To skill or not to skill

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Matthew (00:39):
Hello, and welcome to episode 252 of Effect. To skill
or not to skill? I'm Matthew.

Dave (00:50):
That is the question. And I'm Dave, and welcome to the
show this week. As usual, wehave a, a packed show for you.
We've got, a few things to talkabout in the world of gaming as
as as ever. A couple ofinteresting things there coming
up.
Old west news. Well, you know,this this section has been going
for a little while now, and westill have some more

(01:10):
information. Things are moving,which is great. Mhmm. And then
the, the the key part of the, ofthe show today is your
discussion on the year zeroengine without skills.
What madness is this? This isthis is not right. No. Come on.
What do you what are you talkingabout?

(01:32):
So, Well,

Matthew (01:33):
we shall see. We shall see.

Dave (01:34):
We shall see. So yeah. So welcome to the show. It's a
lovely, bright, sunny Sundaymorning for a change. It's nice.
I was just I was walking the dogyesterday with my wife, and we
were both in quite a good mood.And we just went, it's because
there isn't a giant gray lid onthe world at the moment, which
it has been for about threemonths. So, yeah. It's it's

(01:56):
lovely to see some blue sky.

Matthew (01:58):
Yeah. No. My wife was saying something very similar.
Sue was going on, well, on a bitof a, a paperwork sorting kit,
their kick, and got a wholebunch of, you know, domestic
paperwork sorted. And, we wereboth out in the garden yesterday
pruning and scrubbing stuffdown.
And she was like, in in thewinter, I just can't do

(02:21):
anything. You're all grey. I'mjust not motivated to do
anything. As soon

Dave (02:24):
as the

Matthew (02:24):
sun comes out, stuff gets done.

Dave (02:27):
Yeah.

Matthew (02:28):
Yeah.

Dave (02:29):
Yeah. It is. So it's nice to see a blue sky at last Yes.
Remind us Absolutely. We don'tlive in a box.
No. But yes. So I'm hopingeverybody else listening to this
is listening to this whilstthere is a lovely blue sky,
except for, obviously, poorBruce in Edinburgh where it's
just obviously permanently grayand and foggy.

Matthew (02:49):
And raining. Obviously, we're

Dave (02:50):
just And raining. As I said, I mean, when I when I went
to Tabletop Scotland last year,as I approached the border, the
fog came in.

Matthew (02:57):
The rain came down.

Dave (02:58):
The the fog came in. It didn't really rain, but there
was lots of fog. The fogremained for the four days. And
as I drove south and went overthe border again, the fog
lifted.

Matthew (03:07):
It's okay.

Dave (03:08):
So I was like, welcome to Scotland.

Matthew (03:13):
Yeah. Right.

Dave (03:13):
But, yes. Anyway anyway, enough enough loquacity. What,
what

Matthew (03:19):
So we don't have any new patrons, this week. But I do
just wanna say thank you to allour patrons, partly because in
checking for patrons, I also wason Patreon, and I realized it
was time to move the money that,you know, comes in monthly.
First of the month, I moved themoney into account. Mhmm. And,
actually, I'd forgotten to dothat, last month.

(03:41):
So it looked like we had a huge

Dave (03:43):
amount of money this month.

Matthew (03:44):
In fact, we had two months worth of money, which is
very nice. And it is keeping usgoing and, you know, it has fed
into the artwork for the gamethat we have. So we had some
lovely artwork to show. And Ijust love our patrons. And we
had a great game, which we willtalk about later on.
But we've had a couple of games,we had Deathmatch Island,

(04:06):
earlier in the week that was,exclusively crewed by patrons,
organized themselves. Notsomething we did, not on our
channel. You can find it onDouglas' channel. And also, we
we we rolled up characters ofCoriolis the Great Dart last
night. And again, that's onDouglas' channel.

Dave (04:23):
Cool.

Matthew (04:24):
We'll put a link in the show notes. And I just love our
little community of patrons. Sowelcome everybody. And once
more, if you are a patron andyou're not on our little
Discord, put your Discord namein into Patreon and you will be
invited to our Discord, which

Dave (04:40):
is The new place is placed on the Internet.

Matthew (04:43):
Well done.

Dave (04:44):
Absolutely. Indeed. I was just gonna a slight discussion
talking about artwork. We met uplast weekend and you, delivered
to me the the artwork thatThomas had sent you, the the
original artworks for for acouple of pieces. The the the
picture of me as, you know, thewestern picture of me, which is
fabulous.
The picture of Diggy that we didfor the book, and the image, of

(05:08):
one of our patrons and our oneof our magnificent backers,
Pete, for his character, EddieTyler and his cat, Emmy. Emmy?
Ebby? Emmy, I think. So I, I I Istuck that into a into a frame
and gave it to him when I sawhim on Wednesday.
And, he was delighted to to getit. And I just wanted to say
it's really cool to be able toactually give him the, the, you

(05:32):
know, the the original

Matthew (05:32):
The original work.

Dave (05:34):
Work, which, hopefully, he will he will treasure because it
is a lovely, lovely bit ofartwork. But yeah.

Matthew (05:41):
Just And I've got a couple of addresses as well to
send to a couple of our patronsthat specifically bought that
magnificent, level backing forother people in their gaming
groups.

Dave (05:54):
Yes.

Matthew (05:55):
So Yeah. They were coming together. So they're
they're the portraits areactually of, if you like, the
recipient of the gift, notnecessarily the purchaser. And
I'm gonna send the portraits offto them so that they can have
them in time for their variousbirthdays and stuff. I haven't
done that.
I spoke to you both about itweeks ago. You might think,
well, where's it coming? I II've just been thinking about

(06:15):
the right sort of packaging tosend it in, the right way to do
it. I think I've got it now. Sothose will be coming to you
shortly.
And also to, well, I guess we'llgive it to Bruce at some point.
We're gonna see Bruce Yes. Maybeat UK Games Expo. So we'll save
it until we see you, Bruce, andgive it to you then. And I've
got one more picture in Americato send it to, but I haven't

(06:36):
approached her yet for heraddress.
So I'll

Dave (06:38):
do that. No. That's cool. I always it it didn't occur to
me when we were thinking aboutdoing the magnificent level that
people would sort of gangtogether to buy it as a gift for
somebody else. And I thinkthat's really lovely that a
couple of people a couple ofgroups have done that for
friends of theirs.
I just think so. Yeah. What awhat a really nice thoughtful
gift. I think it was

Matthew (07:00):
Yeah. No. It's really good. I I only hope that one day
you and the people we came with,you know, choose to put me in a
role playing game.

Dave (07:09):
Nah. Nah. It's not

Matthew (07:11):
gonna happen

Dave (07:12):
in that.

Matthew (07:13):
But I also have a lovely portrait of me as a
cowboy, which I, which I I Ishould get framed, I guess, and
put on the wall. Because thoseare good those are good
pictures.

Dave (07:24):
They are. They are excellent pictures. They're
lovely. Yeah.

Matthew (07:28):
That's our lovely Thomas Thomas Elliott, who's one
of our artists who who madethose all all those portraits.

Dave (07:33):
Yeah. Yeah. Excellent stuff. Cool. So what do we have
in the world of gaming?

Matthew (07:40):
World of gaming. Well, we've got big news from, Free
League and surprising news. Ididn't see this one coming. No
need we need

Dave (07:49):
to, actually. Yeah.

Matthew (07:50):
A few weeks ago, we've been talking on the Discord
about superhero games because,your man, Andy, who used to game
with us as a kid and is one ofour patrons, said, oh, Matthew,
you always wanted to do a cowboygame and a superhero game. So
now that, tells him that, OldWest is in the bag, you can do a

(08:11):
superhero game out of Year Zero.And I kind of went I I think I
said, oh, sure that Year Zero isthe right engine to do
superheroes in.

Dave (08:20):
Mhmm.

Matthew (08:20):
And, Felix obviously heard me and said, Hold my beer.

Dave (08:25):
He said, nah. Of course it is. Yeah.

Matthew (08:29):
And they've got a license, and I'm I'm curious
about this one. You can kindasee how they got it because of,
The Walking Dead and thisconnection there.

Dave (08:38):
Yeah.

Matthew (08:38):
But they've got a license to the invincible,
world. Now, invincible, you'renot much of a comics reader, but
you may have seen Invincible onprime television, whatever
that's called.

Dave (08:54):
I'd I'd heard of Invincible. I haven't read any
of it. Like you say, I'm notI've never been a big comic
reader particularly. Mhmm. So Iwas aware of it, but not not in
any great detail.

Matthew (09:06):
It looks lovely. It's, kind of clean, clean art, clean
line art is what I'm trying tosay.

Dave (09:13):
It looks

Matthew (09:14):
very single artist all the way through.

Dave (09:16):
It looks very vigilant the villains in the vigilantes style
art.

Matthew (09:20):
Yeah.

Dave (09:21):
Which I like. I like that very much. I've still got my And

Matthew (09:23):
sort of reminiscent of Steve Rude and and and and
Belgium and and a little bit alittle bit ending in the way of,
my favorites thing that I'd liketo do as a, an RPG. If I was
gonna do superheroes, it wouldbe based on Grant Morrison's
Zenith. And there's, there'ssimilarities between Zenith and
and and Invincible, really.Spoilers. I'll try and keep this

(09:47):
spoiler free.
But, Invincible is about the sonof the world's greatest
superhero as he develops his ownsuperpowers and, the shit that
goes down afterwards. It isincredibly violent. So there's
lots of kind of since AlanMoore, really, I think there's

(10:09):
been lots of what if superheroesexisted in the real world. And
this one kind of states, what ifsuperheroes actually, you know,
given they're strong enough torip the arms off people, what if
they rip the arms off people? SoYeah.

