Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Hey, guys, what's going on? You are listening to this
weekend geek dot net. I'm your host, Mike the Birdman,
and hey, we are back here on boxed roll. What
you're hearing probably on this week geek dot net, but
also my patreon Patreon dot com slash Birdman DoD Fox's
World of Adventure or Storytelling I'm not sure either way
(00:38):
Patreon dot com slash Birdman DoD if you care.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
So, yeah, guys.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
It has made a very busy summer in terms of
t t RPGs for me. I have been playing a
lot of dungeons and dragons, but that's not exactly why
we're here today. So over the summer I had a
chance to finally begin my own private group of Star
Trek Adventures Second Edition. I've been playing that every other
(01:02):
Thursday with my group hearing gwelfh on Thursdays, and it's
been a absolutely wonderful experience. And if you've been following
some of the stuff on Modifius this past summer, that's
the company that I freelanced for, you may have seen
we've put out stuff for a technical manual that came out,
and we just came out with our own guide for exploration.
(01:24):
But what kind of started today's conversation is I was
looking for something before the Exploration book came out, and
I needed something to generate planets and biomes and just
make the Shackleton expanse where I've set most of my
game a little.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Bit more interesting.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
So I was browsing on YouTube and there's a wonderful
content creator named Guy Most. He used to run the
channel how to Be a Great GM Now he runs
the channel off my Bridge, which is specifically focused on
Star trek adventures. And he started talking about something called
this thing called the Galaxy Builder Deck. And if you're
not quite sure what that is, it's a series of
(02:03):
cards based upon spatial phenomena, stuff that happens in space.
It might be like asteroids, get be planets, get be stars,
all sorts of cool things.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
And Guy was using it.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
In his games to generate Solar System planets and eventually,
you know, you could build out entire sectors with this thing.
So I decided to check out who this person was,
and I came across Jeff McDowell, and he is the
owner and operator of this really wonderful thing called Journey
Mountain Studios. And this is the guy who designed the
(02:37):
Galaxy Builder decks. So I emailed Jeff and through a
complete series of misadventures, because if you guys have been
following by social media, my life has been interesting to
say the very least this past summer. So it's been
a bit of a challenge to get Jeff on the show.
But thankfully the Stars of a Line, the Transporter Buffer
is ready to go, and without any further ado, I'd like.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
To welcome Jeff to the show.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
So Jeff, it has been a long time coming to
get this conversation, either from dental problems, death in the family,
sort of a board cube showing up in orbit around Earth.
It has taken a long time, but I'm glad you've
had a chance to come here on the show and
talk about this because I'm a big fan of any
company that adds something a little bit extra to the
(03:20):
t to the tt RPG experience, and having something like
this for sci fi games is I think incredibly interesting.
So to my listeners, explain in your own words, what
are the Galaxy Builder decks and what do they do?
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Sure, it's a set of cards, decks and sets that
provide a visual way to create or lay out a
star system from the stars to the individual planets, inner planets,
outer planets, and I try to create as much variety
(03:58):
as possible. But the idea was that I wanted to
feel like you were looking in front of computer screen
like a holographic display and Star Trek or Star Wars,
and you were looking at the planets as you were
discovering them, so they'd be laid out, you know, whether
you were discovering or pre planned. It was just a
way to have it done visually rather than just through
(04:20):
tables only. I would think and place to help people
from having to draw circles over and over again on
the on their maps. This way they could just place
it down, you know, boom, within a couple of seconds,
you have a whole solar system.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
One of the things that I really liked about your system,
especially with the kind of galaxy builder decks, is it's
not just simple this is a white dwarf star. This
is a planetoid that is a hot jupiter or an
icy Neptune, and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
You excited just decided to give traits to.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Unusual things, like like maybe asteroids have an unusual electrical
field around them. Or one card I literally just drew
out of my own galaxy deck right now, Space Sarcophicus,
So something that's surrounding a planet. One thing that I
drew in my own personal game that were that my
players don't know that I've that I've quite kind of
(05:16):
drawn yet, is there's one card that talks about an
asteroid graveyard. And I'm thinking that is incredibly rich for
adventure seating because like you're not just giving us the
physical playground of where we're going, like, hey, here's a
star system with like a red Giant star has so
many planets, blah blah blah. But when you start getting
(05:38):
into the civilizations and technological tracers, even like political factions
or ideas that you kind of drop into your game,
that really kind of expands out what a galaxy deck
can do. And again, when you look at different tt
RPG systems like Star Wars, Star Trek, you could probably
even use this with like Battlestar Galactica, the expanse stuff
(05:59):
like that. It's really kind of neat that the fact
that we now have these tools. So when you were
creating these what was a lot of your inspiration Because
just from the way some of these cards are written.
