Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll podcast.
My Name Is Ryan. And I saw Buddha on the road and
I killed him. And with us today we have a
special guest that is James Pianca of Empty Mountain Nothing
Can Die. How you doing today, James?
I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me.
Yeah. Thanks for coming on.
Absolutely, yeah. So this is as we always do, we
talk for like 20 minutes before the show starts.
We've had great conversation. I'm happy to repeat here, but
for those that weren't in that and might not know James Bianca
or Empty Mountain, nothing and die Who Who the heck are you,
James? Hey, thank you.
Yeah. So I'm a game developer.
I've been in the video game industry for about 10 years now.
I started in Tabletop. First gig in the field was
writing card names and flavor texts for Magic the Gathering.
You know, I got into the field to tell stories right and in
this exciting interactive context.
And I went to my first Game Developers Conference, learned
very quickly that narrative design, this really wonderful
new subfield, this combination of game design and game writing
was really where I wanted to be if I wanted to tell stories in a
way that was particularly effective in this medium using
its new tool set. But then you go out into the
industry and narrative design chairs tend to really just
secretly be screen writing roles with more Funko pops on your
desk. And so I learned also somewhat
quickly that if I wanted to really, you know, cash the check
that the Narrative Design discipline was offering that I
had to just go be a real game designer.
So I'm about 5 or six years into that path now and I'm back now
in Tabletop because it just hasn't really been that artful
in in video games. You know And something I I say
on the blog post around like the the raison d'etre hello hello
world post on the site was like, you know it's been like 10 years
and I haven't really made a ton of what's in my heart because
that's not that's not really the job.
Like that's not, that's not the nature of employment.
You know you you go out and you make other people's passion
projects and they pay you and that's OK.
It's that's, you know, we've student loans and you can like
go be an adult, but at a certain point I'm just kind of dying
inside a little bit. I haven't really.
I really need to go out and and make the stuff that I would be
happy to see on my tombstone for instance.
Hell yeah. That's very cool.
And you have a project out right now on Zing Quest at Shrines.
But but before we get to shrines, you you've already or
Empty Mountain. Nothing.
First of all, OK, let's start with Empty Mountain.
Nothing can die. Yeah, tell us about Empty
Mountain. Nothing can die.
Sure. Well, it seems like everybody in
this scene needs to make their own little press, right?
So Empty Mountain Nothing Can Die.
Or Empty Mountain Shorthand, you know, is a very small indie
micro press. Right now it's just me and the
people who agreed to collaborate with me.
I hope to make it expand and and have it grow.
I'm still sort of kind of navigating the various schools
of thought and philosophies within the tabletop scene, and
I'm finding myself right now very, very likely in a sort of
NSR type angle, you know, new school Renaissance.
I really appreciate a lot of what the OSR is doing in terms
of its emphasis on really minimalist rule sets that enable
play as this, like really sacred activity that human beings do at
tables. But then also just like getting
out of the way, you know, I found like, you know, we've all
been playing D&D forever. And you know, at a certain point
you realize that the system, as Matt Colville said in recent
video, it doesn't really like do anything like it.
It gets you to the table, it gets you rolling dice, gets you
having conversations. But systemically it's not
actually encouraging or facilitating any particular
themes or types of experiences. And then Morkborg came out, you
know, and I I remember, I remember reading Morkborg and
being absolutely fucking floored at just like some of the
audacity. And it kind of revealed to me it
was like lifting a rock where I was like, I've been playing
tabletop games all my life. I've been deviating from 5th
edition in my own games forever. Because it's bad.
And I mean, it's good, right? You know it's good, but like,
there are parts of it, no. No, that's bad.
You can say, OK, you're good. OK, great.
Thank you. Yeah.
I don't want to alienate any listeners, you know, we've all
played a lot of D&D, but I do think if.
Anyone actually listens to this show.
Trust me, they have been alienated long ago.
Right. We all owe it a lot, let's say,
you know? But but turns out there's been
like 40 years of people identifying its problems and
stepping it beyond them in their own designs.
And so Morkboard really just revealed to me the existence of
this, like, churning sea of interesting design ideas.
And I was like, oh, shit, OK, cool.
So like this, that's, that's where that's where this needs to
happen. That's where this needs to be
done. So Empty Mountain is, you know,
it's it's probably going to have a kind of an art house, art
house vibe, you know? I love that.
