yeah.
I don't know if that's interesting or if anybody is like whoa that's what I definitelywant to see is some bullshit from Shami's game.
It'd be interesting to see because it's kind of like a circular thing of game went to bookto make games.
Yeah.
But I can show you, I can put it in the dock if you want.
(06:48):
Now this is just, I searched my computer and just typed in puppet, this is the first onethat came up.
In our tabletop game we do all sorts of timeframes.
So sometimes we play like a space game, where we have magic and space.
Or sometimes we play in like medieval periods or sometimes we play on Earth because whythe fuck not?
(07:10):
You know what I'm saying?
We just do whatever we want whenever we are having fun.
I can show you what we have and then you can delete it.
Again, you don't need to keep it.
I don't care.
So all the creatures in the game have their own stats.
They have strength, dexterity, stamina, charisma, manipulation, appearance, perception,intelligence, wits.
(07:31):
They all have different magic typings and creature typing.
So in my game system, we have 12 types of magic.
the type of creature, what rank it is.
The creature ranks up the longer it's bonded to you, which is exactly how I do it in thebook.
But you know, the longer that it's bonded to you, the more it gets older, the better itgets, you know, supposedly.
(07:52):
I also had ways in the tabletop game to force it to evolve.
And what I mean by evolve is just go up ranks.
Like the star shards in the books, star shards come from the skies.
They're basically pure magic.
In our tabletop game, you could get
these types of shards and you could force feed them to your creatures and it would autorank them up.
(08:14):
Because again, we're playing a tabletop game.
don't got time to wait for this guy to just level up himself.
There was also magical abilities you could learn as the mage basically that could speed upthe growth process.
So if you were a soul mage who was really, really good at magic, you can make it so thatyour creature grows 10 times as fast.
(08:37):
So while everybody else's ages at a normal rate, yours ages like really, really quickuntil it hits maturity and then.
So the Nexus games is more heavily based off of our actual tabletop game.
Playing in the Nexus is like playing our tabletop games, like with the arbiter and allthat other kind of stuff.
Him bonding to Blaze is like, is like what would happen in one of our games where, andthen he had an egg.
(09:03):
We, we love, love, love.
the randomness of finding animal -appear magic eggs and then it can hatch into anything.
So that joke about it could be a blender was a joke from one of our tabletop games.
Like, man, it could be anything.
It could even be a blender.
So I contemplated having a blender in the actual book, but it's not quite as cool.
(09:24):
You know what I'm saying?
my Relic Keeper just made of blenders.
Yeah, blend made of blenders.
I really love the Relic Keepers.
I think they're cool.
Well, the formatting is wonk here, but if you're familiar with vampire, these things willlook familiar.
If you're not familiar with vampire, I can just go through them.
It's name is That first page is actually very close to what...
(09:48):
So my current iteration is maybe in the like 20s or 30s of general ideas.
This looks very close to like my first few because vampires was one of my earlyinspirations for it.
Yeah, so this is a D10 system and we just wholesale took a lot of the D10 system fromVampire because it's really, it's fun and we like to roll shit tons of dice.
(10:14):
Like the more dice the better.
If you roll like 40 dice, you feel like a baller.
You know what I'm saying?
So that's the kind of stuff we do.
Anyway, Hazmat is the name of the creature and protective measures is her title.
In Vampire you have natures and demeanors, but we hate demeanors so we got rid of them.
(10:35):
But natures at least tell you a little bit about the creatures personality.
So the nature just says defender.
In Vampire you have to like roleplay this kind of thing and you can get points up and downif you do it well.
We kind of kept some of that but not really because it's not quite as fun.
It's pretty limiting.
(10:55):
So we only keep the nature just basically to tell you this
This creature has a defender type nature.
She likes to defend people.
The primary magic magics are Meta and Storm.
And those are from our actual, like we just made all this type of stuff wholesale.
It's the 12 magics.
If you have read my next Nexus games, they're all in the Nexus games.
(11:16):
Meta is a really, really rare magic.
And Storm is about water, lightning, all this other kind of stuff.
Meta is usually about, it's the magic of magics.
So.
She's genderless, but identifies as female.
It's a puppet, so you can wear it.
Its talent is basically how good of a creature it is.
(11:36):
So the higher its talent, the faster it ranks up and the more ranks it can have.
