Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan and joining me today is Nick of Mammoth
Miniatures. How are you doing this morning?
I'm good, thanks. How are you?
Just wonderful. I say morning, but it's my
morning. But you are not quite where I'm
at in the world. No, we're it's 6:00 in the
afternoon here, but it's it's nice, which is rare for here,
which is quite good. Yeah, Yeah.
It's only it's 10:00 in the morning here in sunny
California. But we have found because I work
night shift, so my mornings are my evenings.
So they're your evenings. So it's actually easier to
interview people over where you are than it is over here because
10:00 on a not a Saturday, usually a Monday or Tuesday is a
little bit different for people, but time is neither here nor
there. Nick of Mammoth Miniatures For
those that might not be aware of who you are or what you do, who?
Who the heck is Who the heck is Nick of Mammoth Miniatures?
Yeah, yeah. Who am I?
So I, I am the, yeah, I'd say Nick of Mammoth Miniatures.
I am Mammoth Miniatures. It's just me.
So I'm, I'm the guy who does all the mammoth miniatures stuff.
So I, I sculpt figures and do the casting and write and
publish all the games that we create as well.
So things like Planet 28 and Sundering Floods, all our Super
Tiny Games, Brutal Quest, all of those kind of titles.
And then I also do a bunch of casting for a bunch of other
artists and sculptors across the world via Mammoth Miniatures as
well. So yeah, Mammoth Miniatures and
Nick of Mammoth Miniatures are kind of the same thing really.
It's just mammoth isn't on the birth certificate.
It's just you. Yeah.
So I actually, I, I think it was maybe like two or three days
ago, I got some of your little guys here in the mail.
I got a stack. I wanted your terrade because
these guys, these guys are incredible.
The guy was blowing it out, but it's the little head guys.
Some of your these bitch here. And then it was me and then I
got a stack of all of these the space guys, so I could do do a
whole thing. So literally just got those in
the mail along with these wonderful cards that you send
out. Again, cameras blowing it out.
But but yeah, love your manicures have stacks and stacks
of them. And and obviously we talked
about before stream have like a bunch of the games as well.
So big fan of super super tiny giant battles.
We talked about before stream started.
It's a, it's a Kickstarter, right?
Backed. I think you did it.
Was that a 2020 thing that you put out?
Oh God. It's like Zenquest one or
something. Like that or two mid like moving
house when I did it, which if like my one piece of advice was
someone running a Kickstarter who's don't move house in the
middle. If you want a nice easy life,
don't do that. So it must have been about 2020
ish. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because that seems like forever ago now.
And then I look at it and go, actually, that wasn't that long.
And yeah, so we're saying just before stream, I did that
Kickstarter. And then I lost all the
information for. I lost all the files, all the
artwork, because everything was stored on my laptop and that
laptop exploded, just absolutely killed itself.
So I just didn't have all that information for ages until I was
going through my inbox the other day and found where I'd emailed
it to myself as a backup and just apparently never checked
that. So I was able to republish that
recently, which was nice because I really like that little
system. I think it's really, really fun.
Yeah, no, they're great and you have a whole.
A lost game. You have a whole line of the
Super tiniest too. We got quite a bit of the Super
tiny situations here. Yeah, yeah.
So OK, so my brain is, is breaking and I'm I'm piercing in
three different directions right now.
So like we talked about three things.
One is you, you make miniatures, 1 is that you write games and
three is that you also mold miniatures for other people as
well. So why don't we start with
miniatures? How did you get first of all, I
guess into the miniature scene? And then when did you start
actually deciding to mold and and and cast your own
miniatures? Yeah, so I got in.
I got, I got into like miniatures and miniature gaming
via a part work magazine in the UK that I don't know if you had
in the US, which was Battle Games in Middle Earth.
And it was a, it was a magazine Games Workshop brought out to
tie into the Lord of the Rings movies when they brought out the
Middle Earth range. And it was like the the Age of
Sigmar ones they're doing now where you've got miniatures
every two weeks or something with the magazine.
But that came out. I was like 7 years old and there
was this advert on TV and I was really into Lord of the Rings
and Oh my God, you can have the armies from Lord of the Rings as
toy soldiers. And so that's amazing.
I want that. And then, yeah, just ever since
then. And then I realized like very
quickly, you realize there's a shop in city center that is
dedicated to that stuff. And they've got it all there.
And they've also got like robots and tanks and Dragons and stuff.
And it, it quickly spiraled out of control.
But then I've also always been interested in art.
So my dad always taught me to draw and paint sort of from a
traditional art standpoint. I've always liked making things,
which is how I ended up going to sculpture.
So the two kind of miniatures just became a really interesting
kind of Ave. for creativity that was separate to all the other
avenues for creativity. Which is why in like 20 odd
years of doing miniatures, I've never managed to finish an army
or really anything more than the squad, because you get about 10
minutes in and go, yeah, it's time to start hacking these
apart and keep bashing them and doing something weird with them.
So yeah, it's sort of spiral from there really.
I just, I enjoyed miniatures as a creative output that was sort
of completely my own and had its own rules, but where there was
no sort of going wrong with it, like withdrawing, you can go
wrong and it can look bad. I mean, the miniature can look
bad, but no one can tell you it's wrong.
There wasn't. There wasn't so much of A like
correct way to go about it. When I was getting into it, it
was just like you had it. We weren't really talking about
it on the Internet as much or I wasn't as a 7 year old.
So it was just like this thing that me and my friends all did
and we were all just as bad at it as each other.
So it was like it's own weird little niche we had and I just
kind of never stopped really. So you're, so you were, you were
very young when you got in administers hobby then.
Yeah, it really did coincide perfectly with Lord of the
Rings. Came out, I went to see that,
instantly fell in love with Lord of the Rings.
And then there was a game and figures and everything and I
liked making stuff. Like I was always like making
things out of like cardboard and foam and sellotape.
So yeah, like it just LinkedIn with all the things I liked
doing as a kid. Like I'm going to make a very
British reference, but there was a thing, there's a there was a
program on TV in Britain called Blue Peter, which was a really
sort of AI guess, like a sort of kids educational entertainment
program. But one of the famous segments
of it was teaching how to make the single Tracy Island from
Thunderbirds. Again, this is going down a
really deep like Brit rabbit hole, but I remember making that
as a kid as well. And it's basically it's war game
terrain is what it is. So it was, it was this very
nice, like children's TV presenter telling you, if you
you know, you get the hot chocolate tub and some paper
mache and some sawdust and glue it all together, you'll have
your missile silo. And that's what I was doing
anyway. So naturally, like going from
that to 40K bunkers to warm fantasy terrains, just like,
yeah, cool, this all works. It was like the perfect mixture
of things just to get me addicted to war games and
miniatures. Yeah, the timing just like 0
right in on you. But how did you go from doing
that stuff with your friends and, and all that other stuff
into having like a business turning it actually into this
thing that you do? So, so my background like
educationally and kind of I guess proper work wise is, is
fine art. So when I was when I went to
uni, I was studying sculpture and then I did my master's
degree in fine art with a focus on sculpture.
And while I was doing that, I was working in a tabletop game
shop at the time. So I was learning all the skills
you need to produce miniatures, things like anatomy and
sculpting, mold making, casting, etcetera.
And so I was, I was sort of wasn't doing it while I was
studying, but I had the skill set and I kind of, I liked the
idea of it. And at the time, I was becoming
aware of other people who were doing it themselves, people like
like Alex of Warp Miniatures. I think Warp Miniatures were
just starting out. And I knew of people like
Ramshackle Curtis and Andrew of what is now, I want to say
Meridian miniatures. I think it's Meridian Andrew
May. Who does a lot of the heck of
the Kickstarters and stuff? Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, so at the time, just as I was starting uni, he produced a
range of like steampunk soldiers and he produced a game to go
with them, which was called Steam and Ether.
And I think I'm the only person who has like a printed copy of
it somewhere behind me. But I remember seeing his his
thread on a forum somewhere about this.
And I'll say, well, you can just, you can just do that.
You can just make a game. Like no one can tell you not to
do that. That was amazing to me.
And seeing all these people like that first wave of like big
Kickstarters of people like doing their own thing was really
interesting. And I'm working in a tabletop
game shop to pay my way through uni.