Well, thank you. Yeah, I was listening.
I listened to your your episode with games Omnivorous and I feel
a lot of aesthetic and sort of philosophical kinship with them.
I think they're doing really awesome work.
I really like designers like Everest Pipkin.
I think they're doing really also really interesting
theoretical work and and so you know, I I can't promise where
the what the press will put out what the nature of the work will
be over time. I can only say that right now
I'm interested in releasing really minimalist, minimalist,
narrative driven systems that spotlight what the human brain
does naturally. You know, I think, I think
tabletop role-playing games as opposed to something like video
games are are these these stages, these venues for human
creativity and everything like systems and and art and lore.
These are all just set dressing to help us perform in the
moment. And so I'm interested in a lot
of productive design and kind of pairing away the chaff that that
you know like asking AGM to pour through pages and pages of lore
so that they can internalize it and then spontaneously and and
like sincerely kind of deploy that the all that nuance in the
moment. I think that's a lot to ask.
And it it's also not really the right thing to ask.
Like like people run games. You know for many reasons.
But the the one that I find most interesting, the one that is for
me is to be creative and to and to to actually make those
creative decisions myself and to and to to render this world for
players. And I think that a lot of the
design writing in spaces like the OSR and the NSR is really
attractive because it doesn't. As Jared Sinclair of of SPEAR,
which says in one of his essays, it does not chew your food for
you. My God, could we have a 10 hour
conversation about? Everything that you just said, I
had to put a really big pin in that one.
Yeah, 'cause that's that's just the model, it doesn't end.
No. Yeah.
No. Trust me, we've had many of
those same brief things here. So I don't write things down.
And I wrote down like half a a a thing already about this to to
start. I guess as soon as you started
talking about Empty Mountain, my mind immediately went two games.
I'm nervous and I and then you immediately said it does feel
like your goals for it really align with a lot of stuff that
Geo is doing. Also Geo like games, fantastic
people, fantastic stuff. If you don't know them, please
go check them out. But it's interesting that you
specifically called out Mark Board cuz I feel like that kind
of lifting the rock and seeing something else is something that
a lot of people in this space had a similar kind of it's.
The Allegory of The Cave. Yeah, people, people really
realize that there's more that you can do with games with not
only with layout, with design, with rule sets, with everything
for it. And it was just such a great
game in the way that they hit all of those things and opened
up all of those doors for people.
It's really interesting and and gosh, I'm, I'm just going to
cross one or two of these off so that we actually get the things
that we need to talk about. But also just Five East versus
what you're talking about now it's, I only say this because I
recently talked to somebody about this as well.
Just the concept of a kind of split in generally the way that
people like to play games, right.
In that I feel like there's obviously millions of people
that play 5 E They're very happy with the way it works in that
they're very happy to be kind of like brought through a story
that someone else is telling them and then and people are and
that's fine. And I'm getting much more.
OK. Not complaining about that a
lot. If that is the joy that people
find, that's fine. But I think we're all here on
the show aligned with. We don't like that.
I I like feeling exactly what you're talking about, exactly
what you want to do with games. And that is actually creating
something and feeling like I'm doing something that I'm in
charge of the actions and consequences that that I that
are in front of me, you know? Yeah, I think the role of the
designer is is different and interesting in this space.
It's one of the things, one of the reactions that you might
have when you're discovering the space is you're like looking
through an RPG book and you're like, is this it?
You know, it feels underwhelming.
You're like, this is not enough here.
There aren't any rules or mechanics or or weird
mathematical trickery. And that's, that's the point.
And I think that's the maturity of the designer is to realize
that like, oh, I don't actually have to deploy all this effort.
Yeah, like, you know, in a way that is actually ultimately just
kind of self-serving. You know, it's just like I'm
trying to impress upon you my acumen as a designer.
That's not interesting. That's not what people that
actually take something from from the players.
And so it's a very counterintuitive design journey
that I think we go on when we when we embrace these
principles. I also think it's a matter of
who you're making it for as well.
When you pull out a lot of the like, not subtext, but a lot of
the hand holding like that becomes something for a a person
who is more familiar with like this space and like creating
your own narrative and filling their own gaps, which I don't
think there's anything bad about.
I think that's good. But you have to.
That's the question you kind of have to ask.