It sounds like you either have like you're either an
incredible hobbyist when it comes to understanding spatial stuff or
you have a background in this. So what is your
(06:20):
origin story with the writing process in this.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Just a big fan of all sci fi, I mean,
especially growing up Next Generation, Deep Space nine, Battle Circalactica,
you know, the reboots. I grew up reading a whole
bunch of RPG books like Robotech of course the uh
uh it's not so well. Actually no, there was one
(06:46):
book that I didn't realize was part of Traveler, and
it was called Rebellion. I think it was a meta
Traveler or something, and it was fascinating with the artwork
in it, and that was a big inspiration for stuff
because they had like the whole Imperium and Rebellion. You know,
maps and everything. I love maps. Also, you know, just
stuff like games, you know, the Mass Effect series, Stolaris, Like,
(07:09):
I play a whole bunch of I mean, I could
go on and on just everything sci file was I
was really huge into. And also history, war games, ancient history,
American Civil War. I just love the way that you know,
cultures clash and how the settings involved with it, and
(07:29):
you know how things connect, you know, based on where
you are and who you are kind of thing. And
the cards came out of just seeing what was out there,
and I saw stuff. There were there were apps, there
were ways to quickly generate it, you know, on a computer,
but there is nothing that you could just place down
on the table in front of you. I like that
tactile thing.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah, yeah, Like there's something about being able to have
that at the ready. And as certain game masters, some
of us do a lot of prep before we start
our game. But as any as any game master will know,
there's at least one chaos goblin in every group that
decides to throw let's throw a wrench in that.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Let's just hit the hyperdrive and go wherever.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
And I'm just kind of looking at your decks right now,
and I'm looking at part of my small RPG library
I have in my living room for my own like
writing and like kind of freelancing, and I'm looking at it,
and I never thought of one place I could apply
your cards to, but it literally just blew my mind,
Like that Galaxy brain thing. I could use your cards
(08:33):
with BattleTech and really create some fascinating new worlds.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
For the inner sphere.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
And the clans to like kind of fight on. And
I'm thinking that's interesting because again, your stuff works so well.
I mean, hell, I'm like even looking at like some
D and D stuff, you can apply this stuff to
spell Jammer in a really easy way or pathfinder. And again,
it's something really cool when I see companies like you
(09:01):
do this. There's another company that I worked with earlier
this year called hit Point Press that has these animated
NPC cards and like these drawable NPC's with like having
tools like these cards allow spontaneous creativity.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
But one thing.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
That I think guy from Off my Bridge had talked
about recently or I can't remember whether it's him or
whether it was the Dungeon dudes. It was one of
those big content creators and they were saying, with stuff
like this, for example, how I'm doing it in my
game Because I sent the digital copies of your cards
to my helmsman in my Star Trek game, and I'm
(09:42):
going to say, you're going to draw these what is
the path through the Shackleton Stay? And that's so cool
because like it allows stuff for me is the game?
I'm like, okay, cool, it's a blue hyper giant star.
How many planets are in that system? Is there radiation threats?
Is there a civilization that happens to be highly adaptable
(10:03):
to grab a metric stuff? And again, it's just it's
so fascinating because again, just hearing you talk about all
your inspiration, you're not so you're very open in what
you could adapt because you mentioned mass effect, you mentioned
stuff like that. So there's a lot of real world
science in that. But there's also Star Trek influencers, there's
(10:23):
Star Wars influences. Again, it's so fascinating to see this
been adapted, and as far as I can tell, there's
a lot of people that really kind of love stuff
like this because again, having tools at the table, as
you mentioned, it brings it it's more tactile, like you're
literally bringing stellar cartography to life, and it's so much
(10:46):
I think it gives a lot of a lot back
to the player who's creating. The's like, oh, look at
this cool star system I made, Look at this cool
sector that I've made, And that's a whole new seed
of adventure for people to go off on. So I
guess like when you started working on these and you
started doing the research, What did you find to be
(11:07):
the most difficult thing to adapt to this? Because I
know science and space stuff, you can get really lost
in the weeds. And with advances in like James Web
kind of telescope and whatever comes out of NASA and
the European Space Agency, our understanding of space constantly changes.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Literally year to year.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
So when you were doing the research, how did you
make this flexible enough that it's not like, oh, well
that's wrong now, or this could be expanded upon leir,
like where are some of the resources for real world
science that you kind of.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Drew from, of course on a NASA website and such,
for like, you know, because I didn't know exactly what
was entailed, like the star like I knew about you know,
yellow stars and you know red stars, but I didn't
actually know all the classifications. So I kind of delve
really deep into that kind of stuff to make sure
I understood it. Because the cards also have to show
(12:01):
you where different planets can be depending on the star,
and so that was interesting trying to figure out, like
I think, on the back of the star system cards,
I added like the habitable zones, which is important because
that's where liquid water can exist. If you have liquid water,
then you have general forms of life, so I didn't
do that. There's also just the the themes, the ips
(12:24):
themselves clash like Star Wars and Star Trek, you know,
are different, where Star Wars doesn't care about the science
of a system very much like you have single biome planets.