Was seeing all this new stuff come out and playing all these
games. And yeah, just started started
putting those skills to use in my own time, sculpting figures.
I think I started with 15 millimeter stuff, which I got
some cast and they never really went anywhere.
And it became a business pretty much just as a result of being
of the pandemic. So it was just, I just finished
my master's about a week before we went into lockdown here and
my partner and I were living in a very small attic flat in
Croydon, which is a sort of a people from London say it's not
London. People from Croydon say is
London. It's a whole thing.
But it's, you know, it's, it's like a sort of regional town
bolted onto the side of London. So I really have nothing to do.
So I kind of just started doing that full time and started
writing games at the same time as well because again, what else
do you do? I had a Commission at the time
to build model ships for a cruise line, and when that
finished, I kind of ran out of a ran out of things to keep me
occupied in my flat. Umm.
So I just moved on from doing that to sculpting figures to
yeah, yeah, carry on. Really.
Yeah, no, COVID is such a weird thing.
I mean, the the worst of it, obviously we're going to be
dealing with it's it's endemic at this point.
We're going to be dealing with it forever.
But the number of things that kind of shut down because of
COVID, but also on the creative side, the number of things that
kind of bloomed from it. Like Kickstarter had this yeah,
almost golden age after COVID because everyone was like, I
finally have time to do this thing that has been stuck in my
brain and, and make it and, and so much stuff came out after it.
So it's really interesting to see this kind of like, I don't
know, interesting in a kind of sad way, but like there's like
death and birth of so many things between that like 2
years, it just disappeared for all of us.
But, but, but yeah, to see that like basically you have the time
and and it just became, it grew from there afterwards.
Did you start? Directly onto a website or were
you, were you doing it more locally or how did you actually
get up and running? Yeah.
Good question. I think so initially because
like from working in a game shop, you gather quite a lot of
you, you get quite a bits box, you gather quite a lot of kits
and I'd always liked the kind of Inquisitor 28 scene.
So I was really into that kind of scene and posted a bit within
that community. So I had a small following on
Instagram of people who sort of liked the things I made.
So I started, I think I didn't start with games, I started with
like pewter pin badges and stuff like that because I had a studio
at the time. Luckily I was given a studio at
the end of my masters. I couldn't use it for a year
because lockdown, but I had space to do stuff.
So I had a small stock of things I'd made and I just started
selling those. And I think I built a website
with the intention that I would probably shut it down in like 2
weeks after I'd finished selling the things.
And I just kept making things and the website is still going.
So yeah, I think the first couple of things I just did
through Instagram and then I sort of enough people wanted
stuff that it seemed worth just making it cheap free website and
yeah. And here we are.
And then how did Mammoth miniatures?
How did you come up with Because my issue with everything I do
ever is naming stuff. I there's even games that I've
like just quit playing because I couldn't come up with a cool
enough name or a name that fit a character.
I was like, all right, then I'm done.
So, you know, naming is, is hard for me.
How did Mammoth Adventures come? I know I had different names for
it at first, but Mammoth Miniatures is named because the
village I grew up in, there is a disused gravel pit that's been
turned into a nature reserve. And when I was a kid, they found
mammoth skeletons and sort of Ice Age mammal skeletons there.
So on the hill in this random village in Leicestershire, there
is a giant sculpture made of concrete of a mammoth.
So I always grew up the street over from what was the Mammoth
Lake. And so it was just like a
landmark in my childhood that you would tell people you were
going to the mammoth or you'll meet people near the mammoth or
like stuff like that. So referring to the mammoth was
just something I did in my daily life.
So yeah, it was it was more just a reference to to where I grew
up really. And also it's, you know, it's
nice and alliterative. It's murmur, murmur.
And it's a big thing and a small thing.
And so that kind of works. And I had to resist the
temptation to do color animal thing like black dragon or red
goblin or something like that. Like I think I had a list of
those at 1st and I was like, I'll be one of these.
And I looked at everyone else went I'm going to get lost in
the the color thing names if I do that.
Yeah, absolutely. And you said now that you're now
you're selling other people's molds as well, like when did or
miniatures as well? Did that just kind of also kind
of happen organically? You're like, oh that's cool
thing like I'll just do it. Or was that like a like, how did
that come? To me, it came out of it came
out of me. I really like the freedom that
online distribution has given to sculptors who work digitally.
So I really enjoy the fact that if you're a digital sculptor,
you can start a Patreon and you can sell your own work and
you're not beholden to anyone. You sort of you're controlling
your own craft and producing your own stuff.
I like that idea, but for traditional sculptors who work
by hand, there isn't necessarily that option.
You can't do that without the means of production.
Without making it sound too Marxist, you need stuff, you
need a space, you need resin, you need silicon, you need to
know how to do it, you need time.
And so I thought it'd be nice to just have a platform to
essentially just provide a way for sculptors to make some money
from their work. So the way I run it is like a
publishing service where they'll send me their miniatures, I'll
make a mold, and then every sale of their figures, I'll send them
65% of the profit from every single figure they sell.
That's their take, their royalty from that.
So I've got some to cover the material cost and the production
cost. But the idea is that that way,
rather than just paying them a couple of £100 for the sculpt
and then keeping it in perpetuity, they're actually
able to maintain, you know, I'm not going to say income from it
because we're not selling anything in such huge volume
that you can make a living from it.
Please, no one should ever come to me and think this is going to
be their lifeline out of poverty.
But it's, you know, it's, it's some money at occasional
intervals. And the hope is, and I think has
happened over the period that I'll keep your miniatures in
production, you'll earn more that way than you would by just
selling the sculpt. Because a miniature sculpt for a
28mm figure between 50 and 400 LB tends to be the market rate.
A bit more if you're much, much more famous, a bit less if
you're not. But then if you look at, you
know, the miniature market can be really unpredictable.
Some things will just get really popular inexplicably.
You look at something like the original, like Space Marine
sculpt, that Bob Naismith sculpt.
How many Space Marines have been sold in the entire run of
Stitch. Dominic is making Space Marines,
millions of them, possibly bordering on a billion pound of
revenue. Does Bob Naismith get royalties
from all those? No, He probably did a little bit
1st and they probably went, hey, those Space Marines are doing
great, Bob, but he's not getting any more.
Yeah. So I and that that kind of, I
don't know, it felt like there was a gap in the market to
promote traditional sculpture, especially with the industry
moving more towards digital self distribution.
Having a platform to promote that kind of traditional
creative pathway just felt right to me and felt like the kind of
thing that was worth trying out. Yeah, absolutely.
And then having, like you said, being able to sell as you go and
people getting residuals, royalties, whatever it's called
is it's, I'm sure it's nice to be like, Oh, there's a cool
little paycheck in the mail. That's great like that, you
know, that'll buy a thing. But so I'm, I'm newer to like
the skirmish and miniature scene.
Literally kind of what you said a little while ago, like I
looked at miniatures and was like, if I fall into this hole,
I'm not going to dig myself out. So I specifically said like 10
years ago, I'm not going to get to Warhammer.
And then I got to teach RPGs instead and spent the same
amount of money. So, you know, I kind of wish I
did, but there seems to be this cool, I guess trend back and and
tell me when I'm completely wrong here back into like metal
miniatures and this kind of thriving market of, like you
said, like a lot of creators making their own things and
doing things. People like guards packete,
people like you, you know, people like, you know, over at
ramshackle and stuff. Has there been have you seen
kind of I guess what's the word I'm looking for like a like a
resurgence of that? Is that kind of coming back
around or was that ever kind of? I think definitely like post
post COVID, so like miniature gaming just experienced such a
massive boom of new people coming into the hobby, which is
great. But it definitely feels like
there's there's a renaissance of people wanting the kind of
miniatures they remember from when they grew up.
Maybe. But I also think there's there's
it's not necessarily all nostalgia driven.
I think it's just that people are perhaps beginning to
recognize the creativity and artistry that goes into the
production of miniatures. And part of that maybe is that
because miniature like distribution for independent
sculptors now means that the sculptor can be recognized more.
Whereas before you were much more beholden to working with a
company, It was quite easy to think of miniatures as a thing
that were just made by a company like a toy.
