Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan and joining me once again is Zach of Soul
Muppet. How you doing today, Zach?
Hey Ryan, how are you doing? Good to see you and glad to be
back on the Weekly scroll. Yeah, we were just talking about
where the stream started that I do think at this point you are
the most guested guest we've had.
So at some point I'm going to go back and count it and we'll see,
We'll see exactly what that is. But.
Too many podcasts at this point. I mean, not that that's
possible, but you know, if it could be done.
I've tested on too many podcasts.
I've seen, well, not only ours you've been every time I hop on
Blue Sky, there's like another like Orbital Blues podcast
popping up recently. I'm talking about the project,
which is what we're going to talk about here today, but
Orbital Blues Month, that's what's going on.
So there's been a bunch of months going on, on Backer kit.
We were talking a little before the show started.
So how how's it been having a whole month to yourself?
Yeah, I mean, I always get intensely jealous when I see
another publisher with a month, right?
You know, my mothership months and my mouse written months and
my more tobers, you know, and it makes me envious and jealousy
and that obviously that kind of emotion is always the best thing
to drive progress, you know, So but in all seriousness, it's the
they're always a really cool thing to see done.
And like the ones that are happening for those games you
were talking about are of all the Blues.
It's like, you know, it's popular game.
I'm very happy of how well it's done and how well the third
party team is doing, but it's definitely a bit more nascent
bad to some of those other games, you know, a little bit
more kind of growing in that space.
And it's felt like a really good opportunity to like alongside
project we were planning outdoors and corporations, which
is going to be our third entry from so Muppet.
There's like an official Orbital Blues first party product that
we work with some other folks to release some things as well, you
know, so we've made our game, we've made our adventure for it
as like the big kind of tentpole craft free project of the month.
And then there are five other sort of contributions from other
people all around the open Blues third party scene.
You know, we've got a couple of adventures, a full system
rewrite and like some other like weird different ways to play all
these as well. So it's it's been exciting
putting that all together, you know, coming up with what we
wanted everyone's pitches to be and how it was going to be
different work out who we're going to work with and how we're
going to plan it and what kind of promotional gizmos we're
going to do to make sure that everyone else was excited about
it as we were. But it's kind of all to come
together into like a really exciting celebration of what,
you know, our sad space cowboy role-playing game would be.
So it's been a fantastic experience obviously over the
last weeks and in the months of planning that it takes to to run
this kind of enterprise. Yeah, and obviously we're going
to dig deep into all of these projects.
But for those that might not have seen like that a the other
times you've been on the show or the reviews we've done or like
all of the Orbital Blues stuff here.
What what the heck is Orbital Blues?
A little bit of who is Soul Muppet that's making those games
to just so the people once again that haven't seen it and are
going to go back. All of these great projects know
know what they're back. Yeah, so I'm Zach by Jelly
Muppet on the Internet and I run an RPG company called Soul
Publishing. We're auk based indie RPG
publisher. We've done a mix of like
publishing other people's work and for Oracle Blues kind of is
our flagship indie story. OSRE rules like emotions heavy
game. It's game S play Cowboys.
You play a bunch of interstellar outlaws trying to make ends meet
in a Dust Bowl retro future Americana Galaxy.
The game is about role-playing these kind of sad losers trying
to make ends meet under the sort of existential threat of rent
while dealing with depression. All the art for the game, the
world is this kind of dusty retro future kind of music,
Americana inspired universe. So all of the arts is like a lot
of the art rather is like in world and sort of a mix of like
advertising materials, business cards, posters for places that
don't exist, schematics, diagrams, marketing copy.
So it kind of has this kind of skew morphic sensibility, which
means that as you're reading it, you're kind of finding out more
about the vibes of the world and the characters.
We've ran a couple of crowdfunding projects over the
last few years. Is the third one Outlaws and
Corporations is for a new kind of setting slash source book
that we're doing that details the two kind of opposing forces
within any old Blues campaign, which is going to sort of be the
criminal outlaws and the sort of corporate bodies that kind of
rule the Galaxy. And it's a book kind of
centering around all these different types of characters,
all these factions. A book like fundamentally in
opposition with itself. If you take a look at the page
for the project, you can see that it's this type of book
called a Tech Bash, where like if you read it one way, it's all
outlaws and you meet to the middle, it then turns upside
down and then it's corporations the other way.
So it's kind of a book in conflict about what is going to
happen in your campaign. And it kind of dives a bit
deeper into some of the stuff that kind of more of the
different parts of the Galaxy because the adventures we've
written so far kind of focus really deeply on like three or
four different systems. And this is like this is your
tool for running a campaign across the entire Galaxy if you
need to and kind of going into a bit more about the law.
And then alongside the soul market option made by which is
made by my 2 amazing Co creators for all the Blues, who are Josh
Clark, our artist. And then Sam Slini, our kind of
vibes guy who does all a lot of the adventure writing and you
know, the original idea for the game, part of the the
instigator, if you will. And that's kind of our stuff.
And then there's these five other adventures, I'm sure, some
of which you'll be able to scroll through on your screen or
in the show notes or whatever. There's a mix of different sort
of genres and approaches from like a list of amazing creators
you'll be familiar with if you've spent any time hanging
around in the RPGs. So yeah.
