Voices in the Dark

Episode Transcript
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Dave (00:39):
Hello and welcome to episode 256 of Effect, Voices in
the Dark. As you should know bynow, I'm Dave.

Matthew (00:51):
Are you? Damn.

Dave (00:52):
I've never I've

Matthew (00:53):
never really picked up on your name.

Dave (00:54):
And you've forgotten And you've forgotten who you are.
Well, I'm just thinking we'vedone this introduction 256 times
at least now. Or was it becausewe had some RPG a day things as
well. So probably more. So bynow, people who've listened to
this, maybe we should do a newintro.
Maybe we should change up.

Matthew (01:11):
No. No. No. No. No.
No. No. Because we've just got awhole bunch of new listeners for
this episode who've just seen inthe show notes that we're
talking about choreo list andgreat dark. They've never even
heard of us before, and theycame to us new. So hi.
I'm I'm I'm Matthew, and this isDave. And we could talk a bit
about, you know, our lives ingaming and stuff like that, and

(01:33):
who we are. We could do that,

Dave (01:35):
you see. We could do it new every That's this episode
sorted then. Great. Cool. SoMatthew, no.
No. No. No. No. Yes.
Okay. Anyway, what what we goton the show today, mate?

Matthew (01:47):
Right. So on the show today, we have no new existing
patrons.

Dave (01:54):
As always,

Matthew (01:55):
whom this podcast would not exist, and indeed a whole
bunch of other stuff would notexist. Half the illustrations in
our game, Tales of the Old West,would not exist if it were not
for the generosity of ourpatrons. Anyway, that probably
quite a lot less than half, butthe Kickstarter pack has paid
for quite a lot ofillustrations. But that's by the
by. In the world of gaming, weare gonna report back from the

(02:18):
Call to Adventure that we wereat yesterday tell you more about
that and look forward to UKGames Expo, plus some other news
from the world of gaming.
Stay tuned to find out what thatis. We're also going to be
giving you all an update fromthe old west, as we like to call
it. Old news East, isn't it,this episode?

Dave (02:42):
Oh, you had to remember my little spoiler, didn't you? Oh,
well, thank you very much.

Matthew (02:49):
And and then our main event is, as you know, Dave,
even though you didn't want toplay choreo list the great dark,
a bunch of our intrepid patronsdid.

Dave (03:00):
It wasn't that I didn't want play. I just and I said to
you before we started recording,I do now have gamers guilt for
for, you know, FOMO for nothaving got involved, actually.
But sometimes it's a bitdifficult to find the time to do
that, so I I don't get to dothose games that often. But in
this case, I do regret nothaving got involved.

Matthew (03:23):
Yeah. I think I think those games were on a Wednesday,
which is when you do yourphysical

Dave (03:28):
Yeah.

Matthew (03:28):
Face to
face group.

Dave (03:29):
Makes it difficult. Yeah.

Matthew (03:30):
So that would make it quite difficult. But anyway,
we've been playing Coriolis TheGreat Dark, and we thought the
best way of reviewing the game,what we have played, is to get
everybody together for a chatabout it. So that will be the
the big content, and thatincludes our patrons and
listeners who let's name checkthem now. We've got Thomas. He

(03:51):
was GM ing it.
He was brilliant as usual. Weshall talk more about that. Got
Douglas. We got your friend,Pete. Hold on.
Your friend Pete who plays withyou

Dave (04:02):
Plays on Wednesdays.

Matthew (04:03):
Face to face game. So maybe it wasn't Wednesdays that
we

Dave (04:06):
were And

Matthew (04:09):
we also had Jed from America and John from Sweden as
well. Am I missing anybody? No.No. That's who who was

Dave (04:16):
a friend? Didn't you? Yeah.

Matthew (04:18):
I've already mentioned Douglas. He was from Canada. So
so, yeah, it was aninternational crew. And we had a
great time, but we shall explainwhy we had a great time later in
the episode. Cool.
So moving on to the world ofgaming. Where were you and I
yesterday, Dave?

Dave (04:38):
I'm I'm I'm well, actually, now you're getting
older. I'm not surprised you'veforgotten, because you are going
a bit that way. We're we're atDragonmeat Mark two Call to
Adventure at Kensington TownHall in in London, and it was it
was the new new new but old. Soit was Dragonmeat's attempt to,

(05:03):
I guess, you know, try and goback to the beginning because
this is where Dragonmeat startedback in the day. And it was it
was a it's a nice littlelocation.
It's a it was a really good funday. I enjoyed it very much. The
location was nice. It's verycute and cozy and it's quite
small actually. But it was agreat day.

(05:26):
The one thing that we found wasit wasn't very busy. And now
that might be I mean, there's acouple of reasons for that I
think. One might be thatdownstairs in the basement area
well, it's not really abasement, it's just a lower
floor. And then upstairs wereall full of gaming tables, and
there was a sort of demo areaoutside the main hall where we

(05:47):
were.

Matthew (05:48):
Yeah. In a large sort of lobby area. Yeah. Sort of
thing.

Dave (05:51):
Yeah. And they were full of tables, which were full of
people playing games. So I thinka lot of people, of the seven or
800 tickets that that Dragonmeatwere able to issue, and they
were free which might be I'llcome back to that in a moment. A
lot of those people came in andwent straight to a game and had
a lovely morning or lovelyafternoon playing a game. And

(06:12):
then maybe a lot of those didn'tend up actually in the the
Trader Hall where we were, whichis quite small.
It was quite cozy, but therewere some, you know, some good
players there. We were there.Pell Grain Press were there.
Monty Cook, all rolled up.

Matthew (06:26):
Ian Livingston was there?

Dave (06:27):
Ian Livingston was there. Yeah. So so it's a good a good
cast, as it were. EffectPublishing was kind of snuck in
there too.

Matthew (06:36):
Effect Publishing weren't there, but but Anna from
Freely did let us did say justthis week, oh, if you want to
sell some of your books, you canas well. Sadly, she didn't
didn't tell us that before wewent to the warehouse where we
could have picked up a bunchmore books, but I had I had
picked up a box of six, so wetook those to introduce those to
people who may not have baptizedus. And they went quite well,

Dave (07:00):
didn't they? Sold like hotcakes. Yeah, we sold all of
those by lunchtime, which isreally cool. Yeah. But yes, so
the event was quite quiet.
The again, think, again, part ofit was it was a free event, so
tickets were free. So I think,you know, the incentive once
you'd got your got your tickets,because you didn't pay for them,

(07:20):
maybe it was much easier forpeople to say, yeah, don't
really feel like going down toKensington today.

Matthew (07:26):
Yeah.

Dave (07:27):
So And, you know, things

Matthew (07:28):
like the Pope's funeral, I think, you know,
there may well be people whostayed home before it's that.

Dave (07:33):
Possibly. Yeah. Possibly. Yeah. But it was it was a nice
event.
I mean, we didn't sell very muchfor free league, sadly. We sold
a few bits. I don't I've got noidea what the future will be,
whether whether the Dragon Meatfolks will want to do it again
next year. I I think that theyfelt, at least from an
organisational point of view,that it went really well.

Matthew (07:56):
Whether It was very smoothly run by the Dragon
Meteor.

Dave (07:58):
It was. It was very well done. John

Matthew (08:00):
John and the volunteers did really well.

Dave (08:03):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that was Actually, it was kind of was
very easy for us, actually. Itwas very nicely done in that
sense.
But whether what quite theywanted to get from it, I don't
know exactly. Whether what theygot from it is enough to make
them want to do it again nextyear. And it was something. It

(08:24):
was an event that was done incollaboration with, I guess, the
local Kensington Council, or atleast the

Matthew (08:30):
Yeah, the body service or something

Dave (08:33):
body that runs the hall, because the hall was free,
nobody had to pay to Exhibit. Toexhibit there, which is all
great. Obviously trying toencourage more events like that.
So in a community We

Matthew (08:47):
did donate. One of the key things is the price for a
table was to donate five gamesto to the to the local library
service. So, you know, we we putout five copies of Dragonbane,
which I think is an excellentthing. And and that leads me
onto thinking that I think,really, the Target or the idea

(09:08):
behind it was that maybe itwould be a a great space to
introduce new people who areinterested in gaming, you know,
and families like that to togaming without being a big scary
convention. Yeah.
And I don't know whether thatcame from drug and meat
themselves or whether that wassomething the library service
were looking to do. I don't I tobe honest, I think, though, a

(09:31):
lot of the people who turned upa lot of the people we saw in
the trade hall were old faces,actually, which I think
contributes to the fact that wedidn't sell very much because
they were old faces who'dalready got all our games, they
were looking for

Dave (09:44):
new stuff. Exactly.

Matthew (09:45):
Except for Tales of the Old West, of course, which sold
out quite quickly. So so, yeah,I

Dave (09:53):
But I I I don't know. If the intention is to try and
create another community eventin the calendar, and actually,
this one being a huge commercialsuccess wasn't the point, then,
you know, may well have worked.These things often do take
several years to generate a bitof, you know, publicity and

(10:13):
momentum behind it. The product.Yeah.
I mean, if we did it again nextyear, it would probably be
better, and then it wouldprobably be better the year
after. But again, I don't knowwhether this will end up being a
one off thing for the DragonDragon meat crew or whether they
are kind of committed to tryingto make it a proper point in the
calendar for the conventioncircuit.

Matthew (10:34):
Yeah. We shall wait and see.

Dave (10:37):
But it was a good day. I had a good day out. It was fun.
Didn't start so well for me onlybecause I had to lug all that
heaviest shit on publictransport, which I haven't done
for a long time. But then,thankfully, you were there with
your car, so you could you droveall that home with you, which is
great.
Yeah. But my journey home wasmuch more relaxing than my
journey in.

Matthew (10:56):
Much more relaxing. Sure. And and I bought the stock
in the car. So we did this ill.Working with Freely, we did this
on the cheap.
Yeah. You know, we didn't haveFreely didn't have Games Quest
delivering the games. We onlyhad a small stock. I I drove to
Games Quest on Friday and andpicked up the stock and put it
in the boot of my car. And I'vestill got what we didn't sell in

(11:18):
the boot of my car ready to Idon't know.
I'm gonna have a no. I'll dropI'll drop a line. Do we want to
send them back to Games Crest ordo we want to keep them until we
go to

Dave (11:29):
UK Games Expo,

Matthew (11:30):
which is only a month away.

Dave (11:31):
It's I mean

Matthew (11:31):
Oh. Oh. That would be a lovely segue, but it's not time
for the UK Games

Dave (11:35):
Expo Yeah. Damn. I I guess the question is a logistics one,
isn't it? Is it easierlogistically, in terms of stock
control and that, to give it toGameQuest and then collect it
off them again, or for you tokeep it. I guess we could be
guided by GamesQuest on that,really.

Matthew (11:53):
Yeah. And I think. Yeah. Cool. Right.

Dave (11:59):
Well, let's let's let's restore that segue then. Come
on. Let's restore that segue.

Matthew (12:03):
Yeah. Let's not restore that segue. It's not the right
time because right now, we'remeant to be talking. Look at the
running order. It's it's calleda running order for a reason.

Dave (12:11):
Yeah. Yeah. But your running order's shit. Surely,
Dragon League and then moving onto UK Games Expo is a really
obvious

Matthew (12:19):
No. No.

Dave (12:19):
Good segue to do. And you've put that The upcoming

Matthew (12:21):
conventions are always at the end of the running order.

Dave (12:25):
Not necessarily. And you've put Games Expo at the end
of the running order. So thatis,

Matthew (12:29):
Yeah. Because that's where future events are.

Dave (12:32):
But you can change for the for the flow of the world. No.

Matthew (12:37):
No. No. We're not gonna change. We're

Dave (12:38):
gonna talk now

Matthew (12:39):
about our guests from last week. Who did we speak to
last week, Dave?

Dave (12:43):
We spoke to the lovely Andreas Lundstrom from Nordic
School. It's talking about theircurrent, I guess, maybe it's
finished now, game, YggdrasilBurns, which is on Kickstarter.
It may have finished now.Probably has done, actually. But
if you're interested

Matthew (13:00):
in And what did he mention? What did he mention? He
mentioned that they were up fora lot of Fenics awards.