Dave (10:24):
It it it

Matthew (10:24):
Blood splattered comic. Blood splattered TV show. It's
not my favorite thing. Sorecently, I've been, watching
the friendly neighborhood SpiderMan TV show on, I guess, at OB
Disney. And that, I'm loving.
I'm really loving that. Everytime I try and watch Invincible

(10:46):
thinking I really should likethis. Now, I don't

Dave (10:50):
particularly. It's fine. Is it an animated or is it live
action?

Matthew (10:55):
No. It's animated. Animated. And it it and because
of the sort of the scale of thesuperpowers and stuff like that,
I think there's no way it itcouldn't be. The comic never
grabbed me either, actually, tobe honest.
So I have to say

Dave (11:12):
I go for someone who doesn't really know it, the the
artwork, that that Free Leaguehave put up doesn't the artwork
itself, like, of the the of theheroes, presumably, honestly,
they're all heroes, doesn't giveyou any hint of the of violence.
It looks a little bit cartoony.It looks a little bit Yeah. You

(11:33):
know, the one thing they havedone is there was a blood
splatter across the wordinvincible on it, which is
perhaps their little link backto

Matthew (11:40):
That's their little hint.

Dave (11:41):
How violent it it it is. But otherwise, there's no I
mean, there there's no no hintotherwise. And I wonder if
that's a that's I don't know. Isthat is is there something wrong
with that slightly? That it'sthe artwork is kind of
portraying it very much like akid's cartoon, actually, when

(12:02):
actually the content is anythingbut.

Matthew (12:05):
Yeah. I mean, I think that that is the stick of the
whole concept of

Dave (12:08):
invincible. Perhaps.

Matthew (12:10):
I mean, particularly because he's called invincible,
and yet he is very often

Dave (12:14):
Not invincible.

Matthew (12:15):
I guess.

Dave (12:16):
He's invincible rather than invincible.

Matthew (12:18):
Yeah. I mean, he's still alive. So I guess he's
partly invincible. But, youknow, there there are times he
loses. And when he loses, he'sbattered and bruised.
Yeah. And he recovers veryquickly. I don't know that he's
lost an arm yet in thecontinuity, but many other
people have lost various limbs.So so yeah. I don't wanna spoil

(12:39):
it for our listeners if theyhaven't seen it, but there is,
there's some quite shockingmoments in Right.
In the show.

Dave (12:47):
Do we have any sense from what we've seen? I can't see
anything here so far that givesus a hint of how they're going
to run it in year zero.

Matthew (12:56):
No. I don't know. And you say that's one of the things
that that gets me. Now here'sthe thing about year zero. I've
always I really like ForbiddenLands because of the very gritty
combat in that, which does feellike, not so much you can get
your arms ripped off becausenobody's well, I guess there are
monsters that could do it.
But, you know, you you getreally bad injuries in that.

Dave (13:20):
Death is an ever present risk. Yeah. In in Yeah.

Matthew (13:23):
Yeah. Exactly.

Dave (13:24):
With a lion. And

Matthew (13:25):
and and disability and stuff like that. Unless you're
an elf where you can grow yourlimbs back, you know, you could
retire your character becausethey've lost an arm and stuff
like that. But in in the rest ofyear zero oh, you know, one also
has to shout out for thedeadliest year zero game, of
course, is Blade Runner, as weknow, having done an in-depth

(13:46):
analysis of that.

Dave (13:47):
Of the crits. But

Matthew (13:49):
I'm not sure that the critical injuries system is
gonna cope well with the rippingarms off people thing.

Dave (13:57):
Mhmm.

Matthew (13:57):
I'll be in I'm gonna be interested to see how they do
that. Or they crushing people'sskulls, which is another thing
that happens quite a lot inInvincible.

Dave (14:07):
Right. Okay.

Matthew (14:09):
Yeah. Which is fine because actually, yeah, we know
we we've seen crushed skull on aon a number of, lists. But
that's kind of random, and thisis more deliberate, you know. So
it's more like doing cold shotswhen you want to crash.

Dave (14:22):
I was going I was gonna say, I mean, maybe they need to
take look at Tales of the OldWest and see what we've done
with critical injuries Yeah. Andlocations and called shots and
called blows. Yeah.

Matthew (14:32):
Yeah. So, yeah. So I don't know how they're gonna
handle it. I don't this is onethat I can imagine that you have
no skills, you just havetalents, actually. This this
seems to fit perfectly.

Dave (14:45):
Potentially. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. I mean, if you
if you so I've I've oftenthought about, often thought it
would be very nice to do a asuperhero role playing game, you
know, quite potentially in yearzero. And it's something that,
you know, I've often sort ofcome around to in my in my

(15:07):
thinking, that it would belovely to give that a go.
And then I never get around toeven, you know, even starting it
for whatever reason. But, Imean, in year zero, the obvious
the obvious thing, if you wantedto just take year zero and make
a make a easy superhero game outof it, would be Mutant Year
Zero, where you replace themutations with your superpowers,

(15:28):
and then you you drive yoursuperpowers through, I guess,
power points rather than mutantpoints, or something similar. So
I think I think in that sense,Mutant Ninja Zero would very
easily translate into superherogame because it is a little bit
of a superhero game. Themutations are That's

Matthew (15:45):
a good point.

Dave (15:46):
The mutations are a bit weird. It's certainly not any
kind of realism involved, but Iguess Yeah.

Matthew (15:52):
They're a bit Grant Morrison's X Men and some of
those mutations.

Dave (15:55):
Yeah. Absolutely. And, you know, and and when you gain a
mutation, as you can in certaincircumstances, you You just roll
on the table and you get a newone. But it's it's a mutation
that has suddenly manifested. Insome cases, that means you
sprout wings, which is a bitweird.
So it's it's it is verysuperhero like in that sense,
which is great. I mean, I lovethe game. And, as long as you

(16:18):
look at it in that sense anddon't consider it to be a, you
know, a realistic postapocalyptic kind of game, you
have to suspend your disbelief alittle bit, then it's great. And
but that would work very, verywell if you wanted to easily
pour over a year zero systeminto a superhero game.

Matthew (16:39):
Yeah. Absolutely. And in fact, you're right that that
could be the the way that they'dgo.

Dave (16:47):
I mean, I wonder

Matthew (16:48):
if there was a sort of in the different. In the
narrative, you know, the theidea that maybe, you know, you
start off a a fight gettingpunched quite a lot and, you
know, not doing very wellbecause you haven't powered up
your your powers yet. You don'thave enough hero points or
whatever it is to to use yourpowers. But then then you, you

(17:08):
know, when you've got enoughhero points, you suddenly whack
people through walls andwhatever's required.

Dave (17:13):
Could And also and also take taking the the point you
made earlier about the sort ofthe narrative arc for the for
the main character in Invincibleis that he's developing or
learning his powers as he goes.Having a game where you develop
and gain powers as you go mightmeet that meet that vibe very
well.

Matthew (17:32):
Yeah.

Dave (17:32):
I mean, I've always had a slight thing about games that
say you can't use your reallyexciting and interesting
abilities unless x. So I think,you know, there's always a thing
about, well, I can't use mymutant powers without mutation
points. I can't use some of mymagic and that without willpower
in Forbidden Lands.

Matthew (17:51):
Yeah. A lot of people really hate that in Forbidden
Lands. Yes.

Dave (17:54):
I mean and it's interesting though. Having
played quite a lot of ForbiddenLands now, it doesn't feel like
that when you play.

Matthew (18:00):
No. No. It doesn't.

Dave (18:02):
And we've we've we've often found that we've got quite
a good, reservoir of of ofwillpower when we go into a big
fight. Not always, but quiteoften. And then often we'll
spend it all. So we actually getto use our powers as we go. So
it it hasn't been an issue.
But as a as a point of principleof game design, I can see how

(18:23):
some people would would think,well, that's a bit shit. If I
can't even use my special powerbecause I've got no bloody
points left, that's that'sreally boring as a player.

Matthew (18:34):
Yeah. They should just play it though, because I think,
you know, for me, I think that'sa mechanic that kind of creates
the right sort of narrative. Butanyway anyway, we we will have
to wait and see. Yeah.

Dave (18:48):
So yeah. So this is up for it's up on, a Kickstarter pre
launch page. I don't know a datewhen they're looking to launch
it yet. Do you?

Matthew (18:58):
No. They have said we will announce the date later.
Yeah. It would be good I know Iknow the three d Lounge gets all
the interviews now with the newcreators, but there's a new
creator here who actually wasone of the founders of D and D
Beyond, which is, you know, oneof the sort of early, online
resources for D and D, and Ithink would have been involved

(19:21):
in all sorts of other stuff. Soit'd be good if we're we'll try
and get an interview with themwhen you know, newer newer when
it's coming out.
It would be interesting.Interesting person to talk to.

Dave (19:30):
Yeah. We'll be interested to have a chat. On on the kind
of on on the note of,Kickstarters and dates when
they're going to launch, AlienEvolved is launching this month.
I think it's the twenty fifth.

Matthew (19:47):
I think The twenty fifth?

Dave (19:49):
I think it's the twenty fifth.

