Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan. And I'm Char Asnabel.
And today we're joined by a couple of very special guests.
We have Charlotte and Binary here today.
How are you? How are you guys doing?
Good. Good.
Thanks for coming on the show. Stoked to have you of.
Course, thanks for having us on. Yeah.
And for those out there who might not know who either of you
are, who who, who the heck are you?
Let's start with Charlotte. I do data entry for my uncle,
that's who I. Am cool, cool, cool, cool.
And what what might people have known you from with your
previous works? I've made Daisy chainsaw and
rose thorn keep and celestial bodies.
Game saw excited for that and people tomorrow might be excited
for it as well for some reason. And binary star games?
How? How are you and what might
people know you from? Well, I'm binary star.
He, him. That's my real name.
You might know me from running Binary Star games as mentioned
specifically, you might know Apocalypse Frame.
You might might know Value and Horizon.
Most recently I put out corpse layers.
I put a lot of shit I don't know.
I guess I made celestial bodies too.
I guess that counts you. Like the backbone of celestial
bodies. And celestial bodies, yeah,
we're, we're going to get to celestial bodies because
obviously that's kind of the main reason why we're here.
It's why there's a logo next to my head that you guys can't see.
But that kind of went crazy on Itch, and we'll get to that.
But as I just kind of alluded to a second ago, people might be
excited for Daisy Chainsaw. We actually did an episode on
Daisy Chainsaw on Friday that's going to release tomorrow
because I worked all weekend. But what's funny is before we
started the show we were talking as we always do about random
shit. And so you guys have made a lot
of mech games or mech associated games or things and art haven't
really done a lot of mech anime like Red or say or seen a lot of
mech anime or manga. What?
Why? Why Max?
I love robots. Also, I the reason I wanted to
make celestial bodies is because every MET game I've played and
tabletop games was not satisfactory, which is the same
reason I made Dizzy Chainsaw, because I couldn't find a
magical girl game that I liked. So I was tinkering with
celestial bodies like in 2021-2022 and I never really got
anywhere with it. So I was like, oh, and then I,
after Binary commissioned me from Valley Horizon, I was like,
oh, do you want to help me with this celestial bodies game?
We can collab, I'll help you with this and or you help me
with this and I'll help you with something.
And then it exploded and we got hit by the celestial bodies bus.
Yeah. I had like 3 different works in
progress that got hit by that bus, by the way.
They're coming eventually. I don't know.
We'll see. It's funny because that was
going to be my next question was like, how did you guys team up?
So it all kind of it all kind of comes from celestial bodies.
That's where that's where you guys kind of started it.
Started from valley and horizon. I commissioned Charlotte for
Valley and Horizon like Charlotte did all of the
interior art for every class in that.
Go look it up, it's all bangers. No, I I've seen Valley and
Horizon too. Trust me, I I am a fan of of all
of your things, including Corp slayers, so so yeah.
Yeah, Speaking of, I think you have like one of the four copies
of corpse layers that's out there that I printed.
So good work. Thank you.
But yeah, as far as Mex, well, First off, my personal priors is
like, I mean, as a boy growing up, I love robots, of course.
I mean, I studied robotics in college even.
So specifically though, my priors are weird on that because
my main priors are like Armored Core and Front Mission.
I don't know if you know anything about Front Mission,
but it's more like a Cold War game with a side of mechs.
So that sounds cool. It's dope, but you know, yeah,
I. Think more of a classic mech
background like I watch a bunch of Gundam growing up, watch code
geass, watch Evan Gallium which is mech ish and.
And that's real technical. There's not.
There's metal on them. There is many.
They are living creatures. And then people go inside them,
so it's. It's kind of a hits all the
technical. Does this count?
Yeah, you're basically driving like angels in armor suits, but
like whatever. Like spoiler alert for like a 20
year old anime guys but. It's if you haven't seen
Evangelion yet, well, that's your fault I guess.
It's your fault, actually. Yeah, it doesn't bother me at
all. And I and we were talking about
Gundam obviously is too. I've not seen the one that is
your favorite. I know that a lot of people's
favorites. A newer 1 the The Witch.
What? Is it rich from mercury?
I've not seen witch from Mercury.
I really the last one I really saw was Origin, which I thought
was a fantastic retelling of like the the original, you know,
with Char and tomorrow and everything.
I don't know what anyway, God, nobody exists and we're talking
about Max. And then I guess one of the
other things again we've brought up a number of times is Daisy
Chainsaw. So why?
Why a magical girl game? And like what other ones I guess
are out there? We've only seen like one or two.
Like I think there's like a like one of the Jarrett Sinclair
hacks, like what's so great about magical girls or whatever.
But I haven't seen a ton of magical girl games.
So what made you want to make that?
Because I wanted to play a magical girl game and there
aren't a lot of them. I actually started it.
It was kind of on accident. It was probably like four years
ago now during a game jam on a Discord server I'm in.