So that's what's expected when you're playing in Star Wars.
You know, this is a forest planet, this is a
swamp planet, and that's that's not you know, realistic, but
it's expected. So I have the planets like that. But
(12:46):
then on the back I added a table where you
could have different variations of the terrain and kind of
work that way. And then with Star Trek it's a
lot easier because it's based on factual stuff. And as
far as the new science stuff coming out, you know,
stuff gravity waves, you know, being I guess confirmed, you know,
dark matter, dark energy, you know. I could delve into
(13:06):
that with the trade cards, and that was another thing
I had to work. And originally it was just going
to be the planet stuff and then stuff in the back,
and I realized there was too many variations that I
couldn't have one card have everything because I'd be doing
thousands of cards for every single variant. So I figured, okay,
I can do a cold you know, like an ice
icy moon. And then if I had something called a
(13:28):
trade card, you could add any kind of trait you wanted,
so it could have radiation. You could say this has
you know, fire, tornadoes, and you just mix and match
all these different things and it kind of grows out
of that. So it's a combination. Like splitting it up
really really helped with that.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah, but there's one thing I noticed when you started
adding like kind of traits again, there's so many things
that you can add just for adventure seeds. I was
just looking at one of your cards where it talks
about civilizations and it talks about species that are sentient
under their traits. Are they nocturnal? Do they do this?
Do they do that? That is so much extra stuff
(14:06):
for the game master. That is that's work I don't
have to do now, And it creates things so much
quicker on the table and on the fly. So when
a player, for example, like I said, if it's Star Trek,
that's an organic discovery. And in Star Wars again, now
you could say, oh, yeah, this is a planet that
was colonized by Gamorians.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Or the Quorn or something like that.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
And again, because you're right, that's something I never quite
thought about until you mentioned it.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Like Star Wars is very single bio. Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Like I just read the modifious book on the Guide
to Exploration. I'm thinking, yeah, no, it it don't work
like that, at least not too often anyway. But yeah,
I find that so fascinating. And again, just the fact
that you took the time to make things so rich
and diverse. I think that's really kind of incredible based
(15:02):
upon some of the things that you've heard. Because actually,
I guess my next question is would be just kind
of a boom pop in that head. How long has
Galaxy Decks been around for so far? Oh?
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Oh goodness. Let's see. I started, like I got the
idea in twenty seventeen. I started working on it. I
posted stuff early on in Instagram, devian art, that kind
of thing to kind of get and Reddit, I think,
to get feedback, you know, see if I was going
in the right direction. And then Covid hit, so that
(15:36):
kind of delayed things a bit, and then I finally
released UFF at the at the end of twenty twenty three,
and it was the Planet's Deck and the Traite Deck
Planet Traits Deck, and then throughout twenty twenty four I
started releasing extra like expansion sets, and then the the
Star System mats so you could you know, place them
(15:57):
down and they had like proper orbits and that kind
of thing. And then this year, I think at the
beginning of this year, I released the Stars Systems Deck,
which kind of zooms things out, you know, on your
on your maps, because I noticed that a lot of
people skip the Star System creation part. They just go
(16:18):
straight to the sector, you know, which is fine, but
you know what happens in there, as I always wondered.
But I said, you know, you still need the Star
System stuff. So I did that for twenty twenty four.
And now I'm trying to wrap up what I call
Phase one, which is the setting the location, so it's
the planets, the spatial coordinates, you know, all that kind
(16:40):
of stuff. And Phase two will be cultures the people
that you encounter, and I'll be doing it the same
way I do the planets, where you will have a
militant culture, there will be a religious culture, and you
can combine and mix them so you get a religious,
militant culture, and then there'll be traits where that'll define
like are they honorable, are they slavers? Are they megabuilders?