Dave (13:05):
He did.

Matthew (13:05):
And we said that we would put the link in the show
notes so that people knew whereto vote. And he said he would
send us the link. And thenafterwards, I said, are you
gonna send us that link then?And he said, yes, but didn't
send us the link. So without thehelp of there being a link in
the show notes, I assume he lostevery one of those

Dave (13:24):
wonderful awards. Au contraire. Well, massive
congratulations to him and allthose who worked on Windheim,
because they won a huge swatheof Fenics Awards. I don't have
the list of all of them in frontof me, but they won eight or
nine, I think. And it was

Matthew (13:41):
Yeah. It was a lot. It was a lot of certificates there,
I saw in that photo.

Dave (13:46):
Yes. So, I mean, that was a superb success for them. Many,
many congratulations. I, youknow, delighted for Andreas and
his team. And it's a lovely,lovely product.
So well deserved. Well deservedrecognition. Yeah.

Matthew (14:03):
Yeah. Many awards for Windheim and Dragonbane at
Phoenix. So they, I'm looking atthe list here. Best RPG product,
Gold, Windheim Companion. Bestcampaign, Gold, Windheim Traces
of Darkness.
Best supplement, Silver,Windheim Companion. Best maps,

(14:25):
gold. Wind oh, I'm guessing thatis a Windhime product. It
doesn't actually list which one.Mhmm.
Best spellgebjorn, which I thinkmust be accessories. The
Windhime die set.

Dave (14:41):
Pronounce that again.

Matthew (14:42):
You? Third party product.

Dave (14:43):
Pronounce that again. Go on.

Matthew (14:45):
No. I'm not going to do You're the one who's reading
this Sounds

Dave (14:50):
like something out of Monty Python.

Matthew (14:53):
Windhime No. Sorry. Best Windtime Companion is the
Windtime Companion. No. Bestthird party product, gold.
And best adventure for FedExMagazine was Winter Ravages,
which I remember him telling ushe wrote for FedEx. Plus awards
for Andreas and Robert as writerand illustrator in Fenics. And

(15:14):
RPG, My Father's Sword, won thebest gold won gold for best RPG.
So loads of awards. Superb.
Which raises the question, howdo we get on the in on this
FedEx goodness next year?

Dave (15:29):
How do we get Tales of the Old West in there winning some
of these some of these prizes?

Matthew (15:34):
Swedes. Good. Our Swedish listeners. A good third
of our listeners are fromSweden. Swedes, tell us how we
can get in there.
Do we have to write it inSwedish? Yeah. Yeah. Give us a
shout. Tell us what we need todo.

Dave (15:46):
Mhmm. Cool.

Matthew (15:52):
Right. Next epic epic more epic encounters and the
Simba Room minis.

Dave (15:59):
Yes. So I I I think this news probably came out before
our last episode, but I

Matthew (16:05):
But we didn't say it.

Dave (16:06):
I kind of overlooked it. Yeah. So Epic Epic Encounters is
a collaboration with SteamforgedGames to have created two box
adventure sets for well, inphysical form for The Ruins of
Symbarum, the five e version,which also come with a range of

(16:30):
new minis based on MartinGripp's artwork in the book. Now
that artwork is fabulous. Thethe pictures I've got here that
I can see, the minis look prettydamn good as well.
I mean, certainly some of thosethat are iconic images from from
the book look absolutelyfabulous. But yeah, so so this

(16:51):
is this has come out. It's it'san adventure box set, including
these fabulous miniatures. As Isaid, physical, just for the
Ruins of Simbroom, but you candownload the original Simbroom
booklet free of charge, it says,from the Steamforged website. So

(17:12):
Oh.
If you want if you want theminis, so you can buy this, but
then you can get the originalSimba room rule set for it for
for free for no extra money. SoI mean, that's interesting. I
mean, it's interesting thatthey've gone to do a physical
for five e and then download the
Well
original. But

Matthew (17:33):
They do have I mean, they have a bit of a history
with doing D and D epicencounters. We used to sell
these in the shop when I workedin the game shop.

Dave (17:41):
Oh, right. Okay. So Steamforged have got a history
of five e box sets like this,haven't they?

Matthew (17:46):
Box sets with an adventure. Right.

Dave (17:48):
Oh, You

Matthew (17:49):
know, with iconic D monsters licensed from Wizards
of the Coast. And generally,they would be a big monster. So,
you know, they'd be the sort ofthing that is worth spending
decent money on if you're intominiatures. I I recall our

(18:12):
customers feeling they werequite expensive still, even
though they were big monsterscompared to some of the other
ways in which you could get abig monster. But they did come
with the adventure as well.
And customers quite liked them,but they were they were a
special treat, really, veryoften as opposed to an impulse
buy.

Dave (18:33):
Yeah. So you

Matthew (18:34):
And I've actually got two sets here, one of which is a
big monster. So we've got thecorrupted collus. Yeah. Yeah. It
is exactly the sort of bigmonster style thing that

Dave (18:47):
These box sets

Matthew (18:48):
are the That I used to sell in the game shop. Yeah. And
whereas the other set is,broadly speaking, a bunch of
player characters and somesmaller creatures. Am I right,
looking at the picture?

Dave (18:58):
It looks like it. Yeah. Absolutely.

Matthew (19:00):
Yeah. Five player character

Dave (19:01):
Some those are iconic images from the books. So
there's one

Matthew (19:04):
From the books.

Dave (19:05):
Yeah. With the the there's a sword wielding I'm not quite
sure. There's an elf orsomething with a

Matthew (19:11):
Yeah.

Dave (19:11):
With a with an owl or an eagle on its on its arm, which
is an iconic picture from fromthe Simberm books. That looks
that looks lovely. I mean,they're getting again

Matthew (19:20):
Yeah. This is a good package. So this this box is
£60, which actually, given thenumber of models and today's
prices for minis, doesn'tactually seem to be too
excessive. Five player characterminiatures of various sorts,
four elf warrior models, oneelven leader, four goblins and
one ill goblin priest, fourbarbarians and one barbarian

(19:42):
champion, a double sided battlemap, adventure book, and all the
tokens you need to play. And, ofcourse, works with the Corrupted
Colos as well for a big epicbattle.
Or should we say, an epicencounter. See what I did there?

Dave (19:59):
Well, was very good. Well done. I'm very impressed. Well
done, Matthew. Well done.
Well done, you. Well done. Oh,he's so good. But, hey, that
looks nice. I mean, if you're ifyou want to to have some minis
for your Simba room games that,you know, that you don't have
already, yeah, check that out.
It looks lovely. As I say, Imean, I don't buy minis anymore,

(20:20):
but to me, like you said, £60for a box set with all those
minis plus a game plus some mapsplus other bits and bobs,
doesn't sound doesn't sound thatexpensive. But I'm I say I'm no
expert. I don't I don't buy andpaint minis anymore. I haven't
the time.
If only I had the time to dothese things. Haven't

Matthew (20:39):
the Nobody who buys Minis has got the time to paint
it though.

Dave (20:41):
Let's be frank. Well, that's true. Well, I've still
got some undercoated AUX that Iundercoated probably in 1985. I
probably should sell them orthrow them out, but they're I
don't know if they becausethey're all, like, original
metal die casting, so they'reprobably full of lead. Yeah.
And probably probably a healthhazard now or something.

Matthew (21:02):
Well, no. They're undercoated. You've got it
you've got it all in control.Then again, I think upstairs,
we've got some undercoatedcreatures of some sort. I bought
Tom a a sort of Warhammervariant, what sort of more board
game y variant of Warhammer.
I can't remember what it wascalled when he was 11. We

(21:24):
undercoated those, and that'sabout the size we got with
those.

Dave (21:27):
That's the way it goes. Get them, get a little excited,
undercoat them, and then don'tpaint them, well, ever,
potentially.

Matthew (21:37):
Right. Should we talk about legal news now?

Dave (21:40):
Go on then. Stonemaier Games up to?

Matthew (21:44):
Stonemaier Games are suing the president, the
president of The United States,I think, as opposed to the
president of Stonemaier Games,or anything like that. Mhmm. We
are joining a lawsuit that willchallenge the unchecked
authority of the executivebranch to impose tariffs. We
will not stand idly by what ourlivelihoods and livelihoods of

(22:05):
thousands of small businessowners and contractors in The
US, along with the customers inin whose pursuit of happiness we
hold dear, are treated likepawns in a political game. And
that's become a bit of a classaction lawsuit as far as I
understand with my limitedknowledge of American law.
But, yes, this is about thetariffs, as you've guessed. And

Dave (22:28):
Is so is this is this seeking financial compensation
because of the cost of thetariffs? Is that what he's
trying to do?
No.

Matthew (22:37):
I don't know what they want. I think they want him to
stop the tariffs. I couldactually read the paper, but
it's gonna be covered in allsorts of legalese. We probably
haven't got time for me to readit now. Maybe we should make
that an objective for nextweek's news, and we can give you
an in-depth authoritative andlearned account with all

(23:02):
bringing together all ourexperience in in law, and those
matters.

Dave (23:07):
Yeah.

Matthew (23:07):
He said ironically.

Dave (23:08):
Indeed. But it it does it's a it does look like very
much like a class action now,because it says on here that I'm
just reading that the law firmthat they engaged has now got as
many clients on the case as theycan handle. So a lot of people
have come forward, which isgreat, but I'm still trying to
work out exactly what they whatthey're trying to achieve.

Matthew (23:28):
What are they asking for?

Dave (23:30):
Whether they're trying to achieve because presumably, a
legal case couldn't end up withthe court ordering the president
to get rid of his tariffs, Andeven if they did, he'd probably
just ignore them. But it mightwell be that they're trying to
gain compensation so they don'tgo out of business.

Matthew (23:49):
So one of the things I have heard from other news is
it's not up to the president tomake tariffs. It's up to
congress to make tariffs, andcongress haven't had a chance to
vote. But congress hasn't giventhe president the right to make
tariffs or something.

Dave (24:01):
Well, the problem is congress have allowed this
eighteen o seven emergencylegislation to to to slide,
which gives Trump the the powerto, you know, unilaterally
decide these things. Now, theCongress actually should never

(24:22):
have allowed that because thethe the actual criteria for it
being declared is nowhere evenclose to to what the the actual
legislation says. But it's alittle, you know, fancy wheeze
to allow, you know, theRepublicans in Congress to to
let it go through, because theyobviously have a majority just,

(24:44):
and it allows Trump to do this.But Congress should be able or
should be, you know at somepoint, congress will get be able
to rescind this power, in whichcase the tariffs would have to
go through congress. But rightnow, it gives, at least for the
moment, president Trump carteblanche to do what he likes.

Matthew (25:04):
Yeah. So we should watch that with interest. It's
interesting reading the commentsunder this article about how
commentators are split onwhether tariffs are a good thing
or a bad thing. So

Dave (25:14):
Okay.

Matthew (25:15):
I will not pass judgment on that. Shall we move
on to other stuff?

Dave (25:23):
Yeah. Before we go down the rabbit hole, I've just read
I've just looked at a couple ofthose comments and my Yeah. I'm
itching to respond, but I'm notgoing to for now.

Matthew (25:34):
Let's not do that here. Let's

Dave (25:37):
No. This is supposed to be a fun place. What's next? Come
on. Something more fun.

Matthew (25:43):
Yeah. So I've got my copy of Realms of the Three
Rings, and it's lovely. And it'sI've also, of course, got a
review copy of the Keepers ofthe Elven Rings, which is the
the Lord of the Rings version ofit.

Dave (25:59):
The five e version.

Matthew (26:00):
Yeah. Yeah. The five e version.

Dave (26:02):
Not the Lord of the Rings The Lord of the Rings version of
the Lord of the Rings book is is

Matthew (26:06):
No. No. So the one ring is the non five e version, and
the Lord of the Rings roleplaying is the five e version of
the game. That's what I meant.

Dave (26:17):
I know. But any you know, yeah, it's us. Any slip, and I'm
gonna leap on upon you and

Matthew (26:22):
Yeah. But when it's not a slip, you're still leap on me
anyway, so I have

Dave (26:25):
to guarantee. Well, there was a slip. Anyway, carry on.
So, yes, I I've got my versionof that as well. It's gone on my
shelf.
I'm not likely to play itanytime soon, but it it looks
lovely as always with thesethings. Pardon me.