Matthew (19:50):
You're right. Actually, this month. So, what what the
hell do they mean that theyshould have waited till April in
Alien Day, shouldn't they?

Dave (19:58):
I know. But I think maybe they've felt they've waited long
enough seeing they were lookingto try and kick start it at the
back end of last year. So,

Matthew (20:06):
maybe they're gonna finish it on Alien Day.

Dave (20:09):
Maybe. That would yeah. That might that would work,
wouldn't it? So, so I think it'sI think it's May, March is the
date for that. So it's onlyabout three weeks away.
For those of you who are waitingwith bated breath for Alien
Evolved to to be backable. Yeah.You've only got three weeks to
go. So they've got nearly 17,000followers on Kickstarter at the

(20:32):
moment.

Matthew (20:33):
17,000. That's not very many, is it? I mean, compared to
our 600 backers

Dave (20:39):
Well, exactly. I mean, we had yeah. That it's only it's
only significantly larger. Yeah.But yeah.
So that'll looking forward tothat. That'll be interesting, to
see that come out. And I don'tknow whether you'll get the PDF
quite quickly if you back that.I don't No.

Matthew (20:56):
You're asking that question before.

Dave (20:58):
I haven't I haven't seen. I mean, a lot of the work was
being done, and and a lot of thework was being done last year.
And our our

Matthew (21:05):
Yeah.

Dave (21:05):
Our our mate Stefan, who was doing the, the layout, did
the layout for us for Tales ofthe Old West, is working on some
of this stuff. So Mhmm. It mightnot be a long way away from
being ready. So we, you know, wedon't know. We haven't spoken to
Free League.
They haven't told us anything.But I wouldn't be surprised if,
if a an alpha PDF was availablerelatively quickly after the

(21:25):
after the launch, which would becool. So I'd quite like to see
that.

Matthew (21:29):
Yeah. Yeah. Especially, yeah. I'm I'm very keen to see
what that's like. Yeah.
Right. So that's, Alien News.That wasn't on a running order.
So you start you've thrown meoff. What what else are we
talking about here?
Yeah. Actually, that's that'salmost the last bit of really
important gaming news to you andI, that we've got. There are

(21:52):
some other things of vagueinterest that I thought we ought
to briefly mention. Yep. So,WhatC, for example, have got
their very first virtualtabletop launched, And it's
called Sigil.
Obviously, it can be for D andD. I don't imagine it would be
useless for any useful foranything else. But, Is this part

Dave (22:15):
of the whole One D and D thing?

Matthew (22:17):
When you get I don't know.

Dave (22:20):
We we don't really know much about D and D, do we
really?

Matthew (22:23):
I know. But I I just happened to see them announce
it. Let me see if I can findsome stuff about it, and then
I'll read it off their pressrelease if if I can find
anything. Give me a moment. Giveme a moment, caller.

Dave (22:35):
Yeah. Because, again, it's it's nothing that I, you know,
that we get involved. We wedon't play D and D anymore as
everyone who's a regularlistener will will know ad
nauseum, potentially. But theone D and D thing, I I I was on
the understanding it was it wasit was gonna be the subscription
model again where you subscribeand you get access to
everything. I could be wrong.

(22:55):
I could be wrong. As I said, Idon't really follow what's going
on in the world of D and D.

Matthew (23:01):
So D and D Beyond is the is the thing where you kind
of subscribe to your

Dave (23:06):
rules of

Matthew (23:06):
D and D.

Dave (23:07):
And One D and D is the new edition, 5.5.

Matthew (23:10):
Well, it's now no longer called One D and D. I
think they dropped that, andit's

Dave (23:14):
now open.

Matthew (23:15):
Yeah. I think it's kind of 5.5 or or D and D 95 or some
something like that. You candownload the single client from
D and D Beyond. So, obviously,it plugged in that way. Yeah.
And and in fact, they do mentionit's been in development. So I'm
reading here from n world. Soall credit to n world for

(23:36):
bringing me this news orbringing you, our listener, this
news and me quoting it. Right.Using that content.

Dave (23:42):
We are. We are we are shamelessly plagiarizing
somebody else's content.Excellent.

Matthew (23:47):
So Sigil has been in development since at least 2023
alongside the launch of the OneD and D initiative. One major
concern about the new system,which uses Unreal Engine five to
create three d battle maps for Dand D, was its pricing. At least
in our pricing seems to be tieddirectly to D and D Beyond
subscriptions instead of pushingan additional monetization

(24:09):
scheme onto players. So that'scool. If you're a subscriber to
a D and D Beyond, it looks likeyou get Sigal for free.
It doesn't look like a bad v vVTT. Although, it's more
appropriate for big set piecebattles than for standard
goblins attack the caravan typeencounters.

Dave (24:29):
Okay.

Matthew (24:29):
Yeah. Read some more about it on on, end world. I
guess, the very least I can dois, put a link to this article
that I'm reading from in theshow notes. Moving on. Now this
one, we may be more vaguelyinterested in.
Space 1999, backers have haveare getting PDFs. Not all

(24:53):
backers, I seem to remember.Bruce got his, but Andy Brick
didn't get his. So I don't knowquite what's going on there.
Andy Brick will probably findout he's forgotten to back it.
But, yeah. So that that PDF isout. And we all had a little
laugh at the typography, didn'twe, when that came out?

Dave (25:14):
Yeah. So there's the the, the the the, you know, the the
the Space ninety nine brandedtypography, which is very
seventies and very spooky. Yeah.Which is which is great.

Matthew (25:28):
OCD text.

Dave (25:29):
It evokes the feel.

Matthew (25:31):
Very well. Text dot ICT.

Dave (25:32):
Yeah. Nobody cares, Matt. But, where you for example, the
thing we know

Matthew (25:39):
Typographers care.

Dave (25:40):
Where yeah. So nobody cares. So, you've thrown me now.
So so where where they said, youknow, new to do two d 20? It
looks like it says new to 2020because the d and the zero are
so similar that unless you lookat it really carefully, your
brain just looks at it as twentytwenty, which just looks a bit

(26:04):
odd in my mind.
I mean, I'm Space nineteenninety nine. I haven't backed
it. It's the kind of thing thatI've been very tempted to back.
If nothing else, just for someof the artwork on, you know, on
the front cover because it looksbeautiful. Mhmm.
And I'm a big fan of Spacenineteen ninety nine. I've loved
watching it back in the day. Ieven went and found a couple of
episodes that I watched morerecently, and it's a bit cheesy

(26:27):
and it's a bit Doctor Who. Youknow, the set wobbles kind of
thing. But it's it was good.
The actual stories were werewere good and fun to watch. But
also, I think it it again, thisis just from a very, very brief,
vision into it. It looks a bitthe style of it looks a bit Star

(26:48):
Trek. And I think they wouldhave done well to have made it
look distinctly and obviouslydifferent from Star Trek in its
style. And that topography is abit weird.
But I have I don't have the PDF.This is comments based on very,
very narrow

Matthew (27:05):
And what Douce has shown us. Yeah.

Dave (27:06):
Very narrow glances at it. And I've seen some some internal
pictures from some of the pagesand stuff as well, but by no
means a a proper look. So I'llbe interested interested to hear
how how the fan base, when theystart looking at it, feel about
it. And also about how how thegame plays. Because, again, if
it if it's using two d 20 in avery similar way to Star Trek,

(27:27):
you know, it feels like StarTrek in another skin, or it
risks feeling like Star Trek injust another skin.

Matthew (27:34):
Yeah. Some people may say that's exactly what Space
1999 felt like.

Dave (27:42):
Oh, well, originally, as in the program. Yeah. Well,
that's true. That is true. True.
But then, you know, the the onebig advantage Space nineteen
ninety nine has over just abouteverything else, including Star
Trek, but only only a a kind ofa nose ahead of Star Trek is the
Eagle, which is the the bestchip design in the world. Even
though I absolutely love theenterprise, and I love Excelsior

(28:05):
design, and I love, Klingon dsevens particularly. They're all
fabulous. There's somethingabout I think the thing with the
with the Eagle is you canimagine yourself in it. It's not
it's not so far fetched indesign to make it feel like it's
sci fi from hundreds of years inthe future.
It feels quite present, and itfeels the kind of thing that

(28:27):
you, you you know, you could godown to your local space port
and and see flying around. Andit maybe take lessons in
piloting or something. But yeah.Yeah. Fabulous design.
So, I can't I'm still whilst I'mtalking, I'm holding and playing
with the, the three d printedmodel of a science eagle. E
eagle with a science pod thatAndy created, made for me, and

(28:50):
sent over. So many thanks forthat, Andy. It's, I should
actually get some paints andpaint it because it's great.
It's a lovely little model.
So, anyway, that that's me goingon about space 1999. I could go
on about eagles for a lotlonger, but that might be Right.

Matthew (29:03):
Yeah. At least not that's

Dave (29:05):
than this has become.

Matthew (29:06):
So so, just briefly mentioned, I think of no
interest to you and I, but butmaybe of interest to our
listeners, the Fallen London RPGis doing very well on
Kickstarter. We'll put a link inthe show notes to it. It's got
about 6,000 backers already,which is, 10 times what we got,

(29:30):
I think.

Dave (29:31):
Yeah. Not quite 10 times, but they're they're not far off.

Matthew (29:36):
And, and it's based on a video game series, which I
know nothing about. So, sothat's me. I'm done. In which
all of London falls into a greatbig pit, I think.