You don't, you know, you buy a, you buy an action figure, you
don't necessarily think of the fact that someone's had to sit
and sculpt it. Whereas now you can actually
just directly talk to the person making the thing you like.
It certainly feels like from a from AI hate business terms, but
from a consumer perspective, people are sort of viewing
miniature makers more in a kind of sense of like artists or
creatives than just as part of a production line.
But also, yeah, I think the fact that a lot of the hobby or the
the community and the kind of surrounding conversation around
the hobby is much more online and there's a lot more venues to
talk about it now, means that that weird stuff can find its
audience. I was thinking of it a bit like
a bit like indie RPGs or like indie comics and stuff.
You know, you everyone likes a Spider Man comic, but not
everyone likes the weird comics. You go and find it like a Zine
fair. But if you go to enough Zine
fairs, no matter how weird your Zine or your comic is, you'll
find an audience for it. And I think the same thing's
happening here. It's just that that Zeemfair is
Instagram and Pinterest and weird little Facebook groups and
forums that have somehow survived like the last 20 years.
So yeah, it definitely feels like there's there's a
resurgence in interest in it and people there's, there's a
nostalgia relevant to it. But I think also maybe it's also
part of it is there's an accepted kind of industry
standard now of what a miniature is like.
Plastic production has become much more available.
There's a lot of companies now making plastic miniatures.
Plastic miniatures have to be made in a certain way.
They have to have certain conventions.
And a lot of companies for a long time did copy the kind of
games, workshops, house style. And so maybe now that people are
able to move away from that, people are finding things that
they wouldn't necessarily have known they liked because they
weren't able to see it. So yeah, I think maybe it's just
that the environment's much more much freer for creatives, and
the creativity is being recognized as a result.
Yeah, it's interesting. As I said, I'm I'm newer to the
scene, so the nostalgia part of it doesn't get it for me.
But I still when I see those older models, there's just so
much. I had this conversation with
someone recently. There's so much personality in
the sculpts and it feels much more, I don't know, interesting.
Like, you know, I when anytime I see especially Warhammer models,
because I see like before they had stomachs and after they had
stomachs in my mind is what it really feels like.
Because a lot of the old models feels like their chest is just
sitting on their belt And it gave this interesting
proportions and stuff. But you could see one sculpt and
see some another sculpt and know that it was by a different
person and people bringing so much into what they were doing
and the way that they were painted because of that.
It's really, really neat to see that kind of from what kind of
feels like a little bit of an outsider perspective, because I
again, I didn't grow up with those sculpts.
It's it's really interesting looking at that and and my kind
of firm of reference for that is a lot of teach RBG stuff.
That's where a lot of my things go.
And when you look at the indie, the cool indie stuff and the
artists that are doing those kind of things versus like 5 E
that a lot of the art it you can't really tell who does it
differently. It all looks kind of like this
concept art. It all looks like very samey.
That seems like a little bit of a juxtaposition with with GW2
where a lot of the sculpts look like they're computer made to
specific standards and you can't really tell who does one versus
who does other versus, like you said, like leaning more into
feeling the artistry and feeling the personality of of the things
that people made. So it feels like at least in the
creative faces in general, there is a little bit of a like a
parallel in in that way versus with with mini and teach RPG.
I think yeah, definitely. I think like the, the recent,
some of the like more indie miniature stuff, I think
definitely parallels things like the OSR stuff in LPGS.
Because I know when I, when I got into writing games, I was
really inspired by the old school Renaissance stuff coming
out of the tabletop RPG scene. You know, I've seen the things
like like pamphlets or like like Z fold pamphlets.
That's how I ended up with the Super tiny skirmish format
because I saw OSR publishers making six page pamphlet Zine
games and was like, that's really cool.
Why aren't miniature games like that?
Why does every miniature game have to be like a A4 coffee
table book? And I think a lot of people sort
of probably were seeing the same thing and thinking the same
thing and applying that logic to their own hobby.
And that's kind of how this whole movement has emerged kind
of from the hobby itself. Yeah, again, interesting
parallels because I, I maybe this might, I don't know if this
is going to land for some of the people in the crowd, but like, I
call the Ink 28 scene basically the mini's version of the OSR
without the baggage from the forge.
And anyone that gets that reference, like you're right
there with me. But yeah, both interesting, both
have a lot of cool stuff coming out.
Obviously, like, you know, we're we're we me and Hunter have been
moving a lot more in a skirmish and narrative skirmish,
especially for a while now, because it's just such an
interesting take on stuff. And we love systems and and the
scrimmage gives you that system stuff.
But when you started writing games, you said you were
inspired by the OSR and stuff. What what was actually the first
thing that you made and put out and what inspired you to to sit
down and actually write that very first one?
The the first game I wrote which no one will ever read was my
because I think everyone who tries to write a war game coming
from a warhammer like fan background you try and write
Warhammer. So the first game I wrote was a
completely unplayable sci-fi mass battle game mess.
And we, I wrote it with my brother-in-law and our friends
and we wrote it all up. We formatted it.
I did some artwork, we got some miniatures, we put it on the
table, completely unplayable, like absolute mess.
And then I just didn't write games for a while and went, OK,
I can't do that. And then it was, it wasn't
during lockdown. It was like the last week of my
masters. And I was, I couldn't sleep
because I needed to do my dissertation and I wasn't doing
my dissertation, but I was stressed about it enough that I
was losing sleep about it. So I did, you know, when you get
a piece of paper and you fold it to make a little 8 page booklet,
I did that and I just started writing a little game in it to
see if I could fit a game in that.
And that was what became Super Tiny Skirmish.
So that was the first game I wrote.
And I posted the handmade little booklet on Instagram with a page
like, yeah, that one, I posted that on Instagram and people
were like, oh, that's really cool.
I really like that. And so I did a cleaned up
version with actual drawings and stuff.
And I found that you could get those pamphlets.
No, I didn't find that actually. I was hand cutting and folding
each one at first for the first batch of like 100 of them.
And then I found out later that you can actually just order
pamphlets in bulk, which is way, way easier.
But yeah, it was it was sleep deprivation and not doing what I
was supposed to be doing. Basically, I just decided to see
if I could write a little miniature combat system with a
set page limit. So I think it was the design
brief I gave myself was just, it has to fit within this page
count. And I liked that, like working
up against the limitation. So naturally that kind of just,
yeah, just came about. And then from there, like that,
people played it. And that was really weird to me.
Like people would send me pictures of their miniatures
playing the game that I'd written.
I was like, that's not right. You shouldn't play.
You're not meant to actually play it.
That's just weird. And then like I said, at the
time, I was really into, I'm still, I'm really into the
Inquisitor 28 scene and I had all these kit bashed figures and
I really wanted to make a rule system that worked for them that
wasn't Inquisitor because I love Inquisitor as a concept.
I hate playing it. It's, it's not a bad game, it's
a really good game, but it's a pain to play without a load of
setup. And I started writing a version
of that and then that became another overloaded mess of a
system. And I wrote, I thought again, I
gave myself a limit. So I thought, OK, well, what
I'll do is I'll see if I can fit it on a piece of A4 paper.
And that was the first version of Planet 28, which I think is
still on my blog, like is a rough version, which is
completely different to the game that I then did of Planet 28.
But again, enough people looked at it and they played it and
they went, yeah, there's something here quite like this
for me to develop it. And then that, yeah, that came
perfectly at the right time to be stuck in my flat with nothing
to do. And again, it's that that
blending into the OSR scene. Kickstarter had a thing called
Zine Quest running and it was for scenes of games.
And so I thought, well, there's nothing in here that says it has
to be a role-playing game. It could be a miniature game.
I'll do that. Like it only needs like I think
this the I can't remember what the funding goal for it was, but
it wasn't much. It was like 100 lbs or something
similar for the 1st edition of Planet 28 and it funded and it
made more than that. And again, like people played
it, which was the really weird thing.
So it just went from there. Like people kept playing it.
So I kept writing more games and more expansions and see if I can
find the original Kickstarter and see what the the actual goal
was. Because it was.