Before I was like in the scene, I made the first iteration of
Daisy Chainsaw and like 2 weeks and learned affinity on the side
while I was doing it and that. And so it looked really bad, but
that's fine. And then I worked on it kind of
on and off for a few more years. I had friends help me write
abilities and I did a lot of art and then I scrapped the art and
did the art again and then I scrapped the art and did the art
again and then I got it edited and then I scrapped the art and
then I did the pixel art and that was the one in the book.
I probably have like 5 iterations of drawings where I
was like, oh, I'll do it in this style.
And then I didn't like it anymore after like a month and
but I wanted to make a magical girl game because I wanted to
make one of my friends run a magical girl game for me.
And but we didn't like any of the systems.
So I was like, I have to finish this so we can run it.
And I called it Daisy Chainsaw before I knew there was a band
Daisy Chainsaw. And then after I named it Daisy
Chainsaw, everyone kept making Lollipop Chainsaw references.
So that's how I learned about Lollipop Chainsaw.
Now I get those references which is cool like.
Oh, I thought you knew about that beforehand.
Oh, that's awesome. I.
Didn't know about Lollipop Chainsaw until like a year after
I was I started working on it. I was like, Oh well, that
exists. Yeah, nice space between
Lollipop, Pain Saw and then Daisy Chainsaw, which, like, I
mean, the lead singer was like, well, at least like Courtney
Love called her like one of the original riot girls.
So I assumed that, like you, you knew Daisy Chainsaw.
That's interesting. I I it wasn't an intentional
reference. I just thought the I, I, I
thought I was, I, I thought Daisy chain and then Daisy
Chainsaw and I was like, well, that's a cool name for magical
girls game. And then everyone's like, oh,
there's a band called Daisy Chainsaw.
And I was like, Oh, well, there was my CEOSEO, there's my CEO.
That's pretty. That's a bunch of little happy
accidents. You know that you found this,
this name. That's like double referential
they. Both fit.
Yeah, they're. Appropriate.
It's funny because I, I, I told Hunter I was like, did you
listen to Daisy Chainsaw while you read the game?
Because like it, it works like they're a bunch of riot girls
for like the magical girl anime. So.
No, I listened to Dungeon since while I've read it, which is not
the same vibe at all but it's what I had in my reading games
playlist so. I have an official Daisy
Chainsaw playlist that I've never linked anywhere, but I
titled it Official Daisy Chainsaw Playlist so I can look
into it. I should probably.
Searchable on Spotify. You just throw it on itch or
something or I I guess on on maybe the SPI page or something.
I'll have to find it in my pile of 100,000 playlists, yeah.
Yeah. And then?
So for Daisy, for magical girls, like what is your like point of
reference or like what inspired you to want to play magical
girls? Like what is your past with
that? Are you like purely a Sailor
Moon person or because there's like a million different series
so. So it's really similar to the
mech situation where I just kind of made magical girls out of the
idea of magical girls I had in my head.
I didn't start watching magical girl anime until well after I I
was doing celestial bodies. I mean, I watched Sailor Moon as
a kid. I don't remember anything about
it. I've been I want to I'm trying
to learn more about Sailor Moon because of unrelated stuff.
I think it's cute, but I I didn't really have like I
watched Madoka Magica, but that wasn't until celestial bodies
was like released or Daisy chainsaw was released.
Sorry. And so there was no real like
inspiration drawn from those things.
I feel like one of one of my favorite parts about Daisy
Chainsaw is that you could make the character from chainsaw man
in it, which is not a magical girl, but it it at that point it
is a magical girl like you can make you can turn into a
chainsaw guy and so now. Yeah.
It's funny if we're not watching all of those series, how well
you can hit the beats of what the series are about.
And even like in the kind of GM guide, how like the episodes are
kind of formulated. They're like the overarching
like narrative with enemies or even like your use of mascots.
Like is, are these like things that you went and sought or did
you just inherently put these in and they fit?
I don't remember, but I think it's just stuff that like I knew
about. Like I'm not like it's not like
just because I didn't watch me doesn't mean I don't know what's
going on. And I have friends who like
magical girl stuff like the aforementioned friend I need to
make run Daisy chainsaw for me. So I just sort of.
And then my editor also Matt K helped a lot with name.
He I think he helped name the, you know, the, you know, episode
season sort of naming scheme there.
So. But that was pretty close to
what I wanted to do anyway. Very cool.
Yeah, it's really interesting that like again, you've you hit
the nail on both mech stuff and magical girl stuff without being
like deeply into either. So very good job for that.
It came out of the primordial soup of things I've vaguely seen
online. There you go.
Well. And then Speaking of Max, so
binary star, I know one of the early things that I saw from
you. I have seen Valley Horizon, but
apocalypse frame again getting into the next step a little bit
more. I guess similar ish questions
with Daisy chains like where where why Max?
I know you talked about you were robots and you're in robotics
and stuff, but like what made you want to go from I like
robots to I made a pretty cool like illuminated by Lumen
apocalypse frame like my game. OK so Apocalypse frame is a
weird one because everyone always says it's an Armored Core
game and I say that too. Just I'm the reality, it's for
marketing partially. I mean, it's not wrong, but
that's a big, that's a big unifying point.