Dave (29:49):
Yeah. I was just gonna say. Yeah. So London, Eighteen
Ninety Nine. This is from theKickstarter page.
Forty years ago, the city fellinto a vast cavern beneath the
earth. Now hell is close.Immortality is cheap, and the
traitor, empress Victoria, stillreigns. Devils and botanical
people walk the streets. It's anopportunity for someone like
you.
You crave something more thanmost think is possible. You want

(30:11):
to destroy death itself or openthe gates to the abode of the
stars or restore London back tothe surface. So it's a bit
weird. But, obviously, it'spopular. So I've never played
the game.
I hadn't haven't come across it.I haven't played it. So yeah. I
mean, good luck to them.

Matthew (30:29):
Yeah. I'm I'm kind of intrigued. Does, you know, as as
two natives as we are, I mean, Iknow you weren't born in
Hertfordshire, but you grew upthere, as did I. Does can we go
to the edge and look down intothe great big pit and see London
at the bottom? Who can turn?

Dave (30:46):
I don't know.

Matthew (30:48):
Or is Hertfordshire kind of dragged into the pit
with London? Is it ametaphorical pit? Is it like,
actually, yes, London has goneto hell, and therefore, I don't
know. These are questions that Idon't think I'm gonna answer
because I'm I'm personally notamong the 6,000 people, tempted

(31:09):
to back it. But, No.

Dave (31:10):
Me me neither. But, but, yeah, so interesting,
nonetheless.

Matthew (31:16):
But I do know that younger people than us do play
these computer games.

Dave (31:21):
Young young folk.

Matthew (31:24):
And so, fill your boots if you're into Forbidden London,
and tell us what it's about, byall means. And finally, I guess
we should send out sorry?

Dave (31:34):
I was just gonna say one other thing that we hadn't put
on the list there that then weso last time we mentioned
Terraforming Mars. I don't thinkwe mentioned them. I could be
wrong, that actually, twofabulous folks are involved in
working on their game. Ourfriend of the show, Gareth
Hanrahan, and Ken Hite. So Yeah.

(31:58):
As soon as I saw their names onit, I I thought I went

Matthew (32:00):
You went from non backer to backer.

Dave (32:03):
Well, I haven't backed it. I don't think it's up for
backing.

Matthew (32:05):
It's not nobody's back

Dave (32:07):
yet, is that? But I was I was tempted to back it for all
the reasons we discussed lasttime. But actually, with, with
with Ga being involved and, andKen being involved, it it makes
it much more likely I might giveit a punt. It may be just at the
basic level for the basic book,but, it might yeah.

Matthew (32:26):
Yeah. Like, there's a big start available now as well
that you ought to check

Dave (32:30):
out then. Yes.

Matthew (32:31):
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Dave (32:31):
We we ought to

Matthew (32:32):
check out. We'll put a link to that in the show notes
as well if I remember. Because,again, it's not in our running
order. And we also, given thatGar was involved, we, I dropped
him a line and said, do youwanna come into the show and
talk about it? And he said, yes,but not yet.
Yeah. So, maybe maybe in acouple of weeks' time, that'll

(32:52):
be the content of our nextepisode. That will

Dave (32:53):
be cool. Yeah.

Matthew (32:54):
Or maybe, after then.

Dave (32:59):
At some point. Next couple of episodes. Yeah. Cool.

Matthew (33:02):
I guess, obviously, the best thing to do would be to
talk about it when the actualthing is happening.

Dave (33:07):
When it's launched. Yeah. Indeed. Yeah.

Matthew (33:11):
So, yeah, look out for that interview, shortly. We'll
put a link in the show notes tothe page and maybe the
downloadable PDF, wherever thatis. Yeah. So lastly then, we
just want to send outcommiserations to the Gygax
family

Dave (33:25):
Yeah.

Matthew (33:26):
On the passing of Ernie Gygax, who is one of the first
players of D and D ever.

Dave (33:33):
Yeah. So, yeah. Many commiserations. And, hope
everyone is doing as well asthey can do under the sad
circumstances.

Matthew (33:44):
Right. Old west news.

Dave (33:48):
Yeah. Right then. So, well, if we get the boring bit
out of the way first, So you putyou put pledge manager coming
soon first in the running order,so we'll go there. Pledge
manager is coming soon. There.
That's done. Excellent.

Matthew (34:03):
Yeah. No. I I think it's very interesting actually
the the workload in pledgemanager. We're not we're not
finished yet.

Dave (34:09):
How much? But it's

Matthew (34:10):
surprisingly high. And you've done the most of it, I
think, in this particular way.

Dave (34:15):
Yeah. So far.

Matthew (34:16):
Do you want to explain about postage and

Dave (34:19):
and I'm not sure how interesting that is.

Matthew (34:21):
And import duties and

Dave (34:22):
Other than to say it's a bit more complicated than than
it might look on on the cover.Yeah. It's it's it's an area
where we are it would beentirely full disclosure, where
we as a a a tiny company arecarrying a bit of risk over the
amount of, the amount of moneythat we will charge to the

(34:45):
pledge manager to our backersfor their for their postage. As
everyone knows, postage priceshave been going up for, well, it
seems forever now. And, youknow, postage is quite
expensive.
So trying to get that right tomake sure that, we don't end up
with a huge bill that we've gotto cover because we've
completely screwed up on ourcharges or something unexplained

(35:08):
or unexpected happens, that thenleaves us with a huge bill,
whilst also making sure we arecharging as little as we
possibly can to our backers forthe postage to their their
various locations. It's it's abit of a balancing act to try
and get that right. And it'sobviously complicated by the
fact that we've got backers allover the world, and we've got, a

(35:31):
variety of of prices dependingon how heavy the package is. So
we're working on this.

Matthew (35:38):
And the value of the package as well. So one of the
things that we're

Dave (35:40):
looking at places. Yeah. That's an irritating irritating,
yeah, irritating irritant, thatwe haven't really understood.
Understood. Luckily, it's notgoing to affect many people, at
the moment.
So so, thankfully, that's that'sa good thing.

Matthew (35:55):
Well, we're gonna average it out. So it's gonna
affect everybody in Europe, butbut only by

Dave (35:59):
a tiny bit. But by about 10p or something. Yeah. Exactly.

Matthew (36:02):
Yeah. Yeah.

Dave (36:03):
So, we're working on that. That's that's nearly there.
After this recording, Matthewand I are having our next board
meeting, which will make somefinal decisions on that. And
then I think we'll need a quickmeeting with pledge manager to
just iron everything out. Andthen we're probably ready to go.
So we're not Yeah.

Matthew (36:19):
I'm just putting some new pictures because we've got,
obviously, now that we've gotthe dice in stock, we don't need
my, Photoshop version of what

Dave (36:28):
the dice should be.

Matthew (36:29):
Right? So put

Dave (36:30):
that up and It's a nice segue, Matt. Go on then. Tell us
about the trouble, though.Because I haven't seen it yet.
Because obviously they came toyour they came to your house.

Matthew (36:38):
Hold on. Hold on.

Dave (36:38):
Because you've been living

Matthew (36:39):
with me. Can do this.

Dave (36:40):
On the dice.

Matthew (36:41):
Give me this. You won't hear this, Dave, because

Dave (36:44):
You're rolling some dice. Hold on.

Matthew (36:45):
Hold on. I gotta roll some dice on the table here
right and get the mic right downclose to it.

Dave (36:50):
How exciting. You don't you don't get this on any of the
other podcasts, do you guys? No.Yeah. Come on.

Matthew (36:55):
And, so I rolled five treble dice there. And I've got
a six and no treble. So Oh. Goodthere. That'll do.

Dave (37:02):
Excellent. So,

Matthew (37:05):
yeah, they they feel really good in the hand,
actually. Even my wife, who'snot a gamer, picked them up and
went, oh, these feel reallynice. So, so that's good. I
think people who have backedthem or who may now want to back
them seeing them, yeah. Be beassured they they look good.
Now the challenge with these iswe've got a bunch of these which

(37:27):
were said and frankly meant toarrive months ago. I've now got
to get these tested becausethese are made in China, and we
need to have them tested for theEuropean market so that we could
comply with the general productsafety regulations. Yeah. And
that's gonna cost, a few hundredquid that we didn't at least a

(37:48):
few hundred quid that we didn'trealize Yeah. We were going to
be, spending.
So there

Dave (37:53):
we go. Who knew who knew that scraping the paint off off
the dice and and melting one ofthem would be so expensive?

Matthew (37:59):
Yeah. Well, no. You want they wanna melt all five.
They said they want the wholeset. I reckon whoever runs this
lab is actually just a, youknow, a total dice goblin and
like, oh, I've filled out

Dave (38:08):
a dice. Yeah. So it hasn't hasn't hasn't got a full set of
any dice, but it's got one ortwo of every dice set that's out
there.

Matthew (38:16):
Yeah. So, so yeah. So that that's all gonna happen,
but that will be well well, thethe full complement of order of
dice, wending its merry way tous. But, yeah, they're good. I'm
very pleased with them,actually.
Excellent. Yeah. I'm a bit of ayeah. I'm no. I don't know.

(38:37):
I I have mixed thoughts aboutcustom dice. Part of me goes,
oh, why do why do you make mehave custom dice? And we don't,
obviously. Get a six as Success,get a one inch trouble. That's
all you need today.
You have five of your owncolored dice. Try and keep it
one distinctive color for therest of them and and you're
sorted. But on the other half ofme, particularly when it comes

(39:01):
to Kickstarter and, for one likethis where, you know, we're not
gonna send these out to retail.They're not gonna package them
in retail. You can only getthese from Kickstarter.
I do like getting custom dice,when when they're gonna be ones
that only I can get. But, and ontop of that, the fact that these
feel really good is a win forme, actually.