The I found you and then I just got to click your name and then
the original planet 28332% funded the original goal just
says the total. I don't know if it says the
original goal, 0700 and 50 lbs was the original goal and it hit
about 2500 lbs with 250 backers. As a first project that's
fantastic. And this was back in had to be
like 2020-2021 for Z Quest One. That's awesome.
Yeah, so it must have been 2020. Yeah.
Yeah, that was just this. It was really encouraging to
meet the funding and then have people actually enjoy it and
people review it and play it like people, people whose
content I had watched and people who like, whose opinion I
trusted was saying it wasn't bad.
That's, you know, that's about as high a praise as I could
expect, really. And yet, like, it just carried
on from there really. Like there was no reason to stop
doing it, so I didn't. There you go.
And then you had some, I mean I'm looking at your page here
and there's a number of other things that came out because you
put Brutal Quest out, which is this guy for his Inquest 3.
And then your numbers kept going for that because you made £5000
off that on 616 backers, almost doubled everything across the
board for that. And then Super Tiny Giant
Battles you had like over 300 backers for for that as well,
which I was one of them and made over 3000 lbs doing that.
So, so I guess after the first Planet 28 kind of took off,
you're just like, this works, let's keep doing it.
Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Like, and it, it was never like
the intention was never to make it a job.
Like I never thought this would be a situation where I'd be
like, I can make my living off doing this.
But it was just a case of like, well, people like the games and
I like making them, so I'll just keep doing it.
I like, and I'd be happy to do it regardless if people liked
them, I'd put them out one way or another, even if they weren't
financially viable. Like all the games I write, for
the most part, I put them up for free on War Games Vault because,
again, I want people to be able to play them.
So if you want the printed copies, sure, by all means buy
one. But if you just want to play it
and look at it, there's no obstacle to that.
You can just download it. That's fine.
Yeah, it was, it was really encouraging to sort of have
people actually like it, which is again, and I think again,
coming from like a fine art background, it was, it was very
strange to not instantly be met with critical feedback or like
negative critical feedback. Because if you, if you come from
like a fine art educational background, you're one of the
biggest things you learn is, is how to accept and filter
critical feedback. So I think I was, I was lucky
enough that if it had gone really badly and they've been
awful games, it wouldn't have, I'm saying this retroactively,
it might have, it wouldn't necessarily have instantly
broken me as a person, like I might have survived.
But to do something and not have someone instantly go, well, I'd
change this and this and this. And I think this could be better
to just have people go, yeah, it's pretty fun.
Was was a really weird experience.
And actually to have people want to give you money for things,
that's that's very different to the fine art world as well.
Actually get paid for the for the, for the creations that you
make in art. Yeah, that's insane.
So how did you go from the that initial draft of Planet 28 to to
this version, the Planet 28 second edition?
What kind of spurred that on to turn it from definitely not a
Zine to a pretty beefy hardback? So from so the first edition of
Planet 28, the Zine version, people kept asking for two
things, which was solo rules because lockdown was still going
on, and vehicle rules. And so I did 2 expansion scenes
for that. One was Death on the Periphery
which was solo and Co-op rules. And the other one was Death
Machines which was an entirely vehicle based expansion for
building your own vehicles for the game.
And so we got to the point where Planet 28 was three books with a
page count of like 60 odd pages. And I wanted to do more stuff
with it. But I thought it would be quite
nice if those three books were compiled because there were
things in the core book that needed changing.
Because again, it was, you know, it's my first game.
I wrote it and published it. The only person who proofread it
was my partner, and a lot of the spelling mistakes still stuck
through. There were things that needed
altering, etcetera. So I thought, well, if I'm doing
that, why don't I just combine them into one bigger book and
we'll run a kick start for it and that will be a new addition
and fix some of the problems with it.
And yeah, so, so it was just that really it was just a
natural evolution of I've gathered some content for this
game. There's more stuff that could be
in it. Some things need fixing.
Let's just do a new book. And while we're doing it, let's
make it a nice book as well. And again, it was it was setting
myself another creative challenge as well.
I'm not, I'm not particularly like digitally minded person.
I'm not good with computer software.
So learning to like lay out a hardback book was like a fun
challenge for me. Not one I really want to repeat
if I can avoid it, but it was fun.
And then that went on Kickstart as well, and once again, like
that one hit over 14,000 lbs and nearly 900 backers.
Yeah, that was terrifying. That's that's like enough money
that if you, if you fuck it up, you feel like genuinely like
you've committed some sort of criminal act.
Yeah. And suddenly like again, coming
from like just finishing my master's, just having moved out
of London, not quite having found a job in a new city, and
then 14,000 lbs dumps into your bank account is a really weird
situation to find yourself in. Oh and yeah, the other thing as
well. If you do run a massive
Kickstarter and get 1000 books delivered, don't get them
delivered to your house. It's a good lesson for anyone
there, especially if you live on a small residential St. in
England. In a semi in a yeah in a in like
a a line of houses. Yeah, because you will have to
unload them in the rain and they will take off your entire dining
room. Yeah, just the whole, just a big
chunk gone because I mean, how and how was it trying to, I
assume you were, were you distributing it all yourself?
Did you just not? I mean, because your goal was
very, it was like 3000 lbs, so like 1/5 of what it ended up
being. So when you were like, shit, I
had almost 900 books. I got a mail out.
Like I'm sure that felt cool and also horrifying at the same time
to be like, I have to get a post office like for 900 packages.
Yep, which was basically just me sat at my dining room table with
boxes handwriting labels for 900 Packers because for some reason
until like 2 weeks ago I didn't think to invest in a label
machine. So if you've received a delivery
from me prior to the last month or so, it would have been a
handwritten label. Yeah, my box that I'm not going
to show on stream definitely is handwritten, my name and address
right on the front of it, so yeah.
So yeah, it was just me boxing things and taking them to the
post office, which luckily was right on the corner of my
street. So I would do a batch of like 50
boxes, wheel them to the post office in a little pink trolley,
drop them off, they would process them, send me the
receipt and then I would take the next 50.
And I did that for a couple of months.
Basically. I say did that's still how I do
it. Like that's that's just how it
has to be done. That works, Yeah.
And then it's everywhere. I mean, I was just in LA for for
Brain Dead and it stopped by LA War Games, which is like the
coolest fucking game shop in America.
And there was a whole Planet 28 section and a whole little in
cap of mammoth miniatures like right there in LA, which is
fantastic. Yeah, they put in a.
They got in touch. I got in touch with them on the
exact same day that they were getting in touch with me.
It was a really weird thing because I saw that they were
stocking indie stuff and I thought, that's cool, I'll
message them. And then as I messaged them,
they were like, oh, we were just messaging you.
Oh good. So yeah, they've got some
mammoth miniature stock and they've like given it a full
display as well, which is amazing.
And they've got so that hardback copy, Plant 28, the second
edition, they've got the last 6 copies because they placed their
order right like after those had run out and they said, oh, we
want 6 copies of Planet 20. And I thought, fuck, I don't
think I've got 6 copies. So I ran through my bookshelf
and like drawers and went, no, no, I have, I've got this one
here that I've saved for something and I've got this one
and this one like I managed to find 6 copies.
So those are the last copies of that around.
I think Exalted Funeral have some in stock still because they
put in a huge order for some a long time ago.
And only recently put them on their website so they might
still have some but other than that I think those are the last
few. They have they have a tendency
to tuck a box away in a backroom for for a rainy day of of more
than one project, so. I think in fairness to them, I
sent their order to the wrong address.
So they sent me an address for shipping and I sent it to their
like managing director or something.
So the poor people, like bless them, they just got a massively
torn up box of books sent to completely the wrong place and
then had to go and find it. So I don't blame them for taking
a while to put it on the website.
That's that's entirely on me. Yeah, so sold out Planet 28, but
you can still get Brutal Quest and death in the throne room on
Exalted Funeral. Yeah.
There we go. So LA war games.
We'll have the last handful then.
There you go. Yeah, I know.
Someone bought 1 when I was there.
I was like, you know that the other one is on Kickstarter
right now. He's like, I know, but I got to
get this one too. And speaking to that again, we
we already talked about Woody and now 2E and now we got the
final edition. This is what's currently on
Kickstarter right now. You've already surpassed the
well, this is an American, so I don't know what it is in pounds.