Yeah, for sure. And like to all the people
playing D&D and having a great time, I I never want to yuck
anybody's Yum. I think that's really, really
important. James They're not.
Sure. OK.
Right, right. You're right.
But if they were, I would hypothesize that their yummy is
a little yuckier than they are being honest with themselves
about, and then it could be yummier still.
Yeah, to that same exact point, If you are aware that that is
what you like and you are aware that something else is out there
and you still like it, more power to you.
It's more of the the concept that like 5 E really tries to
insulate its players in the context of like, oh you want to
play space game, just do 5E in space versus like going and
finding something like that in space.
You know, a lot of it comes down to just the amount of
scaffolding people need to play play their game.
And 5E is an extremely scaffolded system where like
every aspect of it is like it. It's handed to you and you need
all of these like training wheels and like definitive
things to to play it. Whereas a lot of the OSR, NSR
spaces like pull a lot of that scaffolding away and starting
with something like 5 EA game that has a lot more of that
scaffolding And then moving to the OSR space is great because
you've learned what you need to learn and you don't need it
anymore. So sometimes it's hard for
people to get directly into OSR and NSR because they don't have
that initial scaffolding. But for us that as you begin
your teaching HRPG journey once you need that scaffolding to
fall away, like that's the space that we're talking about now
and. Absolutely, yeah.
And like, I don't even necessarily have anything
against scaffolding. We might release some games that
are more heavily scaffolded. I just hope they scaffold you in
the right direction. And my conjecture is that 5th
Edition, as it as Dungeons and Dragons as a franchise,
developed and became more important to Hasbro.
I don't really hold anything against the the designers of the
later editions because I think they had really difficult goals,
just like difficult product goals that their designs had to
serve. D&D began as a, you know, as a
dungeon crawler heavily focused on a very specific style of
play, a specific tone, and the rules are there to support and
facilitate those interactions, but that's just not what it is
anymore. It became just kind of a loose
catch all narrative game where people are very invested in
their characters, back stories and it would be inappropriate
for them to die and blah blah blah.
The OC generator, yeah. Yeah, so if you want that, if
you want that kind of game, I think there are better
scaffolds. There are better systems to
facilitate that kind of narrative exchange.
If you want a dungeon crawler, there are still better systems
to go play. So I just don't know what 5E is
for anymore, you know? And I think it's it's, yeah.
So it's, it's OK if like we can make things that are for
something specifically. I think we have to.
I think if you make something for everyone, you make something
for no one categorically. And so if as long as you know
who it's for, right, then you can make something for them and
it can be scaffolded as long as that's what's appropriate for
the type of experience you're trying to create.
Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, 5E is is
like everything. It's a fandom and it has gone
from a game to a lifestyle brand, and people don't know how
to separate their pair of social lifestyle brands from the their
actual identity as a human being.
So anyway, Empty Mountain has already put out a game, right?
Shrines will be the the second game that it's actually
underneath the press, the first one being Sanctum.
Correct. Well, almost correct.
Shrines is not technically a game.
Shrines is a system mutual source book for many games, any
game that is engaging with the sacred as a theme.
This makes it simultaneously more flexible and less appealing
to everyone because it doesn't like, doesn't have a rule set
inside of it. It actually asks you and this is
sort of a lack of clarity on my part that I, I'm a lot of my
messaging is going to correct now is that like it's it's
saying very specifically to game masters.
It's saying embed these in your world expressing their mechanics
in your system period. Whatever that system may be.
You know, because I trust you as a game master, an intelligent
human being making, you know intentional, purposeful
decisions about rules narrative and and and tone.
You're going to do what? You're going to do that anyway,
right? So you're just, you're like, I
think any experienced reader in this medium is ultimately just
like if they're in a bookstore and like flipping through a
book, like, do I want to buy this or not?
I want for me, Let's I'll speak for myself here.
Anecdotally, I'm looking for actionable ideas, and if they
were bolded, that would be nice, so they could jump off the page
and I could see exactly what the kernel of novelty is in a given
design. That is useful to me as an
artist, as a as a creator and a world builder who is going to
take it and repurpose it to my own personal needs anyway,
right? So the whole philosophy behind
shrines and we'll get the second in a second.
I'm really sorry this is off topic, but the philosophy behind
shrines here that I I could have and will now do a better job of
of elucidating is that I don't want to chew your food for you.