It's actually a Xenoblade X game knobbies.
That's where it started. That was my document.
So that is really a touch point in that sense.
If you look at it from that perspective, you can see a lot
of the decisions like why there's divisions, why there's,
you know, kind of a mission structure, like why you know,
why it's organized around like a central point, that kind of
thing. Because I was just trying to get
through that game in 2021 when I found out about Lube and I was
like, you know what, this works perfectly, just like looking
peanut butter and jam. So let's, let's see if this,
let's see if I can make something out of this.
This was about a year and a half into making 36th Way, which is
like a big 13th age conversion, which is on my side.
If you care, it exists. I don't think it's my best work,
but it's a lot of it. The.
Other half is celestial bodies and like 1% other stuff.
Yes, no, I think that combined that's like 220 pages.
Celestial bodies like 270 pages right now.
So I think the two of those combined are probably like, I
don't know, 80% of my output, but yeah, Celestial.
Bodies just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger yeah.
And we can we we can talk about that a bit.
One thing I noticed the transition to celestial bodies
is apocalypse frame is very much about like bad shit happens and
it comes to you right to Earth and everything and celestial
bodies is kind of opposite like bad should happen and everyone
did left. Was there was that a thought at
all or was it just like the the ideas that you wanted to have or
more of like either on Earth or like in space That's.
Interesting. Do you want to talk about that,
Charlie? I mean social.
So the reason I did that is because I had this idea in my
head of giant like cruise ship spaceships that everyone was on
and that had giant greenhouses like right in the middle where
they grew all their food and like got oxygen and stuff from
this huge greenhouses that they just have floating around in
space. And then it just kind of spawned
from there. That's where the story.
But the story started because I liked greenhouse spaceships
there. You go very.
Cool. Nothing wrong with that.
I also like the idea, it sounds pleasant.
Yeah, like I always thought, like, what if you're in space?
Do you get to hang out with some plants?
That sounds cool. That doesn't.
Hang out plants anywhere, man. So.
Yeah, I have a snake plant. That's that's what I got.
So celestial bodies, right? Like we talked about it when it
was itch funding a while back and it kind of blew the fuck up.
Like I don't know if I've seen an itch project like make that
much money in that short a period of time.
It was like almost like Kickstarter money on itch, which
is an interesting thing that happened.
But tell me about how like obviously you guys said you got
hit by the bus of celestial bodies.
Like, how did it feel for that to kind of like come out and
then just blow up? So when we so we soft launched
the itch page to make sure there were no issues with like getting
rewards or whatever and I added fifty community copies just in
case anyone found it. And then we went to bed and when
I woke up it was $1000. We had not announced anything.
People. There was a thread like a
dedicated thread in the official Lancer Discord that people had
made to look out for the launch of celestial bodies.
And that's where a lot of which people bought it from because
someone spotted it like as soon as it went live and then linked
it there. And then I had some piece,
someone messaged me the next morning like, oh, I'm glad I had
insomnia. And I was able to stay up
because I wanted to get the, you know, Max reward, which was
$200.00. And it was gone by the time they
would have, they woke up the next day and I was like, oh, OK.
And we had to limit that because of the amount of work and it was
still a lot of work for all the stuff we had to.
So much work. Almost it.
Was so there have. 41 factions in the book right now.
Nineteen of those are Bevan backers, just so you know.
And half of them, half the hard part, was just getting people to
fill out the form so we could actually make them.
That that that sounds right, actually.
That hurting it was a lot. So I had had some experience
with itch funding prior. I had funded valley and horizon.
It made just shy of 3000 bucks. 3000 was a ish I I figured.
So at that point the highest itch fund was I think 4300.
I think that was anyone can wear the mask because like before
this launched, I I like looked up what the highest itch funds
were just for my own benefit. I want to say actually no, the
highest one was some like first Zeem months thing for like 4800
celestial bodies made 87 something like.
So right now I think we're the number one ditch fund.
Other people have surpassed that 4800 number since, but I don't
think anyone's passed us yet. How that happened is fuck I
don't. We don't know.
We didn't do. Anything a big thing is just I
had a huge mailing list from Apocalypse Frame and it's like I
I don't have a better answer for you other than I emailed them
and then our number went up. Emailing does make numbers go up
consistently. I don't even remember where I
originally saw it because I back to day one, like I've acted like
the second it dropped and I don't even remember where like
what link I saw to it. But as soon as I saw like the
writing, the even just like the the the font, you guys chose the
art, I was like, I don't care. I'm doing this thing and and and
everyone else apparently did the same thing too.
And that's crazy that this that you guys are like the highest
funded like itch project ever still.
And that sounds like by almost double which is which is
absolutely not. And it's pretty crazy.