Yeah, Orbital Blues, sad Space Cowboys.
It's I think it's one of the earlier reviews we did way back
in the day. And I don't remember we did
Orbital Blues first or if we did best left buried first.
But either way, we've covered in both.
I was actually shocked to hear that this is only the third
release from you, but I guess it is because you guys did Orbital
Blues, you did Afterburn, and I guess this is just the the third
one. I feel like I have so much more
orbital Blues than that though. It's because every time we do
it, we go ballistic, right? Yeah.
It's never like, here's a book. Like in the first crowdfunding
project we did a book, AGM screen sets and then an art
book. As a stretch goes for that.
We then released the PDFs for five individual adventures, like
soft covers, all of which like 4860 pages long.
And then in Afterburn, we collected those five stretch
goal adventures into a slip case.
We also made Avhs case full of pamphlet adventures.
We made a whole new book, Orbital Blues Afterburn, which
came with a huge adventure and a load of different like setting
material and in terms of like different spaceships your
characters might be able to get a hold of.
And then like a bunch of like GM advice that I wrote having based
on my experience running the game since it came out.
And then also alongside that, we just happen to do 2 more albums.
And now this Orbital Blues release is going to be similarly
ginormous in that alongside, you know, outlaws and corporations
from us, there's going to be F Infinity from the team of plus
one Exp, which is A kind of race space racing RPG where it's kind
of a mixture of F1 and NASCAR, but in space with sad space
pilots. There's a vape wave Wanderlust
by Graham Turner which is going to be a sort of a AI in not AI,
rather VR. Sorry got my letters wrong.
A sort of VR dreamscape of an orbital Blues adventure.
There is Paramore from Josh Damansky for who's the creator
of liminal horror that is a kind of romance themed adventure.
We've then got Fistful of Stars which is a like a space train
heist adventure from the guys behind Infinity of Ships.
And then finally a lone archivist who was the original
graphic designer for All the Blues is coming out as with
Jupiter and E flat minor, which is a was E flat major.
I've forgotten Jupiter and an E. Flyer.
And that's like a sort of jazz and Blues inspired mystery
adventure. So tons of different people
coming up with tons of different things.
And like, it might feel like, but this is, yeah, this is only
the third craft phonic project we've done for the Blues over
the last like 5 years. The first one was in 21.
The second was in back half of 24, I want to say.
And now we've got this one in 2026.
So it was 23. I can't remember.
It doesn't matter. It's a we've, but we've put a
lot of stuff in the meanwhile. So, you know, I was going to
say, yeah, like you guys, it's maybe it's just how much stuff
we get total from Soul Muppet, not just from not just from
Orbital Blues, but but but the backer kit month specifically
talking about that a little bit, how there's a bunch of them now
and more coming up. Apparently eventually it's just
going to be a calendar for backer kit alone, But how does
that all come together? I guess so like how do the story
of the Orbiter Blues month? I know you said you saw one you
wanted to do when it's great, but how does one actually do you
reach out to backer kit this backer reach out to you and then
how do you decide and, or take submissions from people to join
your month to turn this into what it has become, which is
extremely successful. Every single project is funded
and the whole thing is made over $130,000 for these six projects,
which is fantastic. But how, how does that start?
And like, how do you actually get to the point of being able
to launch six projects together with this amazing group of
creators? Yeah.
So like the, I think the turn around time on this one was
quite short by back standards. We started working on it August.
We had a meeting at Gencom, which you would have been there
for, not there for the meeting, but there on the day that Moll
and I had that meeting probably manning our stand.
So we sat down, we said we wanted to do a month.
We talked about kind of what we wanted to do with it and back
it. We're really excited.
I feel like the collaboration months are like a really unique
part of their ecosystem. Like it's something that
Kickstarter sort of try to do initially with stuff like Zen
Month, right? Or Zen Quest, I guess it would
have been the time, but that's been something that's run like
quite inconsistently and not super aggressively now.
And kind of that collaboration month is sitting a lot more in
like the back territory now. And like, as much as I really
like Kickstarter, it's a fantastic platform and it's a
really great way for us to connect with backers back here.
Just so much more like aggressive with like features
and developing new stuff, which means that when they see a
market opportunity, because they're not the market leader
like Kickstarter is, they're not the brand name, they're excited
to do something cool for us. So we said we wanted to do it.
They were really excited. I think it's a goal for them to
grow the number of months. And then it was put together for
us to kind of go away and find a load of people to work with.
Like the first touchstone for us was like working with people
who'd made all the blue stuff before, right?
Josh had made an amazing adventure called Starfall
Instagram, who's behind vaporwave?
Wanderlust had done 3 orbital Blues adventures, all of which
you can find on the song website now.
We've been printing them for a couple of years now.
And lone arc of this was our original graphic designer.
So we reached out to them and said hey, we want to do
projects. And they were all like, huh, OK,
yeah, I'd like to do that. Took a little bit finagling
because you know, not all of them have done crowd friendly
projects themselves before. So for us it a big part of soul
market is like knowledge sharing and ladder building.
So being able to be like, hi, I will help you run this thing.
I will support you with it. I will sit down with you, I will
work out what your pages. I'll give you feed rock and
everything. Like it's been a little bit more
bespoke than I imagine it is for some of the bigger projects.