So you're close to getting to what was the the goal for or
what you did second edition at You're about 12,000 lbs.
We still got three weeks left in the campaign, which is crazy.
So yeah. Yeah.
So tell me, what is what is Planet 28 the final edition
compared to to 2E? So again, it's kind of it's
partly it was from that initial run of 1000 books.
They're gone. We sold out and I thought I kind
of thought well that's good, that's gone now.
That's probably the lifespan of that game.
And then in the intervening like 3 weeks, I think I had about 100
emails of people going I want to buy Planet 28 where is it and
say oh crap, I'm gone. So I thought well I'll, I'll do
a reprint. I got in touch with the printer
who printed it and they can't print the hardback anymore at
the cost we were printing it at the.
So certain things like the end papers in it, they don't no
longer do or basically what I worked out is to get it
reprinted as it was at 2nd edition, an exact copy of that
book, it would need to double in price.
And I just thought that's not really I don't feel good about
that. I don't feel good about giving
the same product away for double the cost.
And the only reason people would have to pay that cost is just
that they didn't happen to have ordered it six months ago.
And then I'm not very like, uh, active in promoting the game.
But I do find when people talk about it and I have a little
document where if people have feedback or ideas, I'll just
note it down. I won't tell them I've done
that. They'll never know.
But if they've got something they do, they're like, they've
got a house rule and they've got something they think doesn't
work, I'll just make a note of it.
And so I've got this list of things that I thought just
needed, not necessarily changing, but just altering or
fixing or like little mechanics I think would be quite fun or
optional rules that could be added in just adapting it to the
way people have sort of been playing it really.
So I kind of thought of that. And then recently we did a
Kickstarter 4 in the Land of the Thundering Flood, which we did
as a soft back perfect bound book.
And I really like the format of that.
It's a really nice compromise between the scene and a proper
like hardback rulebook where it's it's a nice thing, but you
don't feel like it's impossible to actually play with and use.
And it's a really nice price point where you can sell it at
an affordable price. And it's not, you know, it's not
like a major investment where if you don't like the game, you
feel like you've been robbed. So I thought it would be nice to
bring Planet 28 in line and have something that sort of sits
alongside that. And then I also thought, well,
it's been this is partly partly the reason for doing it was kind
of an in joke at myself. I don't like the Warhammer 3
year release cycle. So Games Watch have updated the
rules every three years. Yeah, now.
Insane to me. Drives me mad.
And I noticed that I'm thinking about updating the game three
years after the last edition and so I kind of thought, ah fuck.
Like I don't want to become everything I despise, become
what I hate. Well, actually, well, if I'm
redoing the game in a new format in paperback, I'll just make it
the nicest version of it it can be.
I'll fix the things that people have wanted fixing, I'll add in
a few things that I like, and then we'll call it the final
edition and that will be it. Like we'll have that edition and
that can stay in print, that can stay in circulation.
It's kind of a more economically viable version of that game
where if I run out of the print run that we do for the
Kickstarter, it's not impossible for me to just order another
print from them and not have to take it to crowdfunding and just
keep it in circulation. And it's not such a huge
investment for people that they don't then feel like they can
buy the expansions or some scenes and stuff.
So it's kind of it's it's relaunching it as a a more long
term platform to keep developing the game.
Because there's loads of stuff I've wanted to publish with
Planet 28, loads of expansions that I've got written and done
and done the illustrations for and everything and just not have
the time or chance to put them out in a way that I felt matched
the the grandeur of a hardback rule book.
Whereas now I think it would be nice to kind of get it to the
point where planetary it can just constantly have new stuff
coming out and you can pick and choose what you want to engage
with. And it becomes more of a kind of
open source system in that regard.
So having the game be viable to keep in print was something that
kind of fed into that. And yeah, like also it's just,
it's nice to to do the stuff that goes into making it.
Like it's nice to do a new batch of artwork and reformat it and
filter through new fonts and see what goes where and just fiddle
with it and stuff like that. Like it's fun to make.
So it's a fun project. But there's also I've got a
vision in my head of, of a game that can just stay in print
forever and not need updating. And you can just it's your game
that way. If you don't like something or
you want to house rule it, you can just put a sticker in it
that says we do it this way and that's fine.
It's interesting. It's like an ending in the
beginning. It's like the last.
It's a final edition of the book, but it's like launching
all of the things that you want to do with it afterwards.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So for those that haven't read
Planet 28 because the system is great and the and the book is
fantastic, what I guess what's the core mechanism Planet 28
that makes it similar and or different to what people might
have played with more with other skirmish games?
Yeah, so I was, I was struggle with this because I don't think
of Planet 28 as a game that kind of has any like mix or like
unique, like mechanical selling points.
Like some games have something where you go, yeah, that's
that's a really cool mechanic. Pro 28 doesn't necessarily have
those. It's designed to just be a
toolbox for you to play with the miniatures you want to play
with. If you're the kind of person
who, like me, has a collection of miniatures that don't
necessarily fit within a neat profile.
So the core system is really simple.
It's AD 10 roll under system, so it's kind of a facsimile of
Inquisitors D100 system but reduced down to a kind of
quicker math. Basically weapon damage is done
via your standard like RPG polyhedral dice.
So you've got a nice spread of kind of options and damage
there, but everything in it is designed to give you the freedom
to alter the mechanics as you see fit.
So the core rules think consult my copy one SEC.
The core rules I think only run to like page 20 odd or something
26 and then everything after that is entirely optional.
So the idea is that rather than shop around for a system where,
you know, I want a system where I can do solo wargaming, or I
want a system where I can have squads versus heroes, or I want
a system that can do big tank battles, but also have some role
play elements. It's all in that book.
You just pick and choose which one you want any given time.
So the strength of it, I think, and I think that people enjoy is
the freedom to create your own characters and create your own
units, your own weapons, your own vehicles.
It's it's all in the the vision you come at it with.
So it's a system that ostensibly it's a kind of sci-fi fantasy,
grim darky system. But if you wanted to play it as
a steampunk skirmish game or a high fantasy or Star Wars or
something like that, it will work for that because all you
need to do is take out the bits that don't.
And the system doesn't fall apart as a result of that
because it's built to be completely modular.
I call it a toolbox system. So it might not necessarily be
your your go to system for every game, but you might find
yourself thinking, man, I really want to run a, I want to run a
skirmish campaign with a game master and off table role play.
And then I want to have my characters in one session fight
in the middle of a big battle. Well, it'll do all of that and
you can take those bits out and you don't need to alter the
characters. You don't need to change
anything. You just need to stack up
everything that you want in that game and it'll do it.
So that's the idea behind it basically.
Yeah, it feels very like it rides the line towards teach RPG
like really heavily like more so than a lot of the scrimmage
games I've read, especially like, you know, and maybe
because the first Warhammer I read was Warhammer Fantasy like
RPG, which at the end of the day is like similar maths to the
scrimmage game too. But having a roll under system
in your thing, having the toolbox you can see and maybe
it's there or not this like kind of OSR inspiration to a lot of
the mechanics and stuff. Where because you can, like you
said, you can do a lot of this stuff as just playing it as a
RPG if you really want to, with the way the mechanics work and a
lot of the stuff and. I think that's, again, I think
part of that is I think I probably, I've played more role
play sessions than I have kind of like dedicated war game
sessions. I've played a lot of war games
and miniature games, but my regular like weekly gaming is
RPG games. We play a lot of like indie
stuff and weird one shots and stuff.
Umm And I always like when those intersect with miniature gaming.
And I always envied as someone who's like first love and main
attraction is to miniature gaming.
I always envied the kind of freedom that you have with
role-playing games where someone will say, I want to run a pirate
game and they won't change the system they're using.
They'll just put a new skin on it and go, we're calling this,
we're calling magic wands blunderbusses.
Now roll with it. It's fine.
You can fudge it so Planet 28, you don't necessarily fudge it,
but you've got the freedom to just decide to reskin it at your
will and change it. So the second edition added in
things that allowed you to play it as a bigger war game as well.