Matthew (26:43):
You want me to edit that out, whatever that is?

Dave (26:46):
That was me trying to suppress a cough. Yeah.

Matthew (26:52):
I'll flag that. I'll edit that cough out when you
when you finished coughing.

Dave (26:55):
Yeah. I finished. I'm I'm a lot better than I was. I'm
still not perfect, though, whichis No.

Matthew (27:01):
Are never perfect, mate.

Dave (27:05):
Well, that I I would I would suggest that's a matter of
opinion. And and and in myopinion, I'm perfect. Anyway,
back to

Matthew (27:16):
And that's the problem.

Dave (27:19):
But nobody else realises I'm right. That's the problem.
Anyway. Yeah. The book itself islovely.
Beautiful artwork. Lovely, youknow, like, tactile feel to the
to the cover. You know, there isa bit of me that would very much
like to dive into a really deepand involved One Ring campaign

(27:43):
as a GM, but I've got no ideawhen I'd be able to find the
time to do it and do it justice.

Matthew (27:50):
Yeah. Yeah. I think I think

Dave (27:52):
So these books make me want to do Yeah.

Matthew (27:54):
Yeah. So I'm in I'm very much enjoying playing an
elf in John's campaign. Partlybecause I really I really love
the mechanics of how elves workin the One Ring.

Dave (28:09):
Oh, because they're super powered, aren't they? Yeah.

Matthew (28:11):
Because they can do pretty much anything. Mean,
they've actually been slightlynerfed by typo corrections.

Dave (28:18):
Okay.

Matthew (28:18):
Where in in the first printing of The One Wing, they
could literally do anything. Nowthey can only literally succeed
in anything that they've got adot in the skill of. Oh, okay.
But that's fine because, youknow, all you need is one dot.
And that's that's relatively fewexperience points made that.

Dave (28:36):
Right. Yeah.

Matthew (28:37):
Now my my elf is back to doing literally anything they
want. And that makes me anarrogant bastard, which I think
is what elves are meant to be,really.

Dave (28:46):
Which is doesn't doesn't take much role playing for you,
does it, really?

Matthew (28:50):
And also, yeah, it's just natural for me.

Dave (28:53):
Kind of playing to the trope of Tyler Jones here a bit,
you know. But Yeah.

Matthew (28:59):
So anyway, a book with even more elf powers and stuff
and elf history is right up mystreet at the moment.

Dave (29:06):
Nice.

Matthew (29:07):
But, you know, like you, actually, haven't got much
time to to play with it because,you know, I feel so busy outside
my day job, you know, withpublishing games and going to
conventions and all sorts ofstuff. Yeah. Is my rather weaker
segue into talking about UKGames Expo.

Dave (29:28):
I mean, that would have been a great segue into the old
news West, but it's not such agood segue into UK Games Expo.
But we've got UK Games Expo atthe end of our World of Gaming
running order, which if it hadbeen second, it would have been
much And this later segue wouldhave worked better as well. But
anyway, UK Games Expo. We'vewe've mentioned that, I think,

(29:51):
on previous shows, but just toconfirm, we will be there. We
will be there

Matthew (29:55):
In two capacities.

Dave (29:56):
Well, was just gonna say, we will be there running the
Free League stand, as we alwaysdo. But also, Effect Publishing
will have its own stand at agames convention for the very
first time, which is very Veryexciting indeed. I don't know
where we are at the moment offthe top of my head. I've seen

(30:17):
the map, but I don't know whatstreet number or street what
street number

Matthew (30:21):
Well, I can tell you our street number because it is
ingrained on my memory. It is 3,which is the hall number, 601.
So that is our stand number. Ando one means what it sounds like.
It's a corner stand.

Dave (30:38):
Mhmm. So Yeah. So we've we've we've lucked in with an
excellent location.

Matthew (30:45):
Exactly. We're in the hall with all the big boys.

Dave (30:49):
As as we should be. We may be small, but, you know, we're
we're we're big of heart. Thatthat works.

Matthew (30:56):
Right. Okay. Yeah. We're the rule of big of heart
boys. Anyway.
So that's big boys and girls,

Dave (31:02):
I

Matthew (31:02):
should So

Dave (31:04):
that's really exciting. There's a few other bits and
bobs going on, which we willfill in the details of those in
a future show, because I don'twant to give any erroneous
information out now until thingsare a % confirmed.

Matthew (31:19):
Yeah. About times and times and locations.

Dave (31:21):
Times and locations. As usual, I'm going to be running a
seminar, assuming it's confirmedand there's a spot for it to
slip in, which would be great.Always a pleasure to do that,
and I love I love thoseopportunities to to chat with
people.

Matthew (31:38):
And we can vote you into that spot because, you
know, you've got two stands tobe at now.

Dave (31:43):
Yeah. I should be cutting You can

Matthew (31:44):
be busy.

Dave (31:44):
In three or four pieces, which would be fine. Yeah. You
know, we can manage that.Wouldn't be the first

Matthew (31:48):
I was hoping I'd get to do that. I've been wanting to do
that for some time. I've got ahacksaw, especially waiting.

Dave (31:53):
Oh, I thought I thought you're gonna say the seminar,
but no, you wanted to cut meinto you want to hang you want
to draw and

Matthew (31:58):
call to Well, thanks, pal.

Dave (32:00):
That's nice. Very just all I yeah. A little a little light
banter and then now you'retalking about brutally murdering
me. Charming.

Matthew (32:09):
Anyway Yes.

Dave (32:11):
So that's really good. But also, you are gonna be master of
ceremonies again for theNational Dragonbane competition,
aren't you?

Matthew (32:21):
Yeah. And I I I really actually, before we spoke about
this, I should have checked withAnno and Millie. But I'm gonna
say it anyway, just in case. Ifyou want to game master a
DragonBang game in the nationalcompetition, do get in touch
with with DragonBeat andvolunteer for that because I

(32:43):
know a number of the GMs whowere there last time, who are
our patrons after all, aren'table to do it this time. So so
they may well be still lookingfor GMs.
And it's a great way tovolunteer. We had a whale of a
time last time. And, you know,you get an exclusive look at an
adventure, which last year'sadventure has now become the

(33:06):
quick start.

Dave (33:07):
I was gonna ask, is this gonna be a new a brand,
completely new adventure, butbased on the same on the same
principles as the last one interms of

Matthew (33:15):
Yep. I mean

Dave (33:15):
Well It'll be a tournament game. It'll be a a time limited
game, and it'll be a game thatwill be published later on.

Matthew (33:23):
Yeah. Well, I don't know so much about whether it'll
be a game that will be publishedlater on. I don't know that
that's for certain, but it it itdefinitely, I've seen it, the
PDF of it now, and it's it'sgreat. It's fun. It's it's very
different from The SinkingTower, which is the last one.
So yeah. And, you know, ifyou're if you're a GM, you'll
get exclusive access to it forat least for the time So, yeah,

(33:48):
do get in touch with boys andgirls at UK Gangs Expo if you'd
like to volunteer for that.That's all I'm gonna say, I
think.

Dave (33:59):
Lovely. Cool.

Matthew (34:01):
Cool. Right. Is that the end of our world of gaming?

Dave (34:03):
I think it is. So moving on to Old West news.

Matthew (34:09):
Awesome.

Dave (34:09):
Three things this time. UK and European distribution
fulfilment should be done. So ifyou haven't if you're in The EU
or The UK and you haven't gotyour book yet, it's on the way.
It'll be with you anytime soon.Similarly with the rest of the
world, excluding The US, yourbooks should be on the way.

(34:30):
If you haven't received themalready, you will be getting
them very soon. So delightedthat that's all happening, and
thank you all so much for yoursupport. For The US, we are on
the cusp, on the verge ofsending our US shipment with all
of your rewards on them. That'lltake about a week to get to The
US. It should go next week.

(34:50):
And then once it hits thedistribution center in The US,
assuming we don't have to pauseanything because of any
ridiculous tariff nonsense inthe meantime, if things stay the
same, that won't be an issue. Itwill be however long it takes to
distribute from there internallywithin The US. So all things
being equal, US backers shouldget it in the next couple of

(35:11):
weeks. Everybody else shouldhave got it before then, and we
will have completed andfulfilled by our target, which
was the May, which will beabsolutely superb, absolutely
brilliant. So fingers crossedwith all of that, but that's
that's the situation onfulfillment at the moment.

Matthew (35:30):
Yes. And we've reopened the so we closed the pledge
manager for a time because wewanted to sort of make a
definite cutoff date,particularly for people that
need to be loaded onto thepallet to go to The US. We've
now reopened the Pledge Manager.So if you're one of those few
backers who haven't yetcompleted the Pledge Manager,

(35:51):
you can now do so. The onlydifference now is if you're in
The US, we will be shipping toyou direct, which, if it's
anything more than just thebook, will turn out to be
probably more expensive thanthose who manage to catch it in
time for the pallet.
And also, of course, any tariffnonsense that is created because

(36:14):
it's being shipped to youdirect, it'll be the carrier
that, you know, comes to you forfor the tariffs. But we haven't
got all that many people in TheUS who are gonna be in that
situation, but there are a fewof you in The US and Europe. If
you're in Europe, no change atall to your prices, but you can
now reopen. And we've got a fewmore. So those who have, in
fact, found the pledge managersince it reopened, you will

(36:39):
still be waiting for a ashipment because we haven't yet
drawn down the list of backers

Dave (36:44):
from people. Yeah. That's true.

Matthew (36:46):
So, yes, if you're if you're thinking, well, I'm in
Europe and I haven't got mybook, it may be because of that.
But if there's other reasons, ifyou did complete the program,
you're ages ago and you haven'tgot your book, do get in touch
with us, and we'll see what'shappened to it. Yeah.
Absolutely. Yeah.
Yeah.

Dave (37:03):
Cool.

Matthew (37:06):
Some people have got it, including acclaimed author
Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Dave (37:13):
Yeah. So I'm not on Blue Sky, so I only see these things
when people who are on Blue Skypost them onto our our Patreon
Discord. But, yeah, AdrianTchaikovsky posted on Blue Sky,
and I shall read it, I think.

Matthew (37:31):
Go on. Read it. It's lovely.

Dave (37:33):
Recent TTRPG acquisition, Tales of the Old West. Bit of a
boom in western TTRPGs at themoment, in crowdfund anyway. Not
a natural genre for me, but I'malways fascinated. This one
seems to do a good job. Ahistorical perspective that
doesn't skew white, rules forbuilding up a town deadwood the
rpg exclamation mark, plus andthis is a bit I really love plus

(37:55):
some really neat systems forduels and gambling.
Enough grit in stats for horsesand weapons, that choices are
meaningful without beingoverwhelmingly simulationist.
Yet he makes a little mistakehere where he says uses the
Modiphius d6 system as in MutantYear Zero, which I know people
have corrected him on that, butthere's a nuance there which I'm

(38:15):
sure you're going to mention,and adapted well to the setting.
A really solid feeling game.What a lovely comment. That was
absolutely exciting.
Hopefully there's quite a lot ofpeople who follow Adrian
Tchaikovsky and would have seenthat and might be thinking, this
game sounds good. Hopefully.But, yeah, lovely comments.
Yeah.

Matthew (38:36):
So that's lovely. And, of course, there have been
lovely comments from backers allover Europe, UK Yeah. Who and
the Antipodes as well, who haveseen it and posted photos of
their books. And I honestly wesaid this in the last episode,
but I gotta say it again. I loveseeing photos of your books,

(38:57):
even though I've been staring atthis cover for for months.
Great to see it in otherpeople's houses.

Dave (39:03):
In the environment of somebody else who might then
play it and enjoy it.Absolutely.