Like I'm sure that you know, on the Mothership team, Sean McCoy
hasn't had like a sit down with all 25 of the creators on
Mothership month at this point. That would just be insane or
unrealistic to expect of a person because you know, we're
able to have a slightly smaller working group.
It means we've been able to kind of interweave quite nicely and
coordinate really well. Then it was a case of like
reaching out some other folks within our circle who we knew
had experienced with crowdfunding projects who would
be excited about all of the police, you know, our friends
basically. And then we said, you know, hit
us up and see what you can do. Like I said, at one point, there
was going to be before we spoke, one point was going to be 12
projects. And that would have been
madness. Like, I think that probably
would have been too many. We would have exhausted the
enthusiasm of all the Blues fans at that point, which is normally
pretty limitless. And we'd have came asking people
to back like 12 projects. That would have been insane.
But, you know, people were happy to be there in the end and, you
know, basically put it together and start promoting about three
months ago. So kind of five months from
initial conversation to I need you to like have a project page
ready for an idea that maybe didn't exist before.
It's sometimes a little bit difficult, but you know, I'm
really happy that the people we were working with were excited
and able to do it. And given how well this one,
this one's gone, we might have to look at doing another
collaboration month next year, maybe.
You know, even though it's been a lot of work for me and more on
the sole Muppet side, but you know, it's good to feel like
we've got this sense of community.
Because the thing that's so exciting about these kind of
collaboration months, and I've said this on a bunch of the
other podcasts I've done, and what I've talked about it is
that it's so easy to like allow what a thing can be like an IP,
right? If you want or a game or a genre
to be stuck within the idea of what the people making it want
it to be, right. You know, whereas all these
different people collaborating and working together and
providing their own spins on what the Blues can be, but are
just completely different to anything that I could write from
my own experience. And you know, never mind once
you add art and editing and layout and you know, everything
else that goes into making one of these things.
So you just, it's one of the most rewarding things to do
because beyond that initial idea of like, hi, I want you to make
a project. Everything that's happened here
is like these incredible creatives going off and making
their own thing within our kind of sandbox, you know, and then
going off and building whatever castles and rivers and, you
know, snow angels they want to do.
Because we were doing our thing. We knew what our orbital Blues
was. But how could I ever know what
someone else saw the Blues would be.
All the orbital Blues is going to happen at the table of people
who are playing with this stuff in the end, which is why it's so
exciting. It's like it will bursting into,
you know, possibility. Yeah.
That's one of the things I find interesting about these months
and, and in general, because if you have the game to, you can't
just make something and think you're going to have a month on
back or get it has to have it a community behind it.
And Orbital Blues absolutely does.
And one of the interesting things about indie games is the
number of people that hack a game and make it into something
that the creator could have never imagined, like you said.
So I, I, that's always something that has driven me towards the
indie scene and everything else is just the ability to have so
much for one thing that is different than even what it was
intended to be. And the cool thing about the
backer kit months is the crystallization of that where
not only do you get to see all these different facets of a
game, but it all, it all works together.
And Backer Kit does a really cool job of something that
Kickstarter would never do because let's be honest, they
don't really give a shit about TRPGS.
The cross collaborations that that are available not only
through all of a ton of backer kit projects, but specifically
through the month. But even the way the project
itself is displayed on the backer kit page where when you
do the month, you're not having to dig through.
Like if you do Zenquest, there's no real way to pull out all
projects that are doing Zenquest.
But when you're doing the Backerikit months, like I have
the project page open right here for Orbital Blues Month and we
can talk about literally the Orbital Blues Month page that
starts it off way. Go explore through all of the
different pages. And I love that they do this
little logo thing for for everything that they do and then
be able to dig through all the projects individually.
So the way Backer Kit puts this together, they do a really,
really fantastic job. Do you think that if you had
wanted to do this not on backer kit, let's say before backer kit
month was happening, do you think you would be able to
corral these like 6 projects together into something similar
to this on on Kickstarter? Or is it pretty much just this
specific way that Backer kit puts the platform together that
makes it a little bit easier, a little bit more manageable?
I'm sure it could be done, but it would be a case of trying to
fit a, a round peg into a square hole, right?
And whereas budget kit will just make you a whole, right, if you
are excited enough about something and you know, you can
suggest a feature which will drive value, right?
They will literally build it for you, right?
The, and it's been very interesting, like being involved
in sort of a different project management, like project people
management, like being account managed, which is like very
boring from a, you know, perspective.
And it's not like I, I do not have a very good relationship
with people at Kickstarter and I'll continue to work with them
on projects which I feel like are a good fit.
Like the way kind of the market spec I've seen for at the moment
is that the USP of back kit for me are the pledge management
tools. The and the the collaboration
months where it's like I still think individual projects more
people are browsing Kickstarter. So if I am bringing the people
with me like I am with all of the Blues, I want that product
from back kit. Whereas if I'm trying to find
new customers like I am with like a new IP like Doom Spiral,
right, that would certainly live on Kickstarter.
And that's kind of because I think there's more people
browsing it, even though like some of the new features might
not be as tip top pledge manager hasn't caught up yet.
Back at 1:00. But if there's still a place for
it to exist and like we have ran something like this on
Kickstarter, yeah, we could have done, but it wouldn't have had
the same like features built for it.
