Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan and with me we have a wonderful guest and
regular here on the show that is Stella Condrey.
How are you today, Stella? I'm doing very well on this
beautiful sunny morning. Yeah, you know what?
And like without doxing either of us, I realized a while ago
that you, I think you're the closest person to me in the
entire teach RPG like nationwide space.
And we can, I think we've talked about how close we are, but but
you're, you're within, you're, you're close, you're close.
I'm gonna say this is a cultural victory for Northern California
over the wretches of Southern California.
I hate to get into my own personal biases, but I believe
that Southern California should be bulldozed.
Nothing of consequences ever happened there.
Starting off the the podcast with with a good I.
Mean. I mean, I will say I'm only here
by happenstance, and if it were up to me, I'd probably still be
in Southern California. But you know what was even
better? Central Coast baby split the
difference. Yeah, the Central Coast is very
nice. I did used to live in San Luis
Obispo and it was like the most gorgeous place ever.
So we'll just go with that. We can, we can let the top and
bottom fall off and we'll just keep, we'll just keep the
central bit that's. Fine by me.
But yes, it's it's been chilly at night, but surprisingly warm
during the day, which is a wonderful.
It is also only November. We'll see what happens in
December. But aside from the weather, one
thing that I figured out, it was like last week.
I just messaged you out of the blue and was like, Hey, have you
ever been like a regular guest on our show and not just like a
player? It was like, no, you haven't.
And I don't. I don't know how that happened,
but it's I'm glad to have actually have you here on the
show as just a regular guest, not just a wonderful player.
Yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm glad to be here as well.
You know, it's a nice change of pace.
Typically I have to be funny and now I can just be as unfunny as
I wanna be. I'm always as unfunny as I wanna
be. Hunter is the funny 1, so you
will kind of have to pick up the slack a little bit for that.
And one, one thing right before we started, I was like, I don't
remember the first time you were on the show.
Do you remember the first? Time I I actually do remember
the first time I was on the show, it was to do, I believe, a
Halloween special where we were doing Camp Cold Water where I
was playing some lady. And I know that we were talking
about making s'mores out of pot brownies.
And I got like so distracted by the concept of of S'mores pot
brownies that I didn't even mind being horribly killed by the
beasts or whatever. That's so funny, that was side
quest episode 3 that came out. It doesn't even list when it
came out that was God. That was at least a year and a
half ago, if not longer at this. Point, I think about two, two
years at this point because it was a, it was a Halloween thing.
Yeah, yeah, damn. Damn.
Well, I apologize for not having you out as a regular guest
sooner. I think it, it was just like,
oh, Stella's just always. Going to yeah, I mean, I, I
always, I show up regularly that's close enough to a regular
guest. Well, I mean, at this point, you
and Josh are kind of considered part.
You are considered part of the show.
You know what I mean? You're not on this office as me
and Hunter, but I think the four part four people on the week
wish girl, are you or or us two? You too.
And then Jerk rounded it out. Yeah.
But but anyway, we're here to talk I guess.
Tabletop stuff. Is that a thing that you do?
Yeah, Yeah, I do it from time to time.
I guess we're kind of here to talk about like my recent
releases. Yeah, cuz I've actually.
Let let's before that. So Stella Condre.
Who the heck is Stella Contre? What might people know you for
here? And then teach RPG space?
So unite, You might know little old me from getting started with
an RPG pamphlet, I guess mailing list for Mothership called Rim
Bound Transmission. For about a year I published a
weekly, not a weekly, a monthly pamphlet for mothership with the
gameable ship for you to use. And admittedly I've stopped
doing that because it's really really difficult for a one
person team to do monthly releases, even if it's just a
pamphlet. This is my advice to anyone
listening who is thinking, oh you know what, I should do
monthly releases. I have seen my friends get burnt
time and time again. Week not week, month.
I have week on the mic. Is it the weekly scroll?
Damn it. Month 5 is a wall.
You don't think it's going to be a wall?
It's a wall. It will get you and then you
have to do the remaining seven months and it is not going to be
good. But I stuck to it because I am
insane and I did a lot of stuff that I'm proud of with that.
After that, I then went on to publish a I went on to publish a
small adventure Zine for Dungeon Ball Classics called Prison of
the Forsaken Bear God, I know Ryan currently has that in
print, however we cannot show the cover of it on Twitch due to
misogynistic double standards. You know, surprisingly art is is
OK sometimes. Art is OK sometimes, yeah.
Sometimes, but we're not going to risk it, yeah.
We're not going to risk it. Yeah, imagine.
Yeah, imagine if if Red Sonia got the Conan treatment and also
she was built like a brick fuck house.
You can at least see the cool back art.
Boom. Yeah.
Cover them nips. There we go.
Yeah. Yeah.
We're we're very modest here. Yeah.
After that I ended up doing a little bit of other stuff and
I've kind of just been doing a bunch of stuff recently on blogs
on other things. You can generally find me on
Blue Sky, not talking about RP GS, but I do talk about that
kind of stuff from time to time. So yeah, if you know me, you
probably know me from mothership and I am actually getting back
to mothership after a fairly big hiatus.
So something in the works to to pay attention to I guess.
Yeah, I definitely had rim bound transmissions before I ever
really knew you. And then now, now you're here,
part of the show, on the show, which is really, really cool.
I have the original like zip lock baggie one, like full of
all of those, yeah. The Ziploc baggie that smells
like phthalates. It does.
Yeah.