Dave (39:21):
Yeah. And I think I think it's it's it's proven to be a
bigger faff than we thought.Yeah. There were lessons to be
learned for next time if we havecustom dice with any future,
products. But I think alsocustom dice is just something
that, I mean, people expectalmost with, with the game,
particularly where there is a acustom dice mechanic in the

(39:44):
game.
And, you know, people likegetting dice. I mean, you know,
who doesn't what gamer doesn'thave, you know, 50 times more
dice than they'll ever need, andthey still buy more. So it's,
yeah. I think it's aparticularly good thing to go go
with a Kickstarter. Even thoughthat's very easy for me to say
because you've dealt with allthe dice stuff.

(40:04):
So you've had all the ball acheof trying to get it all sorted.
Whereas I've been insulated fromthat pain on on this occasion at
least. So, Yeah.

Matthew (40:13):
I so with a lot of stuff about this Kickstarter,
we've learned a lot on the way.We have

Dave (40:19):
learned absolutely nothing.

Matthew (40:20):
Next time I submit print files to the printers,
I'll probably get it right firsttime. Whereas Yeah. This time it
took about four or fivedifferent versions to, to get
it.

Dave (40:30):
To get it. Yeah.

Matthew (40:35):
So so I've learned a lot of that one. I don't feel
I've particularly learned muchabout avoiding the pitfalls of
dice production yet, except tocharge more. Next time we do
them, the dice are gonna be moreexpensive because there is more
faff in getting them. And that'swhat I've learned.

Dave (40:51):
And with things like GPSR, there are costs that we hadn't
expected, which are Yeah. Areare wound up in them as well.

Matthew (40:57):
But it makes me it makes me suddenly realize why,
why why dice are quite expensivewhen you buy them at pizza.

Dave (41:05):
Yeah. Yeah. And we we've often gone, oh, that's expensive
for dice when we've seen themfor different games, for other
games. Now, kinda now we knowwhy. So Yeah.
Yeah.

Matthew (41:19):
And I think, you know, it's it's worse for TTRPG
producers because although thatfeels really big to you, I think
in the world of game dice where,you know, we are at the lower
end of the numbers, andtherefore, the, what do I mean?
The the the the fuck. What's itcalled? The thing where things
get cheaper the more you orderof them.

Dave (41:40):
Yeah. Your barfs.

Matthew (41:43):
The economies of scale. Economies

Dave (41:45):
of scale. Yeah.

Matthew (41:46):
Don't really work for TTRPG producers. So, you know,
you're you're paying premiumprices for a lot of your dice.

Dave (41:52):
That's that is true.

Matthew (41:52):
And never again will I look at will I go oof at the
cost of wear sundice, forexample.

Dave (42:00):
Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew (42:02):
Yeah. No clue. So okay. I think that's all we've got to
oh, yeah. And the other thing,actually, I'll put it out on the
socials.
I'll put a link in the shownotes here. Although the pledge
manager isn't up yet, we havegot a holding page.

Dave (42:16):
Yes.

Matthew (42:16):
So if you and this is important. If you're a backer,
you're gonna get invited to thePledge Manager as soon as we go
live.

Dave (42:22):
Obviously, yeah. You're gonna

Matthew (42:23):
get invited. A backer, if you want to be among the
first to hear it because youwant to preorder now, go to the
holding page and and put youraddress in there, then pledge
manager will will send you areminder when, when we do open
up.

Dave (42:36):
When it opens. Yeah.

Matthew (42:38):
Yeah. I think that's all we need to say about the
world of gaming. About the,

Dave (42:41):
the world of Just just to just to say one one final thing
as conclusion. So, you know, thebooks are with the printers
being printed. The GM screensbeing printed. Dice are on their
way. Dice trays are on theirway.

Matthew (42:57):
No dice trays are here. I've got them.

Dave (42:58):
Okay. Well, dice trays

Matthew (42:59):
are more than on their way. They're on their way to the
distribution center becausethey're still in my house. But,

Dave (43:04):
but yeah. Yeah. We should be ready to go with the pledge
manager in the next couple ofweeks. We are looking like we
are on schedule.

Matthew (43:16):
We are on schedule.

Dave (43:17):
So I'm I'm pleased to say that unless something else comes
up, we we are very hopeful thatwe will meet our our target
distribution, our distributiontarget of of May. So, hopefully,
maybe even some of you, mightget it earlier than that. So
fingers crossed, but we are verypleased to see that it is coming
together, along the time scalethat we had we had we had

(43:40):
envisioned back at the start.

Matthew (43:42):
Yeah. My my only concern is the dice,
particularly when we suddenlyare trusting, are they gonna get
turn out to be made of solidcyanide? Yeah. That will be a
big delay. And also, we don'tactually have our stock of dice
yet.
I'd much prefer to have thewhole lot in a even if it's in a
box in my house, like like thedice trays are. But but they're

(44:03):
still somewhere between Chinaand here.

Dave (44:05):
Yeah.

Matthew (44:06):
We know not where. So, Cool. Cool. Let's get on to my
essay about whether you can runyear zero with no skills.

Dave (44:19):
It's madness.

Matthew (44:21):
The Year Zero engine never stands still. Since its
creation, it has morphed,changing shape according to the
genre of the game it has beenadapted to. So, for example, the
d six based game introducedpolyhedral dice for its fantasy

(44:42):
iteration, Forbidden Lands, andthen stepped dice for attributes
and abilities in Twilight 2,000.And over the years, it has
evolved, cut away some of thefat, worked out what are the
most effective triggers, createda more concise experience. For

(45:05):
example, we have seen a systemthat used a pool of three
different colors of dice becomeone that generally uses only two
or sometimes only one color.
And in recent games, like TheElectric State and Coriolis The
Great Dark, the system has evendropped the concept of skills.

(45:31):
What? This can't be a goodthing. Surely, the slimming down
has gone too far. Of course,back in the day, D and D didn't
have any skills other thancombat bonuses.
But its competitors use thatlack to distinguish themselves

(45:55):
with skill based systems. Two ofthose, Runequest and Traveller,
have systems, and importantly,skill systems, that are almost
unchanged today, five decadeslater. One of the advantages of
a skill based system is yourcharacter can progress by

(46:16):
improving their skills, not theabstract levelling up of D and
D. Another advantage isprogression through skill
development gets rid of anotherabstraction, character classes,
enabling your character to beshaped by the player's wishes

(46:36):
and the played experience, notby the designer's stereotypical
ideas. But one disadvantage ofskills is getting the balance
between granularity andincompetence correct.
Runequest, in its secondedition, offered 60 skills, not

(47:01):
including, if I recallcorrectly, a further 20 distinct
weapon skills. Yes. Yourattributes do give you a base
chance in any skill, but thatwas likely to be a 10% chance or
less of success. You had tospend points on training to
actually be good at anything.And of course, you never had

(47:25):
enough points to create thecharacter you had in your mind,
or even a character that wascompetent in enough skills.
Would you choose to spend pointson the skill of spotting hidden
things? Well, just be aware thatthat didn't include spotting
traps. So if you wanted to begood at both sorts of detection,

(47:48):
well, then you're already onlyhalf as competent as you would
have been. Of course, Call ofCthulhu makes that incompetence
a strength. You're not meant tobe a heroic fantasy figure.
You are an ordinary librarianconfronted with horrors no sane

(48:08):
man should know. Over the yearsand the seven editions, the hard
choices have been softened alittle with mechanics like luck,
of course, but you still have tomake a choice if you're playing,
for example, an Irish chancerbetween being persuasive or

(48:29):
charming or being half as goodat both persuasion and charming.
Experience like that made mereally appreciate the year zero
system when I first readCoriolis. Here, there are just
16 skills. You got to spendfewer points on them, but having
a couple of dice in a skillseemed, on top of whatever

(48:52):
attribute dice you had, toimprove your chance a lot.
Half of the skills in Corioliswere advanced skills that you
could not even roll for unlessyou had at least one point in
the skill, but that thankfullywas an experiment that did not
carry over into other games. Inmost games, you can just roll on

(49:15):
your attribute if you don't havethe skill. That's something I
really appreciate, even if somepeople might say it's not very
realistic, if someone who isquite agile can actually fly a
plane. Another common complainerfrom among those skill heads are
the people that say, but flyinga plane is nothing like driving

(49:36):
a car nor sailing a boat. Howcome there's only one skill for
all three?
One band of particularly vocalcomplainants joined the year
zero community when Free Leaguetook on the Twilight 2,000
franchise, an IP that was anindirect descendant of one of
the first skill based games,Traveller. On reflection,

(50:01):
dropping the concept of skillsfeels like the natural
progression of the argument I'vemade on this very podcast when
people say that the 12 or 16skills that earlier year zero
games have is simply not enough.Look to the talents, I said.
That is how you represent thedifference between driving a

(50:23):
boat, plane, or car. Indeed, Iinsisted in the early days of
the development of tales fromthe Old West that we didn't use
the word skills for our 16abilities.
I wanted them to feel moregeneral, more innate, though
they can, of course, bedeveloped, than skills per se,

(50:45):
and to let talents take theplace of specializations that
can be learned. And it feels asthough there is a similar
philosophy behind Free League'sdecision. If you look at the
talent list in the ElectricState, for example, you can see
that most of the talents simplyadd two dice to a roll in