That chip hard ready to go. So I'm and obviously like this
stuff wasn't invented for TCRPGS.
You know, it really comes from like the events like pin Topia,
right? It's like where all this
collaboration month actually stems from, you know, mother
ship month is just, even though we think of that as the first
kind of thing, it's really just them using the pin Topia and the
Zen type of technology for a specific game.
And when it's applied to a community, like a group of
people both from a design community and a fan community,
that's when it starts to get really exciting to me, you know,
and that really levels up the potential for what project could
be, you know, So I, it could have been done, but it would
have been less, I think it would have been less successful at the
moment. Like in a few years maybe that
won't be the case. But right now it's definitely
the kind of the USP for at the moment at least.
Yeah, it, you know, it seems like that's really the one of
the key features that Back Cricket has now that Kickstarter
doesn't honestly, is usability across the entire site.
And I think possibly maybe being a backer thing for so long, like
needing to build in every bell and whistle to be able to put
stuff together might have helped them.
But like you said, Pintopia, Pocketopia, Zintopia, and now
all these months it, it just feels like the entire thing is
extremely, as I said, accessible for multiple projects with the
collaborations, with the months with, with all of it together
and having these like hub, the, the technology to create these
basically hubs for everything. Like you can imagine them
putting out something that has 100 projects and easily being
able to just go to the explorer page and hitting one of their
little icons and being able to find it a lot easier.
When once again, like if you try to do the inquest on on
Kickstarter, you're hoping that someone puts together another
website that'll that'll somehow put it together for you.
So that's definitely the thing that I've seen as as a backer of
way too many projects that backer kit has done really,
really well. And I think it's really good for
them. You know, eventually, you know,
maybe they'll get as big as Kickstarter is as far as the
ability to to create new people. But until then, I think the
ability to to link like minded people together has been very
successful for them and it's been really, really cool to see.
Absolutely. Now you got over the Blues.
Is is is a big thing that you guys do and we'll talk more
about some of the projects here on Orbital Blues Month, but you
have other games. Do you think there's a future
where there's like a soul Muppet month or like another month for
like a different game you guys have?
Or do you think Orbital Blues is kind of the one that's most
successful and accessible for for like a third party market
for that so? You don't want to make any
promises, but like I feel like couple years ago, I think a best
left buried month could have done quite well.
It's got like a, you know, a couple people writing the
occasional bit of third party stuff for at the moment.
The thing I'd really like to get off the ground is paint the town
red month. I think that could be really
cool. I'd love to make like a sort of
really log mega campaign in between a couple different
people and kind of see where we go from there.
So like that's what I'm kind of eyeing up for next year.
If we feel like we can make it work, but obviously it's very
contingent on getting the right people and obviously the
understanding that paint the Town right is not going to be as
big a game as all the Blues, right.
It's definitely the biggest thing we make by a reasonable
margin, and I think it's past the time where Best of Buried
could support that kind of play. I think people are playing it,
but it's like a sort of real hardcore cult classic game, a
little bit broggier than what else we make.
So I think there's worlds for it in the future.
There's definitely games I would like to run collaboration months
for, but I really like the idea of like potentially what we're
trying to do is run like 2 projects a year, one of which is
a new thing on hit starter and the other which is a a re
release of an existing game with a new thing on that kit as a
collaboration month. That's like my dream scenario at
this point. But obviously I we can't do an
all the police month every year like that.
Would that would burn us out, Never mind the never mind the
the fans and we'd have to look at something else.
So maybe paint the town right, But I think like Orbital Blue
sits in a really specific position for us right now.
So and I wouldn't want to, you know, I'd only want to run this
sort of thing if I know it's going to be a really big
success. You know, maybe we'll do a best
left very second edition at some point or a third edition, I
guess at this point, considering technically deeper is a new
version of the rules after the original Z version.
But you know, I think what would that be?
Best left very deepest, best left buried.
You got it already. Bottom.
Yeah. Best left, Barry.
Rock bottom. Yeah, like.
You. You.
In the future, but in the future, you know.
I got to be honest, I would I would love more best left Barry.
It's one of my favorite things you guys have put out.
Vibes are Immaculate. So yeah, I would not.
I would. I would definitely back best
left Barry deepest in the future.
But the thing with the months too though is that realistically
in in the case of crowdfunding, as someone who once again has
never crowdfunded something but is backed way too many
crowdfunds a year is not a lot of time.
Like I mean we still have not received mothership month 1
stuff and we've already had mothership month 2 and I assume
we'll have a mothership month 3 next year, so.
It's only been announced Month 26 is in October.
Yeah. Which is again, like, I
hopefully we have mothership month 1 stuff by the time we
have Mothership month 3 come out.
A year is not a lot of time for crowdfunding because you have to
do the project, then you have to actually like wait for the
funds. If there's something that needs
to be produced, that has to be produced.
If there's stuff going on overseas, the world is burning
what as always. And you got to get all that
stuff done and shipped and and put together and distribute and
stuff. A year is not a lot of time to
do something every single month that seems and crazy.
Let's just do bi. Let's do biannual people.