And then because I know you have
the, it's all collected also at Space Penguin, where you can get
all of those as the like, the thing that I don't know how
people don't do more often. Just like turning the book
sideways and having like a three, just a pamphlet folded
out in the book. It's so smart.
I mean originally it was going to be all relayed out in a book
format, but I realized that I had written for the pamphlet
format so seriously that it just wouldn't work layout wise.
Just turning it into like 2 typical spreads.
So that was, I think, I think it worked fairly well while also
being out of necessity really. Yeah, I think, I think fairly is
is missed. When I first saw it, I was like,
it literally blew my mind where I I was like, if anyone that has
put out a bunch of pamphlets doesn't collect all of their
things in pamphlet form just like full page in a book, like
going forward, they're missing out because it was such a clever
thing to do. Yeah.
And then yeah, over the the past year I've, oh, I guess another
thing you might know me for is I was the lead editor for a
tabletop RPG Amateur Press Association called Red Solstice,
which was released on the Solstices.
And yeah, recently issue six hit storefronts.
If you were really a fan of Red Solstice, you would understand
that this came out December 2024.
However, my life got really busy, which is also why there
has not been a Red Solstice for the past year.
So yeah, there's there's a bunch of them.
A thing that I pride myself on, Red Solstice, is getting people
who don't typically do tabletop RPG art to do the cover.
Every time I've given them the prompt, hey, do something you
think is self indulgently cool. And every time I've had a really
good result. Yeah, yeah.
This one's a dope cover. Well, who did the one for number
six? I just popped that up on the
screen for people. To see, Yeah, that was Danny
Loon, which, yeah, absolutely lovely art.
Very, very proud to have that mailed out and all that kind of
stuff. But so, yeah, that's that's
probably where people know me from, if they know me from
anywhere besides here. Besides here and but then you
also have some other stuff cooking lately.
Oh yeah, yeah. This one here.
Yes, that is the door in Murex Canyon.
That is my take on a far future dying Earth science fantasy
role-playing game setting. It is.
It was recently released via Spink Space Penguin Inc, for
those unfamiliar. Basically it was just me
thinking about. Yeah, actually, we, you know, I
mentioned earlier that I like getting people who don't
typically do RPG art. This was actually someone's
first like time being commissioned who did the art for
the Dorm Mirex Canyon, which is absolutely wild to me because
like. Because it's great, and it's
great on a book that really shocks me.
Actually, yeah, yeah. Like, look, look at this well.
I got it. It's right there.
It's right there on the screen. Yeah, yeah.
Just there's, there's so much like just look at this.
Look at now. Well, yeah, look at this.
I'll, I'll pull that. I'll pull that page up.
There you go. There it is there.
It is. It's just random ass pages.
It's dope. It's it's do they do comics?
Were they already doing illustrations or like?
What? Yeah, they do.
So I actually found them on. I found them on social media
because I was just like, hey, where's a place where I'll find
people posting art that's kind of weird post apocalyptic stuff.
And I found someone who was doing arts of the video game
Hilux, which I've never played, but it looks cool.
And then I was looking through their account and then I saw
another account and just saw like out of the blue that they
had offered like a quick Commission in like someone
else's mentions. I was just like, hey, I know
this is a long shot. Would you be open to doing a
book? And G was obviously open to it
and was absolutely a delight to work with.
If you're ever on the hunt for RPG art and you can get in
contact with G Jill Rain, do it. Absolutely, absolutely Love,
love, love, love what they did I'll.
I'll get I'll get the links to them from you and make sure it's
down where. Oh yeah, yeah.
Yeah. But yeah, no, that was my take
on a far future kind of posts apocalyptic science fantasy
setting. If you're a fan of stuff like
Caves of Could or other such things.
Dying Earth. It's very much in the vein of
that, although I always try to avoid being unnecessarily.
What's what's the word derivative?
So it's very much my own thing, drawing from a lot of sources.
I made a few, made AI, made a small like appendix in thread
about it the day before it went live, and I ended up mentioning
a scientific study about the refinement of copper from ions
via the use of specialized bacteria.
So if you just want weird shit, this is probably up your alley.
It is a level 5 adventure started up for both Cairn and
BX. So pretty much any like, you
know, OSR game, you can probably make your own from it.
It's yeah, I don't know what to say that that's that's the
problem with having me. On what's the what's the core?
What's the thrust of the adventure Like?
What what? What gets you up and going in
it? Well here let me just read you
the the Backpage errors ago. A nameless empire needed more.
Soon their need forever more expansive and ever more resource
hungry factories was butting a gun up against the monumental
problem geography itself. It was not worth it to level an
entire mountain range for a factory.
So the factories grew upward and a Gordian knot until it was so
bad something had to be done. The Imperial Match Eyes had a
simply had a simple plan. If the world had outgrown its
usefulness, simply leave it behind and move their industry
to a pocket dimension fueled by hyperbolic space-time.
Once there, they could build out as much as they wish, an entire
clean slate planned to perfection to create the
ultimate factory. And so they did.
That empire fell in one day in a reign of Kayla Mutic fire.
The only remnants was a single bunker housing a portal to a
factory. With the rest of the Empire
destroyed and unable to provide power to the bunker, the pocket
dimension froze. No time is passed inside the
factory, even as the countless aeons have erased even the
faintless memory of the place. It is a relatively small hex
crawl, where in the center there is a factory full of ancient
technology that is very strange and very valuable.
It is very much a knee joint, meaning I don't provide a lot of
hooks. This is should probably be
incorporated into a larger thing.