(51:09):
particular circumstances, whichmeans that you no longer have an
agility based driver skill thatlets you fly a plane or sail a
boat. Now you just roll youragility, but you can have
talents like biker, which givesyou plus two dice on any two
wheeled vehicle. Boatman, whichgives you plus two when piloting

(51:33):
a boat.
Driver, which does the same forcars and trucks, pilot for
planes, and rider for horses.There's no balloonist talent, or
is there? It says here on page57, the list of talents is not
exhaustive. You may create newtalents for your campaign as

(51:57):
long as they don't overlapexisting talents. But hold on,
are we being diddled out of dicein our pool?
Let's say in old Coriolis, my PChas an agility of four, a pilot
skill of two, and a talent like,oh, there's no piloting talent

(52:18):
in Coriolis. So, no. Startingcharacters in that game would
roll pretty much the same diceas in the electric state. Ah,
starting characters don't staystarting characters, though, do
they? They can develop theirskills, but you can't develop

(52:40):
talents in the electric state.
You can't turn your drive talentinto a plus three talent like
you can improve your pilotskill. No. That's true. But in
the electric state, you candevelop your attributes, and you
roll more for your attributesanyway. So you might be starting
with an agility of six, actuallyrolling more dice than in the

(53:04):
old game.
But how many talents do youstart with? In the third
horizon, you start with at leasteight skill points, which is the
equivalent of four talents inthe electric state. I just made
a character in that new game,and you start with only one
talent or maybe two talents. SoI think across the board, you do

(53:30):
roll fewer dice on average. Butlet's take a quick look at the
Great Dart PDF.
In this game, you start with,well, talents in this game were
a bit different. They come inlevels, and most only offer a
one die bonus at first level, upto a three dice bonus. But you

(53:52):
do get five talent levels as astarting character. So that's
the equivalent of, two and ahalf electric state talents. Of
course, you add those to yourattributes for the role, and we
know that in Coriolis, yourattributes will be between two
and what?
What? What? There's sixattributes in the great dark and

(54:15):
24 points to spend on them. Nowthe average 14 points in other
games across four attributes isthree and a half, and 24 points
across six is well, it's four.So that's good.
But six talents? What is this?Old school? What are we playing?

(54:38):
D and D?
This is evolution gone mad.Devolution more like? Who needs
six attributes? Really? It'schange for change's sake.

Dave (54:49):
So so that's all all very interesting. And and I think,
you know, having your your yourvery good little sort of summary
of of the range of, of differentapproaches and philosophies is
was was good. A couple ofquestions there. I think, I
think where you where you have,as you describe, where you have

(55:11):
one skill that can cover a bunchof stuff, particularly some
driving skill or piloting skill,you know, you say, look to the
talents, which is fine. Talentsare good at refining your skill
or your ability, but it stillallows you, as a bloke, you can
ride a bicycle to then fly anaircraft.

(55:32):
And I think, you know, you youcover that point. You mentioned
that point. But I think it'sit's a it's a reasonable,
response from a from a playerthat, you know, not everyone is
going to be able to fly a planeor pilot a submarine or
something. I I like, actually,although I don't think all of

(55:54):
the skills should be in it, butI like the idea of advanced
skills that Coriolis has. Ithink having some like piloting
a spaceship that you can onlytry if you've got a skill in it
is absolutely fine.
And I think it's quite it's goodbecause it does narrow down that
that skill a little bit. But, Imean, you've always said, you
know, you know, talents. Youknow, look to the talents. Look

(56:15):
to the talents, which isabsolutely fine. But I think you
then maybe put maybe too muchwork on on the talents.
And I've got a point. I mean, II heard you wanted to come in
there, so that's fine. I will Ihave another point about the
great dark, which I will mentionafter you've had an opportunity
to

Matthew (56:33):
To refute your point. To to to

Dave (56:35):
comment to comment on my very

Matthew (56:37):
well made and I think I think you're right. And I think,
you know, there are it's allabout genre at the end of the
day, I think, actually. And Ithink in a wider in a wider
sense, it's all about genre aswell. So what you're talking
about there is, I can drive acar should I be able to drive a

(56:57):
plane. And maybe in thosecircumstances, no.
You shouldn't. So if you like,where we're doing stuff like war
stories, which is meant to bevery based in realism, you know,
those sorts of concerns aboutyour skill, even if you're not

(57:20):
very good at flying a plane, thefact that you've got a driving
skill, say, in in war storiesmeans that you could in theory
fly a plane.

Dave (57:34):
Yeah. Well, it's it's an interesting one though, because
let's say for example, if I wasI've never flown a plane in my
life. I've been in a a couple ofsmall planes and I've been in
gliders. I said I did fly theglider for about thirty seconds,
but I didn't do anything otherthan not crash. And the the the
real pilot was behind me.
If if I was in a plane, like,let's say, like, you know, a
little two seater plane orsomething, and my pilot was

(57:57):
incapacitated, I would trylanding it. Yeah. I would I
would give it a go. And I wouldprobably, particularly if I was
being talked down, have a chanceof succeeding. Not

Matthew (58:08):
all all the the airplane disaster films tell us
that that is perfectly possible.

Dave (58:11):
Well, and I think there there are cases in real life
where that has happened.

Matthew (58:14):
Yeah.

Dave (58:16):
It's but it's not going to be easy. Now, if I'm a great
driver, let's say I've got, youknow, agility of four and four
in my driving skill, I don't geteight dice for piloting that
plane down. So maybe the thingthat should should be is that
for something like that, unlessyou've got the talent, you get
minus dice on on your role fordoing that.

Matthew (58:35):
Yeah. Or

Dave (58:36):
or you just or you just can't try. But then I would I
would I would try in thatsituation, and I would hope that
I would have at least a betterthan zero, even if it's very
close to zero chance ofsucceeding.

Matthew (58:49):
Yeah. I think I think having modifiers on something
you are inexperienced at may bethe way to go for those very
realistic games. Yeah. As yousay, you'd give it a go. And,
you know, if you think about it,the first pilots couldn't even
blimmin' drive cars becausethere are hardly any cars around
at the time.
The first pilots, the augerbrothers, were bicycle makers.

(59:10):
It did it

Dave (59:10):
did look quite dangerous, though. So now that's

Matthew (59:16):
Yeah.

Dave (59:17):
Yeah. So that's a that's a fair point. They were they were
definitely learning on the job.I mean,

Matthew (59:24):
you know I think in a way, so you brought up the fact
that, you know, the pilot skillor or the expert skills,
whatever they call in Coriolis.You just can't do them unless
you've got the skill. Yeah. Ithink, actually, the better way
of handling that is, oh, well,you could give it a go. You
know, I can give I I don't haveany MediKirge skill, but I can

(59:44):
give first aid a go.
I might kill you while I'm doingit. Yeah. I could give it a go.

Dave (59:49):
Yeah.

Matthew (59:50):
And so I think I'm I I would be happier with saying,
well, it's a minus three dice ifyou're gonna try that, Sort of
rule.

Dave (01:00:00):
Yeah. And and kind of extend that Unless

Matthew (01:00:01):
you've got the talent or whatever that

Dave (01:00:03):
Yeah. Actually

Matthew (01:00:03):
gives you something specific.

Dave (01:00:06):
Unless, yeah, you're naturally talented at it. I
mean, to extend that

Matthew (01:00:09):
But then again, I think there's other genres. So like,
actually, choriolis, where, youknow, being living in space
effectively means, well, ofcourse, everybody can fly a
spaceship. It it is a way tothink about it.

Dave (01:00:23):
Possibly. Mhmm. Yeah.

Matthew (01:00:25):
Luke Luke Skywalker can be an excellent, bomber pilot
because, you know, whatever hesaid about firing bus shooting
muskrats back home in the carShooting.

Dave (01:00:37):
Shooting. Yeah. Yeah. He could bullseye want rats from
from a hundred meters in BeggarsCanyon. Yeah.
And they're not much bigger

Matthew (01:00:43):
than two. That's exactly what I meant.

Dave (01:00:45):
Yeah. But then but then yeah. Oh, happily. But then Luke
Skywalker is the greatest forceuser just about No. In the
universe.
So there's a difference therebecause he's using the force to
be that good. He's not using theinnate skill.

Matthew (01:01:03):
Yeah. But his mate, Wedge Antilles, is in the same
squadron as well. And he's theYeah.

Dave (01:01:06):
But Yeah. But Wedge Antilles is a trained pilot.

Matthew (01:01:10):
Yeah.

Dave (01:01:11):
So

Matthew (01:01:11):
Yeah.

Dave (01:01:12):
Wed Gentiles is a fighter pilot. Luke Skywalker, when he
first gets into an x wing,isn't. So there's a difference
there. So I think I think yourexample

Matthew (01:01:19):
But again, when we're playing role playing games, we
all wanna be, you know, the theguys that can do everything.