Let's do this. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, like the, the, the place where I'm at at the moment is
like I, my goal always is to have the project I did most
recently released digitally before I do my next craft friend
project, right? Because otherwise I'm running
three projects at a time and that is just insanity, right?
You know, and also actually I've already written about 2/3 of the
game and got about 1/3 of the art for the thing that's coming
out in six months, right? So right now in some market
we're fulfilling that as hell, which is printed even though it
crowdfunded last April. We're working on the doom spiral
layout now, which hopefully will be done by UK Games Expo.
We've then got, you know, this is coming out at the moment.
Sam and Josh are working on their book.
There's all those things ongoing.
I'm currently working on my next game releasing in November,
which I'm writing. It's a best, it's an inevitable
follow up. And then also I've got people
writing for the game in a year's time, which is a Paint the Town
Red adventure that may become a collaboration month, right?
So at that point I've got 5 projects on the go and many of
those have multiple bits to them.
You know, Matters How has a core book, the Radicals Handbook,
which was done at the time, at the time we launched it, but
also the Scarred and the field guy telling Earth and the GM
screen. That's five different things.
And you know, even though the the layout for Matters How was
basically done, it's still taken as nearly nine months, a year,
full year actually to get the project like actually released.
Because printing is the kind of the relentless ambition that I
bring to all this stuff is just makes it so difficult because
you know for matters how you know.
For those unfamiliar with the project, the core book is a
well, I can just show it on the street.
Yeah, those gorgeous cutouts in it.
You just had to. You're just taking it farther
and farther with every game. So, so this is the cover.
Have you seen this in real life? Did I bring this to?
No, I wouldn't have time. So that's the meat version.
It flips open like this and then there's a book inside and so
it's got 2 separate die cuts in it, one in the dust jacket and
one in the call book. And you have to do it like that
so you can see it all the way through.
And then the GM screen is the same cardboard as the book
cover, so that we did 2 alt dust jackets which fold over this so
you can dress it up like a, like a, like a Barbie doll with a
book and like, yeah, that's, I can't get that done in six
months, you know? What I'm saying it's the turn
around the layout. Designer nearly killed me so
like, and it's but if I didn't make a new release on
Kickstarter every six months, I'd go out of business because
the company, you know, the the industry is so addicted to
crowdfunding that like running everything running everything
sensibly and slowly. You know it's it's it's we're
growing out of it like, you know the the our crowdfunding
projects are doing a smaller percentage of our business each
year because, you know, we're doing a really good job of like
growing our retail business particularly.
But you know there's a lot of crowdfunding to do so yeah, even
even one month a year is really like a month every year would be
massively ambitious and also we're adding 6-5 other people's
stuff onto it as well. So you know I'm I'm always and
the funniest thing about all this is that working on those
five projects, which I'm currently in various stages of
right matters how doom spiral orbital Blues, it's the boss
paint the town red. But one point in 2022, I had 22
different books on the go, right between my work at Romo and
Decard of my work here. And I was like, that's just not
possible. Nothing's getting done, you
know? And whereas, you know, this
modest 5 projects, which in reality is me doing a little bit
of writing when I have some time, me hiring some people for
two projects, doing layout for one, doing printing for another,
and doing active project management for all of the Blues,
which is what's on right now is, is more sustainable.
But it's still a lot of work. And you know, the way that we
put all this stuff out is that I work really hard and I have a
lot of ADHD and that gets it all done and it's impressive and it
happens and it comes. But like, you know, being
sustainable is like a big goal. And I feel like I'm sustainable
backers as well, because you don't want to outstrip people's
abilities to actually play the games because people playing the
games is what actually keeps the business alive, right?
Because they play it, they have fun and they want to do more and
they want to buy the next thing. You know, we well, I just if we
sort of. Hit playing the game paying for
the game as well is the other issue too.
If you people can't go special edition 200 stuff every six
months a lot so. And that's kind of quite
important to me that like the digital pledges for over the
Blues Month, we try to keep them really modest, really sensible.
There's only 6 projects you can walk away with, you know, 6
digitals and a copy of Outlaws and Corporations with physical
alongside all your physical goodies, including the
collaboration set and the adventure that I'm writing in
Zoom form. I think it's for like 120 lbs,
so like $150.00. So like if you do that, you're
going to get 6 orbital Blues books.
Obviously some of those will be PDFs, but and only one batch of
shipping as well. So, you know, hopefully the goal
is that. And one of the things we have
seen is that because we've been a little bit smaller and
everything, you know, I've kind of encouraged everybody to keep
their standard pledge in vertical was quite low.
We've we've got a massively higher backed every project
percent than you would have on something like mouse rhetorical
shipment. You know, you know, and I'm
really happy that all of the all the Blues fans have come with us
on that because like, you know, running this sort of thing and
finding out that actually we've without stripped the fans,
without stripping the scene is, is really, really good.
You know, of the of the backers. I've just literally just typed
the word month into Google because I'm trying to find the
actual number that is all the Blues month.
Total Blackers 2376. Yeah.
And of those, you know, but yeah, of the total like 1200
backers, like 180 of them have come in for everything, for one
of each project, which is really amazing.
That's so much better than the equivalent insane mother, shit
mother. I think that number is like 5%,
you know? So I'm really happy that like
everybody's been with us and excited because obviously back
in 27 projects is mad, right? You know, So, but you know, even
our 6 plus percentages, it doesn't matter.