However, you know, this is AII already say it on here.
It's a fifth level adventure, so you can slot it into much of
anything. A lot of people are going to
want ancient technology. So that's that's kind of the
thrust of it. What is Kylie mutic fire?
Well, do you want the N universe explanation or do you want my
explanation? I mean both is fine.
My explanation? Orbital laser bombardment.
Dope. OK.
Yeah, there's, there's a, there's a lot there.
The world was undone by massive orbital lasers scorched the
Earth. It's that's a not distant
possibility for us that they stopped crashing them into the
atmosphere. Well, no, that that requires
them to be competent enough to send something big up there.
Which way they're just going to. Send from that.
They're just going to send so many that they start crashing
into each other and then slamming down into Earth.
That's. What?
Yeah, we're going to get Castler syndrome.
Oh. God, but that sounds dope.
That sounds dope as hell. Like you said, like being able
to tuck that into basically any setting.
That's one of the things I really like about your
adventures and the way you write in general is I'm a fan of
adventures that just give me the things I need to run it, not
tell me how to run it. You know, like you're not trying
to tell a story. You're just setting the scene
and giving the players and the locations and letting the
players tell the story, which is a how I really enjoy.
Yeah. Same here.
I cannot stand boxed text. Yeah, I don't want to say it's
the right way because everyone can play their own way, but it's
the way that I prefer. You know, yeah, it it's right
for me. And I am the only person who
matters. I mean, you are the writer, so.
Yeah, yeah. It matters for sure.
Yeah. So that is the door in Murex
Canyon, like you said. You you can grab that over at
Space Penguin, Inc. Space Penguin, Inc.
Yeah, we did talk about it on yesterday's episode with with
jerks or chatted about it a little bit more.
So if you want I guess even more why it's probably about the same
amount of detail. Check out that, but we'll make
sure. Obviously, you know, the links
are or below. Make sure you go snag that.
The other one that just my gosh, the cover for the other thing
that recently came out on your itch goes so hard.
So I know you know what I'm talking about.
Tell me about this beautiful thing.
That is almost Von Hind Manor wherein is told a tale of
bloodshed and diableri. This is actually a remake or I
guess kind of remaster in a sense of a one of the earliest
things I ever did for RPGs, which was a little horror
pamphlet about a family of werewolves.
And it has been expanded out from a one page, well I guess 2
page pamphlet to a 20 page half letter Zine.
Which going to say I'm very proud of how it turned out.
This also was done by someone who doesn't do a lot of work in
RPG illustration specifically, but an old high school friend of
mine. Actually, the person who did the
cover art of Red Solstice issue 1, because it's all connected.
Yeah, yeah, the with with the sick ass Unicorn and the, the,
the elf fighting, the fighting the robot that's emerging from
the ground. Yeah.
No, Von Hind Manor was my kind of it was me trying to do like a
slight remix of Dracula. For anyone like familiar with
Dracula, I think you will see some stuff that is that is
lifted straight from there. But yeah, it is all about a very
rich noble family that are tucked away in the fog shrouded
mountains of Bavaria, sometime between the invention of the
flush toilet and the unification of Germany, which admittedly a
fairly wide range, not not the widest, but you know.
And it is entirely system neutral.
And currently it is itch funding on my itch.
The way this works is if it gets to 600 USD of money raised, I'm
basically saying, hey, I've broken even on this.
It's pay what you want. Now I'm, I'm a very firm
believer in having things be pay what you want because I wouldn't
have been able to get into this hobby if it wasn't for free
things. So I'm a big believer in that.
But I did also spend $600.00 between the editing and the
illustration. So, you know, so I don't want to
be $600 in the hole. So I am it's funding to have it
free. But if it does get to $1000
total raised, I am going to do a print run of this and hopefully
get it out to storefront so people can have it for, you
know, themselves so they can see this beautiful art in person.
Yeah, that that's kind of what I've been doing with that.
And I think it's I think it's good.
I wouldn't have released it if I didn't think it was good.
But I've had a bunch of friends run it actually, which is, which
is very rare. I typically don't get a lot of
play reports right as things come out, but I like release
this on Halloween. So a bunch of people were just
like, oh, you released a horror thing on Halloween.
I know what I'm doing tonight. And every, every playthrough
I've heard of this has been like radically different and I find
that so interesting. Well, I mean, again, part of it
is because you, you really you set the scene, you give us a
players, you give us a location and then that and then you play
the adventure. You know, the way that it
strikes you, which again is that is the way that we I really like
to play games versus, like you said, box text.
I mean, if the adventure already has an ending written at the
end, it's not something I want to play, you know what I mean?
Like I want to discover what that is.
And you this does it, it it goes hard.
I actually you actually. I had no, no, you first, you
first and all. Oh, I love the character.
I was going to say I love the character portraits, they're
incredible. But for some reason, the Von
Hein Manor map with just like the way it, I don't even know
it's, it's it's like, how would you describe this little this
style? This is hastily sketched by
yours truly. Yeah, I, I don't know why I love
it so much, but something about it just tickles me in a way
where I'm like, this is like abstract that makes so much
sense at the same time in the way that like you can lay out a
three story building or at least 2 with like a side part for the
servant quarters and it makes total fucking sense.
Yeah, it's great. I I really.
Like the Connect, it's, it's just a big old graph.
It's, it's how, it's how a lot of my home game dungeons
actually, because when I need to just make something where like
the exact dimensions aren't that important.
