Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll podcast.
My name is Ryan and today we have a special guest with us
that is M Allen Hall. How are you doing this morning?
I'm doing just fine. How are you?
You know, I'm, I'm getting there.
We're getting along here. So welcome.
The times are the difference a little bit for.
You. That's everybody.
The best is when we talk to people in Europe who are only
like 12 hours ahead. So it is what it is.
Yeah, we're here talking today about Godspark, which is a
project that's going out. Are you doing this for Zemo
Zenquest or just February is a good month to drop stuff?
So yeah, it was. It's for Zenquest.
It's actually gonna start before and then run into.
So it starts on Tuesday and then it's gonna run into February to
get it on, which qualified it for like the Zenquest badge and
that kind of stuff on Kickstarter.
There you go. Before we get to Gottsmark,
though, 'cause we'll talk about plenty of that.
Who? Who's M Allen Hall?
Who? The Who The Who the heck are
you? What have you done?
What? What?
Let's talk about what you've put out, because you've put out
quite a bit already, actually, even before getting to this.
So what are some things people might know you for?
Or, you know, let's talk about what kind of got us to God's
bar. Sure.
So I started with role-playing games only four or five years
ago, started playing Dungeons and Dragons, and from that I
first thing I wrote was actually a novel series that was all set
in a campaign of Dungeons and Dragons.
That writing novels was an experience that I don't really
recommend. But once I was through with
that, I actually started writing a A Mort Borg module was like my
first thing that I wrote that was playable.
And like I wrote it because I'd seen other people publishing
Mark Berg modules. I had heard about Mark Borg and
put it out there and like literally the next day I got a
message on Itch that was like, oh, I played this with my group
and we had a lot of fun. And that like instant feedback.
I was like, I'm hooked. Like people like I can like put
just put this thing out for free in the universe and the people
are going to like read it and play it and then tell me they
liked it. Like that's all I'm looking for
here. I want people to tell me they
like this stuff. So started by writing modules
and then advanced from there to writing full games and written a
full a couple full games. Started with some copies of Sr.
some SRDS as historic Raven Madge as my wretched and alone
game, and then moved from there to full feature role-playing
games of my own. Which Sprinkles is missing was
my big release last year as a it's a kid focused game, but we
find everybody can have fun with it.
And then the end of last year I started working on God Spark.
And so that's where we are. Yeah, so I've said this before
we got started. I Sprinkles Missing is great.
I really enjoy it. I I I think there's a huge
opening for a lot of kid focused games because a lot of, you
know, us people in this scene are not kids anymore.
And a lot of us, I mean I don't but a lot of people have kids
and I think a lot of people would really enjoy having
something that they can play with their kids.
Cuz I mean you can theoretically do D&D if you really want to,
but 5E is not. I've never found it to be super
kid friendly without chopping it to pieces.
So a system like Sprinkles is missing was great.
First of all it's super cute and very positively.
I mean that a great way you're you're looking for your missing
Unicorn. The the forest crawl is super
interesting with the with the tables and the system is I mean
B6 and you get more and you got to hit a target number and it's
pretty straightforward. So what was, what was kind of
impetus for, I mean what was the impetus for Sprinkles is missing
and I know there's an expansion for it.
How? How was the process of putting
that out and everything? So it it started, can I?
I don't know can can I curse on this stream?
Oh. Fuck yeah, absolutely.
So it started. I played the demo for Urine
Space and everything's fucked with my wife and we played it
and we had a blast with it and I was like, oh, this is an awesome
game. My kids would love this.
So I got my kids are 8:10 and 12:00, but I'm like, I cannot
put them in front of a game that's called You're in Space
and Everything's Fucked. So with that I was like, I
should just take this and reskin it as something that yeah, I got
my, I got my hard covers like 3 days ago.
They're it's beautiful. It's a great book.
But anyway so I I was like I need to make change this so it's
something that I could like play with my kids and so that was the
inspiration for it. So the idea that it's something
that's spun generated on the fly as you're going.
And then as I was going through the process of re skinning, I
realized that there were certain opportunities there to do things
like make it more accessible for brand new game runners.
Because they're at least in the in the demo version that they
put out while the Kickstarter was going there was still, there
was still a lot of weight put on the game runner to spontaneously
generate the rooms and the the the dangers and what what
happens? I was like, you know I'm going
to take it. I want to make it so you don't
need to know anything about running games so that you can
run this game. So it's very much laid out like
that. You read your sections in every
for every scene. The scenes are already laid out.
This is the problem you're going to present to the players.
These are the you just read straight from the book.
This is what they see. And then there's clear
suggestions for how they could solve the problem, what you
could suggest to them to solve the problem, that kind of thing.