So strong is pretty good, not the greatest.
It gets plus 40 % growth and plus two maximum ranks.
And currently, she's ranked five.
So.
Here we don't have who the master is, who she's bonded to, or what her growth rate is.
this is probably, we were probably playing a game and Hazmat was already rank five whensomebody found her.
(12:00):
Right?
Because her old master died and just so I can, my Arcanist books, you can second bond tosomething.
So there she is.
And these are all our stats.
You can see, you know, if you played a video game, I feel like you know what this means.
She's really tough, but not super duper strong, right?
(12:20):
And but and she's intelligent so if you scroll down just like in vampire they had talentskills and knowledges to Differentiate what the hell you could do There you go, know what
I'm saying in vampire they had like a blood system where you can spend your blood to dointeresting magical things we just used a mana system and Every magical creature has mana
(12:44):
that they can do stuff with That's it
Willpower, the higher you have, the better you resist mental attacks.
If you just scroll down.
That's a physical description of what she looks like.
And then if you scroll down again, this is where all of her magical abilities are.
And they just fucking, they just tell you, you know what I'm saying?
Hazmat can speak and understand every non -magical verbal language.
(13:07):
She can communicate telepathically with anybody up to 300 feet.
All of her occult is considered auto for soaking.
She can breathe underwater.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, whoa.
And if you scroll down one more page, this is the benefits of merging with Hazmat.
So Hazmat can spend a round, two mana to merge to her master once merged.
(13:29):
Master gains half of all Hazmat's stamina.
So currently she has six, so get plus three stamina, half of her manipulation, half of heroccult.
All Hazmat's survival, all her magical abilities.
So you as the mage gain the ability to breathe underwater, have telepathy.
They live and die as a single being just like in my Arcanist books And I think if youscroll down just a little bit more you can see the picture that's used on our character
(13:55):
sheet That's what she looks like because she's like a high -tech Hasmat suit like a high-tech nightmare.
You know what I'm Yeah, exactly So in our tabletop game if you bonded with hazmat, youknow This is what you would be getting and so obviously if you bonded with her and she
merged with you you you become tougher and cooler
(14:19):
It was a lot more on the individual, like the mage.
So in my Arcanist books, it's a little bit more about like what kind of creature you bondto.
But in our tabletop game, could bond with like, you could bond with many, like all thetime.
Like we've had people that have like 14 creatures.
So closer to the Pokemon inspiration.
Yeah, yeah.
Much closer to the Pokemon inspiration.
(14:39):
The soul mages had the ability to make their creatures grow faster, but the wild mages hadabilities to bond with tons and tons of creatures.
So if you were a soul wild mage, not only could you have a shit ton of creatures, but theywould all grow and be faster, like better just in general.
And we had a lot of people play those types of builds where they might as well have been aPokemon master because they were just in the background with like 30 creatures, you know,
(15:06):
and they're all gigantic.
The soul magic had abilities to make a creature that would normally be, you know, maybeyou had a horse.
I don't know why you would do this, but soul magic had like abilities and wild magic too.
had a magical abilities where you can make them gargantuan so you could have like a normalhorse but then you could have like a gargantuan horse you know what I'm saying and trample
(15:27):
all your enemies and bullshit like that or just run faster yeah but so I hesitate to bringall this up because that's clearly not what happens in my Arcanist books you know what I'm
saying like you you can't really use our tabletop game to duplicate an Arcanist book andfeel because
our game is a little bit too cuckoo -cachoo.
(15:50):
I reigned it all in to tell a coherent story because that's yeah I got close to lettingthe crazy out in the Nexus games because the Nexus games is more what you would see in our
tabletop games.
It was like it's over the top you know in terms of like there's giant dragons there thereare mages all over the place trying to kill you there's magical
(16:15):
creatures, maybe you're in a world that's like a horror show, you know what I'm saying?
But that was always fun for us.
You guys have seen basically how the sausage is made.
I understand that Chad is making his game wholesale, you know?
And I like the levels, the level up system in Vampire.
(16:38):
We got rid of that in our game, but in Vampire, everybody had disciplines.
And you can level up your discipline.
And I think that's what you're kind of doing to make the evocation manipulation andaugmentation, right?
A little bit closer and give it more of a two people could have the same creature and godown different paths with it.