It's not competition, but it's exciting.
But like everyone's come with us on this little journey, on this,
well, this big intergalactic journey, you know?
Yeah, You know, it's not competition, but it's good to
see those numbers too because we've discussed this on the show
before and I think it might have been during Mouse Writer Month
where that is it? The months are interesting and I
do think that there is a positive and a negative to the
months in that it's really cool that a project gets so much
focus on it, right. But it is incredibly difficult
for everyone to back all the projects they want to back in
one short period of time. If say a project, say it has 10
projects, if one of those backed a month, more people might be
able to back them because each month they might be able to do
one versus having to drop all 10 at once.
So there is a little bit of of a give and take in that and I do
really like that you guys kept it to like 6 projects because a
mouse shooter had was it 16 something like that which is.
Mother Ship Month 25 was 27 projects.
Which is insane. And I, I, to me again, I think
that one of these months, a year is really going to start
weighing on people. I would much prefer for me
personally, if they cut that in half and they just split that
across and had more of like a two year window for, for the
things that they want to do. I think that'd be at the end of
the day, like more reasonable not only for the creators, but
for the backers and for the market that we currently exist
in with production and distribution.
So we'll see how it goes. I I love that the project is 6
because I definitely did back all six and it didn't break the
bank. Even get physicals with all the,
with the orbital blue stuff versus trying to back all of,
you know, mouse shit or something like that.
Like even if you go pretty light with the Zenes, which is what
they did, it adds up really, really quickly.
And, and not wanting to miss out on a lot of great projects makes
it hard for people. So I, I would much prefer to see
over the Blues month this year with only six projects and maybe
another thing next year, the year after with another 5 or 6
projects. And I think that sounds more
sustainable for everybody then then going crazy.
But you know, some projects have just a lot of, of, you know, big
third party scene. But I will say, and I'll say
this again, I showed this off a little bit before.
You are not allowed to make a book as big as inevitable again
because I've run out of shelf space and all my shelves are
shorter than this. So this is this is all soul
muppet and this is inevitable here way at the top.
So shorter books than inevitable through just just for the
future. You gotta, you gotta.
I'll see what I. Can do.
I do have to consider your shelf space as one of my primary
production design concerns. Which as you should.
That's my point. That's what I'm saying.
I'm just letting you know now that that's an important thing
that you have to keep in mind and consider.
Is it going to kill you to know I'm making another a four book
by the end of the year? I mean, Doom Spiral is that big
as well. Doom Spiral is a four, so you'll
be in danger there. Why are you doing this?
Why are you doing this, man? I'm.
Sorry. So Doom Spiral is really going
to be that big. Yeah, a four like it's 75,000
words I think. No, 8585 it's.
Massive you got to do like B4. That's a good size book.
See how it goes. How are you with US letter?
Do you prefer that to a four? Fuck American sizes of
everything. Give me a everything because it
makes sense. You know, I'll take an A5A6A4
all day before I'll do anything. My game I dropped in an A6
because I was like fuck these American sizes.
So we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll figure it out.
I'll just have to create a whole do.
I'll just chop a part of the shelf out just for your books.
But so, so you do have 6 projects on.
I know we, we talked about them a little bit and Outlaws and
corporations. I want to dig into that a little
bit more because you, you are doing something.
Let me mute this because it's going to make me talk.
There it goes for those watching live on back, KID.
Thank you. So outlaws and corporations,
you're doing something really cool with this project that I've
only seen in if I think about my shelves 2 two other books.
You're doing the the the flip book and you said that.
The. The Yeah, What's it called
again? Tet besh.
It means like tet besh in French.
Literally right right there on the screen as I'm as I'm looking
at it, it looks fantastic. So I know you talked a bit about
why you want some friction with that, but like what expand on
that a little bit? And also like what is the
production like when you decide to flip a book upside down?
Is it literally as easy as in layout, you just turn the pages
upside down? Or is there more to go into
production of a book like that? So the file prep is really easy,
like you just make APDF and then you smash it together and flip
it in Adobe. It's not very hard.
The bit that's a bit more challenging has been sort of, it
has to be really tightly planned because like what we've been
attempting to do is we agreed the different bits of what was
going to be in this book right at the start because Josh is
writing 1/2, Josh is doing the outlaw half, and Sam is doing
the corporation stuff. So we decided there needs to be
6 factions. They all need to be 2000 words
long. There's going to be 6 locations.
They all need to be 1800 words long and like so that they're
like meeting them as literally like a book inverted, right?
You flip to the same section and the other half of the book and
similar stuff will be there. And then the other bit has kind
of been on the art side where Josh is trying to come up with
like 2 distinct art styles, one of which is kind of this glossy
corporate style and the other of which is the kind of dustier
outlaw visual language that is really iconic to.
I mean, both of those styles are really iconic topical Blues.
But the kind of the need from it originally burst upon like the
fact that Josh wanted to do more writing for me.
And I was like, Josh was like, I really want to do more writing
because Josh did some stuff during Afterburn and really
enjoyed it. And I really enjoyed Josh's
work. And I've obviously got a million
projects on the go. And I kind of said, well, you
guys write this book together. I'll kind of step back a bit and
focus more on the kind of directional side and briefing
and magic management running the month basically at this point.