Dave (01:01:26):
The Luke the Luke Skywalker. Now that is fine.
Yeah. And I think that that is agood point. There is there is a
realism here.
Do we you know, if there's anexciting moment in a game where
someone can try flying anaircraft, but but the GM says,
well, no. Have you ever flown anaircraft before? I don't think
so. Fuck off. You can't do that.
That might be a bit boring. Butany on that point, so just
extend the point that we startedwith. So you talk about, the

(01:01:49):
electric state where, you know,the talents effectively are
skill bonuses. Where you addYeah. Plus two dice to driving,
plus two dice dice to biking, orwhatever it was.
Yeah. That that that's kind offine. It doesn't escape the the
the problem we've just beentalking about that you could
then fly a fighter jet with awith a dice roll on your agility

(01:02:12):
potentially. And also it bringsthe other issue of isn't that
really, really boring use oftalents? I mean, the great the
best talents in the games, Ifind, are ones that give you a
bit of flavor, give you a bit ofcolor, give you something a bit
unusual.
And I think, you know, we'vewe've tried quite hard in in
Tales of the Old West to havetalents to give you an edge in a

(01:02:34):
way that is different to justall have plus one to your
shooting skill. Of course, youget those talents in Tales of
the Old West, but there's quitea lot of other ones that don't
do that. So isn't just saying,oh, have plus two to your skill
role a really weight a waste ofthe potential that talents have?

Matthew (01:02:52):
Yeah. I I tended to agree with you because let's
face it.

Dave (01:02:57):
Because I'm right.

Matthew (01:02:57):
Preventive terms of the Old West with skills plus
talents. Because that's that'sthat's the way we want to use
skills plus talents. And eveneven as I said in the article, I
feel that with a lot of ourtalents, we have gone down that
way of, you know, finessing theskills a bit and creating
specializations and stuff likethat, which is all cool. But

(01:03:18):
also, yeah, we've we've tried todo things. You know?
And again, there are some, like,you can only do this thing if
you have this talent as well,which

Dave (01:03:26):
Absolutely. Yeah.

Matthew (01:03:27):
I like. So a lot of our thought has gone into that.
Yeah. And I guess Electric Stateis a bit boring if you like.

Dave (01:03:36):
Because I'm I'm assuming because I haven't I haven't read
it in great detail. I'm assumingthere aren't another tranche of
talents that do

Matthew (01:03:44):
something like that. Any kind of electric state
superpowers, generally. I mean,there's some shit that goes down
with when you're in in in the,neuroscapes and stuff like that.
But Right. But generally not.
And inter we'll come on toCoriolis in a moment because
I've now got some directexperience Coriolis. And I wanna
say now that is a little bitdifferent as well. So, where was

(01:04:08):
going with that? So the electricstate, yeah, I think the big
difference for the electricstate comes down to genre again.
So the journey in electric stateisn't procedural.
It isn't about, well, it'spartly about you going
somewhere, meeting the bad guys,defeating them in whatever way
you do that by rolling dice,and, and moving on. It's it's a

(01:04:33):
more internal journey in that.In that, you know, a lot of the
the important thing aboutelectric state is, tension and
hope and stuff like that. So youcan regain hope by, I may be
getting this wrong, but you'vegot to have arguments. The the
the the the team of players hasgot to have tension between the

(01:04:56):
different characters, and thenthey can recover some of their
stats by having sometimes anargument with one of their
fellow players or by coming topeace with that player having
Yep.
Having had tension between themand stuff like that. So,
actually, the mechanics arereally all about those internal
group dynamics powering yourability to do stuff. And so the

(01:05:17):
skills bit of those talentstakes a kind of back seat

Dave (01:05:20):
Yeah.

Matthew (01:05:21):
I think.

Dave (01:05:21):
So it's just the game.

Matthew (01:05:22):
Of the drama of the game.

Dave (01:05:23):
Yeah. It's the game in narrative terms recreating
something like, the road ratherthan something more, I don't
know, frivolous.

Matthew (01:05:33):
It's not quite as, godforsaken and, frankly
depressing, and I wanna killmyself after finishing that
book, as the road.

Dave (01:05:42):
That's Cormac McCarthy for you.

Matthew (01:05:44):
Yes. So I

Dave (01:05:46):
was just thinking if if that was a

Matthew (01:05:48):
But yes. Yes.

Dave (01:05:49):
But it is

Matthew (01:05:49):
more like that. More about those that sort of
dynamic. Yeah.

Dave (01:05:53):
So I was saying if that if that's the tone they're going
for, then maybe having aslightly dower approach to your
talents is a way of creatingthat feel around the table. You
know, if you if you wanna createthat kind of feel around the
table, having talents that areactually really exciting and
loads and loads of fun mightbreak that immersion a bit was

(01:06:13):
where I was going with thatthought.

Matthew (01:06:15):
Yeah.

Dave (01:06:16):
So actually

Matthew (01:06:17):
But this might bring

Dave (01:06:18):
Maybe there was a a tech there there was a strategic
decision perhaps to make thetalents less interesting and
exciting in order to generatethat feel around the table?

Matthew (01:06:28):
Well, I yeah. I think so. Right? So I think the point
I'm getting at is they wannamake the procedural bits. So
here, I'm using language fromRobin Laws about what he calls
that drama and procedure.
And procedure is what is in manyrole playing games, the, the fun

(01:06:50):
bit in that you roll dice to seewhether you can do stuff. Yeah.
And the drama bit is theinteraction of the play the, you
know, the the the role playingbetween characters that goes on.
So this one, they wanna kind ofslightly make the procedural bit
less fun so that peopleconcentrate more on the drama.
And to a degree, I think that,you know, that is the magic

(01:07:11):
behind Vaesen as well, actually,in that, the procedural bit
there because you're rolling sofew dice and you got so little
chance of pushing, you turn moretowards the drama bit of your
character interactions withother players Mhmm.
As you're playing naturally,which is why we think Vesen is

(01:07:31):
surprisingly good.

Dave (01:07:32):
Or Yeah.

Matthew (01:07:33):
Sorry. I should why I think that Vesson is
surprisingly good, but I thinkwe

Dave (01:07:36):
all agree

Matthew (01:07:37):
Vesson is surprisingly good.

Dave (01:07:38):
I think that's a good bit of analysis, actually, because
I've always said that there'ssomething about Vesson that I
can't quite put my finger onthat just really encourages good
role playing. Somethingsomething between the lines. And
you might be right. That mightactually be it. The the your
your your opportunity to doheroic stuff is is capped by the
way that you can push or thenumber of times you can push.

(01:08:01):
And so when you do push, it'sit's a it's a really important
moment. You don't push you don'tjust push in a willy nilly way
that you might do in Coriolis,say

Matthew (01:08:09):
No. Coriolis, the third horizon, I think is almost a
pulp game because you could justpush willy nilly all the time.
Yeah. And, you know, yes, youyou build up darkness points,
and and the GM can use them tobe a git later on. But everybody
shares that gittishness, whereasevery time you push in person,
you're taking a hit yourself.

Dave (01:08:29):
Yeah.

Matthew (01:08:30):
You know, it's effective. So, yeah, you wanna
push less. You wanna you'dtherefore talk more. And I think
in a way, in a slightlydifferent way, that's the same
effect they're going for with

Dave (01:08:42):
Electric state.

Matthew (01:08:43):
With electric state.

Dave (01:08:44):
Yeah. Okay.

Matthew (01:08:45):
But I think it's different in Coriolis. So it's
not just that they said, okay.Let's take the skills out of
Coriolis as well for the sameeffect. I know in the in in the
bit I recorded, I, you know, Italk about, oh, you've got
generally, yeah, a lot of theskills there or a lot of the
talents there are effectivelyskills where you've got one to

(01:09:08):
three levels of the skill where

Dave (01:09:09):
you can add one

Matthew (01:09:10):
to three dice.

Dave (01:09:11):
I was gonna say, is that is that basically it for the
talents in The Great Dark?

Matthew (01:09:15):
No.

Dave (01:09:16):
No. There are more varied and interesting

Matthew (01:09:19):
There are more there, actually. And in rolling up my
character, I feel particularly,this was driven home to me only
last night, which is why it'snot in the recording. So I was
expecting that. Actually, I'veonly got one talent. My
character's only got one talentthat does that.

(01:09:41):
So, so that's interesting. Yeah.And I, you know, I need to go
kinda go back and think, well,why did I why was that my
impression when I was goingthrough the walls? Did I not see
all these other talents thatI've actually now got?

Dave (01:09:54):
You say, was that was that a choice, or was that a random
talent?

Matthew (01:09:59):
So that one talent was one I got because of my
background. My background wasactually a choice because I
could have rolled it randomly.

Dave (01:10:08):
Right.

Matthew (01:10:08):
But one just leaped out of me, which is, you were
brought up in the, alleyways andshanties of Aluminum Bay. And I
just, I love that. Cool.Aluminum Bay. That's great.
So so I said, oh, I wanna dothat one. I wanna do that one.
Whatever it is. But I could haverolled d 66 and ended up with

Dave (01:10:32):
Something entirely different.

Matthew (01:10:33):
A variety. Yeah.

Dave (01:10:34):
Yeah.

Matthew (01:10:35):
So that was so effectively, that was a random
talent. Then you get another onebased on your chosen profession,
I think. And then you get tochoose three, which should come
from your profession. Although,one of them can be one you
choose. As long as the GMagrees, you can choose Yeah.

(01:10:58):
Another one from anywhere. And,yeah, and so I I, you know, I
chose those. Thomas had said,okay. Let's do it. Let's create
everybody.
Let's create the team first andwork out what everybody's role
is in the team, and then you canbuild your characters towards
that role. And so the role thatI gravitated to in the team is

(01:11:19):
scout. Now I've gotta say, wenone of us particularly built
our characters towards thatrole. As scout, I would have
chosen somebody who maybe, youknow, has got high perception,
could get a six in theirperception stat. Don't get me
started about six six stats.
Feels so

Dave (01:11:37):
good as I did. Maybe that's a conversation for next
time.