(17:00):
I just, these were the first, like I wanted to get at least like three per row for what Ithought they'd be in there, but I eventually will probably add more.
but, that way, you know,
you know, everyone with a nightmare, they can do this like, no, if they don't care about,you know, hurting their allies or not, they won't, they won't be able to prevent it.
(17:22):
I did.
Even like two weeks ago, I was going to try to put passives in there, like the passiveabilities.
And I thought, eh, I'll just give them their own little different section.
One of the things I read, one of the books I read that sorta gave me an idea for modifyingit.
If you ever read the dungeon Lord series.
(17:43):
their random like bulk experience for buying stuff that did guide me is it the seriesthat's literally called Dungeon Lord or is it a Dungeon Lord?
Dungeon Lord with I haven't read the Dungeon Lord book but I have read some Dungeon Lordbook he stopped writing it part way through it's very sad yeah okay very good book very
(18:04):
good stops at a very big cliffhanger and then he grew bored and left
But so the idea was sort of in that same vein as like vampires where, you complete thisscene, you get this much experience, you do these extra things, you get that probably even
have the gaining experience just for showing up for the session just to get people to wantto actually show up because that's so hard nowadays.
(18:33):
Yeah, that's true.
It's always the curse of tabletop gaming.
The more people you have, the less likely you're ever going to meet because
None of your schedules can ever align.
that?
We struggle to get just our two schedules aligned.
Right?
Shoot.
You know, one of us will be going on vacation and be like, okay, let's do two episodesthis week and then we won't record next week.
(18:56):
But then the week following will be good.
then like, like this week we're like, okay, well, it's how I'm going to be on vacationnext week.
Like we'll record on Tuesday instead of Thursday so we can do the live stream on Thursday.
All this juggling so many vacations you guys that's all they're going to say is that theycan take vacations So have you have you play tested this at all chatter is this Beyond
(19:30):
trying to do things in my own head.
No, it's very hard to find people to bounce ideas off of I got you
You don't have your own John?
You don't have somebody who's married to the numbers?
I have two cats and their response to everything I say is, leave me be, I'm sleeping.
(19:51):
Or I just want to stare at you from across the room.
probably some scritches, some catnip demands.
Or I'm going to break down this door.
Hello, goodbye.
I just didn't want you to have a door closed.
How dare you try to do something without me?
Which if you've seen on the Discord, the small cat I have, the white one, she can breakdown some of my doors.
(20:14):
It's actually kind of terrifying to have one just burst open.
She's a mature mimic.
But so small.
But she's so small.
I think she weighs like seven and a half pounds.
Also, just to give you like an idea of how much John really likes numbers.
(20:39):
Those ranks on the our animals of pure magic so like with hazmat They mean something likereally tangible and what I mean by that is is that every time you go up in a rank from 1
to 10 you get to stat increases and Four or six skill increases I can't remember exactlybecause I don't have my rule books and stuff in front of me But that from ranks 1 to 10
(21:07):
More stats, more skills, and it's numeric.
You can count them, basically.
You can tell what rank of creature you have by counting up all the stats and skills.
And like every other rank you go up, you get more abilities, depending on the type ofcreature you have.
And then from 11 to 20, it's half that.
So you get one stat and half the skills, right?
(21:29):
So again, you could count what rank creature you are because of the ranking.
And John came up with like this entire system of how many points of growth you get per daydepending on how powerful a mage you are.
So you you might need 10 points for it to go from rank one to two.
And if you're an E rank mage, you only get one point a day.
(21:51):
But if you're an A rank mage, you give 100 points a day.
You know what I'm saying?
So technically your creature ranks up from rank one to two like two seconds after bondingto you if you're an A rank mage.
That kind of thing.
Like, John, John really, really, really, really, I can't stress this enough, guys.
Really likes numbers.
Does he have a favorite number?
(22:13):
John's?
Do you have a favorite number?
Do you have a favorite number?
256 he says No, Is there a reason John Kuhn I know it divides into something is that aprime number?
(22:34):
It's it's two to the two to the two.
Okay.
That's why I remember there was something about that one that number stuck out Yeah SoJohn says that it can that number the 256 can be divided multiplied it
Multiplied and fucked with in many ways and that's why it's the best number So there yougo you got his favoritest number ever but yeah, like I said He he went way way way out of
(23:03):
his way for our system It's just it's it's so much it would overwhelm you guys if I showedyou well They'll like magics and stuff like that.