I want to give you exactly what you need, no more and no less.
No, no superfluous crunch, no superfluous fluff.
Just the actionable idea, the kernel of novelty with a
beautiful illustration. You know, to to back it up and
to sell you atmosphere and tone and really bring you in and give
you all of the sort of like kind of like emotional meta
information that you would need to make use of that novelty
yourself. Yeah, you put a lot of trust in
human beings who are, on the whole, fucking stupid so.
Yeah, I think it's a mistake maybe.
No, it's fantastic. I mean, I love the idea of the
project. Like I said, well, let's wind it
back for just a second because once we start trying, we're
going to go for a while. But Sanctum Sanctum already
exists. And for those who want to get
into the empty mountain early, because I feel like if your
vision happens, we're gonna we're we're looking at something
that is striving for you know the next games.
I'm nervous. Kind of like art house press
idea, which I'm super excited for.
I'm very kind of what. Thank you.
But what is? What is Sanctum, since this was
the first thing that kind of represents you that you decided
to put out? Yeah.
So Sanctum is pretty directly inspired by the ground itself,
by Everest Pipkin, which is a collaborative storytelling world
building game where everybody sort of in a collectively shares
authorship over a setting over a longer, a long period of time.
It's got a couple components, you know, use like a deck of
playing cards to answer prompts, which you look up in the book.
And So what Sanctum is doing is, is making a couple couple
changes on that. It's first of all getting a
little more specific. It's saying this is about
dungeons, dungeons as a theme. We all understand what a dungeon
is. I'm going to try to verbatim
quote myself in the instructions.
It says like a dungeon can be any enclosed dangerous space
into which outsiders might venture venture for personal
gain. That's my working definition of
a dungeon. I they could be they could be
open air theoretically, but I think they would need some
enclosure otherwise. We're just talking about
sandbox, you know. I think we get our words have to
mean something, you know so but they can be a tower, you know.
It could be a cave, it could be a tomb, doesn't matter.
And it is basically just a template for conversation.
It's really just a series of prompts and some barely there
rotation rules that say, OK, here are the here's some
curated, heavily analyzed pillars as prompts of what a
dungeon is and what makes it interesting inside of it.
So you move through three acts over the course of the game as
if you were doing, you know, narrative arcs in a story.
They don't really map onto the the Aristotelian curve
correctly, but like, there's three arcs.
So the first one is the dungeon itself, where the player, the
players, define the features, the aspects of that dungeon that
give it its identity. And so the the those prompts
here for clarity are the site, the site itself, the place, the
prize, the thing inside it that's worth risking your life
to retrieve. And the Guardian, because
there's a boss battle, right? Got to be in dungeons.
Yeah. Just thematically,
conventionally, we all, we all want a boss battle here.
So we identify these three things and then there's sort of
an expansion. It's not DLC, but like we
literally like a moment afforded to the players after the
original definitions of expanding each other's ideas.
You may not talk about something that you you may not expand upon
an idea that you yourself offered, and you may, and you
ideally want to prioritize details that nobody has expanded
upon yet. So this is all really
deliberate. I don't want there to be any
sense of, like personal ownership and the implied
competition that would happen in the conversation.
It's not like So one person's like I define the prize and
therefore I'm like, wedded to it, and its fate matters more to
me than it might to my other players.
No, you define the prize and somebody else makes fun of it or
embellishes it, you know? So it's like the yes and improv
attitude is really important here where we allow players to
kind of go through it. Second act is we define the
party, the intruders, who's going to go get this, who are
they, what's interesting about them and how do they prepare?
Right. So we get we start to set the
scene and the last step, how do we prepare implies the third
act, which is the actual adventure itself.
And this is, there's a a bit of a.
A change in kind here where all of a sudden now we're talking
about a narrative. Before we were doing world
building. It was expository.
We were like, OK, here's like the scenery, right?
It's all kind of static and frozen in time and we're
defining that moment. But now time is going to
progress linearly. So over the course of act three,
they we actually go through the dungeon.
And so there's the approach, the complication and the resolution.
And I'll stop talking, I think. But I do want to talk, I think.
No, keep going. No.
You sure? OK.
Yeah, totally. OK Well, the complication part,
I think is the most interesting here because it's the most
editorial moment in the entire design.
For the most part, Sanctum is saying here's what dungeons are
structurally, and here is like the shape of the sandbox.