Matthew (39:07):
Yeah. I mean, you know, even better than that, I'd love
to see photos of your groupplaying it around a table. So
Neil we've talked about Neil whodid it at Seven Seven Hills in
Sheffield last time, and he hada lovely photo of the group
playing it there. Yeah. Show usyour photos.
Share your photos. I really liketo see other people enjoying

(39:29):
this game. And since youmentioned that I would give you
the nuance, of course, I do wantto remind everybody who's saying
Modiphius? Modiphius had nothingto do with it. They did kind of
co publish.
They supported Free League inthe early games with Mutant Year
Zero and with Coriolis. Yeah. Infact, is their name even on the
back of the first edition ofForbidden Lands? Have gone all

(39:54):
the way through to there.

Dave (39:55):
No, I don't think. I think by then, Friedrich had done
their own thing, but it wasdefinitely Coriolis was a joint
publication, a joint publishingthing. Yeah. But, yeah, I think
that was to make life easier forthem, particularly outside of
Sweden at the time.
Yeah.
A good collaboration at thetime. Yeah.

Matthew (40:19):
So, yeah. So so often, Modiphius does get confused with
with Free League on on on thatissue of of the Year Zero
engine. Thank you, Adrian.

Dave (40:30):
Thank you.

Matthew (40:30):
I'm sure Adrian listens to every episode of the podcast
as well, because that's where hegets all his ideas from. I

Dave (40:37):
would like just to point out his comment about really
neat systems for duels andgambling.

Matthew (40:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Considering

Dave (40:44):
the debate that you started when I was doing the
gambling rules about, oh, Idon't need gambling rules.
They're too complicated, and allrest of it. And actually, people
seem to like it, including

Matthew (40:54):
No. I didn't. I I did. Just was wondering whether it
might be the sort of thing thatwe would put into a supplement.
It wasn't the rules themselveswith.

Dave (41:02):
Okay. Okay.

Matthew (41:03):
Obviously, it was the the obviously, the gunfight the
the dueling rules, we weretotally in agreement on. In
fact, we co developed those. Forthe gambling rules, was saying,
you know, do they need to go inthe court book? And, obviously,
you were right, Dave. For thefirst time ever, I will tell you
that, and probably for the lasttime.

Dave (41:22):
Yeah. But it's the first time you'll tell me that. It's
not the first time it's thecase, though. It's because
because as you said, you're anarrogant bastard.

Matthew (41:32):
I didn't say it wasn't the first time. It might be the
only time I've admitted it.Anyway.

Dave (41:39):
Yes, quite possibly.

Matthew (41:41):
So yeah, I don't know what's going to happen to the
old West news segment, whetherit's going to be a regular thing
from now on. I mean, it'llobviously pop up because there
will be news. We'll bedeveloping other stuff, there's
still things at the stretchgoals that we'll be announcing.
But whether it's gonna be everyother week, I don't know.

Dave (41:58):
It's probably, we could probably sign it off, couldn't
we? I think, as a as a as anactual item on the on the
playlist. Because we've probably

Matthew (42:13):
As as a regular. As as as a regular.

Dave (42:14):
That's what I mean. Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew (42:16):
Yeah.

Dave (42:16):
And we could just add it in as, you know, the the the end
the end on the world of gamingfor for future.

Jon (42:24):
Until

Dave (42:25):
things change again, and there's more to talk about. But
having having gone through thatexperience of, you know, the
kick particularly since theKickstarter, where it felt
really, really sensible andreasonable to be talking about
it every time we we have a show,we're probably at the point
where the need for that is is isless, less acute. So, I mean, I

(42:47):
do wonder, just thinking off thetop of my head, whether we could
do something for an episode inthe future about our experiences
of kick starting and producing agame.

Matthew (42:58):
Well, funnily enough, before you signed up to do your
usual seminar at UK Games Expo,I I was going to suggest that we
might do a we've just done akick starter. This is what we
learned seminar, but but wedidn't. Never mind. Maybe we'll
do that to to track and meet.

Dave (43:17):
Yeah. Yeah. That's that's a good idea. I mean, what I
might well do, because becauseI'm always quite you know, the
agenda for these seminars isalways quite loose. I might
just, you know, leave a longerquestion and answer thing at the
end.
So if people did want to hear afew comments on on our
experience with Kickstarters, Icould I could I could talk about
it a little bit. Yeah. But,yeah. Cool.

Matthew (43:40):
Let's just say this one thing in Old West news. If
anybody is running Tales of theOld West, apart from Bruce, who
we know about, Anybody elsewho's running Tales of the Old
West, do get in touch with us.Come and see us and tell us how
you run it. We may even if youhaven't already had an exclusive

(44:01):
gift for us, we may even have anexclusive gift for Tales of the
Odd West GMs at UK Games Expo.

Dave (44:08):
Yeah. While stocks last.

Matthew (44:11):
While stocks last.

Dave (44:12):
Exactly. No clue.

Matthew (44:14):
Bruce, you've got yours already, so we'll see if we can
find something else for you.

Dave (44:18):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Brilliant. Good stuff.
Right then. Well, that was kindof longer than I think we'd
planned to talk about becauseactually the bigger part of
today's show is the groupdiscussion that you held with
all our lovely friends andpatrons that you already name
checked earlier on yourexperiences of playing

(44:38):
choreolist, the great dark.Looking forward to hearing all
about that.

Matthew (44:43):
So welcome, fellow players and anointed GM, Thomas.
Maybe the first thing we oughtto do is quickly whiz around the
table, introducing everybody sothat our listeners can recognize
your voices. I, of course, amMatthew, co host of the Effect
podcast, and Jocina in the game

Dave (45:05):
that

Matthew (45:05):
we just played. John, you next? I did John first
because I saw he was muted and Iknew that he wouldn't unmute
before he started.

Jon (45:14):
That's good. Thank you. I have a dog that's a bit shouting
in the background sometimes. Butwell, I'm John, from Sweden,
and, I played Asmira, theDelver.

Matthew (45:30):
And, John, have you not just played apart from Coriolis,
the Great Dark, which we aretalking about, have you also
played Coriolis, third horizon,and prior to that, ye olde,
Swedish version of Coriolis?

Jon (45:45):
Yes, I have.

Matthew (45:47):
So you are the too old hand amongst us.

Jon (45:50):
Yep. I've not GM'd any Coriolis, Only played. Cool.
Strangely enough.

Matthew (45:59):
And Douglas?

Douglas (46:01):
I'm I'm Missiopio in the game. And I'm reluctant
artsy and I have a teeny tinychannel.

Matthew (46:13):
And we will mainly find recordings of the game we've
just played on your channel,won't we Douglas?

Douglas (46:18):
We will indeed. And I'm Canadian. Wee. Hooray.

Matthew (46:24):
Now we need to get back back to No, no, let's let's
let's go the world tour andfinish off with Pete. So Jed,
that puts you next.

Jed (46:32):
Okay, I'm Jed and I played Verlov and never played quite a
few Free League games, but I hadnever played any Coriolis or
even read any of the booksbefore sitting down to play this
game. And, you know, I'm locatedsomewhere near Canada, though
she'll go unnamed.

Matthew (46:58):
And so you are untainted by any memories of
previous Coriolis. That's whatyou're bringing to this
discussion.

Jed (47:06):
Yes. It was very easy for me to play my character looking
at your character, wonderingwhat he's prattling on about
because I myself was like,icons?

Matthew (47:14):
I don't

Jed (47:15):
know what those are.

Matthew (47:16):
Well, there you go. The truth will be revealed

Douglas (47:19):
to you.

Matthew (47:20):
The truth will be revealed. And then Thomas,
esteemed GM for this for theadventure.

Thomas (47:27):
And yes. And I am I am I am nowhere near Canada or The UK
or Sweden. I'm as far away fromthose places as you can be while
still being in a triangle.

Matthew (47:38):
All places that shall not be named. All the places
that shall

Thomas (47:41):
not be named for that matter. A good solid fourteen
hours from anywhere by plane.And I was indeed the GM for
Coriolis The Great Dark. I haveGM'd a fair amount of the Third
Horizon. And I have justrealised the Third Horizon is
the only free league game I'veactually played at any length.

(48:04):
Because I am responsible for allof the capybara jokes that now
do their rounds in the Coriolisuniverse for my Skavara. So,
there you go. Sokar.

Matthew (48:16):
For wanting to eat a capybara. That's the main thing.

Thomas (48:18):
I was going to hunt it and then kill it. Anyway, let's
not dwell on the cultural issuesthat became apparent. But yes,

Peter (48:27):
so I am

Thomas (48:27):
a GM.

Douglas (48:28):
Hell, there

Dave (48:29):
he is. Brilliant.

Matthew (48:30):
And the reason you haven't played any other three d
games is because you are aneternal GM and mostly GM I

Thomas (48:38):
am mostly a GM and found it very strange to be a player.

Matthew (48:43):
Cool. And finally, let's come back to the home
country. Pete, our esteemed, ourgreatest backer ever of tales of
the Old West, actually, Pete.Yep. Yep.
What else do you have

Dave (48:55):
to say

Thomas (48:55):
about that?

Peter (48:55):
I am crippled by that backing. Anyway, my name is
Pete. I played Attila in in thethe in the in the game. I loved
the third horizon. Adored it.

(49:18):
And I'm also Dave's mate fromDown the Pub.

Matthew (49:22):
Which is how you got to be playing Coriolis with Dave in
Yes. Yeah. Down the Pub,locally. Dave is not joining us
tonight. Dave has had a busybusy well, because he didn't
play the game.
So what what contribution can hemake? He'll be prattling on in
either side of this, interviewthat we're recording now, in the
in the show proper. Right. Let'scrack on. We've got four topics.

(49:47):
The first topic we said we'ddiscuss is character creation.
Who wants to go first? Nobody.Okay, I will. I am going to say
I loved character creation.

(50:07):
It for me was a little bit ofwhat would you call it? Life
Path character creation. Really?That's what I'm talking about.
Which did the thing actuallythat I remember on first reading
the book for The Third Horizon.

(50:28):
As I sat down and read the bookfor The Third Horizon, every
other paragraph kind of said,here's a story hook for your
adventures in the future. Youdon't know what it means? We
don't know what it means. Youcan invent it. It's just an idea
we've thrown out there.
And that's a little bit likethis. So I was immediately

(50:49):
caught by being brought up inthe slums of Aluminium Bay. I
just like that phrase. I don'tknow what Aluminium Bay is.
Actually, we do discover whatAluminium Bay is.
It's in the book. But I lovethat. Just here's a bunch of
ideas. So that's my starter for10. What did other people think?

Jon (51:12):
I think it was a traditional free league creation
process with everything youexpect, plus this quite handy
life path thing that gave justenough without being too

(51:34):
cumbersome or take too muchtime. So I think it was really
good.

Peter (51:40):
Yeah. I I think it felt I think it felt like, you could
pretty much roll anything onthose tables, and it would make
sense within your character'sbackstory. And that's something
that, you know, needs to sort ofneeds to be able to happen in a
random, character generator.

Jed (52:01):
I felt like the process got us to having a really well
gelled group because we didcharacter creation kind of
altogether much better than somegames. Like, think we ended up
in a really kind of cool, ifragtag kind of like group, it

(52:21):
kind of even though I didn'tunderstand the universe or
exactly what was going on, Iunderstood the group dynamic
and, it, you know, reallyclicked, I thought. Yeah,

Douglas (52:33):
I'm looking at the origin page. And I thought that
that was fantastic, where youget an added talent, you also
get this associated faction, andthen you get some type of
contact. And the way thateverything worked out in the way

(52:56):
that we did it was reallybrilliant. And Thomas will
elaborate on the, on the processbecause he switched some parts
around, which I thought werereally, really good. The
attributes, I personally reallylike the fact that there are
six.
I know that there's a stigmabecause of the attachment to
kind of more North Americangames. But strength, agility,

(53:21):
and then the addition of insightand perception along with logic
and empathy. Perception is theawareness and vigilance and
insight is mental stability andintuition. I think that was a
nice compromise of getting awayfrom skills, putting them into
attributes and then keeping theother four core attributes,

(53:46):
allowing them to move intotalents. So I, I really enjoyed
it.
I thought that we did it reallywell in the game, but as kind of
other people who are wanting toplay this game, it'd be
fantastic.