So it sort of started as just like I should just reskin this
for something that's PG and then it, you know, Yeah, as things
do, it morphed and let's make a system that's really accessible
for everybody. Yeah, and it's it is, like I
said, it's really good. You know, when I read through
it, it's laid out really well, like you just said, like you
could. You know, we we talk a lot on
the show here, you know, because we do some, like, weird shit on
here. Like a lot of people make some
weird stuff that have been doing it for a long time.
And a lot of games just aren't like gonna be people's first
games, you know what I mean? And but Sprinkles was missing
easily. Could like, I could grab anyone
off the street, slap that in their hand and they could be
running in the game for people in like 15 minutes.
Like, it's like super easy. Just grab a handful of D sixes.
And that's a really big, like, positive for the system.
I mean whether you're playing it or running it, it's it was
really approachable and like I said as a kid friendly system in
a space that I think could use a lot more kid friendly games like
it's it's really well done. So that was that was great.
I appreciate that. Yeah, I'll say So we had a as it
Packs Unplugged this year and I had a booth there and we also
had a demo table for and we were running Sprinkles as missing and
like some you know. So we had we, I don't know we
ran 10 or 12 games over the course of the weekend.
And some games were like, you know there were a parent with
their kids or whatever. And we played it.
But then we had, you know we had some that were just like five
like tatted up biker guys that like have been playing D&D since
like the early 80s. And like they're going to be,
they're going to go looking for their Unicorn.
And they everybody's having a blast.
And like people, everybody can have fun with it.
You know, like I always when I pitch it, I always say like it's
good for like 6 to 12 and adults and I'm like a teenager could
definitely play this and have fun.
But I'm not going to promise you your teenager is going to want
to do anything. Yeah.
No, that's great.
I, like I said, a lot of space for it.
You know, there are other one of the reasons Max Ritter is so
popular is because it's really great, but it's also really
approachable for families. And I mean like Princess and
peril and stuff like that. Who doesn't?
Who didn't play? Like, gosh, what is the name of
that board game where you have to dress up as a Princess?
Because my sisters made me play that like crazy.
It was when we were a kid. You never had that.
I don't know what I'm talking about.
You, you, you had to get all the Princess parts, you know, like
clip on earrings and stuff. Anyway, I had two sisters, so I
mean. I'm not.
Yeah, but no, it, like I said, it's great.
And then as far as putting out a project, having something that
put into people's hands, like, you know, obviously you're doing
it again. So it didn't.
It didn't. It didn't kill you.
No, it was. It was fun.
Yeah. Yeah.
So it was, it was a process. And now so I'll say I started
that project in like June of last year and the and at the
time it was because Crowdfunder was doing like focus on kids
stuff. It was like that was their month
for kid focused products or whatever.
And so I ran it for that and it went terribly.
And so it was like I had like 3 backers and I like immediately.
I took it down after like 4 days.
I'm like, no, no, no, we're done with this.
So I still ended up obviously making the game and put it out a
little later than I may have hoped for.
So it was a bit of a stretch for what I was thinking.
You know what? I'll try Z Inquest.
It's like that didn't work out. But let's go ahead try another
crowdfunding thing, crowdfunding thing.
And that's where I was. Like, what can I do?
That's where the God Spark came from, as sort of the next step
for that. Gotcha.
And So what? What made you want to do?
Because Got Spark is a is a solo pen and paper adventure game,
not like a journaling game, because you've written solo
adventure game, There's solo journaling games.
You've done Merck Borg. You've done Cyborg.
You've done Lost Bay. You've done Liminal Horror.
You've done Sprinkles. Is missing.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
And so, right. So I wanted to do a game, so
there was, there was at packs you there was lots of attention
to solo games. So I already had a few solo
games, two couple journaling games and one that's like a solo
hex crawling sort of again, playing on the border between
role-playing and board games. And I think that's what Godspark
does too. Like, I don't call it a soul
role-playing game on the like on the Kickstarter page or anything
like that. Like I really think this is a
this is an adventure game. So honestly a lot of inspiration
from Miru, so Hinokodo amazing game.
And so the idea of, yes, there is a role that you're playing,
but really you could ignore that and play this as just a tactical
board game. And so I like the one player
aspect. And that was where I started.
And I had an idea for, oh, it would be cool, like if we were
just, you just woke up in a place and there are these just
like monstrous bodies, like falling from the sky.
Like, that'd be awesome. You have to surf through and
it'd be like every reason loved that.
Put a skull in the front. It'll be perfect.
And so from that, I sort of went like, where could I take this?
How could I make this into a game?
That's where I went, got found. So there's God Falls or what
they're called. It's like those are the gut
bodies of dead gods and we're going to go look through them.
We're going to need some go look for some some God sparks, which
is like the divine energy in the game.
And so from there I sort of work through how is that going to
work? How are we going to make a game
out of this? And now we have God Spark so.
So I just brought up the cover and it's a great looking cover,
definitely snagged me as soon as I saw it.
And we'll get to some spreads here in a little bit too, cuz
it's really it's a beautiful looking game.