(17:05):
Are they I guess you know, all kinds of things
like cloners. You know, the traits will be able to
you'll be a mix and match, combine them all together
to create a specific culture and you can name it
using my labeled cards and that kind of thing. And
then after cultures will be governments, so it be like
(17:26):
three cards like the type, like the ideology of the government,
who's in control the government, what's the authority? And then
how they got there, like are they elected? Is are
they anointed? Are they appointed voted in? You know what
kind of thing. So you could get something like a
an anointed democratic junta, which is very strange, but you know,
(17:50):
you draw the cards and you work with them.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
And the really cool.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Oh and then phase three will be settlement, which will
double as population cards. So like you have a mining camp,
which will be a cardinal like a little collection of buildings,
and it'll say who's there, and like what kind of
things you might find, whether you know, if you stumbled
to the camp, you know what will what kind of
type of people, so you know, military, you know, guards, administrators,
(18:20):
you know that kind of thing. And then what type
of items you might find there. And uh, you know,
just going from camps from like ten to one hundred
people up to cities and metropolis, is you know, tens
of thousands people, a million people, because again, like with
the planets, trying to keep everything in one place, it's
(18:44):
not possible, like I could easily have a planet that's
like a desert planet with a thousand people. It's like, okay,
well what if there's there's more than that, then you
got to create another card for It's like, okay, I
gotta split it up. So that's the three phase that
I've been working on so far.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
That's really kind of awesome, Like when like when like
you were talking there about the different types of governments
and peoples and their philosophy and thinking, all right, Kardassians
but Jorans cling.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
On yes, all that way in my mind when when
I was thinking of each category, it's like, you know,
pulling from definitely Star Trek and Star Wars and all
the others.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
I guess that's kind of a fun question there. When
you're writing these cards, do you find it's easier to
write with any specific setting in mind, Like do you
find it easier to write with like Star Trek in mind,
or Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
I mean, I've watched them so much and for so long,
it's just kind of there, Like I'll start with something
that's factual, historical, and something from the shows will immediately
come to mind, like especially with the government, you know,
you know, different types of stuff you know we've seen
in reality, and then you know, Cardassians is easy, you know,
dictatorial and you know, but very traditional and uh, family
(19:59):
orient to, you know kind of thing. I mean, it's
it's there's so much that we have to pull from that.
It's I mean, all I gonna do is just is
open up Google ducts and make a list and it
all and it just all starts pouring in. And then
the problem is just trying to organize everything out in
the cards. And because I want to make sure that
people who buy these get as much as possible just
(20:22):
in the first purchase, you know, so I need to
have everything there, and it wasn't always possible with the planets,
which is why I'm gonna be working on a planet's
two deck, which will include things like city planets, grassland planets,
a Mars type planet, halo rings, jump jump gates, you
know all that extra stuff. You know that that's been
(20:43):
talked about in sci fi, but I haven't hit yet
in the cards, man.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
I can't wait till you do, like a like dice
in sphere or something like that, or like super voids
or something like that.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
That's not gonna lie. That's some pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
Shit, wormhole and all that.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Oh, that's so exciting.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
And I guess just looking at the flexibility of the
cards now, obviously we want to focus on having these in.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
The physical world.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Has there ever been any thought about developing this into
an app or something where you could buy the cards
ala carte like the different sets, put them into an app,
and then you could just pull this on demand, Because
let me tell you, having a tool like this would
be I'm paying you money for this, because this would
(21:31):
be so cool to just have on my phone in
an instant if I need something, or if I need
something and I'm running like a Star Trek game, like shit,
need a sector?
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Need it now?
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Forgot my cards at home? Is that something that's ever
been like kind of thought about.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Maybe, Oh, absolutely, yeah. I mean I've seen what's been
done for Star Wars, Star Forged. You know what's the
other thing starts without number stuff is just is great
and I'd love to have that for my cards. First though,
I need to do just virtual tabletop like just you know,
(22:07):
having it available to be able to pull up in
cards and put it on a virtual tabletop, like I
need that to do that first, and then after that
I can look into creating a like an actual app
for this, because the next phase after the sci fi
is to go into fantasy, like do all this stuff
but for the fantasy one.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
That would be awesome.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Like, man, just again, it's so cool that you're like,
you've you've covered sci fi, you're hoping to expand expanding
in the fantasy. Would you ever do anything involving say
cyberpunk or whor maybe.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Yeah, because I mean those are offshoots of you know,
cideh or whatever. But I do have another block, which
I'm calling, I guess a world builder decks where it's
it's for cyberpunk but also superheroes because it's kind of
the same thing, you know, using high tech and using superpowers.