One antidote about that. OK, so when two people buy an
itch roar at the same time and it's the last one because this
happened to us, it's just kind of shrugs and goes, OK, you can
both have it. Yes, someone bought the last
$200 tier I believe at this within a minute of each other,
so basically at the exact same time and each gave it to both of
them. So they were only 5 and we end
up doing 6. Why functioning just as well as
we would all expect it to. We didn't know this could happen
and we didn't know it would happen so.
It was. Very strange.
We we had no idea because like just the idea of that happening
is very, very strange in general.
But I was like, why did why does it say 6 out of five rewards
that I checked and it just had them both like like recently
bought the same time And I was like, oh OK, sure I guess.
Six out of five. I can't imagine that that's not
something that's going to come up like super often or people to
buy like a limited reward within like, you know, the same minute
of each other. Yeah, I assume they had to have
both had the payment window up at the same time as how that
probably happened. But.
Yeah, that means they would have had to do it within a minute,
Yeah. Well, you guys just had to do 6,
which just added to the, the list of like the 19 other things
you had to do. Because if you look at the
original, the original celestial bodies version and then you look
at the schools I have, what do I I have the terrestrial edition,
right. If you look at the Titan
edition, like like basically the entire middle of the book is
just like factions. And it's like a huge chunk of
that like, like I guess backer rewards from itch.
I would accept Scavengers and Infinity.
We did. We didn't make any original ones
for this edition. We're going to later.
Binary is frozen. They are.
Classic, classic. There we go.
We're. Back Yeah, yeah, we didn't make
any original ones. We're going to make original,
more original ones for the Titanic Eclipse edition.
There were just so many backer factions that we were like, we
had to figure those out first so people could have them, and
we're like, we'll just do everything later.
Binary. Do you have your test print of
the potential final soft cover version?
I'll check the shit out. It's that.
Blur. The blur put.
It in front of you and it'll unblur.
There you go. So we're going to do a softcover
version on the Kickstarter that's cheaper than the
hardcover version, but to make sure it was viable, Binary
copied a bunch of pages and ordered it in black and white to
see if it would it would like hold up.
By itself duplicated the faction section.
That's all I had. To do.
That's a thick boy. That's a thick boy.
Was there ever any thought about potentially like just having
like the book and then like a faction book?
Yes, yeah, but we didn't feel like it.
See, what I hate and like is if you get like half of the book
and you're like, oh, I can't actually do anything with this
without the other half. Like the DND, like players
handbook, monster manual situation where it's like, OK, I
can kind of do something with this, but like not really.
We want to do eat that shit. Factions are really important in
celestial bodies because like the whole like mission process
is revolves around and progression revolves around the
factions you meet. So separating them kind of means
like if you lose the factions book, well, what are you going
to do now? Yeah, and all factions double
it. Like the only enemies we have in
there are factions right now, So I did.
Print all of celestial bodies. I forgot about that.
For a solo game, let me see if I can get it.
Here's all explicit bodies currently printed.
Nice. It's so I can play it solo, but
the factions tab is is huge. Like massive.
A massive chunk of pages. And that's like 8 1/2 by 11 too.
That's not even the size of like the the the regular book as
well. Yeah, it's 8 1/2.
Yeah, it's regular printer paper.
I didn't, I didn't adjust the zoom or anything.
I wanted more margin space. Our current PDF is 6 by 9, so it
wasn't too, too much different. But yeah, it's very, it's very
big. The factions are very important,
which is why we have so many of them because they're just kind
of like the core. Everything revolves around the
factions and who you meet. We kind of dug right into
celestial bodies without really even saying for those that might
not know what celestial bodies is like, what the heck is
celestial bodies? I guess what's the what's like
the elevator pitch for the game and then for those listening,
you know, now we'll learn it our.
Community copies are any indications.
Yeah, but so, yeah, so. So what's the pitch for
celestial bodies? OK by any?
OK, I guess I'll do it. Celestial bodies.
It's a mech tabletop game. I don't have the rest of the
pitch yet. I haven't had to think about
that before. My favorite part is the grid and
all the grids. It's just it's, it's, it's in my
tabletop game. There's not a lot of like like
story wise. I feel like it's not super
different from a lot of other MET games.
I once had someone ask me on Tumblr to sell them on it over
Lancer and I just ignored the ask because I'm like if you need
me to sell it for you then just play Lancer.
Like, I don't care, I'm not your mom, whatever.
I do have the, I do have the pitch we wrote up.
Yes, right up the pitch. Tell us.
In Celestial Bodies you will play the residents of home ships
that house the remnants of humanity.
Specifically, you'll be playing it's lamplighter that unions of
pilot and mech humanity is completely spread out from
Earth. They're starting to arrive at
the corpses of dead gods floating in space.
They're starting to make mechs out of those dead gods.
That's probably a bad idea. We're doing it anyway.
No, yeah, that's a great pitch multi.
Like you're like 5 generations from like Earth, deep in space,
making all this mech. And so the grid obviously, I
think is one of the things that a lot of people were drawn to
because it's an incredible idea. It's super clean, it's super
neat. Don't know how it hasn't been
done before because it's so cool And it is kind of, I mean, you
can see a little bit in some like video game stuff like
STALKER and things like that. Have you know, their backpacks
you have like the grid or whatever.