Matthew (54:00):
Okay. I'm going to put a bit of a challenge up here.
Well, two challenges. Obviouslymy first old Corianite
challenge, there are nine icons.There were four attributes.
I'm not saying any more thanthat. But this is known. No, my
realistic challenge. Yeah, wedid create, I mean, this

(54:20):
wonderful group, which was, Ithink, enhanced by the fact that
we were all doing it together,but also I think was somewhat
enhanced. And I'm lookingactually to Thomas here to
comment on this.
Were we just lucky with the dicerolls in that we ended up being
generally either black frogCoriolite associated with the

(54:43):
black frogs I'm one of them.Douglas, are you a black frog?
Are you a toad? Mean, not frog?

Douglas (54:49):
No, I was at nothing. As I recall, I

Matthew (54:53):
wasn't a faction. Surely you had

Dave (54:55):
a faction.

Douglas (54:55):
Yeah, did. I think that it was the navigators.

Jon (55:01):
A traitor among us.

Douglas (55:02):
I never said

Dave (55:03):
anything about it.

Matthew (55:04):
Yeah. You remember what we did to the navigators in the
last

Douglas (55:06):
episode, don't you? Well, you know, things have to
happen. I was more concernedabout my makeup.

Matthew (55:14):
Yes. Yes. You are. So, Thomas, were we lucky without
dice rolls? Or do you think thesystem lends itself to forming
perfectly gelled groups, if notnecessarily particularly
equipped for the task that liesahead of them?

Thomas (55:29):
I think a bit of luck was at hand. I think there's
nothing in the system thatspecifically made because you're
all rolling independent lifepaths. There was luck. There's
no debate about that. But youalso then made choices, right?

(55:49):
And those choices were obviouslyaligning across the group as you
were discussing it. So, I thinkto Jed's point, doing it all
together created both anarrative construct. And Pete
was as a general statement sortof rolling first. So, that had a
tendency to to bend the curb ina particular direction for want

(56:10):
of better language. I don'tthink there's anything specific
about the life path generationthat would create that.
And actually, what I was goingto say was the two things I was
going to comment on. One, myattempt to change the structure
so that you guys would buildcharacters that would be more

(56:30):
aligned to the role that youwere going to play in the group
completely But actually, inclassic example of found
strategies, it actually ended upbeing awesome because of course,
then you were deliberatelybending away from that. Like it
was almost like it became thenarrative construct is we're

(56:52):
shit at our jobs. So thatactually was brilliant. Like in
a sense, the fact that you chosethe opposite direction of the
answer was actually what builtthe group really well.
I mean, was completely a playerchoice, but it was hilarious.
And the second thing I was goingto comment on, which is to build
on Doug's point about the twoadditional stats. I was running

(57:13):
Basin yesterday for one of mygroups. And let's be upfront,
the two skills that are rolledthe most in any Free League game
are the equivalent ofobservationinsightswhat is the
person thinking? And what thehell is going on around me?
Perception looking for things.Like they are by far the most

(57:35):
commonly rolled skills in anyfree league game, whatever name
they carry. And so moving themto stats is an admission of
reality. It's no different to,you know, the reason the other
four are stats is becausethey're kind of baseline common
traits, right? Like they're thecore traits.

(57:55):
And I actually think it makes alot of sense to make them stats.
It's like, what does everyplayer roll every freaking game,
right? At least three times.Anyway, so yes, that would be my
reflection on that. I do thinkas a general statement, as a big
fan of life path generators andindeed someone who's written my
own, I loved it.

(58:17):
I think it's really well done. Ithink the life path generation
itself is elegant, which I'malways keen for. It's not very
complex in one sense of theword, but it gives you a lot of
variation. And that's a kind ofbrilliant mix.

Dave (58:33):
Yeah.

Douglas (58:36):
I'm sorry, Matt, but I did, didn't mention in the
opening, but I did run this fora group of 12, 13 year olds
Coriolis and Verge Horizon. AndI think that there were actually
more choices to be made in thegreat dark. Now, I'm not sure if
that's a false memory, but thatwas something that struck me.

Matthew (59:01):
So Cornelius hasn't got a life path at all, has it?
Absolutely. There's you canfudge a life path out of it by
saying, know, there are 36systems, so you can roll D66 to
find out which one you come fromand stuff, but, but, but you
don't really have a life path.So that is more of a point build

(59:24):
system. And, but yeah, you'reright.
It's nice to have a life pathwhere you've got choices. I
remember, I think uniquely amongus as a group, there were a
couple of times where I said, Idon't want to address this. I've
seen aluminium bay. That'saluminium, aluminium bay,

(59:44):
aluminium bay. Sorry, Jed.
Aluminium bay. That's where Iwant to come from. I love that
phrase. So I ignored, or Ididn't even roll a couple of
times. But I think everybodyelse rolled dice.

Jed (01:00:01):
Think so.

Matthew (01:00:02):
Douglas, when you say more choice, what do you mean by
more choice?

Dave (01:00:06):
I

Matthew (01:00:09):
mean,

Douglas (01:00:12):
the origin started us off really, really well. We
obviously had choice there. Thenwe have reasons to become an
explorer, which I thought wasreally good. Then we have our
guild. We also had the bird,which was a collective that we
worked on.
So that was a team buildingexercise, if you want to put it

(01:00:35):
in that kind of perspective.

Matthew (01:00:37):
And of course, the ship and the rover as well to a
lesser degree than a bird.

Douglas (01:00:43):
And then you have the specialities, which again seem
to there's just layer and layerof building. I think that
Thomas's word elegant is great.There is one aspect that I want
to speak about just very, verybriefly, that is quirks. So if
you're at home looking on page22, you'll see that we have

(01:01:04):
quirks. Now, the quirks that arementioned here in the Great
Dark' are smokes too much,easily distracted, sleepy,
suspicious, wears makeup.
Now these are kind of noninvasive quirks. They're not
something that's going to reallychallenge you as a team, but are

(01:01:25):
something that you can build on.And I think that in some of the
games that you'll find in FreeLeague games like Dragonbane,
and this has come up recently,that some of those quirks or,
you know, things that you getexperience points for for role

(01:01:47):
playing actually can bedetriments to the group as a
collective. So being a berserkerrunning into a situation or
having some type of maliceskill. So I think that the
quirks in this work a bitbetter.
I was just looking through ThirdHorizon to see what theirs were,

(01:02:13):
but I believe that they werepretty open ended as well and
not kind of hurtful to thegroup. So they weren't
detriments.

Matthew (01:02:25):
Yeah. Now there is one point on quirks. Maybe we should
hold this over till the end, butmaybe not. I remember one of us
had a as you as you said,Douglas, play to your quirks,
get an experience point. But oneof us had a quirk that was not
particularly playable.
It was like I can't rememberwhat it was.

Jed (01:02:45):
Berloff had a tattoo.

Matthew (01:02:47):
Oh yeah. Had a tattoo. Yes. That is the one.

Jed (01:02:51):
I really role played that one too, think. But

Douglas (01:02:54):
if we spent more time, if we spent more time on Ship
City, I think that that wouldhave played more of a social
interaction. I mean, mine waswears makeup or was always
perfumed or both. And I mean,that would be more in social
interaction than it was on thegreat ship. So if you're playing

(01:03:18):
a campaign, I think that theperks will really come out. If
you're playing something that'sshort term, it's nominal, but
it's there.

Matthew (01:03:27):
This strikes me as a great segue to our next section,
which is playing on the greatship. And we started off, of
course, in Ship City, didn't we?Now, my first question is to
you, Thomas, actually, on thisone. How much of that did you
create? Or how much of it wasactually in because we were

(01:03:49):
doing the starter adventureeffectively, weren't we?
How much of that was added on byyou as a GM?

Thomas (01:03:56):
Almost all of it. The adventure has a kickoff which
involves, you know, the sort ofthe starting point obviously.
So, you get it's a little BasinY. You get a letter effectively
for want of better language. Inthis case, it's a mission

(01:04:17):
briefing or something from theExplorers Guild and you're sent
off.
So, I flipped a lot of thataround. First of all, I changed
who was the bad guy and who wasthe good guy, for want of better
language, like who was managingit and who wasn't just because
it didn't gel particularly withhow I had imagined it. I just

(01:04:38):
flipped them. I didn'tparticularly mind. So, yes, so a
lot of that came out of this.
And I listened to an actual playwith another group and I can't
remember who they were. And theydid something similar. And I
thought that was a really goodmove. So, as in they set up the
meetings with the internalfaction leads before they kicked

(01:04:59):
off the actual delve. So, I tookthat as a bit of inspiration and
then did my own riff on it.
So, So, the adventure itself didnot have very much of that. You
definitely did meet yoursponsor, but it wasn't
particularly significant. Andthe great ship was completely
wasn't in the adventure at all.Like so I can I manufactured

(01:05:22):
that completely from the tablesthat come with the game, which I
use to create the superstructurefor the great ship experience,
and then built a bunch of notesand comments around that, which
I've which I've said a few timesnow, which I think is and maybe
it's just me? I tend to findsandbox games actually more work

(01:05:45):
than non sandbox games as a GM.
I think it's oversold thatsandboxing makes it easier for
GMs. I think that's actuallyuntrue.

Jed (01:05:53):
Who says that?

Thomas (01:05:55):
Well, there's this perception you've just got these
tables and you just roll on themand then you're ready to go. And
of course, that's bollocks.

Jed (01:06:03):
Yeah. That's never been true for me. I when I run a
sandbox, it's I can't resistputting far, far too much work
into it.

Thomas (01:06:12):
Yeah, and I think it's much more interesting, right?
The sandboxes tend to give you asuperstructure, but like I've
run one ring, and it uses a verysimilar model. And I've actually
found that bit the hardest bitas a GM to handle by far. So,
So, those would be my comments.

Matthew (01:06:31):
So, yeah. So, you created a community with things.
Mean, I feel particularlyblessed as a Coriolite that you
put me in contact with a bunchof fellow Coriolite nutters who
are spoilers. And on top of thespoilers, I won't mention what

(01:06:55):
those of us who are truechoreolites know. So that was
great fun.
We all had a whale of a time,and I think we could have played
another session of just fuckingaround on the great ship. So I
think that's a lesson forpeople, or particularly for gems

(01:07:18):
is do pre roll, as you've said,those things and make it feel a
little bit more than, oh, thisis a chore you have to go
through before you get to theadventure itself, which is to
delve. Mean, me, that was thebest bit.

Thomas (01:07:37):
Yeah, I was gonna say, I should also admit that to some
extent you guys drove like so Ihad a superstructure I'd written
out notes, but I did changethose notes based on what you
guys were doing. So the randomcourier lights living in the
bottom of the ship secretlystealing oxygen and water from
the ship for their prayers andtherefore bringing the whole

(01:07:59):
ship at risk was completely ariff on the fact that you
decided, are there anyCoriolites on this shit? Like it
was literally you going, arethere any co religious? I was
like, oh, I was looking for aname for that group. Perfect.
There you go. It is official.They are now these people.

Douglas (01:08:16):
And they're sitting right there at that table.

Thomas (01:08:18):
They're sitting right there just at the table next to
you. So, you know, I mean, I hadan intention for a group of
people who would be disruptorsand literally your question to
the effect of, are there anypeople like me on this ship? Oh
yes. And then not us.

Matthew (01:08:34):
And in fact, that was of course triggered by another
thing that I guess you'd rolledis we'd spotted a weird
malfunction that was down in theend to a blight cyst. But my
first thought was, is thissabotage? And could there be a
group of Coriolis causing thissabotage? And they weren't

(01:08:57):
causing this sabotage and theywere kind of causing another
form of sabotage, but I went toinvestigate those. And then I
got invagled into them becauselet's face it, know, Corie likes
to those people.
And they're my people. I've feltover them. But they turned out

(01:09:20):
they weren't the thing that wewere investigating. And I like
that. I like the fact that thatwas, I triggered that, but it
went off into effectively a redherring.
And there was another thing.Other people haven't talked.
John, what was your shipboardexperience?

Jon (01:09:37):
Oh, I liked it very much. I think it also was the best part,
actually. I think, Thomas madeit feel very real and gritty and
well, things like that couldhappen on a ship and with all

(01:09:59):
our jobs and working schemes andhow we dealt with that. It was
fun.

Matthew (01:10:13):
Douglas.