So you can play with squads of units and tanks and heroes and
you can almost get up to like Warhammer 40,000 scale games
with it. But if you want to, you can
strip it right back and have a, yeah, like an RPG light Co-op
game where you've all got your one guy and there's a game
master controlling the scenario. Because that's, that's the kind
of gaming I enjoy. And I enjoy the idea that you
can spread from that to different things and carry on
with the same characters and the same narrative as well.
Like being able to tell a story from a single solo game through
to a massive multiplayer battle without ever having to alter
your stats or change system or anything like that seemed really
fun to me. So doing that was sort of one of
the goals really. Yeah, you know, there's in
teacher BG's, you know, me and Hunter talk about this a lot.
There's a a bunch of different like genres, types, whatever you
want to call it. And some of them are, you know,
these like kind of capsule games where this system does this
thing and and this is the adventure you're running.
And maybe it's just this one time you do it or whatever.
And then you have framework games is what I call them, where
basically it gives you the tools to do whatever you want with it.
Some resolution mechanics, maybe that, but throw in whatever
setting you want. And Planet 28 really gives me
those kind of vibes where like you just said, you can just kind
of take this, this framework that you put in there, this
toolbox of things pieced together and whatever you want
and be able to roam with it, which is absolutely fantastic.
And again, like really straddles that line between teach RPGs and
and skirmish, but from the skirmish side first, which I
really enjoy. I'm a systems guy.
There's a lot of discourse and stuff and teach RPGs about
systems and stuff. But as someone who really enjoys
system and mechanics coming out kind of like a similar issue,
but from the kind of narrative skirmish side versus like the
Teach RPG side has really been scratching an itch.
And Planet 28 is one of those ones that I got like a while ago
that has been really scratching the itch for a while because of
the freedom it does provide to kind of do whatever you want and
also lean into that Teach RPG side if that's where you kind of
came from. So it's just, it's good game,
buy the game, back the game, go to Kickstarter and back the
game. So with the final edition, what
what can people actually get? I have the Kickstarter page
pulled up right here. So when they go back this what,
what can you actually get on this Kickstarter?
So the main the main cut of pledge level is obviously for
the rule book, which is going to be a A5 soft back bound rule
book. So nice spine.
But if if you trying to think of like an industry standard, but
like, think of like when you you buy like a graphic novel, that
kind of soft back, soft cover, yeah.
Perfect bound, yeah. Yeah, perfect bound.
There we go. So you can get just the book,
but there's also pledge levels for a couple of expansions.
So and again, this is kind of things that I've wanted to do
for a while, but also things people have asked for.
So the two expansions that we were included by default in the
kind of all in Pledge War World one, which is a setting guide.
So I like the idea that the book doesn't have a setting, but I'll
publish again, essentially source books which will have
scenarios and weapons and characters for a setting and
give you the information. So it's a it's the idea is it's
a planet where all your legal troubles can be resolved by
going to war with each other. So you you opt in to resolve
your conflict via war world. Isn't that what we're doing
right now? I feel like that's what's
happening in the world right now.
I feel like that's where we're. At just want to say quickly, I
have a real problem with that. I'll publish a game and it will
become suddenly very prescient very quickly.
Stop doing that. So when I did Planet 28.
When I did the solo expansion of Planet 28, the campaign that's
in that is about a world under quarantine because there's a
mutagenic virus breaking out. And then we went into lockdown.
And then when we did second edition, there was an expansion
for that about the galactic emperor dying, and then the
queen died like about a week later.
So I'm not saying I have these powers, but if I do, I'm not
using them responsibly. So yeah, the next one you make
is a game where everyone is happy and fed and and all the
richest people are guillotined and then we're good to go.
Yeah, so the other, but the other expansion that's included
in this Mutants, Monsters and Mercenaries or Mutants, Machines
and Mercenaries is partly it's all the stuff I've created for
Planet 28 that's never had a venue.
So things like extra weapons and scenarios and characters and
stuff. But it's also it's things people
have asked for to help them get into the game.
So one of the things I've consistently had people ask for
is basic character types. And I'm, I've always been a bit
like wary of doing it because I don't want to give people a
format and then they just stick to that.
But I also understand that absolute creative freedom is a
bit intimidating sometimes, especially if maybe you're
coming from games where you've got like army lists and set
units and stuff. So one of the things will be a
kind of essentially default character types that you can
quickly use for a game or if you just want to stat up a game
really quickly, you don't want to use your pre-existing
campaign characters or you want to play a solo game and just
need some quick enemies. It'll have your basic enemy
types in it and you just give them a gun and go, yeah, it's
that it costs this much points, drop it in your war band and
it's done. So things that can help people
kind of play games without necessarily needing to do all
the kind of prep work that you might do for a more in depth
narrative campaign. But also extra scenarios and
rules. And one of the things that's
going to be in there is rules for boats and naval fighting.
So rules for like boarding actions and drowning.
Things like that were fun to write.
Demon weapons are like really powerful weapons, have got their
own abilities and can like screw with you on the tabletop.
Things like that. Loads of weird scenarios.
I wrote a whole little mini campaign based on Les
Miserables. Can't remember why now I did
that, but I did. That'll be in there because I
like it. So it's going in and just, yeah,
just I want to give people lots of stuff so that when they come
to play it, they can always just grab something from it and make
the game different every time. Like if they say today we're
going to play with demon weapons, that game will be
unique because of that. Or today we're going to play
this scenario. They've just got it there and
they can mess with it. And then we had, I did set
script stretch goals for the campaign.
I didn't think the campaign would do as well as it's done so
quickly. So I only really set like 3
stretch goals. One of those is for paper
figures that start to set because I like making paper
figures. People seem to like them.
One of them is for an artisan because I've I've done a lot of
illustrations in the time I've been making Planet 28.
So collecting those into a little booklets and we can have
a flick through them would be nice.
But the other one is for another setting guide which is called
Smeg. And again, if you're a fan of
old British TV going back to Blue Peter, basically it's I
really like Red Dwarf. I don't, I don't know how
popular. No, I didn't think so.
Red Dwarf is a quite depressing sci-fi comedy about a guy who
gets frozen in stasis and wakes up 3,000,000 years in the future
on a spaceship in fast space where everyone's dead except for
his roommate, who he hates, who's been brought back as a
hologram, a computer that's gone senile, and the human offspring
of his cat, which have evolved in the ship 3,000,000 years and
is obsessed with fashion, did. Futurama.
Get inspiration from this because it sounds like you just
described like basically Futurama.
Yeah, Futurama. I think there's even like some
direct references to it in Futurama at some point.
I wouldn't be surprised. It's like Futurama meets
Farscape. Yeah, no, it sounds awesome.
Watch Red Dwarf is great, but it's so one of the fun things
about Red Dwarf is it doesn't have any aliens.
They are completely alone. And in the latest series, it
becomes about them kind of almost struggling to survive by
salvaging and encountering the remnants of humanity now that
humanity has gone extinct. So they're encountering things
like insane robots and genetically engineered life
forms that have gone like gone native and stuff like that.
And it's got loads of parodies of popular sci-fi.
Like they'll have an episode that's obviously a piss take of
aliens or they'll riff on Star Trek and stuff like that.
So I wanted to do something that's got that kind of more
comedic element to it. This, by the way, this will be
your new obsession if you go and watch Red Dwarf.
It's great fun. I'm already looking at it now.
The DVD collection's like 60 bucks on eBay and it went for
six. Wait a minute, how?
How long did this go for? Because it doesn't look short at
all. So originally I think it was
nine seasons, then it took a break, then it got, there's a TV
channel called Dave in the UK, which is where old TV shows go
to die. They made more seasons of it and
then there were two TV movies. It's very rare in British sitcom
like culture in that it has more than like 12 episodes.
Yeah, well, yeah, because British TV loves doing like 3
episodes a year, which is which is interesting.
Yeah, 12 seasons, 2 movies, a total of 123456789 times 6 is
54. 57 + 8 It's like 65 episodes in two movies like.
That's, I'd say about 30 in the first wave are really good.
They're all funny, but it's, you know, like anything, it goes on
a little too long. But yeah, the first few seasons
are genuinely really funny. It's very Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy in terms of like that depressing humor.
Yeah, I think my math is about on this.