It's not it's not appropriate for a stream
We would be here for several hours.
Make a very long movie explaining it.
It's silly.
(23:23):
One thing I was going to include in this was almost directly just taken from it, the boonsand flaws of vampires.
Yeah, boons and flaws are great.
They're fun.
They can do some weird stuff in there, like, you know, just to help your character.
Inspiration for things like that would be like, have a permanent wound.
You could be like Ilya and not be able to see out of one eye for
(23:46):
Very specific reasons, but be but but also gain like, you know, two or three points for itfor buying stuff and have some.
need to figure out the numbers for it, but have some kind of cap for how much you canactually get as a total.
Maybe you only be able to pick like a couple in each or something.
But also stuff like if you pick a baseline of, you know, like in for most people have likea tier three, but you're like, just want like a tier one.
(24:12):
You get extra points for that to to be able to spend on.
whatever boons.
Yeah.
That's fun.
Some of merits and flaws that we have are things like you can be bonded to an extracreature just as a baseline.
So every mage in our game, you can bond with one creature.
(24:32):
But you could take a merit to bond with like two right out the door.
And then if you became a wild mage, this is how we got people that had like 15 creaturesbecause they would take all of the
all the merits in the beginning so they could bond with tons of creatures and then they'dtake up wild magic and then they could bond with more creatures and then they'd make
themselves magical items, know, like the trinkets and artifacts type of thing and thearcanist to bond with even more creatures and and then they'd just walk around with a
(24:58):
fucking zoo of fucking - I mean, if you like animals, why would you not like an entirelike army or zoo that just follow you around?
Yeah, well
Also in our tabletop game, just like in the Nexus games, if you're bonded to a creature,they can always retreat into your shadow.
Like that's a small pocket dimension for familiars, basically, your Eldrin.
(25:22):
And so what was really funny is the guy who had 14 dragons, and they were all likegigantic, and they could just come out of a shadow at any second.
And we did have a lot of funny moments where we're like in a building, and then he wouldbe like,
I bring out my creature!
It was like, I got the building, it's gone, it's smashed!
(25:43):
The whole town is fucking destroyed.
He busted out all of his gigantic creatures right here in middle of nowhere.
When the room isn't big enough, summon dragons.
funny.
So John, I'm Ted, four little minutes for four letter names, all the same.
(26:09):
lord.
now do you have kind of like a, like a start, a starting sheet for your game yet?
not a, not a proper one.
No, not really.
I was working on, I was working on, this one looking at all the things and, sorta, sortadidn't make the actual sheet as I had an vision for it.
(26:30):
But generally the only thing that actual characters would have would be like HP and.
list of items and the number of wounds they have, because I was going to use HP andwounds.
And that way you can have the bigger numbers with healing and make it actually feel good.
But wounds are like permanent damage that you can't really heal from.
(26:51):
Most of the actual character sheet would be, I guess, contained in the creature one.
Whenever you whenever you get your creature, you'd be handed your like two or three sheetsof paper on that, if that makes sense.
The nightmare was the one I was focusing on when I had more ideas for it.
Cause I wanted to get it ready for this in some amount of time.
(27:11):
When I first mentioned it like two, three weeks ago.
you haven't done the like Rizzle or anything like that?
No, sadly.
I have a guy at work that I've gotten to start reading the series and that is hisfavorite.
So when I told him I was making a creature, he's like, you made the like, no, sadly, no.
Yeah, that one's, that one's one of my favorites too.
(27:32):
There is a surprisingly lack of.
ferret myths like magical ferrets and any sort of myth and I really really like ferrets soI had to that was one that I had to make myself I appreciate that Nicola thinks that he's
the main character as well
I love how sassy, his name just popped out of my head in Astra Academy.
(27:58):
Reeve.
Yes.
I love how sassy Reeve is just like, I swear.
Like you guys will do what I say.
I am the teachers.
You know, the teachers, Eldrin, the teachers Rizzle, you will listen.
I have authority.
I like Meetback mainly because his name's Meetback.
(28:23):
Yeah, he's great too.
See, all the whistles are perfect and they're on perfect little way.
Such big personalities in a tiny little form.
A fluff.