You know, in a lot of cases I just I just go and start like
making a little graph. Yeah, the all of the portraits
were specifically designed to be in the universe artifacts.
If you pull up the like spread that is that is for family
members the the two sons, daughter and grandma.
That spread, like it is said within the module that there is
an empty frame for a portrait because you know, this, this kid
is too young to have gotten a portrait painted yet.
So we had, we had a lot of fun with that to, to tell you a
little bit of how the sausage is made.
This actually was supposed to be released on Halloween and we
were trying to get it released on Halloween for three
Halloweens in a row, but the editor got very busy, which
happens sometimes. So this is, this has been like a
great weight off of my shoulders creatively because I have just
been sitting on this, you know, mostly, mostly complete document
for a long time. So I'm very happy to get this
out and see people playing it. It is rather horrific, as my
stuff tends to be. There's a there's a lot of dark
stuff, so yeah. Yeah, one of my I mean go buy,
go download it, but one of my favorite things also is the the
option for or is it am I missing like a very first page?
Is it the different lycanthropic natures?
The different lycanthropic natures that like that.
It's so interesting when I first read it and really thought about
playing through something and how vastly different the game
can be just based on like those three options where it's like
just the moon or like the like the either human skin or
wolfskin part. Like it's crazy how you could
approach kind of like, I don't know if you're trying to defeat
the Wolves quote, UN quote kind of thing, how you'd have to
approach things so much differently based on like the
weather chart and and everything like that.
And and they never come to like in Derby.
Yeah, yeah, I, I did like a, I'm not going to say a deep dive,
but I did like a dive into like various historical, like
European Wolfman tales for like a lot of these.
And all that. Stuff Yeah, yeah, the the
Wolfskin 1 was like specifically from my admittedly it's been
like 2 1/2 years since I did that deep dive, probably yeah,
more than that. So I, I can't quite recall off
the top of my head, but I'm but like, yeah, I'm pretty sure it
was a Norse myth about like a a man who had like the wolf pelt
that he could, you know, go back and forth between there's like a
lot, there's a lot of interesting stuff with in like
werewolf mythology. I think like a very famous 1
specifically within southern Slavic mythology.
There isn't really a distinction drawn between like a vampire
blood sucker esque creature and a werewolf, which was also kind
of part of the inspiration for me taking Dracula and making it
about a pack of werewolves. Because I feel like, you know,
you still have this, this very obvious metaphor of the nobility
praying upon the people you know that they rule over.
But I feel like, you know, there's a lot less sensuality in
having your intestines ripped out by a wolf than there is like
your neck bitten, which I feel like is important.
We need, we need a less sensual world.
We need a less sensual world, guys.
Stop. Stop biting necks, people.
Yeah, everything needs to get more unpleasant.
Yeah, gruesome. That's what we really need is
more gruesomeness. In 2025, we'll leave the neck
in, leave the neck in in 2025 and we hit 2026 people.
Yeah. I mean, I don't disagree with
you in in the case of the adventure, right?
Because Dracula. I love vampires.
I love them so much. If I if I had one wish, I would
just wish to be a fucking vampire.
But but I will say it's it's it, it's been done and then done and
then killed and then done and then much like a vampire like
comes back and and keeps fucking going.
Right. But I feel like werewolf hasn't
really been done nearly as much and I'm glad we'll see.
We'll see how Wolfman is with with Eggers coming out, maybe a
lot of. Giggle boom Is.
Is that the one that's going to be in Middle English?
I think so. I'm, I'm not really like an
Edgar's guy, but I'm a really big fan of historical
linguistics and I've watched so many short films that are just
like, hey, here's like a casual conversation and like Old
English and I eat that shit up. So when I heard that there was
like a big movie that is coming out in Middle English, I got
really excited. We'll have to look into that.
Yeah. I mean, because they put out,
they put out like probably the best Disney movie The past 10
years and the best, I think it's a Marvel movie, even the black
and white Wolfman movie that no one's really heard of or seen,
which was crazy thinking that was going to get some some wolf
stuff back. But again, like nobody's even
heard of or seen freaking Wolfman.
I certainly haven't. Oh yeah, Disney released like a
Wolfman Marvel movie and then just didn't promote it at all.
Kind of like Blue Beetle just threw it out there without
telling me it was a blue. Beetle Movie.
Exactly my point. So yeah, But yeah, there's a
black and white Disney Wolfman movie that actually goes kind of
hard. You should check it out.
But yeah, I'm excited anyway. Excited for a werewolf movie.
But I really like the way that you did did push it out of
sensuality into like the the gruesomeness especially.
It just fits so well with having an entire like rich family,
obviously as like the pack of wolves, Like it's just a clever
way to really mix and match all of it.
And then even the color something entire adventure.
Obviously it's got to be red. Obviously it's got to be red,
but the portraits, the way that they're done and it it they're,
it looks like it's painted in blood, which is super dope.
Yeah, they're honestly like talking to, I mean, the the the
illustrator, she's a good high school friend of mine, so
obviously I'm going to have nice things to say about her.
But like, there was a lot of stuff that like, she was like
going into a bunch of stuff. If you have the illustration of
Heidi up specifically, I told her that it was like.
So I told her that was very clever the way that like her
neck is kind of weird and wonky because like, you know, human
necks, the the whole straight down wolf necks, the whole it's,
it's to the back because, you know, quadrupeds versus bipeds.
But hers is kind of just like a weird wonky halfway space.
And I was just like, that's like a really good detail.