Are you doing all of the graphic design and layout and stuff too,
or do you have people coming in for that?
No, that was all me. So I've done the with.
So with one there's one art piece in the final.
In the final layout that I did have was done by Strega, Strega,
Wolf, Vandenberg. So I had them do one piece
because it was just sort of I knew what I wanted to look like
and it was just outside my skill level.
So I do, we do have that in the final book but most everything
else was me. And so I did the layouts.
I did the the covers, the skulls are all me.
It was just like, you know, I like one of the things I really
enjoy about making games is I get to do all those other
aspects. So like when I started and I was
writing novels and layout for novels is just like one column
of words that just goes on forever.
What what I've been able switching to games and being
able to learn, learn about laying out the text, learn about
illustration, learn about all these other things.
They're just, it's just a lot of fun.
It's fun just doing everything, learning everything.
And so for this game I do, I've been doing most of the stuff.
So, yeah, go ahead. No.
Yeah. So I was just bringing up some
of the spreads here. This is the page two I love.
I love whenever whenever a layout crosses the the middle
page, it's just. It's nice, right?
I had a lot of, I had a lot of fun with this.
I've really, I really enjoyed making the the spreads.
Everyone's, they're all different.
Well they're all so 2/3 of the book, which is the the rule book
part is every spread is like completely different from every
other one and so that. So yeah, we've got the the
violence spread up now. It's just it was just a lot of
fun just incorporating just straight photography with a
little bit of editing into the different text layouts.
So it was it was an, you know, it was an exercise for me, but
it was a lot of fun putting together and I think, you know
what we end up with is a nice accessible thing.
It's also nice to look at. I mean novels.
Every game system under the sun so far.
Layout, art, like everything. Kind of just hitting everything
from all angles, huh? Yeah, and it's I like to have
work on skills and something I'm working I'm getting into for
I've got another project coming out.
So at some point this year that's it's a tarot based game.
So I started drawing some tarot cards and so I actually have
some like physical ink and watercolor drawings now of tarot
cards that I've made. And it's just like working with
like physical media, which is not something I'd ever done
before. It's been really fun and to
learn about, to learn to watch YouTube videos and how to do
these different things. It's just fun just like doing
everything. And that's what I said, like
cool stuff about games is they need all these different things
so you can learn how to do all these different things.
Make sure you can also like get people to help you and like,
hire people and stuff like that. But this is just for, you know,
I'm just doing this for fun, so I just learn it myself.
There you go. Hey listen, anyone that can do
it all themselves saves a lot of money.
And you know, if it looks like I said these friends are great.
So you know if you can do it and you're doing it this well, then
I would definitely just keep doing it.
So, so Gods spark though so it is a you describe it on your
website as like a pen and paper adventure game.
Kind of reminds me of like like 12 years from Max Moon or
something like that where you're you're playing through as a
character. Can you do you wanna walk us
through like you said you're seeking you're going across this
world seeking these God sparks. But is it, Did you adapt like
another adventure game system kind of how you did with
sprinkles missing, or did you come up with this whole system
by your like? This was this is all, this is
all brand new. So the way it works is you start
the game and the idea is you wake up and you are you have
been granted a God spark by your God as they died.
And so in in my original idea of the game every God spark was AD
6 and what I quickly found out is I was going to need like 30
or 40D sixes to play this game. Which is fine for me because I
have lots of dice, but the I got some quick feedback that it
might be unreasonable to ask other people to also have 30 or
40D sixes to play a game. So with that I I changed things
some things up so every God's spark is represents AD 6 and the
God's sparks as the resource. So it's a bit of a resource
management game they are going to be.
They're going to drive everything.
So when you have hit points called Just Life, and the hit
points go to every round of the game, you're going to decrease,
You're going to lose one hit point.
Just everything's decaying, everything's walk is, you know,
entropy is accelerated in this place.
You're losing hit points all the time.
You're looking for God's sparks, which I'll get to a second how
you find them. But as you find them, you can
use them to replenish your life. So as you're going through on
your on the the sheet that you use to track the game, you're
collecting God's sparks in one section of the sheet.
And as you have them, you can move them on other sections of
the sheet, essentially. And so if you move one into your
life, yeah, you just gain another six pips of life.
That's on the D6 for items, which we're called relics.
Three types of relics, you've got weapons, armor and
transport. And each of those is going to be
when you use them, you're rolling D sixes.
And when you create them, you create them from God sparks.
And the number of God sparks you use is how much power they have
and that's how many D sixes you roll when you use them.
So if you've got like a power to weapon when you are fighting an
Angel, which are the monsters in the game, you're going to roll
2D sixes. And so that's all great, but I
wanted it to be a limited resource and I wanted to be
there to be risk to using it. So pretty much anytime you roll
A1 in the game, you're going to be losing AD 6 from whatever it
was you were doing. So if you are using your weapon
and you roll 2D sixes and one of them comes up as a one, your
weapon just broke and now it's only a 1D6 weapon.