I want you to be able to very deliberately replay this over
and over and over again with different people with different
ideas, and for the dungeons to be very different.
I want it to be a generative system.
It's a it is a generative replayable system for creating
content. And you might then come up with
a cool dungeon with your friends and then run a like flesh it out
and actually go run, you know, mark board or D&D or something
in it. You know it's a, it's a, it's a
like a scene generator. But something different happens
in Act three, specifically in Step 2, the complication, which
is where as a design, it says sort of ideologically, it says
something's going to go wrong. Structurally, you must define a
set back, because setbacks are a really important part of that
Aristotelian curve, which is not the only way to tell the story,
but it is the main one that we do in the West.
And there is a part such as the entire movie, The Empire Strikes
Back. You know, when shit goes wrong.
You know, we set up, we, we we meet our characters, we learn
their goals, we set them off on their path.
We have the inciting incident. Everything gets exciting.
There's a big set back that follows to earn the the climax
and the ultimate cathartic victory.
And so I contend that this is essential to a good story in
that format. And so if we are doing that, if
we are telling a story structurally, we should really
make space for and actually formalize a set back.
This is also important for players to be like oh, to to
remind them again that we're not wedded to these characters.
It's it's a totally interesting story for the dungeon run to
fail. You know, if you have a TPK and
everybody's dead. And the resolution of the run is
that as one of the one of the examples in the book that the
guardian mounts all of the intruders heads on spikes
outside of the dungeon as badass.
Good job, cool story. You know that We don't have to
win. The objective is different for
gameplay. We're not.
It's not actually an RPG. You're not playing a role.
No. No player is in the driver's
seat of a of a hero and playing out a heroic power fantasy.
The objective is to tell a good story, and sometimes those end
in failure. Yeah, I really.
So when I first got this one of the very first thing, and I
think I said to Hunter 2, it reminds me a little bit, have
you ever played Archipelago? That's a board game, right?
No, it's like a it's a generative kind of storytelling
this, but it reminded me of the same kind of vibes as like
Microscope or Archipelago. And I absolutely love those
games where you exactly like you said, kind of write this story.
But I really love the way that it was applied into the 3X and
directly specifically to like dungeon design storytelling,
right? And it's really cool.
And I love the idea that you have where you could get to like
Step 2 and be like, right, let's play now, like let's play this
world. So it's nice that not only is it
a system where you can sit around and play with your
friends, but you can also use it to generate other things, which
is nice and like a little a six. You're going to get like a lot
more than you think out of like what?
Like the 20 ish pages or less. So it it it's a neat thing and
it's it's really interesting for the first kind of thing that
you're putting out as your press to be this like OK clearly we're
gonna be leading into narrative. We're gonna be leading into this
specific type of design away from some type of heavy
mechanical thing. Right.
Yeah. To be to be clear we might put
out a heavy mechanical thing you know some of the like I am a
systems designer in my day job so I like mechanical things.
I am just removing them mechanically like as a mechanic.
I'm like pairing those back for these kinds of designs with the
press might do other stuff in the future.
But right now I'm I'm very interested in this kind of stuff
but I do want to I do want to drill a little deeper on your
your noting of its size. So a six, as a format as like a
as a as a, you know, a size of a book is very purposeful and
interesting. One of the design goals for this
game, and I think this is absolutely this will always be
100% everything every mountain does will always do this.
I think this is really important.
Playability or accessibility I think is just absolutely
essential. If you ask like to reference D&D
again, if you ask the Dungeon Master to buy all the books and
do a preposterous amount of reading and prep, the
playability of your game is very, very low.
Very fucking low, you know. And so A6 means it fits in your
pants. Let's say it fits in your back
pocket. It's a back pocket, exactly.
You can bust that shit out on and this is something that, like
Exalted Funeral took this line of copy and put it at the top of
the store page. They like Big Orange Font
because they agree that this is the selling point.
It was designed for bonfire circles, car rides, and 2nd
bottles of wine. I want to ambush my friends with
this game when we're all a little drunk and feeling loose
and creative, and I want it to be such a simple system.
It's very important that the that the systems be be so simple
and accessible that the facilitator, character player,
which is an optional role, you don't need that.