I'm sure Nicolay would be very disappointed that none of us said that he was the best one.
I don't know if Nicolay's ego would be able to handle that blow.
(28:46):
He would just disintegrate us.
He hides the bodies of anyone who disappoints him.
Working on this obviously are you gonna build out every single Eldrin that you want tohave included in the game?
So eventually I'm gonna have like how she mentioned for hers tags to creatures and havethose as sort of like general rulings instead of spelling it out on each individual
(29:10):
creature 50 times across all of them, but if it I will eventually add out I'd like tobuild every creature one of the reason I'm waiting for the bestiary have more exact
definitions for a lot of them
Based on the few you've shared, can kind of guess at how to translate them into a gamefairly well.
(29:32):
And even for like true forms, go for that one.
It's sort of one I extrapolated.
And I was probably going to stick with a Pokemon reference where you have to level them up99 times to get their true form.
They'd be like a level 100 at that point.
gain some specific like for
Golems you have to feed them like 99 units of that metal or something over time or for thevirtue type ones some system of just giving people a certain number of points for very
(30:06):
specific actions and when they Reach the right number they get their true form Stuff likethe aura we're gonna be basically expensive like feats or skills you could buy with
experience like you know if it costs 20 to buy
a level up to your magic, it'd be like 50 or 60 and you could get things like your Tearsof Aura.
(30:31):
which I actually have on him, like the forest, the calm and the mastered get better usingit over time, but you basically have to invest a lot of points into it.
And then as far as like objects and magic, the imbuing that kind of part of it, how
Just thoughts on it, not necessarily like trying to put you on the holy on the spot of.
(30:54):
so that one would also be sort of like the, or you have to get the skill and.
Intent intention is someone would be teaching you and then you'd have a reason to spendpoints on it.
But ultimately, you know, spend whatever specific amount of experience to learn the skill.
And then you kind of like how the magics you have the list of things you would get a skillthat is, you can invest, you know, you can work with different.
(31:20):
materials you can have like a better guaranteed success for using more star shards stufflike that.
Okay.
And then weapons would work the same way.
Like, you learn how to use small swords and you can get like jumping attacks or parriesand stuff like that.
So exciting.
(31:40):
Like you said, I've never played a tabletop game before, but I really, I really like thisseries.
I'm not sure if you guys can tell or not.
Yeah, do you?
You've never mentioned that before.
No, not at all.
Definitely not mentioning it to coworkers or trying to convince people into reading this,you know, my family, that kind of thing.
(32:05):
Hey, I appreciate you.
I also really like the series.
That's probably more important.
That is a benefit of it.
It has a ton of my favorite stuff in it, you know what I'm saying?
Obviously I'm a huge fan of things like Pokemon, Digimon, but I also really really likejust adventure fantasy.
(32:33):
I really really love the world basically, like having really unique locations that allfeel like fun and magical in and of themselves.
I have a stupid history degree so I have to use it somehow.
I base a lot of the cities and the cultures off of really fun, interesting real worldcultures.
(32:55):
So, you guys, I'm sure you all remember the Chasm City, you know, where the first TyphoonBeast had died, right?
And there was like a big gorge.
That is based off of a real world city where they built two halves of the city across likea giant Chasm.
(33:16):
And I always thought that was really
I mean, I thought it was stupid to be frank because feels like you're gonna die, but Ialways at least thought it was very cool to look at and it would be very interesting to
live in a city over a gigantic pit, but you know, you would be a tourist, but not buy ahouse there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I would, I would look at it, you know, Instagram, a couple of pictures of me near theedge.
(33:42):
You'd probably like a, there's one YouTube where I watch and his favorite phrases,geography is everything.
So he tries to turn everything into like a geography lesson.
okay, yeah.
I'm just saying, Frith Chronicles is definitely, definitely all of my things that I lovejust wrapped into a ball.
(34:02):
But alright, so so moving from check, go ahead, chat.
no, I'm good.
I am better at answering questions that I am spewing information out.
So questions are better than rambling for me.
So moving forward with, with your tabletop, kind of like, where's your next step?
I know you're talking about getting most things written down or at least typed out.
(34:26):
So that way you have something to look back on that kind of thing.
Right?
A lot of it is, I think.
The more creatures I specifically build, the more specific mechanics that I can put onpaper.