If you were using your transport and you roll one, now it broke
and it is degrading and you wouldn't.
It's going to get weaker each time you do it.
The same goes for enemies, when if your enemy attacks you and
they roll one, they're going to lose an attack die.
So everything it rolling A1 is going to be reducing what you
use When you perform miracles, which are the the magic
essentially of the game. You'll take God sparks that you
have saved up and you'll roll, depending on the strength of the
miracle, a number of D sixes, and again if any rolls one, it
doesn't count towards succeeding in that miracle.
Winning the game requires casting the highest level
miracle, the miracle of ascension, and so you need to
save up essentially usually need to fill up your entire God spark
pool. All of your storage has to be
full of of unused God sparks and you have to roll all of them and
hope that none should come up as a one.
And there's some recourse if some do and you're trying to win
the game. You can have some RE rolls that
you've saved up from earlier in the game, but but that's sort of
how it goes and you're going to be going into these dead gods
which show up on a a hex map throughout the game.
They show up randomly. So each time you don't know how
far you're going to go to get to the next one and that transport
time is going to be costing you time and if it's costing time
it's costing life. And so all of that is going to
be moving around and then in the gods you're going to use the
playing cards to find out what kind of what areas you'll find
in those gods and some are going to give you God sparks and
sometimes you're going to find NPC.
So there's other Saints in the game, some of which can join you
and become essentially like companions.
And that or you might find angels, which is going to be
fighting. And the battles are meant to be
short and hard and deadly. So you know you it'll be A2
rounds and one of you is going to be dead.
There's some recourse again for you to come back and be
reincarnated sort of on the spot and keep going with that battle.
But I really just wanted everything to be really fast and
everything is really dependent on those God sparks.
Yeah, I mean, it sounds brutal, like it's like extreme usage die
because it's not like, oh, you go down one.
It's like, no, it's just gone. Yeah, no.
So yeah usage. So using usage dice like what
came there was. So at at first I was thinking
about doing a usage die situation but I really wanted it
just to be D sixes and doing like I think it's fallen that
has goes from D20D12 and I saw that and I was like you know so
something I learned again, not asking somebody to have 40D
sixes on hand. If I ask people to have a full
set of RPG dice, that's going to be a barrier but pretty even if
you've never played an RPG you probably have AD 6:00 somewhere
in your house and like you can play this game with one D6.
It'd be a little annoying for some of the roles but it would
work. But I want to, So I it's in the
in the attempt at accessibility, I really wanted to just be D
sixes. And I I did.
I've done that for some other games, whereas earlier I was
using full like D20 for this, D12 for that.
It's like, no, let's just make everything D sixes because
that's something I can feel more comfortable that everybody's
going to have, Especially when I'm going to conventions and I
have, you know, a different audience and I'm getting traffic
in my itch page. Like if you're finding an itch
page for a role-playing game, you probably have a full set of
dice somewhere. There are people that wander by
my I'm at a convention at a brewery in town.
Like, not everybody there is going to have AD 20.
So. So I I I like the idea of
focusing on just the D sixes. No, I mean that's a great,
that's a great thing to do for accessibility and I'm a huge fan
of 2D Anyone anyone that watches show normally knows that that D
sixes and 2D sixes are my favorite.
So I mean I of course they have a million but it it's it's
really interesting to hear kind of like the YS like I love that
it's for accessibility and but I also I I love the idea that I
mean I you're right I do have 40D sixes but I like that it's
more representative too so it just feels cleaner.
So the the premise of the game is basically to just keep
finding enough God sparks while you have enough energy to
finally cast this final miracle of ascension.
Correct. Yeah, you need to so the IT you
to cast the ascension miracle, you need to roll 6.
You need to cast perform a miracle with 66, which is that's
the highest level miracle in the game.
And your pool that you can have saved up is at most 76.
You can have up to four. Every time you perform a miracle
and you roll one, that doesn't help that that's a sort of a
failure. So if you're trying to just say
you're trying to make a weapon with and you say I'm going to
make A1 power weapon, I'm going to roll 1D6.
If you roll one, you get nothing but that, and you lose that
God's part because it's a one. So you're not getting nothing.
Nothing that goes into another column on the sheet which is
essentially a re roll and so you can save that for later and so
you can have up to 4 little re rolls.
It's just re rolling one die. So it's not like, so if I roll
all six and I roll 2 ones, well if I've got two re rolls in my
pile I can re roll those two and hopefully they won't be once and
I can still get that last miracle.
So I it didn't. It was a little, like you said,
a little. In one of my own playthroughs, I
failed the six dice roll three times.
And so like I roll 6, I'd lose one or two and then I have to
like keep going, going to find more and I get it and I roll it
and I'd lose more and I'd keep going.