But talk about the grid a little bit and just how that be like, I
I guess came about where that came from and like kind of how
it works just a little bit for for those that haven't seen it.
The grid was one of the original ideas I had when I made
celestial bodies. It was the first thing I was
like, I want character creation to be on a grid.
This was in like 2021. I didn't have an idea of what
the grid would look like. I just was like, it has to be on
a grid. I can be weird shaped or
whatever. I don't know.
So but that was like that plus being jam less were like the
things, the requirements for creating celestial bodies that I
came to binary with. Yep.
So for the grid, it's really funny because at some point I
looked up our initial conversations about like what it
became, and it literally was just like, hey, I want character
creation on grid. OK, what if the grid was hit
locations? OK, what if if you hit a already
hit place, it was a crit all right?
Binary came up with the 6 by 6 like base grid, which makes it
really easy to roll because you can just roll 2D6 and you're
fine. So that general shape from this
guy put it in front of me again. Choke by clove Fulminata.
That's the one that made me think about like that 6 by 6 D
66 grid shape joke obviously does not do the same thing, but
that got me in that mindset and like from there, that's where we
went from there. It's a really cool idea.
It works really well and it's very interesting.
I going through socialize first time I was like, oh, this is
cool. Like it very much takes you out
of the regular like nebulous hit location or whatever, have
damage. It's very, it's very pseudo
battleship, you know? Yeah, it's abstract, but in a
very like non abstract way, driving it where it's like you
don't see like legs and arms and heads like battle tag or
something, but get a sense of like OK, I'm making something
also. It's really fun.
It's really fun to make builds because you have to make
everything fit. Instead of just calculating how
many points you have. You, you, you have to like.
It has to fit together. Yes, so that was the known
moment I really knew we had something is when I spent like
all weekend just fucking around with builds when we made the
initial like general ideas like, okay, no, this is something like
we're going somewhere. No, it's so neat because again,
like it all. And that makes sense, right?
Like you're fitting things on this grid, which again, if
you're playing like a video game that does a similar thing with
like the backpack, you have to fit it in the pack.
So if a thing is shaped like this, you know, you have to, you
know, do a little thing like this.
But not only that, the modules and like the the bits and parts
that actually make make go also have to fit and they have to be
next to the thing that makes it work.
And then armor goes on top of it.
And then like, yeah, the battleship hit location to like
hit the thing. It's all so it's so clever and
so clean. And again, is one of those
things like how, how has this not been thought of before?
This is so smart and it's it's I mean, again, the second I saw
the grid, I was like, I'm backing the fuck out of this.
I'm just going all the way. But one of the other things I
really love is that most of the frames have square, rectangular,
you know, they're they're, you know, whatever.
I can't remember that all my polygons, they're they're a
squarish shape, rectangular shape until you get to the end
where you start talking about the these guys.
I'm scrolling for those that can't see the Titan frames.
Yeah, that are actually, and then those are all the all these
like weird shapes. And then when you see like why
the Titan frames are Titan frames and how they're different
than the regular ones, then I saw that they were weird shaped.
I was like, oh, this is so perfect.
Like they're not like all the other ones and you have to do
this other weird thing and there's layers of armor and
stuff. So I mean, you guys just did
such a fantastic job of, of making it this kind of abstract
idea feel so grounded again by having the pieces have to be
next to each other and stuff like that.
It's I mean, I good job. That's all I can say.
Rob, Basically, yeah. And so we have, again, I have
the Terrestrial edition, you can get the Titan edition now.
And the next thing that's coming out is a Titan Eclipse edition.
So talk about that a little bit. Like what is the big difference
between I guess the three versions of the game?
I know we talked about the Titan version, there's a lot more of
the fact and stuff in it, but what's the big difference for
the newest 1 coming out? So Terrestrial edition was
really just like really focused on that combat system.
Like just very, like the grid was the main thing with the
Terrestrial edition. It's like 60 pages long and like
almost all of it is just that the Titan edition we were really
focused on like, OK, this needs to be like properly playable GM
Leslie. Like we really need to make this
properly playable and like playable in a fun way.
Not just like, yeah, you can do it, but it like kind of sucks
after a while. Like we wanted to be like
sustainably playable. GM Lesley So that's where you
saw a lot of the progression systems.
That's where you saw a lot of the faction stuff.
That's where you saw like Charlotte's incredible Mission
Hex flower thing, which is. Yeah, super cool.
Now that's that's all. Charlotte, I can't take credit
for that, but yeah, like that's where you saw all of that kind
of stuff come in. And yeah, the next one is going
to be emphasis on that taking a lot of those ideas a little
further, adding more content, frankly, that's that's one
thing. We had hex flowers.
We have 5 Titan frames in the tank right now that we have not
put in the in the Titan Titan edition.
The reason is because they're attached to factions and we had
to figure out what that means. So there's a lot more stuff with
factions we want to do and there's a lot of other things
too. I don't know.