It can have just read the book one time and literally be like,
OK, we're sitting in a circle, your player 123, what does the
site go, you know, And now we're playing like just off off the
bat. That's very, very important
because we're all adults. We all live in the age of the
inchitified Internet, so our brains are broken and it's
really hard to like, actually get together in person.
And it's just anything we can do as designers to remove obstacles
to people actually playing the game is, you know, that's
mission critical. I mean, absolutely in it's it's
interesting when you think about that and the number of games
that I've chosen not to get. I don't understand people That,
And again, to each their own. I love quality.
Like, you know, qualifiers I think are really important in
this space because so many people don't use them and act as
if they're an authority in a space when it's really just a
personal opinion. So in my personal opinion, when
I see a book that like, touts the fact that it's 500 pages,
I'm like, I don't, I personally don't see it as a good thing.
I'm never going to fucking read it, never going to fucking read
it. Why do you think we haven't
reviewed DCC it on the show? I know it's all spells.
Don't get mad at me but it's I I that's why you know we're both
fucking piece of shit like 0 attention span high ADHD like if
it's more than a couple 100 pages like I'm I'm I'm already
checked out I'm sorry. Like I will try but I just
can't. So I I love the small and I
really like the the thought process into that.
You've clearly, clearly, clearly put into such a small format and
small game like it's not, it's dense for its brevity, you know
what I mean? And I really enjoy them about
design. And so does that carry over into
shrines like these principles that you have in Sanctum when
you're looking at shrines, which as you said, it's not a game
it's a system neutral kind of supplement.
It's a resource. It's.
A resource toolkit, yeah. Right.
What are there similar kind of themes and and themes that you
might carry forward with empty mountain that you brought
forward into shrines? And also like tell us a bit more
about shrines? Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. So I'll answer the the question
concretely first before we talk about shrines and abstractly and
in general. So the meat of shrines are these
12 spreads, right, that are each of them really lavishly
illustrated by Connor Fawcett who's just a phenomenal
illustrator who's working with us on this project.
They've they've contributed to stuff like Wander Home and
Lancer and world ending game by Everest Pipkin and so just
really, really fantastic work. Each of those illustrations
provides visual, atmospheric, tonal context for a little
narrative and mechanical vignette.
Just a bit of micro fiction and a excuse me, a system neutral
gameplay hook. A a a little bit of a little bit
of a mechanic game mechanical game design that we just trust
you to be able to lift out and apply to whatever system you're
doing. And so there's a deliberate
brevity in all of those things in in that approach and I will
be likely it's possible right now.
You know I don't want to like this would be the first time I
talk about it publicly but I I might actually just double the
amount of microfiction that the book contains without doubling
the illustrations. It would just it would break the
budget to to double the illustrations.
But I do want people to really feel like they're getting their
value for a source book. You know the the the fact that
it's reso printed on such, you know fancy stock and it's the
the process of that printing is more expensive in general means
the the price point can't really change.
But I do want people to feel like they're getting their
money's worth. So writing is, you know, free
for me. Like it's I can, I can do that
easily. It takes time, obviously, and
sweat equity. But it's like I don't have to
hire somebody else to make that contribution to add that extra
volume of content. So, you know, a bit of an bit of
ambiguity there. But that's the thing, That's the
thought process, right? The philosophy here is that
Ioffer you more by, not by offering you less, right?
Like it's it's a very deliberate piece of actionable, you know,
idea, idea, work per scene per vignette.
You supported of course with. Sorry, go ahead.
No, no, no. Continue please.
Well supported of course by with couple pages of procedural
tools. So multi column modular tables
that are deliberately generative, right?
I, I, I for me might like, I like tables, but if they only
have one column, they're just a list of writing.
There's they're just a list of like a very specific pieces of
prompts. Systemically I find them more
interesting if they are combinatorial in such as like
like Valtivarn for instance, which is an absolutely masterful
book. The the, the breadth and and
depth of of those tables is absurd.
And I think that, you know, having combinatorial prompts
like that allows GMs to do the same kind of work that they
would do in Sanctum, players might do in Sanctum.
And so there's a bit of that in the back, but the the first bit,
those those vignettes, that micro fiction that's more
authorial, you can obviously make whatever changes to them
you want, but each one of them is a bit more of a a a more
wholly realized narrative conceit.
Yeah. I I, I love the the, you know
the best thing that I find with this kind of like generative
procedural kind of supplemental context is the adventure seeds
and then the ability to use those to expand.