And I was like, that wasn't very much fun.
So I was like, how can I, how can we make something come from
that failure? And that's where we got the RE
rolls from. Awesome.
No, it's so. I mean, this speaks right to my
grim, dark kind of heart. It sounds great.
Yeah. Panion Games is in the chat, and
they said that after Sprinkles was missing.
They thought you were kid focused, but now they know
better. You know it was so I have a a
journaling game called Unhallowed and it on for the
cover for that. And it's it's literally, it's a
pan. It's a one page, it's a one, one
page front and back game when it's printed.
And for the cover that I made like a sort of like a a metal,
like a heavy metal logo of the word unhallowed.
And then I sort of like fused it onto a deer skull because it's
sort of like a dark forest kind of a thing.
And I literally made that game in a weekend, like 3 days, two
days for writing one to make the deer skull.
Done. And that is my highest selling
product ever. And I'm convinced it's just
because it has like the creepy deer skull on the front.
And then so that's why I said like, I'm going to put a skull
on the front. And I was like by learning from
that, people like skulls. So they've got a so now we have
a deer skull, Now we have a skull in the front of Gods Park.
I was like, how can I make a skull be part of this?
Because that's in you know I so, you know, so I'm running like
Facebook ads for the getting rid of the Kickstarter and like it's
just a big old skull and says your God is dead.
And it's working really well. Yeah, hey, listen, I mean, not
going to lie though, the I'm looking at the Unhallowed cover
right now and it's, it's pretty badass.
Like I would, I would, I would play this.
So. That's like I said, definitely.
That's literally like my highest selling product ever.
And I'm convinced it's not because people wanted to play a
journaling game, which is what it is.
It's because they see that they're like, oh, that's cool.
I don't know what this is, but like, that's cool.
I want that. Yeah, hey, art.
Art sells games, you know that. It really does, which makes me
wish I was better at it, but. Hey, listen, you're good, so
keep going, but. You know, if I could make that,
I'd be happy. I've done a couple things.
OK. It's like more generally, it
would be nice to be to be more confident in it, especially
because one of another, a project that's come up in the
last few days that is in play testing now is a.
It's a deck building game. And let me tell you, there's a
lot of art in a deck building game.
Every one of those, even though they're a little tiny, you know,
like 2 inch by 1 inch pictures, like if I need fifty of those, I
can't do that. Like, I don't know.
That's just so much so. It's like he's a little
intimidating still sometimes. No I I definitely I people that
are these double and triple threats people like Hodag or we
just had the the guys from Still Lee still Fleet and Odd Goblin
and and he did all of the art for his own game which is really
great and I just like stuff. That's amazing.
Isn't that amazing? Yeah, it's.
It's so good. So, yeah, super jealous of of
being able to just be like, hmm, what's this thing that I want?
Oh, I drew a picture of it. That looks great.
Yeah, I totally get that. It's.
Like I have things in my head and I'm like, I can't get this
onto the paper like or into the into the iPad or whatever it is
that I'm trying to like put it on.
It's not happening. So you know, I don't know if we
touched on this a little bit already.
My brain doesn't doesn't still have it in it, but what was,
what was the impetus for wanting specifically to do a solo
adventure game and why? One that is like dead gods and
Saints and angels and and you know the vibes it was.
Part of it was I got a lot of the solo games I heard a lot
about when I was at PAX Unplugged.
Like I had my solo games there and I had people and I had a
little like sign up. I had like, you know, a sign
says Mark Borg, and a sign says Cyborg, and a sign says D&D and
a sign says solo journaling. And I would have people come by
and just point at that and like where's your solo journaling
stuff? Like where are your solo games.
So there is a lot. You know there's people want to
play games and there's they can't always get a table
together. So like sure, Sprinkles are
Missing is great if you've got people you can play with as is
lots of, as are lots of role-playing games.
But I wanted to be like, you know, I want to make something
that's going to be solo, that's going to speak to that group.
And it's the kind of thing that was sort of like a combination
of, you know, I keep an ideal list right on my phone in the
Notes app. I just always have a list of
like, random ideas. I'm like, oh, that could be a
game. And just sort of I look through
there, I'm like, what are these things?
Could I make into a solo game? And so the, I mean, dead gods
again. It was sort of like I had that
that Facebook ad like plan. I'm like, I'm going to say
something like really gay. I need those rage clicks.
It's like I want to just like put something out there.
Your God is dead. Like maybe get people just like
catch their attention with something like that.
And so started from there and where we know we have God's
spark. There we go.
Yeah. And I love, I love solo
adventure games. I, you know, I really enjoy solo
journaling games. Conceptually, I have a bunch of
them. I just, I just, it's just I
can't sit down and really do that.