We're estimating it's going to be like another, I don't know,
like hundred, 120 more pages. I estimated this big boy at 400.
So to give you some big book. I have a lot of ideas because I
will it'll be like one in the morning and I'll be like binary.
We should put this and bless your bodies and he's like, dear
God, no, and I'm like, well, we're going to I'm going to
figure it out is. There any concern on like scope
creep at all where you feel like it's just going to like get away
from you or you or you want to make sure that you have
everything possible that you want on like I guess like the
third iteration of this. So there's some concerns over
time. It's definitely been one of
those things where you want to keep an eye on the size of any
given feature is the big thing. I am very assiduous about this
because I don't want to die making this.
But aside from that, I don't know.
It's a big game. Like that's enough scope.
I don't, I don't think we need to worry too hard about it.
I think we've already crept pretty far.
Yeah, and I feel like, I mean, there's a lot of stuff in the
game, but it's all around like the core gameplay loop of do
missions, meet people, make friends or make enemies and then
do it again. And all the stuff we've added is
just contribute to that. It's not like random, random
stuff we're adding. The factions take up a lot of
space because we want a lot of factions and that's like most of
the page count anyway. A lot of it's also a layout
concern. The reason it takes up so much
space is we have like a full page for every like build that a
faction does, like including like reposted stat blocks for
weapons. And the reason for that is just
to make it a lot easier for you to run.
You can just open to that page and you're ready to go.
You don't have to reference everything.
So it's not just like straight text for 280 pages like.
There's a lot of white space. We made it very it's very clean,
which was why it was so easy to print out it on my 20 year old
HP laser printer. Yeah, definitely.
I mean especially when you get to the frames and stuff, the
pages definitely have plenty of room to breathe.
It is very nice. We talked about this with Daisy
Chainsaw as well. Is that you did a really
fantastic job of of exactly that, like having a nice size
margin, having a nice size font where you know, if I if I have
like 8 1/2 by 11 two column things, it's all text.
I'm just I just get lost and like the spreads and stuff.
I like having the information I need for what I'm talking about
like in front of me and that's it.
And you guys did I mean Daisy chainsaws like that.
And the Titan edition is like that too.
It's very readable. And like you said, the page
count. I mean so much for dis factions.
If you look at you're at page 34 to start the factions just in
the Titan edition and it's page 164 until you're done with the
factions. So there's like 130 pages of the
200 and and 50 ish pages is just all factions, which again, I
mean, that's you don't you don't need to read every single bit of
that all the time. If the if the rules are mostly
the 1st 34 pages and then there's like more build stuff at
the end. You really do have a pretty
small kind of player section beginning that's still nice and
tight and interesting. Any of the the faction section
is for there when you need it and to access it.
So if it's 200 pages long, you don't need all 200 all the time.
So it's OK, you know what I mean?
Like that's I mean. You're going to be referencing
all the time. You could probably fit it on
like 4 pages. Like it's not that much like or
if you have like weird shit like missiles, but like for most
builds it's not really that much.
I'm trying to convince Binary that our dust jacket for the
hardcover version should be a CHEAT SHEET, but I still don't
think he's convinced. Oh, that.
'D be a great idea. That's such a good idea.
Production is the part. Yeah, the.
Little. Well then, the dust papers don't
cost too much. Yeah.
And so the the layout overall that.
We've kind of been talking about with like the, the rules being
kind of like a in the beginning and the the rest of it being
like this, this useful toolbox. It very much reminds me of
fists, the game fist with it's like the rules are very slim and
they're very much at the front and the rest is the intelligence
matrix. I really do actually like that
model to have like this game. It's like fairly lightweight to
run, but then has this like very robust like toolbox or things to
add. And I think there's a really
cool idea, especially for this, like you said, it really adds to
the core gameplay loop of, you know, making friends or making
enemies, fighting and doing it again, you know?
Yeah, the secret is that despite being associated now with a 280
page book mostly, I don't like huge games.
I don't usually play huge trad games, like that's not a thing I
usually do anymore. You're with.
Friends here I I have played Pathfinder second edition.
I'm in a Pathfinder second edition game.
I played a lot of Pathfinder when I first started table talk
games. I've never read Pathfinder.
I've used the websites that have the Pathfinder stuff on them.
So my Pathfinder Second edition story is that disliking it was
what actually made me a game designer because I started
thinking about, yeah, 13th Age was way better than this, but I
can make a fixed version of that.
And that got me here. There you go, I will say.
I will say one of the good pitches of like why celestial
bodies over Lancer is you don't need a fucking app to play
celestial bodies because it's impossible to play Lancer
without like the fucking app. Tools that I will die on.
If you make a game and it needs an app that sucks.
I hate Yeah. They'll have kind of celestial
bodies on a napkin and a pencil. You just have to draw some boxes
and you're good like. You can just play it on your
like a normal table with printouts.
It's so much it's probably easier to do that than to try to
make it put it in an app. Listen, I have said those exact
words. I mean you.
Can you can you can hire someone too.
You don't need to, and that's great.