I literally, I counted all that, but it says 74 episodes of Web
Dwarf have aired, including the special concluding the 12th
series. So I think my math is about 10
off on that. But I love that I literally have
a Hitchhiker's guy tattoo. I love super like dry British
humid literally says it's got the 42 and it says don't panic.
But I, yeah, you, you, you just you, you ruined me for, for 74
episodes of a show, or at least put me on to it.
And I really appreciate that. Well.
I'd tell you what as well, if you're really into because
you're really into role-playing games.
If you get really into Red Dwarf, you'll have to try and
track down the Red Dwarf role-playing game.
You know I have. You see the problem I have here?
This is about a 10th of what actually exists in this
apartment. There's a little space in there
somewhere. It's like it's my Holy Grail
piles but it goes for like 300 LB on eBay.
I've spent way more than that on a game.
I'll get there, but but so so I love that you.
This is the final edition that is kicking off like you to do
more stuff with it and you're already doing the more stuff
with it, which is great. So like this has already been
backed as far as like the stretch goal.
So we get 2 settings on top of all of the the compendium, the
mutants marks the machines. Now without stretching yourself
too thin because please don't do that.
Are are the, is that the end for the stretch goals?
Are you going to say now we just get you just get more stuff
because again, there's three weeks left in the campaign?
I don't I again, like I, I kind of thought we would do the
stretch goals, but we would just do the stretch goals.
I didn't expect us to breakthrough the stretch goals
in the first day, so I didn't really have a contingency plan.
There is there's more stuff. And to be honest, what I need to
do is sit down and go through all the stuff I've made and
never published and see what kind of form I want to put it
in. Like I really like the idea of
just doing more setting guides and just publishing increasingly
weirder like universes to play this game in.
And that's the other thing I should mention as well.
The one, the one thing about Plan 20 I do think is relatively
unique in war gaming is it's published on Open License, which
is something I really liked from the OSR.
So I like the idea of people taking it and doing their own
stuff with it and publishing their own expansions, making
their own guides for it. Like my, my dream would be for
someone to make loads of underweight stuff that I have no
involvement in, but people, people like it like that.
That would be amazing to me. Yeah.
No, there's, there's definitely stuff I would like to do and I
need to sit down basically and work out whether or not it's
finished enough for me to commit to it, to fit it within the
timeline. Because I've set myself a really
long fulfillment date on this deliberately.
So I can't go over it. But I am aware that I have a
tendency to go over fulfillment dates.
I like to. Be April 2027.
So yeah, you gave yourself a little bit of time a well, a
like a year easy. So yeah.
And I want to stress the goal is not to hit April 2027 and go
time to ship all those books that have been finished for six
months. The goal is to send it out
before that. But I've deliberately set myself
that goal so that if another horrible global event happens,
I'm not sat there like just not being able to do anything and
going off. Fuck, that's late.
Right, you got time. Are you distributing this
yourself again or are you trying to?
Find something it will be. It will be another case of me at
my dining room table, but I've got a label printer this time,
so there you. Go there you go.
Because you're already pushing 400 backers again with like a
week into the campaign. Yeah.
So if you get like another thousand, that's that's a lot of
books to to take up your living room.
Yeah, yeah. But you know, I've, I've, I've
moved house now I've got space. I've, I've got my, my studio as
well. So the chances are they might
get delivered there. There you go.
Because that's, I don't, I don't cast or produce anything at
home. I have a space to do that.
So nice. This time I've actually got a
little bit of logistical like groundwork in place to cope with
that. So hopefully that.
Yeah, and also the Kickstarter too to get everything is it's
extremely what's what I'm looking for reasonable for the
pricing, because if you all go all the way down to the the
biggest tier, it's only 40 lbs, which is like 55 bucks, which is
what I hit immediately. I was just like, yes, I want all
the stuff. And for 55 bucks to get all this
plus, you know, shipping from from whatever, which is fine
you're getting at the highest tier.
It's a planet 28 rule book. It's both physical scenes and
plus another death in the throne room and an A4 art print on top
of that for 55 bucks is a steal for like you said, a game that
you're able to pretty much do whatever you want with no wing
that there's going to be. Especially hearing you talk
about it knowing that not only are you getting the game, you're
getting at least 2 settings for it, an expanded compendium, and
the goal is to have just more and more settings to be able to
play the game in. So basically an endless amount
of stuff for it for what amounts to 40 to 50 bucks.
Yeah. I mean, I think again, I don't
want to say I always like embedded by working in a game
shop, but having worked retail side of tabletop gaming and like
talked to players and talked to people buying tabletop gaming
products, the things that people always liked were the things
that weren't extortionate that they could just take a punt on.
You know, you'd get amazing games, come out like big games
and they would be fantastic. Like games that were genuinely
like beautifully produced, amazing games, really nice
mechanics, amazing artwork, so much passion put into them and
they would fail because they were really expensive.
Like there's games I loved like, oh, what they're called Merck's
was a really great miniature game.
I say a few years ago, that was like a decade ago by, I want to
say Megacon games. It had a really unique art
style. It was really nice, but it was a
little bit pricey to get into, but you didn't need much to get
into it, but it was just a little bit pricey.
And so it struggled to, to to kind of grab people who would
otherwise I think have taken a punt on it and really loved it.
And I saw so many really good games not sell and then get sent
back to the supplier because people have got a limited hobby
budget. And if you're already playing
Warhammer or War Machine or DND as your core game, you're going
to buy those things first. And whatever's left is what the
indie stuff gets, you know, it's, it's trickle down
economics, you know, we're only getting what falls from the
table in terms of like people's people's hobby budget.
And so I want to make games that people can actually afford to
buy. And then if they don't like it,
I don't feel like I've robbed them.
Yeah, I, I feel like so, you know, we've been in the show for
for quite a while. We reviewed a lot of games.
We're pretty deep, especially in the TRBG scene and there's it's
the skirt machine is in AI think a better spot as far as like the
indie stuff goes. And I think a lot of it is just
the a lot of people have your perspective like they want to
make games, not products, and they want people to play the
games because they're fun and and they made the game because
they want to play it and it's fun.
So when you look at games like like planet 28, when you look at
games like Cauldron, when you look at games even like flames
of Orion, like flames of Orion has a free PDF that you can
download for whatever you're talking about making things
super affordable. That's you know, when you look
at teach RBGS, especially a lot of the biggest because one of
the things that that you said you based on want to build a
community. You want people making stuff for
the game and playing the game and doing these things.
When you look at the biggest kind of games in the indie indie
small market space, things like mothership, things like
Merkborg, things like cloud Empress, things like mouse
redder, All of those games have free core book PDFs, which
allows people to get into it so easily.
But then you have a lot of people in the space that it
feels like making products, like they're not putting out ash cans
or hiding it behind this. They're trying to drop their
first game is like a $30,000 Kickstarter or whatever.
And it's like, so are you trying to make a product and make money
or you trying to make a game that can build a community?
And it sounds like what you're doing and what you obviously
have done, because this is the third iteration of this and
people keep asking for more, is building a community, putting
out an open license, putting it available, like you said, all
your stuff free on War Vault. It's this is it's because it
sounds like you want to make a game and love making the game
and and people enjoy it. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's I guess
again, like comparing it to like coming from a fine art
background, I'd do it anyway. Like if people didn't pay me for
it, I'd still do it. It wouldn't necessarily be as
nice or as polished or it wouldn't be published book, but
I'd still make it. I just do it in my own time.
Like, you know, I still make sculpture.
I don't sell it or show it, but I still make it because I'm
gonna because it's a compulsion. And I think as well, like from
the war game miniature side of things.
I think the war gaming community, we're all quite aware
of the fact that we're a niche within a niche and that every
single game requires a certain level of investment and passion
on our part to actually engage with.
Like, if you're like, if you get, if you want to get into
like World War 2 gaming, you need to sit down and build your
miniatures and paint them and you need to do loads of stuff to
get into that. So, and then you've got loads of
systems you can play. But if if I publish a game
that's really specific, that requires you to have specific
miniatures, not only am I asking you to pay for the rulebook, I'm
also asking you to spend like 20 hours of your life building the
stuff to do that and engage in a whole like extracurricular thing
before you can actually decide whether you even like playing
this game. So I think it behoves me as the
creator to make that access as easy as possible and make that
affordable. Because if I'm going to ask
people to engage with it and spend their time committing to
it, I need to, to prove that it's worth doing, give them
something to actually engage with.