Cuz I, you know, I've got that ADHD perfectionism where I'm
like, I can't just jot it down, it has to be the finished
project, like as I finish it. So the idea of just being like,
oh, let me just do that. Like I said, conceptually I
would love to love them more or or enjoy them more.
But so adventure games like this where you can like roll dice,
move forward, have a goal, like have a quest, you know, it's it
really speaks to me a lot. And this is exactly that.
I I love the idea of it all. Just being this quest that you
can and you can win, which is cool.
A lot of teach RPGs. It's fine that you can't win,
it's just about the experience. But sometimes I want to win a
fucking game, you know? Which is why I feel like it
really, Like I said, it plays on that line between role-playing
game and board game because you can win.
And that's why I don't call it. It's like I wanted a game that
you can win. Especially journaling games,
internal games don't. For me, my games, they don't
just end. You lose.
You have to lose the game for it to end.
Like you're going to die at the end of the game pretty much,
whether it's explicit or not in like what I wrote or what you
wrote. Like that's pretty.
We all know that's how this game ended.
And so that's fine. But like you said, like maybe I
don't want that all the time. Maybe I want to win.
And so like, I, which is like I said, I don't even call it a
role-playing game. Yes, you're given a role in this
game, but it's the adventure. Like, that's what we're here
for. No, I mean and it makes sense.
Pen and Paper Adventure game is a perfect title for this.
So yeah. So as far as crowdfunding, mm
hmm, you are, this is gonna be Kickstarter project.
Yes. And it launches on Tuesday.
What is that like the 20? 3rd.
The 23rd So what? And this is your gonna be your
first kick Kickstarter, right? I know you said you tried
crowdfunding A buffer Kickstarter.
Do you have like what? Like do you wanna let let's talk
about Kickstarter, let's talk about tiers and things like that
When people when people back this project cuz they should
this sounds awesome. What can they expect when their
project drops? If you're going to talk about
that like do you have multiple tiers?
Do you have are we doing hardback?
Are we doing softback? Like what's the project's goal
all? Right.
So there's gonna be PDF cuz everybody can always get the PDF
and then there's going to be a because it is Zine Quest,
there's going to be to qualify qualify to sort of be in the in
the spirit of Zine Zine Quest. It's going to be a staple bound.
It's about I think it ended up around 32 pages.
So it's not even honestly that long.
It's a it's a bit of a bigger Zine, it's not A5 format, it's
somewhere in between A5 and B5. So it's a little bit nice, a
little bit more room which I wanted for some of those spreads
And then there's so there's going to be the PDF, there's
going to be you just got the paperback version and it will
come even the the base paperback tier comes with a couple I'm
going to print those the the play sheet, the Saint sheet that
you has the map and it's got all different boxes where you're
going to be putting your God sparks.
So I'm going to get that printed on some heavier paper and that's
going to be included with all the zines and then the sort of
the the the top tier is just going to be the assigned edition
and then a print of Strega's artwork.
So it'll it'll be that and that'll also come with some St.
sheets. So yeah, there's our St. sheet
which has everything you need to to track your game, to play the
game and so that'll be printed on this like some cardstock and
tucked in there. So hopefully we'll stand up to a
few games worth of erasing and stuff.
Yeah, I mean, it's a great sheet too, and I love that.
I love character sheets. They're great.
I love that. It's also it looks like, and
maybe I'm wrong, you can fold it in half and not fold over
anything, which is nice because you could probably just print
these out on 8, 1/2 by 11 landscape, fold those in half
and have you know a couple of those with you to to run some
games if you want. Yeah, it's it's laid out six by
6 inches by 9 inches. So it'll be a A6 by 9 card,
Yeah. And so yeah, it was.
Initially it was across a spread of a book of when I was still
trying to figure out trim for the Zine and stuff like that,
but I ended up with this. And so yeah, you have the
everything you need there to track the game and how it
progresses. Yeah, it's.
And I like this Christian and chat just said as well that they
love this kind of sheet. It's the play sheet, more than
just a character sheet. And for for this kind of game,
especially for the adventure game, it's awesome to be able to
just have everything that you need to run the game, to play
the game to everything. You could just pull out this
card, pull out the sheet, whatever, and they just have
that open work on just that, you know, flipping through the book.
Because I assume at some point, just like a lot of the adventure
games, you're gonna get to a point.
You don't necessarily need to reference a book constantly for
for everything, especially if you have everything in a sheet.
Exactly. And part of it was I've played
games where they've got the the map is there on the page and the
character sheets on another page.
But it's like if I'm doing stuff on that and then I'm turning
away from that to find something in the rule book, then I'm
turning back to that. Or you know this way you know
when I play when I played it with I take the little red I
grab some of the little cubes from like terraforming Mars like
the little plastic cubes and I use those instead of like
constantly checking and erasing to try.
But if like I've got that in the book and then you turn around
turn the pages or whatever. If you've got your token
tracking your mark on your movement on the map, like you
can't be turning the page because it's it's fixed.