That's The thing is, if you have it but you don't need it, it's
very different than if you have to have it in order to play the
game. The way people share builds they
make on celestial bodies in the Binary Star Games discord server
is with a code block where they use little brackets and put, you
know, a corresponding letter in the brackets and then they post
the key at the bottom and that's it.
They it's perfect. It's so easy to share a whole
MEC build in one little Discord message.
Nothing else is needed. No, that's nice.
I love build. System.
I'm just like, I'll never get over how just clever and clean
and functional building in celestial bodies.
It's a really great idea. And it's just, I don't know, the
cleverness is it makes me just like smile every time I see it.
I'm just like, and then, and then it's battleship.
And that makes so much sense because like, if you have a
grid, why not just like attack the grid?
I don't know. It's just, it's, it's so
unbelievably clever. And again, I think that's
realistically, I think the grid system is one of the reasons it
blew up the most on itch, because as soon as people saw
that, they were like, holy shit, yes, this is a game I want to
play. Plus that shade of pink was a
very nice choice. It's this.
Pyramid. Yeah, yeah.
I don't know if you have seen our overlay, but it's basically
the exact same color as what we use for like everything that we
do. So solid choice the.
Grid devlog is the only devlog I've had blow up on social
media. Like that's a nuts experience
because like who? Who cares Usually, but.
Yeah, that's great. So the the Titan edition is
going to be bigger, heavier, but again, the game itself is is
going to be pretty streamlined. A lot of it's going to be other
stuff. What?
And I know you guys said you got hit by the bus from this and you
have a lot of other projects on the side.
What does the future look like for celestial bodies, and what
does the future look like after celestial bodies for both of
you? For celestial bodies is a lot of
work on celestial bodies because it's going to be very third.
Page. Needs a lot of layout.
We're doing like all these little supplements, which means
that we're going to be laying those out and releasing those.
Then the supplements we hired some writers for to each write
little scenes about like what happened elsewhere on Earth for
like specific parts of Earth. That happened on and so they're
they're writing this. We've already paid them for half
of it so and so we're going to have layout some spreads of
those and then have little mock ups for those on the Kickstarter
page and they have their own Macs and stuff builds and items.
And then we also have our little zenes that we have to do mock
ups for where we have our Zen of stuff rules we wanted to add
into the main book that are fun but don't really make sense to
be in the main book, like our fun little things we like.
And then we have one of downtime actions that we have to do as
well. Yep, our big ones are a How do
you play as a faction? Because like that was a question
we got a lot and like that's an interesting question to answer
because some of them have a bunch of home ship and some of
the no home ships and just like how do you thread that needle?
The other one is, yeah, talking about like specifically focusing
on like the lamplighter pilots, like what's their life like?
You know, like what do they do between missions?
Like really thinking about like that more so than like and like
adding little like procedures for funsies, but like nothing
that really like ties into like the main game loop in the same
way. And the answer to what
lamplighters do outside of the mech is more grids.
Yep, I'm. Finished Listen, yeah, we can't
go wrong with grids. You'll see that you'll see that
spread soon, but I came up with like some like 2 overlapping
grid system for what are they doing and how does it turn out?
There you go. The grid, the grid system for
celestial bodies is partially what inspired me to look into
making something similar for like mission generation because
I wanted it to be. And same with the faction
reputation stuff. I wanted it to be the same level
of tangible. I didn't want to just like hand
wave it as numbers because that felt wrong when you were
tracking your character, you know, your mech on the grid.
I wanted to feel the same or feel similar where you can like
see the progress and it affects what's going on around you,
which is why I found hex flowers and was like, let's do this,
let's turn this into mission generation.
That's a. Pretty great idea.
Yeah, I mean, we didn't even really get deep in the hex
flowers. And guess what?
If you want to go go go back to the Kickstarter and buy the
book. I highly recommend still
grabbing the Titan edition. But that's it's such a clever
thing as well, just like the way that you move around and then
also the things that can happen if you like.
Here's a factual thing. But if you go off the edge,
guess what, now you have this other thing too.
It's just such an interesting mechanic that also fits really
well with the grid because somehow grids and axis still
really hold hands nicely. So it all feels like super
cohesive and in post celestial bodies for I know Binary, you
said you had like three games you were working on Charlotte.
I know you said you have Rose Thorn keep and stuff.
I don't know that you put out these chainsaw with Space
Penguin. Is there other projects that
either of you guys have that are going to come out during, before
or after celestial bodies that are that are on the horizon?
Want to go first or should I? I'll.
Go First Rose Thorn Keep is also going to be published through
Space Penguin very soon and dirt told me he's going to order like
a bajillion copy. So I'm excited because I love
Rose on Keep and I think it's awesome and I am going to be
finishing up Happy 99 around the same time we're working on so
Steel bodies because that was delayed by my job that sucked
the soul out of me. I love that job, but it it also
was very tiring so I didn't do anything else.