You know, to fight crime or make do crimes or
(23:01):
kind of thing, and those will be instead of laying
out planets, that'll be like laying out city blocks, and
the city blocks will have you know, districts, and they'll
have you know, the same way that planets are. The
problem I'm trying to figure out is how to get
the traits in there, because the traits you like. The
(23:22):
way I have it is like when you place them
on the table, you place the traits next to the planet,
so you can kind of it's like opening up a
little website, little database file on the planet itself. And
if you have block city blocks all close to each other,
touching each other, there's no room for the trade cards.
So I'm trying to figure out how I'm gonna do that.
One idea is like I have the star system mats,
(23:43):
like if you've seen those, Like when you plan on
the table, it's got the orbits in its open space.
You don't cram all the planets in there. They're in
their own orbits or whatever. So what I could do
is have like district mats and you put the neighborhood
cards in there, so it's like a generic neighborhood district,
but you're putting in specific locations for like you know,
(24:07):
this is a layer, this is you know, a chemicals
kind of thing. Yeah, and then next to that will
be space enough to put trade cards for like you know, well,
this has certainly had a spill or someone broken, or
it's got a security system, you know what kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Man.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
I'm just you were talking about that.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
I'm thinking cyberpunk red Shadow Holy shit, this could be
so much fun, man like, And I'm even just kind
of thinking about this again, just putting an idea in
the back of if you could a system like this,
a card system, this should be so nice for designing
in Shadow run, there's the I can't remember what it's called,
(24:48):
the matrix, so designing systems like, hey, you need to
break into I don't know as technologies pyramid, but here
is the decking matrix you have to break into. That
could be a fun little side project. Again, I guess
you'd have to talk to Catalyst Game Labs about that, but.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Still, that is really cool.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Not gonna lie like, if you could, I really hope
you pull this off because this is kind of that
is so freaking cool, And again, that would save me
so much time, like, hey, you are in Seattle, what's
the district? Like the halloweeners are there? But yeah, just
being able to flesh out the world so easily and
so fast. And again it's on the table so the
(25:33):
players can interact me. Even the players can draw cards like, hey,
maybe this is a good trait, maybe it's a bad treat.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
You don't know.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
That's so much fun, Like Jeff, I gotta say, this
has been a.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Really fun conversation today and it's getting me more excited
to play with these cards, to get these out on
my tables. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what comes
out of you guys next.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
So if people want to buy your products, where would
they have to go?
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Oh, mainly it's through drive through, RPG and itchio. I
mean they can search for a Journey Mountain or or
Galaxy Builder decks, you know, just on drive through or
even Google and natles take you straight there. Like the
store name is just under Journey Mountain Studios.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Well, guys, these get a high recommendation from me. You
can look forward to these being featured in our Holiday
Gift Guide later on this year, on this weekn geek
dot net. So look for that Holiday Gift Guide being
broadcast on December twelfth, along with a bunch of other
cool tt RPG products and video games and toys and
all sorts of other things from our friends out there
(26:44):
in the world. So Jeff, once again, thank you for
taking time to speak with us. Please keep us informed
of what new things are going to be coming out
of Journey Mountain. I have a feeling they're going to
be exciting additions to our tabletops and hopefully virtual tabletops
in the near future.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Guys.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
That was my interview with Jeff McDowell over at Journey
Mountain Studios. Like I said, guys, this this shit's really cool.
It was really hard to contain my excitement during this
interview because again I'm a very spontaneous DM and having
the ability to go, oh shit, I need something, I
have it so I could maintain the illusion of control.
(27:22):
Point is I'm not a control You think I am
good enough for me? So anyway, guys, be sure to
check out more stuff. Like I said, please check out
his stuff on Drive through our RPG. Please support him
and hopefully well we will see more stuff and we'll
have Jeff back on the show when we see some
additional cool stuff come out from those guys later on.
All right, guys, so I'm gonna get out of here,
so enjoy the rest of your day, and hopefully you
(27:44):
will always be rolling natural twenties or maybe, in the
case of Star Trek, critical ones, because hey, that's a
double success and you want that same way. Guys, until
next time, I've been Mike the Birdman saying, be excellent
to each other. We'll catch you guys again next time.
Right here on this Week geek dot Net.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
At no point in your rambling incoherent response were you
even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
Thanks for listening to this episode of This Week in Geek.
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Speaker 3 (28:34):
We would be on a if you would join us.
Thank you for your cooperation. Good night,