And so it will be that that sheet is going to is it will be
on the inside back cover of the book mainly.
So if people get the book they can like photocopy, put that on
the photocopier and like get this.
There's also you can always get the PD printable PDF from my
website for free. But but yeah, the idea is like,
if all you have is this book and you could at least like, throw
that on a photocopier and get your own sheet on a separate
piece of paper that you can play a game on and then throw away
and you still have your your original right there in the back
of the book. Well, that's one thing that's a
lot in your website, which is great to see too, is you have a
lot of like free downloadable content for your games.
Like a lot of the maps and stuff like that you can just go right
to and download and that's a that's a great thing to have for
everyone. So they can actually play your
game, which is which is nice. Yeah.
So I that was like a, like, I don't remember I mentioned the
first thing I made was that Mark Borg module.
And that was one of the first comments was like, hey, can I
get like a blank, an unmarked map that I can like show my
players so they can see where they are.
And I was like, yeah, that's true.
That's great. And so I and then when I started
selling the modules as physical scenes, I'm like I can't hand,
I'm not going to hand out the map with everybody.
But like I also have a place on my website where you can just
come grab all that stuff for free, all those supplemental
materials, anything you would need to help run the game.
And so that's why that's all there, yeah, So that the same
sheet will be there. So anybody that needs more can
always print them. That's I mean, it's such a nice
thing to have for people for accessibility and stuff to like
you don't need a making people pay ticky tack for stuff like
that. I feel like would be more
driving away than people being like this cool guy has this cool
stuff and I can just download it for free.
Here you go. Yeah, for the games as well.
So did you. So is that that's our highest
tier because just like Pendeon, you know, I'm, you know I'm a
I'm a highest tier kind of person.
No, I thought so. I thought a lot about doing like
a box set that had those little plastic cubes so you could move
them around and had the dice so you could have, here's your 8D6
like 8 is about the optimal amount because when you look at
the Saint sheet over there, there's the two squares that
have the the six pips in them and so those are 18mm squares
when you print it. So it can fit a standard 16
millimeter D6. So you're going to use AD 6 to
track in those two positions. And then the most you would need
otherwise are the six for the available gods part.
So like I was thinking about I could have 8D6 in that box and a
bunch of those little red cubes and then some little tiles to
mark on the map where the gods are falling.
And it quickly like this is I'm making a board game now and I
don't want to make a board game right now.
Like I don't have the like fitting all into the box.
Board games are a whole different beast, and maybe I'll
be jumping into that at some point.
But for this I'm like, look, I'm just doing my first Kickstarter.
Yeah, we're just going to have a book.
We'll have, like, we can get some nice art prints for
Strega's art and like, we'll sign the book.
But yeah, it's going to be my top tier.
Anything more than that, it's like it's a little too much for
me. There's going to be a couple
stretch goals. I'm going to print some, get
some just some stickers done of the God Skulls.
So that one, the one's on the cover and then there's a second
one that's on one of the spreads.
So we'll get some stickers for everybody.
And then another stretch goal is going to be two player rules.
So I've got in my head roughly how you would do a competitive
two player game. Essentially it's a race and
yeah, it'll just, I haven't yet taken the time to write it all
out and play test it, but I think it could probably work and
there's room in the book for it. So we'll see how that goes.
Yeah. No, I mean smart.
Super smart. Especially for for your first
Kickstarter. Not having stuff is great.
Stuff is for 2nd, 3rd, special editions when you know you got a
big audience for it. I mean the number of of I've
only backed a couple 100 Kickstarters and I got to tell
you what all the ones that have bits and bobs and stuff like
that especially for first first Kickstarters man.
Not only is it so difficult as far as fulfillment and all the
the stuff but I mean the amount of stress it's gonna put on you
and those are always a project that take longest to deliver and
the longer you have from the from funding to delivery the
less people care about your game you know so it's it's you know
especially for early projects it's it's much better to do
something like this. You know you already said the
accessibility was people you know you have you have the dice.
So people can already have the dice.
That's such a smart choice in my opinion to to keep it to the
Zine and a couple of things and maybe in the future doing
something that's really good to hear.
Anytime I see someone's like, here's a but here's a box with
80 things in it, I'm like, fuck, that's like an extra year right
there. Like like you have to get all
those things and put it in a box and then I got to pay even more
shipping to get it to me, so. Yeah, no, it's like, it's really
nice when I can just do media mail and I can be like you.
It's like, sure, pay me 5 bucks. 6 bucks I can get this shipped
to you versus like now I've got a box with all these things and
maybe it's going to weigh a whole bunch of like all of a
sudden it's 10 bucks just to send send it from like from here
to like the next state over. And it's just it's a lot.
And I don't. I'm just first like I said first
time and I've everything that I'm doing for this, I've already
done. I've already printed zines.
I've sold zines. I've shipped zines.