You know, just coming out the gate and saying by my rule book,
I'm not going to tell you if it's any good.
You got to buy it to find out. I think no one enjoys that and
it it just makes for a bitter experience if people then don't
enjoy it. And I think that also creates a
really, I like that. I, I think that it creates
people like more immersion into like what people are doing the
DIY aspect of the, the skirmish and hobby scene.
It feels like when you when you don't have to commit that to it,
you're committing more to it because there's, you know,
especially, you know, there's people that can just I wanna
play 5. Okay, I have the book, I'll be
the GM just show up. And then people have so much
less investment in what's going on.
And this one you'll find people on itch complaining that like a
free game has like all this and this and this and that wrong
with it because not investing into it.
They can just look at it me like, I don't want it.
I don't want it like when you actually have to invest more of
your time. And I feel like for me
personally, like having to invest the time, wanting to
invest the time into getting the minis, painting the minis,
putting the minis together and playing the game.
Like I'm going to be more invested in that game than if I
just have to show up and sit down at a table.
And that's one thing that I've really enjoyed getting more and
more into the scrimmage hobby. And I think that also makes the
consumers of the skirmish games more, I think understanding of
the creators and designers too, because they also have to create
and design and paint and do things in order to commit to the
game versus kind of just having to show.
Up everything, it's, it's a back and forth like there's, it's
almost collaborative where I provided a tool set that the
player can use and then they're then taking that and using that
in their own way. And then they might come back to
me with feedback about how that works.
Is it's, it's this kind of ongoing process of interaction
between two people creating from different perspectives, which I
don't think exists anywhere else outside of like the tabletop
gaming community. It's it's a very specific thing
where you get given something and then you can completely
interact with it in your own way and adjust it.
And alternately, there's very few mediums where you can do
that. You can't do that with, you
know, I mean, maybe I'm not a big video gamer, but like you
can't necessarily do that with like a video game where someone
gives you a video game and you go, cool, I'm going to do this
wrong and do it my way. Like they don't work like that.
You can't do it with painting or with a sculpture, something like
that. There's very few kind of
collaborative narrative creative experiences outside of tabletop
gaming. And I think war gaming in
particular has always it's never been as big as tabletop
role-playing in terms of like the product side of things,
which is weird because it requires more of a material
commitment. But if you if you ignore the
Games Workshop and it's kind of like offshoots like Warlord and
Mantic Wargaming is always basically just been blokes in
their sheds running small businesses selling toy soldiers
to the 12 people they know who want toy soldiers.
And then only with the advent of the Internet and like like
specialist publications has not been able to kind of spread out.
But it's always been fairly cottage industry.
So I think in a way like the the skirmish boom is, it's almost a
return to form where people have sort of looked at what
Gameswatch have been looked at, how popular it is and gone.
Well, let's carry on with how we used to do it, but we'll do it
in a kind of more communal way rather than just like handing
paper out to my mate down the pub.
I'll put it out to the community online and they can engage with
it. And that also kind of Harkins
back to what we talked about early on with the kind of
renaissance in the miniature makers and creators aspect of it
too, where I think that's really pulling a lot of people into to
more that buy in too. So you're getting these really
cool skirmish games that are being made and distributed at
the same time you're getting these artists and creators
going. I'm going to make minis my way
and I'm going to do what I do. But like you said, there really
isn't anything out there. You could have modders on video
games like you play like Sesame Street and Skyrim or whatever,
but it's not the same as or even in the teach RPG scene.
Sure, you can play imagination a little bit differently, but to
actually be like, here's a game and you go, OK, now I'm gonna go
not just because no one in board games too, no one in board games
hands your board and says OK, now go like paint the pieces and
do whatever. There are some that that you'll
get cool models for, but it's not like you have to build this
and paint it and do it before you can get to the table.
It really is a very small thing that tabletop, specifically
scrimmage and wargaming does that I think does differently
than just about anything else where it's like, here's a game,
go paint and build all of this stuff just so that you can play
it. And then let's sit down and
actually do the thing for it. Is it's it's the thing that's
been tickling my brain in a, in a really good way for for over a
year now. And it's, I think it's that
investment, that DIY aspect that that kind of like immersion, you
get into the community, into the scene by having to do all of
that is, is great. And you know, it's where I'm at.
It's umm, it's weird as well because like again, that that
whole thing, there was a period a couple of years ago where that
was the flavor of the month in the like the fine art world.
The contemporary art world was collaborative world building.
And there was a couple of months where the fine art world got
obsessed with role-playing games and Warhammer.
Because people who take things very seriously and write
articles about stuff discovered that there was this whole way of
engaging creatively that they just had no access to without
being part of this community. And they're like, oh, that's
really neat. We've been trying to do this for
years. Like, art has struggled for
years to come up with a way to fully engage with its audience
in a way that's reciprocal. And it's tried so many different
ways. And nerds have been doing it for
decades and just not telling anyone.
Yeah, no, it's, it's been great, It's been fun.
And again, systems like Planet 28 make it, it is different than
a lot of systems out there. So it does really scratch a
different kind of itch where you can do whatever you want.
And, and the fact that going forward, knowing that you're
going to be doing setting guides and and, you know, basically if
someone says I want this thing, there's a chance that in the
future you might get it. Just don't ask for anything bad
because apparently every time you make something, the world
follows suit. So let's keep.
It I know I'll do like a nice like utopian setting next there
you. Go see if things.
Turn around. Yeah, well, I feel like maybe
that's the one miss you're gonna have with your things, but it
would be great if you could try because maybe you do have the
touch. So people are going to go back
this on Kickstarter. The links are going to be, it's
the Internet, you know how the Internet works and they'll be
below or whatever. But when people are looking for
your miniatures, when people are looking for Planet 28 and all
the future stuff, like where are people able to find you on the?
Internet, so the web stories Mammoth Miniatures.
So if you search Mammoth Miniatures, we should come up.
I think there is a very nice company called Mammoth Mammoth
Factory Miniatures who are an STL Patreon.
They're not me. So they are very nice.
So if you see them, don't like shout at them and tell them
they're the wrong mammoth. They're lovely.
But yeah, so mammoth miniatures. This, the web store has
everything. Everything I will say is cast to
order. I don't keep stock of most
things. Some things I will have stock
for. But if you order something, just
bear in mind once I've got that order, I've got to go physically
make it. So sometimes it I am a bit slow.
I'll admit. I'm well aware of that.
But it doesn't mean it's not coming.
It just means I'm, I'm in the process of actually hand
manufacturing it. And then we're on Instagram as
Mammoth miniatures. I'm on Instagram as Nick the
Evans, which is where I'll post like work in progress stuff or
like stuff that isn't necessarily Mammoth miniatures
related, but might be miniature related.
Also, just stuff that isn't like immediately in the pipeline for
Mammoth Miniatures. I'll post it there as a work in
progress just because that's basically just like my my diary
and then I'm on Blue sky as well as we discussed this earlier
that I can't remember my own blue sky name.
Nick. Nick the Mammoth.
Is that what it is? And mammoth miniatures Nick or
Nick the Mammoth on Blue Sky as well.
There you go. So yeah, you'll find me there as
well. I'm not a huge like social media
guy. I don't, I don't like to clock
people's feedback stuff so might not post very frequently, but as
a rule, if I'm doing something new or I'm working on something,
you'll see it in one of those places and I'll I'll cross post
it as much as I can there. You go so find Nick at all the
things go back. There's 21 days left, and by the
time this drops, it's probably gonna be more like 14 or less.
But go back Planet 28. Trust me, you're not going to
regret it. It is a fantastic game, and I'm
very excited to see what is different with the new edition.
Nick, thank you so much for coming on the show.
I hope this is not the last time.
It's been a pleasure talking with you.
Yeah, it's really appreciate it. Family.
Yeah. So that is going to be us for
today. Thank you, everyone that's been
here. Thank you everyone for watching
and we will see you all later. Bye.