And a lot of these are actually like edited from public domain
illustrations and like, you know, bashed together, painted
over to create like a bunch of stuff.
I'm sure if you look at the picture of Dora, you might be
familiar with that skull use quite often in NDRP GS because
it's a pretty sick skull, you got to admit.
But yeah, I know just all of this stuff kind of put together
and she showed me like the original illustration.
She's just like, yeah, the neck was kind of weird on this to
begin with. So I knew that like, that had to
be the base for someone with weird kind of wolfish anatomy.
And there's just, there's just a lot of great details.
I I love the way all of these turned out and seeing them come
from very basic sketches where it's very roughly like photo
bashed together into like the full illustrations was was
absolutely wonderful. So, so for the people that are
going to go download this after they hear all about this, what
is the thrust or what is like the core kind of beginning bit
of of von Heineman or what gets the players kind of up and
running into this area? Like, who are the Von Heines?
Like, yeah, what's their situation like?
So the von Heines are simply a family of specifically Bavarian
nobility in the late 17, early 1800s.
It is a situation rather similar to Dracula, just like a place
that's a backwater. Hardly anyone ever thinks about
it. However, the mother of the
family, Dora von Hind, is a powerful sorceress on top of
being a werewolf, and she is able to tell the future and
every. I believe.
I believe it's every. I think it might be every
solstice or every equinox, I cannot recall off the top of my
head. One of the two.
She can tell people their future and as such, there is just a lot
of very rich people who go to the von Hines to see what the
future holds for them. On top of that, there is just
like a small town nearby, just a, you know, typical Bavarian
village. And it's just like a little hex
that you can drop into your world with just a small little
point crawl in it. If you spend enough money in the
town, the Von Hines will notice and they will invite you because
they do want rich people to give them money.
Yeah, there's, there's just like a lot.
There's not really like a traditional hook because I don't
tend to do those because it's just, it's just like a weird
location that you can get in over your head very quickly.
I love that though, and it's so it's interesting the way you
wrote it to be. Like if things were slightly
different in a couple places this wouldn't exist, but the
town is far enough away from everything else and no one
really messes with it. The von Hines aren't really rich
enough to because I, I love the description of the of Werner,
who he's basically like, I just want to be left alone in the
hunt, but we need the money. So she has to do these readings.
So they're not quite rich enough to not have to do it.
The other noble families aren't like so rich or powerful that
they could really wipe them out. There's this just really cool
coming together of these very specific set of circumstances to
put you in like this exact tiny little hex for it to work out
where like if it even if the town was a little bit bigger,
because there's even a part where it talks about, you know,
generation. Maybe a couple of generations
ago, the town could have got together and wiped out the Von
Hines. But like there's not enough of
the people now. So everything is kind of in this
perfect mix and, and stuff where all of this like makes sense in
a really interesting way where again, if any, any of those
factors are going to push in different direction, the whole
thing would kind of fall apart or, or not the adventure.
But just like the situation, someone would move or something
would, would trigger something. But it's there's almost this
like stasis that this little hex is in and it's just in this
constant loop because everyone is like just not quite able to
kind of break out of it. It it, I don't know, it feels
really cool. What can I say it, it's gothic
baby. Yeah, I know.
I yeah, yeah. The, the thing that I, the, I
think the part of The thing is like, because this was kind of
sitting mostly finished for like 2 years, I ended up like
rereading it, having forgotten most of it.
And it made me realize what kind of stuff I put in a module that
makes it a me module. And I think part of that is
there's just a lot of random events that can entirely change
the course of this that are just totally outside the players
control. And it's not just like, Oh yeah,
rocks fall, everyone dies. But there's like a, there's
there's like holding cells for people who are going to be
butchered and eaten. And there's just a chance that
there is someone in there. Not there's not always going to
be someone in there, but there is a chance.
And there's like AD 4 list of like the different people who
can be there. And you know, there's, I mean, I
guess it's all about maximizing the chaos.
You know, you're never sure what exactly a playthrough is going
to be like. Well, because once again, you
know, going through the adventure, you really, you know,
the we got, we got John Davis in the chat and like the location
is the hook. Like you really give this the,
the, the little hex part with the little point crawl in it.
And it really is just here's a list of random encounters.
Here's a list of all of the people, including like all 20
servants. And then every, you know, kind
of space that they could go with the stuff that's there.
And then you hit the back cover and you go, OK, I have all of
the things to do it, and now I just have to go do it again.
There's no direction. There's no ending.
Like, I don't know, I love it. The the only way for it to end
is someone important to die. Much like real life.
Yeah, yeah, Actually, John Davis in the chat, you know, I already
mentioned it, but I, but I think hammers would be like a great
way to to do this. You know, there's a lot of
Catholicism going on in this. I mean, it's a mountain, it's a
small Bavarian village. I guess there's got to be some
amount of Catholicism. Yeah, John said probably about
10 minutes ago, want to run this with hammers.
So I think you guys are on the same page.
That means I think maybe one of the next APS we get to on the
channel should be bomb Hind with hammers.
And yeah. You, me and well, I guess you
would have to run it and then me, John and Hunter can play in
it and there we go. Yeah, I'd love that.
But yeah, I know those have been the two kind of commercial
releases of October. Of October, yeah.
Because because I, you know, I'm not releasing everything.
I'm not releasing one thing a month anymore.
But I, I still think I'm fairly prolific because I've done some
other stuff this year on my, like, blog.