So, like, let's just do a Zine to get started.
That's that's really smart. I I got to say you you're like
pro you're kind of prolific already at least as far as the
stuff you put out. Like everything that I've seen
from you has been really fantastic.
This looks really great. Like I I'm surprised I haven't
heard more about some of the stuff that you've made and I'm
really hoping that this really pushes that more into I think
the consciousness on on maybe it's just not Twitter maybe I'm
too stuck in my own loop. But you, you have a lot of stuff
with a lot of experience with a lot of different systems.
It all looks fantastic, it all plays great and it's like
everything you make seems to just be a banger.
So I'm super excited for Godspark, but do you have plans
for like what's coming next after Godspark?
I know you said you have like a note sheet of like all these
ideas. There's.
Thousands of ideas. So the next thing that will be
coming out is going to be the tarot card game.
So that is going back to journaling.
It's called endling. So on the topic of you die at
the end of the game. So the word endling in this
respect came from a twit discussion on Twitter that that
word means the last of a species.
So you were the last human. And so it's it's going to be so
that's obviously not going to have a happy ending, but it can
be a successful ending. So it's going to be a journaling
game, but there's actually going to be a winning of that game as
well. It's going to use a a hex flower
to track your movement around the world as you're moving from
where the bunker where you've been holed up while every other
human has died to some as yet undetermined goal.
So you're going to be moving towards a goal and the Tarot
cards, which is a bit like a anemonesis.
The idea of you the you draw from a minor Arcana to give you
a prompt, and then you draw from the Major Arcana to give you
some inspiration if you need it, to answer the prompt.
So it's going to be sort of like one of those games.
And then with the cards that you draw, you're going to be
building the history of this last human.
And then if you manage to make it to the last to the end
without running out of resources because it is still going to be
a bit of a resource management game, then you'll be able to
figure out what it was that you had to do and why you had to do
it and who you were doing it for.
That kind of a thing. But it's all all that together
is, is is sort of built into this journaling game.
So that's probably the thing that's the product I've got
closest to completion, which I doubt.
I I don't know. It's it's one of these things
like maybe I'll do another Kickstart.
We'll see how this one goes. I haven't decided.
Or I'll just put it on itch on like a Sunday night and maybe
somebody will see it. I don't know.
Let's. See what happens.
Yeah. So I mean and it it sounds great
too, like I've I'm just excited to start just snatching up your
entire backlog and and seeing what comes next.
I mean this godspark of all the things you've done, like I love
Mark Berg, I love Cyborg. I mean that's literally like all
of this is all of that, you know, But you know solo
adventure games, like you said, a lot of people are really into
solo games cause a lot of people, you know, either I mean
COVID is still a thing and some people don't want a whole table
full of people or yeah, sometimes you know, their
friends just aren't into this kind of thing.
So being able to sit down and have the same kind of fun you
can have from like AD and D Ish game or whatever is, is really
great. So I'm, I'm super excited for
this. I love solo adventure games, and
this one sounds great. Kickstarter is dropping on
Tuesday the 23rd. Yes, this episode will.
I'll try to have it up before then, no worries.
But as far as all the rest of the stuff we've talked about as
far as Sprinkles is missing, as far as all the previous games
you've already done, where can people find those things?
You're I I, you know, on the screen over there is your
website. But what's the website?
And where can people find all the rest of your stuff?
So yeah, so mallanhall.com has at the very least, links to
everything. I have my physical store there
where I sell stuff that I also sell at conventions, which is
most of the bigger products. So most of my modules are
available there. Digitally, I've got everything
on Itch as well as, like we've been talking about earlier, I do
lots of like, random little jams on Itch because that's fun and
fun to spark creativity and stuff like that.
So I've got lots of weird little games on there on Itch, and then
I do have a handful of games that I put on drive through RPG.
Not the whole catalog there, but if that's where you like to
shop, I do have a few products available through that
marketplace. And then for socials, most
places on M, under score, Allen, under score, Hall, all that's
you can link. There's links to all the socials
from the website. So as you know, socials change,
which they do. All that stuff stays updated
there. Yeah, you know and and and in
the podcast or VOD or YouTube, whatever looking at, we'll make
sure that all of those links are are down below.
So you guys can just go click on that.
Well, listen, it's been really great talking to you and I'm
super excited for not only Godspark, but all the stuff you
have going forward. Like I said, you're pushing all
my buttons as far as games that I enjoy playing in, systems I
enjoy doing. So it's definitely great to see
and I'm excited for what's coming next.
Well, thank you. Thank you so much.
And yeah, definitely thank you for having me on.
It's been great talking to you. Yeah, no, I really appreciate
you being here. So that'll be our episode for
today. Definitely go check out Godspark
on Kickstarter. We'll make sure that the link is
in everything below. So you can just click on that.
And thank you for being here and we will talk to you all later.
Bye.