So I'm fishing up Happy 99 and I'm going to have the I'm trying
to get the actual like rules out before Celestial Bodies launches
because it feels wrong to launch a Kickstarter after my
Kickstarter isn't done yet. And I also am working on another
magical girl game, but I don't know how much I'm supposed to
share about it. So I there's just another
magical girl thing coming. Cool.
Yep. So for me, one thing that
Charlotte and I are probably going to both be working on is
like I said, we talked about doing a work trade at at the
beginning of celestial bodies and this is the second-half of
the trade. So anointed is a game that
exists now technically on my itch.
It's going to get completely revamped.
That is going to happen at some point in the near in the far
future. The.
Far future, the future some point.
Yeah, Speaking of the far future, I'm also continuously
working on Liminal Void. That is my space total effect
game, same system as varying Horizon.
I just released an update to the quick start this this weekend,
so that's fun. That one.
I'll just be working on and off during celestial bodies
probably. When you hate celestial bodies,
you need a break. I tend to bounce between like 5
projects at once. So yes.
So we have that going on. I have about 1/3 of AVN Nash
Nation of Amorous also on my itch page.
I'm probably going to be continuing to work on that.
I'm still working on Valley and Horizon Tactics, which is my
room variant. I'm continuing to work on that.
I don't know. I have a few things that I have
specifically not working on, specifically to not add it to
the pile so it's. Like 8 things going on at once
on top of celestial bodies that's coming to kick harder
soon. That works.
Yeah, yeah, when I got tired of working on celestial bodies, I
did come up with a lot of cool ideas for Anointed, which
includes more hex flowers. It does.
No, it's sick. We're talking about doing like a
combat via hex flower thing. So like.
No dice. Dance like that.
Sounds awesome. It does sound awesome based on
where you are on it. That kind of thing.
You. Just pick where you go on.
Your equipment. Yeah, you change the equipment
you have, changes the actions you have available on your hex
flower. So there's like a base no
equipment hex flower. And then different parts of it
change depending on like what weapon you have, what armor you
have, and maybe you can block or dodge.
And you have to time your blocks and dodges with when the enemy
will attack. And you kind of have to learn
how the enemy attacks and when they're winding up so that you
can attack and still safely block or dodge their attack by
with your actions on the hex flower.
But you using an action on the hex flower, you know, opens up
more actions, but it also limits you from only what's available
around you. So that's that's my idea for it.
That sounds awesome. Yeah, that does sound pretty.
Cool. Very early, by the way.
Yeah, I mean, anything in that description may change, but.
Everything. Yeah.
I mean, I think I described it vaguely enough.
Yeah, but it still sounds awesome.
We'll definitely, we'll definitely be keeping eyes out
for that. So when is there a date for the
Kickstarter launch for Celestial Bodies?
March 4th Pope right after Zemo Zine Quest.
Yeah, we don't want to do it during no.
Matter where you fall on the Zine discourse, this is not a
Zine. It is a bunch of Zine stapled
together. My 400 page Zine guys, it's it's
a hardback. It's it's a Zine yeah, but but
great. So March 4th for that.
The link is on our overlay right now.
What I have and what I wrote was binary star dot game slash
celestial as the short URL that'll take you to the
Kickstarter. We'll make sure that that link
is in below. But you talked about anointed
and a bunch of stuff on your itch page.
So where can people find your stuff?
Binary. Yes, so my stuff is at Binary
Dash, Star Dash games dot itch dot IO.
You can also just find it from binary star dot games.
I have everything linked out from there.
I have a bunch of shit on there. I make blog posts all the time
there. Go to either, you'll find it.
Yeah. You know, we figure it out.
What's funny is about one in 10 people that we have on the show
actually can give like their itch address without having to
look up their own address. Almost everyone's like, oh, I
don't really remember what my itch is.
Mine is super easy because I made an itch account like 100
years ago so it's just the username I use on like discord
and stuff. It's a selkie SELKIE dot itch
dot IO. Perfect.
Easy peasy. And then you said you had a
website as well. Yeah, Fragrant dot garden is the
whole URL, and I posted A blog there recently explaining
Mission hex flowers because binary kept pestering me about
it. Yes, go read you.
Better write A blog. You got to write blogs.
And I was like I don't want to but OK fine.
There you go. But yeah, we'll make sure that
all those links are below. Listen, I'm super excited.
Philistro bodies again. Every time a new addiction has
come out, I just get more excited for it.
I'm excited for the brick that I'm gonna get when it comes out
after March 4th self. Defense so.
Yeah, right. So it looks fantastic.
Honestly. Thank you guys so much for
coming on. It's been a pleasure to talk to
you. We love all of your stuff.
Like I said, this episode will drop this week after the Daisy
Chainsaw episode and at some point Apocalypse Frame is on our
list as well. So we're fans of both of your
guys work and we just really appreciate you guys coming on
and and and, you know, chatting with us.
Thank. You for having us.
Thanks. For having us.
Of course. Absolutely.
Thanks for coming on. So that will be us for today and
TuneIn for all of this. Make sure you back the project
on March 4th and click the links below to find all that and we
will talk to you all later. Bye.