Douglas (01:10:15):
Well, love compare and contrast. So I just noticed that
there's 30 pages devoted toCoriolis in Third Horizon, and
Ship City has 20 pages. But thenyou have to look back to the
beginning with charactercreation where the guilds are

(01:10:37):
spoken about quite extensively.So there's a lot going there's a
lot of input that the creatorshave put in to kind of flesh out
the game. No, we don't havespecific people for Alkmars,
like they did, and tables forencounters in the Spire.

(01:10:58):
But Ship City, I think thedrawing of it is fantastic. I
thought that was amazing. Veryretro kind of a Jules Verne
esque type of drawing, which Ireally appreciated on the ship
and with the game in the ship,because we didn't spend any time

(01:11:21):
really on ship city, but I lovethe concept in the game.
Reflecting on the game itself, Ithe things that I remember the
most beginning, the captain'stable was very vivid. I loved
that.
I really liked the kind ofmundane, oh, well, everybody

(01:11:43):
works on this shit becausethat's what you do. And then the
end part where Thomas had ourkind of firefight as well with
the manta. And then there wasalso the great ship was in peril
because, you know, there werebig blasts going through it. We

(01:12:06):
didn't do anything to contributeto that whatsoever. But it was
awesome.
I love that. And I, and I didlike the Delft. I really, I but
we'll get to that. But well

Jon (01:12:19):
And one thing I think to contrast to old Coriolis, it's
it's I think the the great ship,it's a social thing to travel in
space. While when you have justone little ship as a group, it's
just a means to travel betweenthings. I I like like the

(01:12:44):
feeling of being on a realspaceship, so to speak, instead
of just how we now we arrived atthe new place, and let's go out
and see what we'll find. So

Matthew (01:12:55):
Yes. Now I remember that Dave had been very
impressed by the Ark in MutantYear Zero and was hoping that
the ship design in Coriolis TheThird Horizon was going to feel
like the Ark, and it never did.Because of course it doesn't
have a community. Yes, you mightall contribute to the design,

(01:13:16):
but they were looking forsomething, I think a bit like
Firefly in, or Serenity in theFirefly. But that it was just a
bog standard.
It could have been a travelership or anything like that.
Whereas when you've got acommunity that you're traveling
with and other characters andyou can magic up a group of

(01:13:39):
Corriolites if you feel theneed. That offers more actual
role play. Pete?

Peter (01:13:46):
Yeah. I I think the the great ships, the the actual role
play of of of that taking you towhere you're going allows for a
greater social role playingexperience in that, you know,

(01:14:07):
you you wanna if my character,for example, wanted to try and
sell some drugs whilst he was onboard. Mhmm. And, you know, to
do that, he would have to bestationed inside the ship. So it
was it was hit.
It was more about him trying toget the good jobs on the inside
of the ship, and also, you know,looking out for the rest of the

(01:14:32):
ship as a whole, sorting outthat blight assist because we
needed to get it sorted becauseit was sapping energy from the
ship's systems and, you know,put the ship in peril. We put
the ship in peril later, but,you know, it's unintended, I

(01:14:53):
think, is is the best way ofputting that.

Douglas (01:14:56):
Says the pilot. Oh, no. You weren't.

Matthew (01:15:01):
Oh, captain. I

Douglas (01:15:04):
I really liked the feel and I hope that this isn't an
offensive comparison. I likedthe feel that it was a grittier
type of Star Trek, that you werein a ship and it's kind of
clunking along. So it's not inthat way, but you were dealing

(01:15:24):
with the ship's crew. You weredealing with day to day type
things. And so that, it feltreal and it felt compelling and
I actually cared.
And that's the difference in alot of games where you play and
you want to get to the delve oryou want to get to the goal, do
you want to get to the, to, tosomething. I was very happy to,

(01:15:45):
if we would have spent five orsix sessions just fucking around
on the great ship, I would havethought that that was awesome.
There's also an interestingpoint that Coriolis is actually
500,000 people and the Greekship is 200,000 people. So it's

(01:16:08):
not that dissimilar and you havethe variety that you can put in
and the Coriolites can certainlyhave a much greater presence if
you so desire.

Jed (01:16:21):
Ked? Yeah. So for the great ship, the ship city, I kind of
saw that as my point ofreference was like Tycho, I
think from The Expanse. Andsince my character was an

(01:16:42):
investigator, I'm like, Oh, I'mMiller, I got this, you know, I
can, I can wrap my brain aroundthat? When we got to the great
ship.
You know, I said like, Alright,well, I know it's a Dune type
ship, but we don't know thatmuch about the giant ships in
Dune. But when we got invited tothe captain's table, my brain,
my lizard brain clicked in and Iwent back to space 1889 when

(01:17:06):
like, you're on the ether flyer,and you have to have like this
very proper Victorian kind oflike dinners and things. And so
I was like, oh, this is going tobe like death on the Nile. Like,
there's going be a murder andwe're going to be investigating
on the ship before we get toport or something. And and then
it was like much grittier andit's more like something from
alien or something like, youknow, not the xenomorph part,

(01:17:26):
but just the industrial.
We gotta solve this problem onthe ship, there's, weird doings
down in the bowels. And so,like, I enjoyed that quite a
bit, but I was still very muchtrying to figure out my
references and and wrap my brainaround it.

Matthew (01:17:40):
I've got to say, it's been said that one of the
references for The Great Dark isThe Terror, the story of a
nineteenth century sailing shipstuck in the Arctic. And by God,
it feels a lot like that,actually. I think that's a real

(01:18:00):
success. If they were sayingthat great ship transport should
feel like eighteenth centuryocean going, then they've
managed to pull that off in someway. The Delve.
Let's move on to the Delvebecause we've spent a bit too
long on the great ship. I'mgonna say I'm gonna come out and

(01:18:22):
say it. The Delve, for me, Iwasn't there for half of it, so
this might not be fair. But itfelt a lot like dungeoneering.
And, actually, that's not what Iplay role playing games for.

Jon (01:18:36):
I I think it was fine. We took a little bit to understand
the how it worked and with theresources or the management of
points. But I think it was itwas good. But I think also that

(01:19:00):
if the game only was the delvingand spending downtown in Ship
City, then I don't think thisgame would be that fun,
actually. But also it was ashort short adventure when not
much mystery really or or well,there are some some themes in

(01:19:26):
the Great Dark that we couldhave explored more if we had
more time, I think.
So now it was just get down andsee what what's the source of
this and then get back up.

Jed (01:19:39):
The Dell felt kind of board gamey to me, honestly. Like,
maybe I was part of it. I thinkI said this on the the Discord,
it's like the fact that we'relooking at a side view on the
map rather than, like, a floorplan top view. It's kept made a
bit more abstract and then youcombine that with supply, which
is a pretty abstract resourcebecause it can be both your

(01:19:59):
bullets and your air. All ofthat was just like, okay, we're
playing the game and we want towin the game.
So I think we skipped a lot ofside rooms and other role
playing opportunities in theinterest of like, you know,
achieving the mission.

Peter (01:20:15):
And I think initially it felt like, oh, it's going to be
tough to make our resourceslast. But as we got further and
further in and, you know, wefound a bit of, you know, some
resource, it was like, oh, okay.This is fine, which is you know,
initially, that I think that'swhy we pushed on because we
thought, maybe we don't haveenough. Go on, Doug.

Douglas (01:20:44):
No. I was just gonna say I re maybe I'm just a
dungeon delver. I enjoyed it. Ithought it was far better than
say some of my other experienceswith fantasy dungeon or castle
or tomb delving. I enjoy, Ienjoy the social game, I think

(01:21:06):
much more in recent years than Idid when I was younger, where it
was, you know, you were in adungeon and you were just going
from one fight to another fight,to another fight, one trap to
another trap to another trap.
I had a, I had a more realisticfeeling in, in this type of
delving. So I didn't feel thatit was as board gaming as others

(01:21:29):
did, but I thought that it wasreally fun because of the
tension. And I did feel thetension and the tension was
partly the supply. As abstractas it is, I like that better
than micromanaging bullets ormicromanaging, you know, oxygen
as different from say somethingelse where that's similar to

(01:21:52):
Vassen in that, you know, youdon't need to have the coinage
money. You have just a kind of,this is your class.
This is how much you can afford.If you have to look at the price
tag, you can't afford it. Sowith supply, we were looking at
it. I didn't feel obsessed. Ijust felt more and more pressure

(01:22:16):
as we were going down.
And that also came about withthe bird. And I think Matthew,
if you were there for thesession with the bird and
controlling the bird, you wouldhave felt much more in control
of the emergence of the blightand the importance of how that

(01:22:37):
could really tear us apart. Butwe had great roles. So,

Peter (01:22:43):
Sorry. Sorry, Matt.

Jon (01:22:46):
I was

Matthew (01:22:47):
gonna tell you, I was there for the very first writ of
the delve, and there's somelovely bird control there, I
have to say, speaking as birdmeister or whatever the, the,
the specialist. So that was,that was good. But I guess my

(01:23:08):
issue is, I don't know what youencountered, but my fear is you
encountered some blight monstersand you defeated the blight
monsters. There was, I think,catching up on the end of the
because I whizzed through to seehow the other episode ended. I

(01:23:29):
wasn't there before we did thelast episode, but I didn't see
all of it.
I think there was some humancontact with a fake human that
was actually a blight controlledbeastie. But yeah, I'm a social
role player. I like the politicsand the intriguing, and there
didn't seem to be much of that.We didn't meet any other

(01:23:51):
factions around the Delve untilI returned to the next session
when we had the space combat.John, you've spoken?

Jon (01:24:06):
Oh, I've spoken, but I can speak more. I think it's I think
the resource management I Ithink it works. If you don't
think of it too much, it getssome tension. But it's it's, as
you say, it's not much social,maybe between the players, but

(01:24:28):
it's it's not much, it's more ofan exploration rather than

Matthew (01:24:33):
was

Jed (01:24:36):
just gonna say, I feel like I think I said this at the time,
I felt like if we were playingaround a table in person and we
had like, you know, tokensrepresenting our supply and
you're tossing them in and youhave to go around somebody has
to throw one every time andthings like that and make it a
little more tactile. Because Iyeah, I under I got the tension
from supply. And I don'tparticularly want to be

(01:24:58):
micromanaging bullets and airseparately or any of that. But I
was also just having a hard timevisualizing what was happening.
And I do like to have a clearidea.
But I also say that in the Delt,there was some moments that I
thought were really evocative,the tentacle bush thing that we
had to fight at the verybeginning. And just like this

(01:25:20):
idea of you're going into aziggurat, but it's completely
choked with this like, you know,intelligent weed brush thing
that we had to kind of hack ourway through. So it was very
different vibe than going intothe caves of chaos. Yeah. I

Douglas (01:25:40):
wanted to mention what I did with the kids. And I can't
remember the details, but Idon't want any spoilers. So if
you haven't played this moduleor campaign or whatever
adventure, was it Station 18?Yep. In in Yeah.

(01:26:03):
In in in third horizon. Now Ibelieve that it's Station 18
where you you go. And then atthe very top, there's a garden.
And and is that true, Matt?

Matthew (01:26:19):
Well, the whole the whole of the station is covered
in Yeah. In in growth. Yeah. Italso appears in Dark Flowers,
which is an adaptation of it,which is the start of the
adventure of the core book.

Douglas (01:26:34):
So I, I really felt a reminiscence of going back to
that and that feeling with thetree. And I liked the fact that
the navigators had become zombieesque because of the blight. I
liked description, but I thinkthat it's important to say to

(01:26:56):
those who are listening, what weplayed was a brief snapshot of
possibilities and trying to workthrough the rules to see. I
don't think that the delve isintegral to the, the gameplay of
the great dark. But I think thatif it's, if it's used well, that

(01:27:21):
it can easily become a top downview.
It can be a side view. And Ithink that there are little
innovations which were good.

Matthew (01:27:33):
Last word on the delve to you, Thomas.