And then they kind of went off. We agreed the shape and then
went off and just wrote it all and did all the art.
So, but you know, this isn't the first RPG book in this style.
You know, I'm really happy to say that I stole this idea from
Ronan Decker. I used to work.
They're doing, they've done recently or crowdfunding a game
called Ways and Means, which is like a heart book, which is a
similar vibe. You go at it one way, it is all
about dungeons. Oh, sorry.
You go at it one way, it's all about like dungeon crawling and
delving. You go at it the other way, it's
all about treasure and trading. And that meets in the middle of
the same way. So that was a very exciting, you
know, idea. And I was like, what could this
be for an idea? I wasn't like, I'm going to
steal this idea or do an Oracle Blues book.
But when I we kind of realized we wanted to write something
about like the factions and the setting going like out here's a
cool novel idea. It's like ultimately when it
comes to all the Blues, I think like and soul Muppet projects in
general, we've set such a bar for ourselves to be like
absolute weirdos with it in terms of like every project just
has to be bigger and crazier and weird than last with holes in
it. Bold leaf leather books that are
the same half inverted and VHS box sets full of pamphlet
adventures. Like we couldn't just say and
here's a hardcover 6 by 9. People would laugh at me.
I'd lose my street cred, you know, because how would people
know I'm a sicko if I don't do weird stuff?
Yeah, gonna do sicko shit. You're not really a sicko, so
yeah. Yeah, exactly.
And I, I, I actually literally cannot tell you live on air what
we are doing for the project in six months because someone will
steal it from me and do it first.
So I'll have to tell you about it basically another project
like another in about 6 months or just after the show.
Yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's a constant like commitment to
the bit, essentially. And like eventually I'm going to
run out of weird shit to do with books.
And when that happens, I think I'll just like retire and make
shoes or something, you know? I don't know, Probably that's
that's a bad. I'll do something else, you
know. Something but.
For now, there's runway left to go.
So on top of the fire project, you have the core project here
is Outlaws and Corporations, the Ted bash we're talking about
right now when people go to backer kit right now, I mean
projects funded, which is absolutely fantastic, pushing
800 backers for it and you still have almost half the month left
to go, which is great when they actually go to the project page
and choose to back this project. What all you know, what all
sticko shit are we getting with this project like we got with
the rest of the stuff? What all is what all is coming
with Outlaws and Corporations on top of what I assume is the
ability to click a button and grab everything.
I think that's previously been out for it.
Yeah, so the actual new things we're developing for the month
for for the Outlaws competition really slim.
It's just the book, right. I didn't want to be like, hey,
we're doing a book that we're doing this, we're doing that,
we're doing this, we're doing that because like that would
take the oxygen out of the room of these other people who I
really want to support. So actually in terms of like
projects were saw Muppet, it's just Outlaws Corporations, that
is £40.50 bucks. That's what you need.
You can get bundles of all the previous stuff, you know, the
core book and there's a collection for Give Me
Everything right. But the other stuff we're doing
is kind of more to do with the cross collaboration nature of
the month, right? So the other bits you can get is
if you buy. So all of the projects, each of
them is an orbital Blues project and all the Blues is about
music. So I went to my friend Behold,
and I said, hey, I want you to make me a song for each one of
these six projects. And that is like themed to the
vibes, but still part of a cohesive whole.
And then he's smashing out at the moment, this amazing album
of different songs, which you can get as a as a physical
cassette if you bat 4 projects at any level.
Well, three and Outlaws and Corporations, because I pay to
ship it to you. But you get it for backing a few
projects. And alongside that, there's like
a sticker pack with each of the stickers from the six different
projects that you kind of like see on the Orca Blues book page.
And then the other thing that we're doing is this adventure
I've written for Orca Blues called Atmospheric Breakup,
which is the if you back every single project, all six of them,
you get this like completionist. I think it was going to be a
pamphlet, but we smashed the stretch goal to turn it into a
Zine. So I'm currently, you know,
writing that Zine with the intent to run it live on stream
next weekend on plus one Exp with a bunch of my pals.
So you could watch me GM ING as well.
And all the links for that will be all over the Soul Muppet
Kickstart page. So that's happening.
And we've got some stretch goals for other stuff we want to do.
The one that I'm really fucking excited for, the most excited I
think I've ever been for a stretch goal is the map, Josh.
We've always really resisted doing an orbital Blues map
because I feel like, you know, making a map of the Galaxy
suggests a sort of finite Canon, which we've always just been so
averse to. But we've decided to focus on
like a specific region of the Galaxy called the Reach, which
is like the sort of old frontier between the belt, which is like
the outer rim basically like the expansionist edge where there
barely is anything. And the galactic call, there's
the Reach. And Josh is going to be doing a
map of the Reach with and then I'm going to skew morphic in
universe map with a bunch of stuff on it.
And that will be detailing all the sort of major worlds, major
systems, all the different, you know, bits that exist in the
existing adventures and a bunch of stuff fill the gaps as well.
And then on the other side of that enormous A1 poster we're
going to be doing is going to be a load of tools and
spreadsheets. Not spreadsheet, sorry, tools
and tables and tips for like running a galactic scale or
Blues campaign, you know, all the different sort of like
travel tables and locations and different sort of networks of
things. You might need a bunch of
products. And that's our 60K stretch goal.