I actually released two different spell Jammer
adventures, you know, because I'm a, I'm a big fan of Spell
jammer. One of them is heavy on the
horror, because of course it is. Horror.
The dialect stuff, you know how it is.
No, that was a, it was a question mark.
I was like, I wasn't sure if you were saying one syllable or two
there. Yeah, no, no, it's a, it's a
it's like how I say pillow instead of pillow.
Oh, gotcha. How do you say?
How do you say BUTTON? Button.
That's right, it's not baton
anyway, but so what's what's what's your blog?
Where can people find Yeah? Yeah, no, my, my my blog is let
me find the the URL actually exactly.
It is pounds of nothing POUNDSOV no OF sorry NOTHIN
g.blogspot.com. I post there on the regular.
Unlike a lot of other blogs, I don't tend to do like theory
posting or like mechanic posting.
It tends to just be a stuff that is.
I definitely think it's posting. Oh no, no, I was talking about
something else. Never mind.
Yeah, yeah, I just tend to post shit that is eminently usable.
For example, my most recent thing was AD 66 random potion
generator. Nothing with like any of the
actual like potions there in, but instead it is like trying to
figure out the properties of it. All sorts of stuff.
Had fun with that. I post monsters, massive hex
maps, hacks for games. I've actually currently been
running a small little community blogging project called the
Magic Mask Relay, where the way it works is you write up one
magic mask and then you tag someone else to write a magic
mask and they tag someone else. And then eventually when we've
gotten 100 magic masks, then it's over.
We've done the relay. It has been a little bit slow
going, but I've still been having fun with it.
I don't know, I just, I just do a lot of stuff, I guess.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You also, I don't know if we
talked about this or maybe I'm making this up.
You already have Eastlake Village outright like.
The oh, Oh yeah, yeah. So there is, yeah, The Song of
Eastlake, which was a massive multiversal hex crawl that I did
not end up mailing you a copy. I was planning on it, but life
got crazy. Would you believe that Actually
Red Solstice Issue 6 was the reason why I ended up mailing
out the international copies of Eastlake?
It was. It was a Well, the reason I was
delaying it is because it would cost like $400 to mail out all
the international copies. Oh, wow.
Yeah. And admittedly, part part of
that was the fact that I waited so long, but like, I was waiting
so long because I didn't know how international shipping was
going to go down because, you know.
The world and all the things in it, yeah.
Yeah, all all the problems they're in, but all.
Problems in the world. Great shopping.
I think it's Germany. Yeah, it is.
It is German. If you if you want to pick up
some of my RPG zines, you can actually do that at all the
problems in the world in Germany.
So yeah, if. But you said but but you said
there's another, your work. Is there going to be another
Eastlake? Yes, there is actually a work on
Eastlake 2. This is not being ran by me this
time, but is instead being ran by someone who contributed to
Eastlake. One Hags shout hags.
Love her. I am still going to be doing the
layout on this. And if you've seen the layout
for The Song of Eastlake, you will know that means I'm in for
way more work than I reasonably should be because I cannot help
myself and go all out. For any people unfamiliar with
The Song of Eastlake and that is a project it started off by,
well, it started off with two basic ideas.
One of them was kind of cemented during the time that I played a
game of Morc Borg, that lovely Swedish game, which I was taught
how to pronounce it by a Danish person.
So whenever I go to pronounce it how I was taught by a Danish
person, all the Swedes look at me like I'm insane.
Which, you know, fair enough. That is the appropriate reaction
to Danish. You know, like Mork Bori or
something like that. Some.
Yeah, well, part of The thing is it's actually cognate with
English Mercbury, which I imagine there's probably a Mork
Borg hack about playing like the world's worst pensioner called
that. Mercbury it's.
Nice. Yeah.
Mercbury. Where was that?
Oh yeah, yeah, we played Goblin. I think it's Goblin Gulch by
Dyson Logos, and we played it in Mark Borg, and the thing about
the goblins there is that if a goblin attacks you, you have to
kill the goblin within a day or you become a goblin.
And that radically changed the dynamic of this fairly standard
adventure. So between that and me doing
like a playthrough of the Wilderlands of High Fantasy as a
solo hex crawl where I was like bringing my own things just
like, OK, so like they say, there's goblins here, but like,
what's the deal with these goblins?
It made me work on a project where I made a very small
bestiary and then a very small, very bare bones hex crawl.
And I had people fill out this bestiary like, hey, what is an
orc? Like, sure, we can all say like,
yeah, they're like green pig nose guy, you know, but like,
no, no, tell me, tell me what exactly an orc is.
And they fill out this bestiary. They create the setting just
from these monsters. And then they have to fill out
the hex crawl, which is just, you know, it's very bare bones,
but it's just like 13 goblins, 5 works conflict.
And you have to make sense of that with what you ended up
writing with the bestiary. So you end up getting like these
same like variations on, you know, the same idea just
repeated over and over again. And we're currently working on a
version of that, but with a dungeon instead of a hex crawl.
So that's that's fun. If you want to pick up the song
of Eastlake. It is currently unlisted on,
well, unindexed on Itch and has been since its start.
I don't think it's ever getting indexed.
No idea why, it's just not. You can ask, they say you can
like it's after like 3 days. You're supposed to be able to to
like e-mail them and be like hey why the heck?
And it's indexed. Well, that at this point, who
knows, maybe when we publish Eastlake too, they'll index both
of them. Or maybe not.
But if you want to find it on Itch, if you go to my Itch page
and go down to projects I have contributed to, it will be
there. Yeah.