Thomas (01:27:37):
So, I definitively had first and second edition D and D
in my head with the big tablesat the back of the DM's guide
where you rolled up dungeons inmy head as I kind of worked
through the delve. So, thatmight be partially my fault. I

(01:27:58):
think the delve works well ifit's within the context of a
greater story. I think everyoneis right about the Delve itself
being a bit mechanical. I thinkit would be lying to suggest
otherwise.
It's designed that way. It'svery mechanical in feel. It's I
obviously pre rolled things andadded to them. But at the end of

(01:28:21):
the day, it's go here, look atthis, go here, look at this, go
here, fight this. I am actuallytempted by the idea of splitting
say supply into the two pools ofstuff you use to fight things,
stuff you use to survive things.
Because I actually think thatwould bring out the choice
making component of what am Icarrying into the environment

(01:28:43):
much more structurally likeyou'd actually be trading off am
I going to carry a shit like soJed's Coiler Carbine was the
bete noir of the GM's monsters.But if it was you Verlov is
carrying less oxygen becausehe's packing six freaking boxes

(01:29:05):
of ammunition strapped to hisback, and everyone's going sucks
to be you, Verlov, when you'retrying to clamber out because
Verlov doesn't have enoughoxygen and then there's a
genuine, alright, who's gonnagive Verlov enough oxygen to get
out of the thing? That actuallymight be much more fascinating
than it looks at first. I ran analiens campaign where the

(01:29:28):
characters were exploring why isthere so much cross genetic
material across all thedifferent planets? Because if
you think about it, every modernscience would suggest that if
you go to another planet and tryand eat the food, you're almost
certainly going to die horriblyor it's going to do nothing for
you.
Yeah. And the fact that in thealien game, there's a whole

(01:29:49):
thing about you can eat thesecrustaceans from this planet
that's literally like that, youknow, 100 light years away from
Earth. You can literally they'rea delicacy that you can consume
is fascinating, right? Like itsets up a whole really
interesting question for ascience group to explore, which
is why the fuck can we eat, saidcrustacean. So, if you took that

(01:30:10):
approach to the delvingmechanism where it was part of a
greater arc and you wereexploring a particular set of
interesting things, which thiscould easily turn into because
what was going on in thebackground is drug running,
right?
Like at the end of the day, thewhole story was actually about
drug running. And if that thenbecame a whole series of
adventures where you were divinginto places to find out the

(01:30:30):
story of the drug running andand the fact that someone is
basically shipping blight backto the ship city and people are
sniffing it, that can't possiblybe a problem in the future. What
could possibly go wrong? Andthen you become part of that
story. And so you go todifferent delves.
Think that would work reallywell. Think I think I agree

(01:30:51):
completely that if the game Ican't remember who said it. If
this game was primarily aboutthe delve, which is how it
presents, which is actually areally important point. Okay, so
everything we've talked about isin the lore section of the game.
We have not like all of the funstuff is in the lore section.

(01:31:13):
There's a couple of tablesrolling up great ship travel.
It's literally two pages worthof tables. Most of the mechanics
from an adventure perspectiveare built around the Delve. So
actually, in all fairness to allthe people who complained about
the Great Dark being overlyfocused on the Delve, they're
right. They're completelycorrect.
It's just that as a group, youcan just like you can in

(01:31:36):
Coriolis, there's 15 pages ofcombat rules or something, Like,
who gives a toss? Okay, like,like we hold Coriolis up as this
fantastic system. It's not, it'sactually a really average
system. It's not a great system.The darkness tokens are an
endless, I just ignore themconversation.

(01:31:59):
The combat system is overlycomplicated and min maxes
certain weapon selection choicesand talents. It's a terrible
system. It's a great lawsetting. It's a freaking awesome
law setting. And people thenbuild that into great campaigns.
And there's no reason why thatcan't work for the great dark.
You kind of have to take thesame attitude. Anyway, therein
does my rant.

Matthew (01:32:21):
Now, we have overrun in our recording. We've got limited
time. So one word from everybodyin turn about the mechanics. Is
there is there something youwant to celebrate or or or
destroy in the mechanics fromwhat you've experienced so far?
And I'm gonna be really mean andgonna pick people out as the way

(01:32:44):
I see them, which means, John,you're first.

Jon (01:32:48):
Okay. Short. I I like the the way, equipment is a very
important part of the game. Soyou have to have the right
equipment, and that feels a goodway. It's it's on the theme of
the game, so to speak.

(01:33:08):
You have to plan and you have tobring just what you need.

Matthew (01:33:14):
And Douglas?

Douglas (01:33:15):
Talents. They are special skills, traits and
abilities that can benefit yourexplorer. And they do. I love
the traits. I did not miss theskills because of the fact that
the attributes fit in thebasically the two most rolled

(01:33:38):
things that you've got sociallyand interactively.
I loved it. I really liked, Iliked the mechanics.

Matthew (01:33:44):
Cool. Pete?

Peter (01:33:47):
The the delve itself, to me, felt fun and different. It's
it's not typically a roleplaying game that I you know,
the type of role playing game Iwould play. I am more of a
social role player, but theDelve felt different to me, and
I really enjoyed it regardlessof its faults.

Matthew (01:34:11):
Okay.

Jed (01:34:13):
Jed? This may come as no surprise, but I really enjoyed
the auto fire rules. I mean, itreally evoked the feeling like
you're opening up and you know?But at the same time, have to
balance that with knowing thatthis also is going to cost me,
like, air, you know, like, goingback to that supply point

(01:34:34):
concept. But you're juststrafing across a group was a
lot of fun.

Douglas (01:34:38):
You also must have really liked the fact that the
dungeon or the the the thenarrator rolled what? Was it 40
dice and got, like, twosuccesses or something like
that?

Thomas (01:34:50):
48 dice and Pete get two successes.

Peter (01:34:53):
Yeah, was against me. I loved that. That was brilliant.

Thomas (01:34:58):
48 dice. Anyway.

Matthew (01:35:03):
Thomas, what was your favorite or least favorite part
of the mechanics?

Thomas (01:35:06):
Yeah, if you will indulge me. So, two things very
quickly. One, I actually thinkthe experience point frame is
excellent. Only we didn't knowthat it was excellent until we
got to it at the end. So, itactually inspires all of those
things we've talked about onthis call about working with

(01:35:29):
your faction and communicatingwith people and playing up your
quirks.
And we didn't know any of thatuntil we got to it. And then we
went, Oh, what do you know? Oh,turns out we were meant to be
intriguing with our factions anddoing all of those other And
that's where the experiencepoints are. Awesome. Good to
know.
So, I would suggest they shouldbring that up a little bit in
its prominence in reference tothe game and that conversation

(01:35:49):
on Delve. And the sort ofnegative, and I completely align
with Jed on this, the tables forthe grade ships I enhanced to
death. I spent hours on workingout what they would actually
mean. So, actually in a sense,it's that classic line of too

(01:36:12):
much too little, but they'reprobably pretty sparse. There's
a lot of choice, but they'reprobably pretty sparse.
And so, something more like aMoria style table set where you
can actually roll chambers andget lots of really interesting
detail out of that die systemmight benefit the game.

Matthew (01:36:31):
Thomas, it sounds like you should create that for the
Free League Workshop. Because Iloved our great ship.

Thomas (01:36:38):
I start thinking about but I'm trying very hard to
pretend that I actually work fora living at the moment and it's
consuming all of my time.

Matthew (01:36:48):
And that's made me both remember and forget my favourite
thing, which has really actuallyhappened. There was a thing I
really liked, but it's gone.Damn it. I'll probably remember
it by the time the episode'sout, and I'll mention it there.

(01:37:10):
No, I shouldn't have gone off onthat little fantasy of you
creating a vessel in Japan forgreat ship travel.
So I think we're concluding.Thank you, everybody, for
joining us, or whatever time ofday it is for you. Good morning,

(01:37:30):
Thomas. Time to wake up the restof your family and enjoy a
Sunday. And good evening, John.
It's always time for bed. Andgood afternoon, Jed and Douglas.

Douglas (01:37:48):
Supper time. Supper class.

Jon (01:37:49):
It's been

Matthew (01:37:52):
a real pleasure having you all here. Thank you very
much.

Douglas (01:37:55):
Thank you.

Jed (01:37:56):
Yeah, thank you. Thanks.

Dave (01:37:57):
So now even more I regret not having got involved because
it's such a great group ofpeople that you played with
despite you and it sounds likeyou had a great load of fun. And
I and I am interested to playthe game. I, you know, I you
know, full disclosure, I was alittle disappointed when I first
heard about it and that thechanges and how far it moved

(01:38:18):
away from, you know, Coriolis ofThird Horizon. But actually, I
mean, having looked at it a bitover the time and having heard
comments like these, I'm muchmore interested in the game than
I than I kinda thought I wouldbe. I think my my big question
though, which maybe came out ofyour conversation, but I didn't
just grasp didn't I didn't gripon it, is why?

(01:38:41):
Why are people in the great darkdelving? What's the reason
behind doing that? What's thepoint? What drives them?

Matthew (01:38:50):
That's that's a good question. I don't think we
particularly covered it reallyin the conversation. And we had
a specific mission in thisadventure to find out what had
happened to another party, as itwere. I mean, broadly speaking,
the delve feels you know how inSimba room, obviously, there's

(01:39:13):
your wonderful city life andyour politics and stuff like
that, but there's an idea and anassumption in Symbroom that
you're gonna go off and go intothe forest and find an ancient
ruin and explore explore thething. Well, it feels to me that
the delve is is that.

Dave (01:39:31):
Because that because that's interesting. Because in
Simba Room, it's always feltlike this is just like treasure
hunting. You know? Or you mightyou might be an archaeologist,
so you're treasure hunting, butfor a for a different
motivation. But I wonder whetherin the Great Dark, there should
be a more intrinsic, morephilosophical reason why you are
delving rather than just this isa this is kind of a dungeon

(01:39:53):
delve, and I wanna find whattreasure treasure is at the
bottom.

Matthew (01:39:56):
Yeah. I mean, it is but it is kind of archaeological. It
is you know, I think we'recloser here in the Lost Horizon
to the builders that we used tocall the portal builders. There
there are more artifacts. Well,I'm not sure that there are
actually more artifacts, becauseancient portal builder

(01:40:17):
technology seemed to be prettydamn rife in in the third
horizon.
It just generally it wasn'tnecessarily a thing that, you
know, you you were being theprimary source of that portal
builder technology, Well, atleast not in the games that we
were playing. So so, yeah, therefeels that we are we are
unearthing structures anddevices and artifacts of a

(01:40:44):
previous civilization that maybe important to us.

Dave (01:40:47):
Yeah. So But I've

Matthew (01:40:48):
got to say

Dave (01:40:49):
I was just curious.

Matthew (01:40:50):
The build

Dave (01:40:51):
so the builders in the Lost Ark are are basically the
the civilization of the Simba inSimberun. Is that what we're
saying?

Matthew (01:41:00):
I I think that may be the case. Yeah.

Dave (01:41:03):
Yeah. Okay.

Matthew (01:41:04):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I haven't actually read it. I I
didn't want to read too much inthe background as a player. So
unlike with Coriolis, I did Ihave not devoured the book Yeah.
From front to back. But youyou'll you'll recall that Thomas
said that he kind of has, and infact, there's lots of great law

(01:41:24):
in there. And this comes to mypoint, I think, which I think we
as a group enjoyed thepoliticking aboard the great
ship and the sort of randomencounters on the journey, which
all, you know, there are tablesto make this sort of stuff, but

(01:41:45):
it did require both reading, youknow, being inspired by the law
and doing the same thing thatthe law, in fact, does in The
Third Horizon, that it inspiresyou to expand upon it straight
away, which is, you know, Ithink one of the great strengths

(01:42:06):
of the creative team behindCoriolis generally, and why we
even do this podcast now.

Dave (01:42:13):
I mean, Thomas, I'd say, we're certainly at the end that
that there are a

Matthew (01:42:16):
lot of

Dave (01:42:16):
tables in there for use, but it feels quite procedural.
And he had to do, I think hesaid, hours of work to bring
them up to to to what hepresented to you guys as the
players.

Matthew (01:42:30):
Yeah. I mean, you know you know how I like to roll
Forbidden Land's proceduraltables in game, then I have to
pause sometimes to click it in.Yeah. Yeah. I think I think he
thinks it's kind of impossibleto do that, and you shouldn't do
it in game.
You should do it pregame.