That is going to be like the rabbit sicko shit that I'm
really excited for and like going to a printer and saying,
hi, can you make me a A1 folding map, please?
And most of them sort of develop aneurysms trying to think about
having to fold it that much. But we're going to do it.
And Josh is going to be a freak and I'm going to be a freak
about how much for freak Josh's. And then if we hit, I think it's
75 K, my amazing friend Galen Brochure is going to be doing
another poster for a really iconic spaceship, which I'm
going to write an adventure to call the back off for the looks
of it. So just more, more and more
successive stuff. But right now that's kind of all
in the stretch goal territory. And all of those are going to be
made available digitally for free for all the backers of
them. So you know, there will be some
extra bits to add, but your £40 call book or your £20 call book
PDF will also get you this if we hit the stretch goal galactic
map and then whatever an operation goals you hit by
backing bot projects. So I'm, and obviously beyond all
that I was just talking about, there's five other projects, all
of which contain all that amazing stuff.
Yeah, very, very excited for all of them.
Excited for that. Those specifically those maps
sound fantastic and you're only about 7 1/2 K away from at least
a 60K stretch goal which is incredible.
Like halfway through the project so I really open both posters
happen. You said the map is folding.
Is the poster being folded or mailed in a tube?
I will not be mailing anything in a tube brother.
That is why things fold up. Do you think this is my first
rodeo? Do you think I like shipping
things in tubes by volumetric weight?
Tubes are great because then you don't get fold lines in the
poster, you know? No, but they also cost $1
million to. Shoot, I know, I know, I know, I
know that. Just put it on the back.
I. Feel like have a tube?
Option. Particularly, particularly for
what it's trying to do, you actually want crease lines in
your galactic map, right? You want it to be weathered.
I will be manually weathering every single map with sandpaper
before we set. There you go right on the edges.
Notice I said, is the poster going to be in a tube?
Because the map, you're right, has to be folded.
So so it's got to be it's got to be.
That absolutely makes sense because it's basically says on
their fold out map, which for those old enough to remember
using those that that'll hit you right in the nostalgia.
So so you're here on the show and it's it's always great
talking to you, but I've seen you all over the Internet on a
bunch of other podcasts recently.
So for those that are trying to get more info, more stuff, more
of you as this project goes on, what what are some of the other
podcasts that they can catch that you've been on recently or
that you're going to be coming up on?
So I did the Yes Indeed podcast with Thomas Manuel of Rascal
fame. You'll be able to find that
online. The guys from Why We Roll That
Still Feat Studios did an entire Blues Month series.
I did an episode. There was one with Wes Franks,
there was one with Adam Stations, and there was one with
my good friend Josh Dramatsky. You can also find me on 3rd on
the Tabletop Corp podcast from Third Floor Wars that should be
coming out in the next few days. Also did weight roll that again
with my good buddy Alex mix up pixels.
That was kind of a lot about like community building and like
growing again, like specifically about like growing all the Blues
from like an original project that did OK into like a much
bigger success than it is now. And then obviously the other
thing you'll be able to see me do that I mentioned is that
atmospheric breakup actual play stream that will be happening on
plus one Exp on the 25th and 26th of April.
So the last weekend of the campaign month at 11:00 PM
Eastern. I don't know what that is in in
West Coast money, but. 8:00 AM, 11/8, 8:00 PM Early.
Yeah, yeah. Wrap it up with plus one over
there. Yeah, just, I mean, getting
doing the whole circuit. Glad that we are all part of it
again. It's always a pleasure to talk
to you here on the show. I can't wait to see this
project. And I just want to clarify.
So the the final two stretch goals are the poster and the
thing and that's going to be digital.
But if you want them and you have the stretch goal, you got
to go back in and add them as a physical add on, correct?
So yes, but there will be a pledge manager and that is the
best way to do it at the end to just add it back there.
And I think there is a certain level above which we are giving
people the map. But I think it might be the Give
Me Everything pledge we'll be making.
We'll be poking people on that because like I want to get that
thing into as many people's hands as possible.
So it will be priced to move. If I actually had wall space to
put posters, I would put posters up, but every wall in my
apartment looks like this, so I have no place to put posters
unless I put them basically on the ceiling because these are
definitely 6 foot bookshelves. But once again, Zach, always a
pleasure. You know that if you're a soul
Muppet fan, every time a new project gets together to come
out, you can expect Zach here on the show.
I'm talking about it. So it's always great talking
with you. It has been too long.
Let's not make it that long again, and thank you for being
here. I really appreciate it.
Yeah, thank you so much for having me on, and thank you to
the listeners for listening to me ramble about Space Cowboys
and project management for 60 minutes or so.
Yeah, absolutely. You will find all the links to
to everything that we talked about below, maybe the links to
the other podcast. If I'm feeling particularly
awake when I'm putting this episode out, don't be surprised.
So check. Those out there's an update with
all of them on that. You can just link that I'll.
Just link the update to it. Perfect.
If I remember to do that, you'll see that below.
Otherwise find them. But again, thank you so much.
And that's going to be us for today.
Bye everybody. Thanks.
So much.