The The Song of Eastlake by the Eastlake Choir.
It's it's good and it's free because it would be way too much
of A hassle to actually split royalties with that many
contributors. So if you want a / 200 page RPG
setting book that is eminently playable and really easy to like
slot into like weird multiverse travel stuff, Song of Eastlake's
probably for you. I've probably talked about this
on the show before, but I think. I think you you you might have,
but still, I mean, it's dope. I have I have the hex map and
table of contents pulled up right now and just the list of
people on there is crazy. You know, like Brandon, you
Christian Kessler, Christian Sorrell Kirsch, I mean Luke.
Gearing. Still like, still like Andre.
I mean, look at this crazy. Yeah.
Pretty Luke. Gearing, yeah.
It's, you know, Reese Carter, the IT, it, it's, it's a, it's
a, it's a who's who of like dope, like indie OSR people that
should all be more famous than they are if we were in a
different, you know. Scene Yeah yeah that there's
there's some amazing stuff and there's the the thing that's
most surprising to me is that there's two different mech
warfare submissions and also two different Midwestern horror
submissions which that I'm I'm going to say that it's it's
interesting even seeing people like tackle the same genre,
seeing how that differs person to person based on their
artistic kind of thing. For for example, the the two Max
one of them is very much like about like alien exploration and
weird cool powers and the other one I'm going to say that was
done by nuclear obelisk shout out.
The other one was done by Sam Sorensen and that one is I mean
it's very much a Sam Sorensen joint.
So it's like very much about logistics, you know, and the the
two Midwestern horror, one done by Eva Klein, the other by Jason
Wardell. I would say Eva Klein's horror
is very wet, while Jason Wardell's one is very dry.
And I will not elaborate beyond that.
Wet horror is, yeah, it's interesting.
That could just be like a thing to ask people, are you a wet
whore or a dry whore person you know?
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
And there is also for talking about stuff I've released
digitally recently, there is the Forbidden module, which yes, I
did release something. Let's see when I'll.
I'll check the date on that. If I scroll up and then down.
Yeah, I I released this in March 2025.
It is called Escape from the Eve Compound and it is a modern day
mythos horror adventure that I cannot talk about the contents
of on Twitch. I just genuinely cannot.
So yeah, I think this is like one of the only things in recent
memory I have like started out the Itch page with a content
warning because it's a lot. It is a lot.
But if you want to start one of the most insane paranormal
investigation tabletop role-playing game campaigns, I
guess you could. It's a lot.
I'll say even just reading the intro, because most of your
adventures have like a solid this is what the fuck, you know,
at the beginning. And it's quite a lot.
Yeah. I would definitely say it's
there's a content warning on it, but my goodness, it sounds, it
sounds great. It's a lot though, yeah.
It's, it's a lot. What, what can I say when I when
I write mythos horror, I don't fuck around.
Obviously not. No.
If you read this you will know. Yeah, yeah, I this is, this is
the problem with being annoying about cosmic horror generally is
that I think everyone else is doing it wrong because, because
too many people expect to survive.
Oh, maybe that's, that's what's great about gothic horror is
that like there is no happy ending.
Everyone dies. And if you if you happen to
live, it's usually like in squalor and depression until you
just die anyway. Yeah, yeah.
And, and I really like, I, I lean into that when I do like
cosmic horror stuff. So, yeah, if you, if you want a
very fucked up, you know, module about libertarians in West TX, I
I can say that with I can say that with impunity that is about
is about tech libertarians in West TX.
Isn't it kind of funny how in 2025 there are no libertarians?
A. Random, random political mess
here, Yeah. Yeah, no.
But yeah, this module is also very political.
Oh, really? Yeah, escape from the Eve
compound. I was, I was being sarcastic.
Yeah, a little bit just touches on some things that are that are
hot button, I'll say. Yeah, very hot button.
And I don't name drop. I don't name drop Donald Trump.
I just say the current president because it's set in July 2025.
I'm sure you can figure that out yourself.
Yeah. Yeah, it was in the in the in
the far future of July 2025 when it was released March 2025
there. You go wait, wait, wait in the
hey, listen, who knows what's going to happen month to month
anymore. So it's it's it's you know, the
difference could be could be quite a lot.
So are you got anything else that's cooking right now besides
apparently this AP that we got to plan at?
Some point? Well, for stuff cooking, this
was actually I am, I mentioned earlier that I am working on
some more mothership stuff after a fairly long hiatus of like
doing mothership stuff. And part of that actually is
that I'm working on a the hex crawl for mothership.
I will not give a lot of details now, but it is in the works
entirely because a bunch of redditors really pissed me off.
Like Reddit does, yeah. I'm not a.
Reddit person. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm.
I'm not typically a Reddit person either.
However one of my things got posted in R/DND memes and ended
up getting like a lot of attention like an absurd.
I was just like where the fuck am I getting like 1000 views on
this from in like 1 day And I I find the Reddit thread and it is
people discussing my rim bound transmission.
The pamphlet called Deep Space Marines, which is a collection
of five private military companies that you could work
for. And one of them is called Yes
Girls Private Security, which the basic premise of it is that
the people there have to undergo extensive plastic surgery in
order to look like real life anime women and in the process
have their identity entirely destroyed in order to appeal to
rich men. And a bunch of Redditors tried
to argue with me that I actually have a fetish for undergoing
extensive plastic surgery to look like an anime woman.
And I told them, no, I don't. I actually hate anime.
And they're just like, prove it. And then I posted proof and
they're just like, wow, why do you hate anime so much?