Dave (01:42:46):
In advance.

Matthew (01:42:47):
Yeah. Then absorb the stuff and expand on the stuff
beforehand, which

Dave (01:42:51):
Yeah.

Matthew (01:42:53):
Which maybe, you know, maybe I'd try and wing it in
game as I so often do, because,you know, me and prep. And maybe
I could make a half decent hashof it. I I don't know. I've I've
I've not looked at it yet. But,yeah, I think the key thing is
Well, you did

Dave (01:43:12):
a job with that Forbidden Lands scenario that we did
completely procedurally. Thatwas Yeah. Yeah. That was very
well done. That was a reallygood story.

Matthew (01:43:21):
And maybe you can do the same thing, but it does feel
to me like there's a lot of loreto absorb first in The Lost
Horizon. You know, he broughtstuff out for our characters. We
didn't make it easy for him inCouch Generation because he
tried to set it up so that wecould create, we we knew what
our roles were before we did ourcharacter generation. So that,

(01:43:44):
of course, we would then createcharacters that were best that,
you know, as good as they couldbe at doing those roles. And
actually, if we didn't, we justused the dice and, you know, we
saw what flowed out of And we'vegot a great group of characters.
I would quite happily playAttila's Circus again. Pete,

(01:44:10):
your friend Pete, our leader. Iwas the scout and also the, I
guess you'd call it the masterof the bird. That

Dave (01:44:18):
does sound But none of

Matthew (01:44:21):
us were particularly well qualified for our roles.

Dave (01:44:24):
Yeah.

Matthew (01:44:24):
And so so we all and it was great. It was really good
fun and thoroughly enjoyedourselves. But I almost despite
the and this is, I think, thebig difference for me between
Coriolis, The Third Horizon, andThe Great Dark is in both games,
you've got a great deal of lore.The lore in The Great Dark has
evolved from the lore in TheThird Horizon, so that doesn't

(01:44:46):
feel too much like we've loststuff. Yes.
Coriolis are religious nuttersnow. And no matter how hard you
pray, you don't actually, youknow

Dave (01:44:58):
Don't get a boat sorted.

Matthew (01:44:58):
Get answered by the gods. Yeah. Because because the
mechanics aren't there. So thething we've said that the
darkness points in The ThirdHorizon are a clunky way of
paying the cost of your re roll.But actually, within the
structure of stuff like going tochapel to do preparatory prayer

(01:45:22):
and then getting an extra bonuswhen you've done that.
Sweet, sweet. And that reallythe lore and the mechanics
combine them to give ussomething really special. And it
doesn't feel that the mechanicsof this game combine with the
lore in such a way. So for me,it's still essentially a

(01:45:45):
slightly disappointingexperience. We had great fun,
but that was through the effortsof Thomas as a GM, you know,
understanding our characters andwhere we were coming from,
finding bits of lore in the bookthat fitted in with that, and
expanding on that.
And it's it's a

Dave (01:46:00):
great work. And having a great group of players that
really got into

Matthew (01:46:03):
And having yeah. So it's not all Thomas' effort. We,
you know, we've got someobviously, you know, and here's
here's here's a word for peoplewho are considering patronizing
the podcast. If you patronizethe podcast, you get an invite
to our Discord, which is thenicest based on the Internet.
But it's where you get to meetthese excellent players, players

(01:46:24):
and GMs.
And, you know, we we therethere's some lovely games
happening here that you and Ihave no involvement in at all.
And when we do get involved, wewe have a world of fun. Yeah. So
let's just say that. We've got alovely a lovely team of people
on our Discord.
I love everybody.

Dave (01:46:40):
Yeah.

Matthew (01:46:41):
And and this is so yeah. And there's just another
example of the mechanics notfitting in. So as I've said,
darkness points are a bitclunky. The the interesting
thing is the cost of prayer nowis hope.

Dave (01:46:53):
I was gonna say, what's what's the push mechanic?

Matthew (01:46:57):
So you spend a point of hope. Yeah. But, and this is
fascinating, because this issomething that we dallied with
in

Dave (01:47:04):
Oh, I think I remember now. Yeah. Go on.

Thomas (01:47:06):
Yeah.

Matthew (01:47:07):
Which is that all the ones you roll cost you more
hope. Yeah. So you don't knowhow much hope you are going to
use. And obviously, when you runout of hope, bad things happen.
So this is But

Dave (01:47:21):
you always spend one hope to push in the first place?

Matthew (01:47:24):
Yes. Yeah.

Dave (01:47:25):
Is that right? Right.

Matthew (01:47:26):
So it's already a bit from my version of all.

Dave (01:47:29):
Yeah. Well, play tested that idea with your friends and
they hated it, didn't they?

Matthew (01:47:33):
Yeah. Now I was trying to work out why. Yeah. Why why
it wasn't and I don't thinkanybody hated it in this system.
Think broadly it's because wehad a bigger pool of hope than
you and I were creating onaverage for faith.
So I think my starting hope waslike 10 or 11 points.

Dave (01:47:56):
Right, okay. So you could afford a couple of bad rolls and
losing a few points without it.

Matthew (01:48:00):
Yeah. Completely

Dave (01:48:01):
lower your hope pool.

Matthew (01:48:03):
Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, I think I might have had
more hope than everybody else, II think. So that might be kind
of towards the maximum I'd

Dave (01:48:12):
Right.

Matthew (01:48:12):
It's based on a couple of the stats. You've got six
stats in this one. I can'tremember which stats contribute
to your hope. But I'd, you know,I'd luckily, because of the sort
of character I was, you know, acouple of my bigger stats gave
me quite a big hope pool. Yeah.
But nobody, I don't thinkanybody felt, Oh, I'm really low
on hope. Pete, I think, got downto, know, here's my last one or

(01:48:34):
two points of hope. So I thinkby the end of the campaign, he
was, or by the end of theadventure, he was, you know, not
wanting to push.

Dave (01:48:40):
Struggling.

Matthew (01:48:42):
But also, he was incredibly lucky in his role, so
he didn't need to push,actually. Okay. Cool. At one
point in in the last I I I hadto miss out on adventure for
social reasons or something. Ican't remember exactly what.
And so I came back the weeklater, and and Pete was in the
middle of a combat where the bigbad monster was throwing every

(01:49:05):
sort of attack at him. And thethe attacks work a little bit
like they do in Alien. It's arandom roll and then something
terrible.

Dave (01:49:12):
Signature attacks. Yeah.

Matthew (01:49:13):
And and this monster was designed really to attack
the whole party. So anybodywithin the sphere of influence
would suffer whatever itsattacks were. And there was only
one person within the sphere ofinfluence for whatever I don't.
And it was Pete. So he wasgetting all the attacks on him.
And yeah, every time the monsterrolled, they actually attacked
dice. You know, nine, ten, 12dice. They were getting no

(01:49:37):
successes or very few successes.And Pete was a relatively
resistant, resilient characteranyway, so when he was damaged
it wasn't that much. Wasblooming hilarious to watch it.
To see Thomas's frustration thatthe big bad monster was being so
ineffectual. So yeah, luckily hedidn't need to do too much in
the way of re rolling, havingspent most of his hope. Yeah, it

(01:50:00):
worked. I think it workedbecause, you know, there were
just you had a bigger pool towork on.

Dave (01:50:06):
Yeah. Whereas,

Matthew (01:50:10):
you know, one

Dave (01:50:10):
bankroll in Charles Can you recover

Matthew (01:50:13):
easily. Yes. As well. So was it

Dave (01:50:16):
an economy that was going up and down throughout the
scenario?

Matthew (01:50:19):
Yeah. I think it was easy to take a rest and recover
hope, and there are other waysof recovering hope as well. So,
yeah, I didn't ever feelparticularly threatened. Well,
my character didn't. You know?
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I missed outone of the one of the sessions
where a lot of combat was goingon. But I'd, you know, I'd I'd
been pretty much flattened by amonster in the previous session
to that.

(01:50:40):
And obviously, there wereshenanigans in the last session.

Dave (01:50:44):
Yeah.

Matthew (01:50:45):
As well. And at no point did I really get very
worried about my hook level.

Dave (01:50:52):
Yeah. Cool.

Matthew (01:50:54):
And I think it's one of those games, again, a bit like
Versen, where because actuallythe chances of success are
relatively low, and the dicepool is by no means as big as in
Coriolis The Third Horizon.

Dave (01:51:09):
Right.

Matthew (01:51:09):
So it's less pulpy. You choose to do things other than
roll dice quite often.

Dave (01:51:14):
Yes. Right. Okay. Cool. Mean, it sounds really
interesting.
And and like I said, my myexcitement about getting the the
physical copy and havingactually sitting down and having
a read of it is is is definitelyhigher now than it was when when
I first backed it. So, yeah, I'mvery much looking forward to
seeing it. And Yeah.

Matthew (01:51:34):
And we've been playing off the PDFs, but it looks Yeah.
Beautiful. And I think the bookwill be a beautiful thing to
hold as well. Yeah. I mean,obviously, not as beautiful as
Tales to the Old West, but butwhat can be?
Well,

Dave (01:51:46):
indeed. Indeed. And on that self congratulatory note, I
think we're probably done fortoday, aren't we?

Matthew (01:51:55):
Yeah. We are. Bloody hell. We've talked for an hour,
and there's We have. This mightturn out to be quite a long
program, boys and girls.

Dave (01:52:01):
It'll be a long show, folks. Yep.

Matthew (01:52:02):
But if you're listening to this at this end of the
program, you already know that.

Dave (01:52:08):
This is very true. Very true. Anyway, well, thank you
for lasting this far. If you didget this far, we appreciate it.
You are a stalwart of the Effectpodcast.

Matthew (01:52:19):
Anyway Next week next time, we will be shorter.

Dave (01:52:23):
Yeah. Is that all we're gonna say for now?

Matthew (01:52:26):
I think that's all we're gonna say. So you may have
a there may be an interview inin the offing, but we don't want
to spoil it if if it doesn'thappen or if it doesn't happen
or whatever. Yep. So you'regonna have a bit of a chat about
that, and there may be aninterview. Or there will be
something else.

Dave (01:52:42):
Indeed. There will be loquacious content in one way or
another.

Matthew (01:52:46):
Yeah. I'm partly inspired to do a little bit of
Koilos of the Great Dark lore atsome point, so which will get us
back to our roots.

Dave (01:52:54):
Yeah. That'll be cool.

Matthew (01:52:55):
So if we don't have an interview, I might try and bash
something out for that.

Dave (01:52:58):
That's a good idea. So do we have any idea when the great
dark is likely to fulfilphysically? Because I don't
really have a sense. I mean, itcan't be much longer. But
because again, I I don't reallylike doing stuff off PDFs, so I
really want to get the physicalbook in my hand.
So I haven't looked at the PDFin any great detail.

Matthew (01:53:20):
So they've got their rule book from the printer,
apparently.

Dave (01:53:23):
Yeah. So I guess we're probably weeks away rather than
months then, with any luck.

Matthew (01:53:33):
So maybe. Well, yeah. Unless Yeah. There was quite a
big gap between us getting ourbooks back from the printer and
fulfilment happening, but that'sonly because we hadn't done the
Part

Dave (01:53:45):
of that was our fault, though. You know, that was our,
you know, made talk about Thatwas my rookie era, yeah, that
really caused that.

Matthew (01:53:54):
Yeah. So

Dave (01:53:56):
So, hopefully, they're not going be making those kind of
rookie errors after all theirKickstarter experience. So

Thomas (01:54:04):
But, yeah.

Dave (01:54:04):
Yeah. So, hopefully

Matthew (01:54:05):
Likely happening in month of June, possibly July, is
what they say.

Dave (01:54:09):
Okay. Cool. So not that. A couple of months away then. So
that's cool.
Because I'm I'm I'm beginning tofeel a little bit of FOMO about
this actually. So I'm quite keento get the book and and and have
a read in it and and startexploring the great dark. But I
said I don't really like sittingdown and reading PDFs in that
way. Anyway, okay. I think thenit's goodbye from me.

Matthew (01:54:34):
And it's goodbye from him.

Dave (01:54:37):
May the icons bless your adventures.

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