Matthew (01:11:41):
No. No. No. Maybe. So I've got so, you know, I should
I should maybe have chosen onethat's that whereas.
But but the other thing we didwith our team is we get a bird.
Every team has a bird.

Dave (01:11:56):
Yeah.

Matthew (01:11:58):
And our bird is a kind of Scottish bird. And because I
chose the esoteric profession,partly because I I just so want
to be a bloody corollary. So I'mgonna be mouthing off courier
like truths to everybody.

Dave (01:12:13):
Right.

Matthew (01:12:15):
That would that was my my stated aim before Catch
Generation. And indeed, I amafterwards. So I'm an esoteric
person. Esoteric peoplegenerally have high empathy. I
don't I've got five in empathy,which isn't six, but that's
fine.
So I I'm gonna be the person in,you know, who looks after the
bird as it were. And the bird,the abilities that our bird has,

(01:12:37):
again, chosen at random, are, isit's a scouting bird. So that
fits in with my role in a way.Yep. So that's cool.
But only one of my talents givesme extra dice. And that is the
one I got from from mybackground, and that is the
acting talent. So I get plus onewhen I'm trying to, you know,

(01:12:59):
pretend to be somebody else,basically.

Dave (01:13:01):
Right.

Matthew (01:13:03):
And it could go up to plus three if I develop that
talent. But the other talentsI've chosen include, well, so I
thought I gotta choose onethat's a bit scouty. So I

Dave (01:13:17):
Wouldn't make sense, wouldn't

Matthew (01:13:18):
it? Yeah. Of, one that's, you know, gives you a
bonus when you're trying tohide. And I think that might be
one that would go one to three.A stealth a stealth talent.
But, actually, the one I chose,I think you know, and I checked
it with the team to say, yeah.Yes. I'll go with this one. But
I think this one will be moreuseful and more in keeping my

(01:13:39):
character. It's a sixth sense.
So I can never be surprised byan ambush.

Dave (01:13:43):
Okay. Cool.

Matthew (01:13:45):
And so that, again, that feels more of the world
rather than being a a a, youknow, a skilled type talent.
That feels a slightly magicalability that fits in with my
slightly esoteric, weird seersort of stuff. Another one of my
talents is, one where I can askI can't quite remember what it

(01:14:07):
is. It's but it's effectivelyit's premonitions. So I can ask
the GM to tell me somethingthat's true.

Dave (01:14:12):
Good.

Matthew (01:14:14):
Having having done a ritual. So, you know, a lot of
that, which is the more flowery,you know, superpowered nature of
Coriolis, there are talents likethat. So they haven't just been
deadened down to just extraskill ranks. But the the
corollary of that is becauseI've only got one of those and
it's in acting, I feel for a lotof my procedural rolls, I will

(01:14:36):
only be rolling my stats. And mystats are between three and
five.
So most of my dice rolls, unlessI'm using gear in any
interesting way that gives me abonus, most of my dice rolls are
going to

Dave (01:14:48):
be quite weak. Yeah. Yeah. What's the push

Matthew (01:14:51):
So we'll see how that plays. Sorry?

Dave (01:14:54):
What's the push mechanic?

Matthew (01:14:56):
The push mechanic is, a bit like electric state. It's
hope. You have hope points. Ihave Okay. Seven of

Dave (01:15:03):
hope

Matthew (01:15:03):
points. And I think I've gotta check this out. But I
think it's like my discardedoption for,

Dave (01:15:17):
Toto.

Matthew (01:15:18):
For Toto. For faith. So you So what? You do have Rolling
it. Two different types of dice.
I think I think gears aretreated separately, but you lose
a number of points based on thenumber of ones you roll.

Dave (01:15:30):
Yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah.

Matthew (01:15:32):
And you don't unlike Toto, you don't have the option
to buy those rolls, those pointsoff. Yeah. Yeah. The the trap
sorry. What I'm saying is youdon't have the optionality to
spend points instead of gettingtrouble.
You just lose hope. Yeah. Andwhen you've lost all hope,
you're effectively broken.

Dave (01:15:53):
Right. Okay. And the and this hope is an individual stat.
So everyone has their hopes. Soor is it a group?

Matthew (01:16:02):
No. Hope is an individual stat, and it's based
on a couple of I can't rememberwhich, of two of my other stats.

Dave (01:16:08):
Right.

Matthew (01:16:09):
Yeah. So, so you've got your physical stats contribute
towards your health. Health.Yep. And you lose you know,
those are your hit points.
And again, I've got seven ofthose. And you've got something
else as well called heart, Ithink, which is my defence

(01:16:29):
against blight. And because mymy two highest stats contribute
to that, I've got 10 of those.So I'm quite hardy when it comes
to, the corruption of blightcompared to everybody else.
Yeah.

Dave (01:16:42):
Yeah. Well, I'll be interested to hear how how it
plays. Because, because it wasinteresting that, you know, that
the the the guys that you testedthat system out with for Tales
of the Old West hated it.

Matthew (01:16:53):
They really hated that. Yeah.

Dave (01:16:55):
So it'll be interesting to see how it plays in in in the
Great Dark.

Matthew (01:16:58):
Well, I just I'm just gonna check on that because, I
might also be confusing it withelectric state, which I think
also has that same mechanic.

Dave (01:17:07):
Okay.

Matthew (01:17:07):
That you let me just go. Hope and despair. You can
suffer despair by pushingattribute roles as what is that
gonna tell me? No. I can't Ican't spot it now, but I think I
think it's something like that.

Dave (01:17:28):
Because we have sites while somebody looks looks
something up. Okay. Okay. Well,no. Well, interesting.
Yeah. In fact, good essay, pal.Well done. Yeah. I think we've
reached

Matthew (01:17:43):
the end of the show, haven't we?

Dave (01:17:44):
I think the debate remains open, actually, as far as I'm
concerned.

Matthew (01:17:48):
Well, I don't think there is much of a debate. I
think, horses are courses. Youknow?

Dave (01:17:52):
Yeah. Possibly. Yeah.

Matthew (01:17:54):
Yeah. It just shows the variety, you know. What are you
trying to achieve in the game,is becomes an interesting thing.
And then what helps best?Skills?
12 skills, 16 skills, or noskills. Mhmm. Yeah. It can be a
way to do it. And I'm yeah.

(01:18:14):
And I'll wait and see, how wellI do. I think none of us are
particularly suited to our rolesin the team, but but we'll we'll
see how it plays. We'llactually, go on. I'm getting
more into it. I gotta say, Ilove the Coriolite stuff.
So Cool. By random apart from mychoosing to be a courier like

(01:18:37):
everybody else chose randomly,and I think everybody else or at
least three other people aremembers of the Black Toad, which
is the the kind of mafia,faction

Dave (01:18:51):
of Right.

Matthew (01:18:52):
Coriolis. And who are the Coriolites' best mates? The
members of the Black Toad. So asa as a team, we've really
gelled. And we've got this crazyidea that, that Pete's character
is a bit incompetent.
And he and he pulled togetherpulled together the team by how
they look rather than whetherthey could actually do the job
or not.

Dave (01:19:14):
Excellent. Pete Pete's Pete's Lee's

Matthew (01:19:17):
name is showing there. His character's name is Attila,
and, we we decided our team arecalled Attila's Circus. Cool.
Could you also you also randomlyroll the color of your, your
shuttle and your gear, and we'rebright orange. So

Dave (01:19:38):
Bright orange. Okay.

Matthew (01:19:40):
I did suggest we might call ourselves Attila's clown
car, but, Thomas said, well,maybe it's everybody else that
calls you Attila's clown car.But you call yourself Attila
Sure. But we shall see. We'llsee how it goes.

Dave (01:19:57):
Cool. Good stuff. Well, that's probably enough for this
fortnight, don't you think?

Matthew (01:20:03):
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. So

Dave (01:20:05):
when we do next time next time.

Matthew (01:20:07):
We may have, a lovely chat with Gar. Or if he wants to
hold off another couple ofweeks, we'll think of something
else.

Dave (01:20:16):
We will. Quite what? I don't know. But, yeah.
Suggestions on a

Matthew (01:20:24):
post Yeah. I'm not going to do an essay on having
sick stats.

Dave (01:20:30):
Maybe you should.

Matthew (01:20:31):
No. I'm not.

Dave (01:20:33):
Okay. Cool.

Matthew (01:20:34):
You wanted an essay on having six stats, you fucking
have an essay on having sixstats.

Dave (01:20:38):
It might be quite short. But yeah. Yeah. Cool. Alright
then.
Well, I think everyone have agreat two weeks. And in the
meantime, it's goodbye from me.

Matthew (01:20:50):
And it's goodbye from him.

Dave (01:20:52):
And may the icons bless your adventures.

Matthew (01:20:56):
Still, even in the great dark, my character insists
that you are blessed. I I've gotmy character has a keepsake,
again, which I chose rather thanroll randomly because I just saw
it on the list. A medalliondepicting the Coriolite traveler
icon.

Dave (01:21:10):
Oh, cool. Nice.

Matthew (01:21:11):
Nice. So still the icons are in the great dark. You
just Excellent. When you pray tothem, nothing happens. Uh-huh.
You just lose hope.

Dave (01:21:22):
You have been listening to the effect podcast presented by
Fiction Suit and the RPG Gods.Music, stars on a black sea,
used used with permission offreely publishing.

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