I'm just like, OK, well, I can't win with you people, but there
is a bunch of people in the Commons talking about how bad it
was for the mothership brand that Tuesday night games allowed
me to publish that with a third party license.
So I, I told, you know, I, I added Sean McCoy and I was just
like, hey, we have a, we have APR crisis.
A bunch of Redditors think I got a boner and Sean was just like,
fuck no, this can't be happening to us or good publicity.
So it was the kick in the butt I need.
I'm just like, I've been thinking about doing a
mothership hex crawl for a while and originally I was going to do
like a big mothership mech hex crawl and then I realized I
didn't want to write a mech system, which happens.
So this is going to be a weird, weird hex crawl about biological
horror. We're going to see the the Yes
Girl security squad or. Probably not.
But then it's not really like a a you.
Know I don't don't worry, I'll I'll include something that
someone will think is a fetish. Yeah, I mean like a random table
encounter or something is then like you want to buy or
something and like, you know. A lady with boobs so big it
kills you instantly. Yeah, yeah, or some other shit,
I don't know. Got to be something, but I mean,
if it's you, it's going to be, it's going to be weird and
gruesome and crazy anyway, so we'll see.
We'll see what comes from it. But but so, so we talked about
your blog, We talked everything. Where can people find the rest
of your stuff? Where is all of Stella on the
Internet? If you want to find me on the
Internet, probably the best place to do that is Blue Sky.
I use it quite regularly on there.
You can find me at Evil Goblin dot Wedding.
I additionally have a Mastodon account where I do a lot of like
RPG blogging related stuff. However, that account is
actually is mirrored onto Blue Sky automatically and same is
actually true for my Blue Sky account.
So you can find my Blue Sky account on Mastodon and follow
me there and you can find my Mastodon account on Blue Sky and
that would be at 500 lbs of nothing.
If you just search on Blue Sky, you will probably find that
Mastodon account. So, yeah, that's kind of where
you can find most of my stuff if you want, like specifically the
RPG stuff, you should probably follow that Mastodon account
either on Blue Sky or Mastodon itself.
And yeah, that's that's kind of where you can find me.
That's where I will be posting links to my blog.
That is where, you know, I will admitly, actually I do, I do
post like my main, like it releases to my blue Sky.
So I guess follow me there as well, but.
Either way, you can find me on on on either of your Twitter
clones of choice. And then obviously your itch has
been underneath you the whole time 500 times nothing dot H dot
IO and all of this stuff will be in, in the links where you can
click it either on, on on the podcast or, or it's 2025.
You know how to find people. Just go to the notes of the
show, right? There's another thing that you
were talking about before the show started, though.
Yes, yes, there is one thing I want to advertise.
This is something that I am doing as a favor for a friend,
but honestly, it is something that I believe in anyways, if
you go to the website www.momgenesfightppd.org.
And the thing about genes, it's not like the pants, it's like
genetics. MOMGENESFIGHTPP d.org.
If you are over 18 or over 21 in Puerto Rico and have given
birth, if you were willing to donate some genetic material in
the form of blood, you would be able to work on this project
that is trying to find a possible genetic link between
postpartum depression and, well, your genes.
This is, you know, I'm going to say a fairly good thing if you
can, you know, if you're willing to part with some blood.
I know that's that's kind of ironic of me after I was talking
about preferring werewolves over over vampires.
But still you should you ought to part with some blood if you
can and have given birth and this is something you would be
interested in. A lot of people suffer from
postpartum depression and you know, anything to help out.
You know, this is you know, this isn't entirely out the goodness
of my heart. My friend works at the lab that
is doing this, but I think that this is still a good thing to
do. And it has been kind of crazy
for them because of funding stuff because like a lot of
funding got cut. If, like you mentioned, women in
like your study, which is which did make like studying
postpartum depression harder because they were no longer
allowed to use the word woman due to do the stuff which, yeah,
it's it's just insane. Everything is insane right now.
But yeah, again, if you are over 18 or 21 in Puerto Rico and you
have given birth and you want to, you know, do something good
for people and for science everywhere, go to WWW.
Mom jeans, fightppd.org. The link of that will probably
be in the description, but it you know, if not, just just go
to Internet Explorer or your other favorite browsers and and
go in there and yeah, there. You go yeah, we'll make sure
that that's down there. Yeah, I think Internet Explorer
doesn't exist anymore, but I'm definitely an edge guy, so we'll
will excuse me for for that mistake.
Sell it. Listen, it has been wonderful to
talk to you. We got to have you on the show
again soon. We haven't done APS in quite a
while because both Honor and my schedules have kind of been a
little bit crazy. We got packs coming next week,
but starting with the new year, I think because December's
always kind of slow for us, we got to get back to APS, maybe
Von Hein with Hammers and John Davis, and then get Josh back on
the show as well and get the gang back together.
But it was a pleasure to talk to you.
Thank you so much for coming on as a regular guest this time.
Glad to, glad to be here. Yeah, if anyone wants to, you
know, talk, if anyone's run any of my modules and like wants to
talk to me about it, I am genuinely always down for that.
And just hit me up on social media.
I'd love to hear about whatever insane shit you get up to with
my stuff. Most of it's available on Itch.
Currently the Doran Murex Canyon, only available via
Spink, but you know, there's good stuff.
Hope all you all have a great day.
Yeah. Thank you so much, everyone that
was here in chat and you have a great day as well, Stella.
We'll see everybody later. Bye.