A lot of things I, because I don't have anyone to bounce it off of, usually it's just inmy head bouncing around throughout my day.
(34:47):
It makes it easy.
My job's physical, so my brain needs to be occupied somewhere else anyway.
But, Do you listen to audio books?
Yes.
Right now I'm actually going through the first series to help with this, but.
I think in the past year I've gone through like 150 books.
(35:09):
get you get eight, 10 hours a day.
Listen, if I heard the book before I listened to it at like one and a half speed.
Wow.
First time I go through it at normal speed, but it fills the day.
Books don't last more than like two days, half the time, but well.
(35:32):
Yep.
All right.
And then is there anything else specifically towards your tabletop that you want todiscuss or ask about as far as mechanics go?
I know you said you're working towards more towards vampire, correct?
For, I mean, that was one of the inspirations I had for it.
I had had a few numinaire vampire, even Dungeon Lord added a little bit of it and just, Iwanted to make the system simple ish so people could pick it up easy.
(36:05):
I know it's already geared towards people who like creatures and whatnot.
So I wanted to be something that people could actually play with not needing a hundredpage rule book.
It might turn into that eventually, especially, well, the creatures would make it hundredsand hundreds, but well.
(36:25):
But I'm trying to make it simple.
So if things are complicated, I mean, my wording makes sense in my head, but translatingto other people's difficult.
Well, we'll definitely have to keep in touch and, bring you on periodically just so thatway we can hear you see your progress and kind of see what you got put down and, and see
(36:49):
where we can, Talk through things to help make, make sure it makes sense.
And definitely something looking forward to.
know a lot of people on discord on the capital station discord server.
a lot of people talk about being interested in a tabletop with the frisk Chronicles and,
I know this is definitely going be something that a lot of people are going to be excitedabout and, keep continuing to be looking after.
(37:14):
So, definitely be, definitely be excited to keep, keep in touch with you and keep gettingupdates from you.
I'll give, I'll give updates as I make like milestone improvements on it.
And if, hopefully by showing it off, can use random people as bouncing off ideas to makeit more coherent and more fluid for people to understand.
(37:38):
Yeah.
That's cool.
I like that.
Awesome.
Well, I'm going to start wrapping things up here.
We are extremely happy that we had everybody on today.
Chad, thank you so much for coming on.
Shammi, know kind of like last minute threw you out there on that, but thank you so muchfor taking the time.
(38:00):
know you just got back from LibertyCon, right?
yeah.
It was great, but you know, it's tiring sometimes to go to cons because I'm
because I'm a woman now.
Okay.
Well, I really appreciate you guys.
I appreciate you showing up.
It was good opportunity.
(38:21):
I, it's been nice.
Yeah.
I'm really glad that I didn't have to do anything.
I just ran it all and I was also here.
So success.
You weren't, you weren't a moderator.
Yeah.
I also just got to participate.
It was beautiful.
Well, we thank you again.
We thank everybody for coming on.
(38:41):
We want to thank everybody for listening and watching the podcast, the YouTube channel.
We really do appreciate any kind of feedback, whether it's just thumbs up or comments onthere.
we were almost to a thousand downloads, overall with the podcast, which is absolutelyphenomenal.
And I do appreciate everybody for listening to the podcast, whether it's the podcast orthe YouTube channel.
(39:04):
So again, really love and appreciate that.
next week we'll be getting into.
book number five, world serpent.
Yep.
We'll be getting to world serpent Arcanist and it's starting next week.
So this will be our week between books.
So again, thank you for everybody and we'll catch you guys next week.
Eric Scott, and I want to thank everyone for listening today.
(39:27):
We post a new episode every Wednesday morning at 11 Eastern, 10 central and eight Pacificstandard time.
We are on all podcasting platforms and are also on YouTube as well for video.
After the additional episode airs, we post chapter by chapter videos every day in asmaller, easier to digest format.
We do want to give a special shout out to the final member of our team, Dan Mackeson, oneof the admins for the Frith Chronicles Wiki, link listed below, and doing his best to keep
(39:55):
everything running smoothly behind the scenes.
If you want to reach out to us, you can email us at frithguildpod at gmail .com or onFacebook or any other social media.
by searching for Frith Guild Podcast.
Just to remind everybody, we have links to everything in the description below on both thepodcast and YouTube.
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