And having that and making people be aware, you know you're
really again it comes back to trust where you're you're really
looking for a market of people that don't want something that's
just necessarily here's this cool thing that people wrote
beginning to end with no nothing outside of it.
It is in itself the thing and you just drop it in versus the
people that are like this is a cool idea.
I can think of 10 different ways where I can run this like in my
own thing or adapt it. So for example I'm looking at
the Oracle of malice which obviously there's a reason you
put it at the top. It's fucking cool and art is
fantastic. Yeah.
There's a reason it's. On AT shirt, which we'll get to,
but I love this spread here, and it's for those watching the
slideshow. They'll see it above us, but
like, just the idea behind like this idol, Buried Deep hosts A
hateful Oracle. Venerators may name an enemy.
Roll the D6 to determine what the Oracle reveals about the
enemy and this information must be new.
And then there's six options, one of which is like something
they fear or something they love, something they hate.
Like, it's fantastic for the ways that not only are there six
options for that very small, tiny little bit, but a million
paths that can be taken off of each one.
And even for just those small little pieces, outside of the
generative tables and extra microfiction like you, there's
1000 campaigns like we wrote off this one little square page and
and I love that. You're singing my song.
I feel so seen right now. Thank you very much for for, you
know, unpacking what I hope the people see as the value in this
approach, right. Like I don't want to just flesh
out answer all the questions for you chew your food for you but I
do want to get you chewing and so that's that's really great to
hear If you're listening to this right now and you feel like your
values are being described please come check out the
Kickstarter. You know we we're funded now but
we could have a stronger launch I I would have like to have a
slightly stronger launch because the the presses debut product 0
established audience so far is the first podcast I've been on.
So thank you guys again. Wow, yeah.
Thanks for making us your first. Hey, I mean you guys are the 1st
to say yes. So it's like this is, this is
the this is the beginning. I'm this is the beginning of me
trying to find that audience, find that community who shares
these values. So if you're listening, if you
feel like we're describing you please show up.
Follow us on Instagram. Show up on Discord.
Say hello. I want to make games for you or
I want to make or I want to make resources that make the games
you're already playing better, easier, more interesting.
That's what I'm here to do. Very cool James, I have a
question. What what do you play like?
What is your go to game that you and your table?
Play well, kind of between play groups right now.
Recently moved so my play group in in Los Angeles.
Not super recently, but my big my big play group was in LA and
the last thing we did was a huge 5E campaign.
It was pretty badass. We had a good time, but it was
barely 5E. You know, I remember there were
sessions where like you roll a you roll the die once, once or
twice. We're playing a lot of board
games right now. I, you know, I work in video
games and it is professionally mandatory that my diet be
diverse. So I'm I'm playing much more
video games than I am tabletop games right now.
Which is part of why I'm doing this, because I'm tired of I'm
tired of a lot of what video games ask me to do.
I think they're kind of disrespectful of our time in
general, especially like if you're making a live service or
something. There's this idea that you want
people to be logged in as often as possible, as frequently as
possible, and you want to really want to create FOMO when they're
when they're not logged in. And I FOMO is like for me, like
my nemesis I I want. I hate if if a design implies
that I will, that the player will feel FOMO.
I'm. I'm probably going to put a
sniper bullet between his eyes, like, right away.
I respect that and I appreciate it so.
Yeah, so, so, so, yeah, thank you.
What are we playing right now? What do you want to play like
tabletop wise? What's it what like?
If you were like going to sit at a table and the the whatever
game master was going to use shrines and whatever else, what
would you want to play? I would love to see shrines in a
couple different systems and each one of these I think would
really express like a different version of it, like a different
way to use it. I think burning wheel obviously
on the crunchier end would be would be really interesting.
The system doesn't really matter at this point, and this is like
a sort of an OSR position. I think that is like it doesn't
actually really matter. That's why there aren't really
rules in the thing. I agree.
I just want players to sit personally.
Yeah, yeah, me personally, I really want to play some index
card RPG. I want to play more Iron Sworn.
One thing I am playing right now is a solo journaling game called
Glitch Them. I don't know if if you played
that, but it is badass. I, my protagonist, is such an
asshole and I love it. It's like the worst version of
me. It's like just this evil, shitty
exaltation of all my worst character traits and it's just a
phenomenal character. I love it.
And that game, the game drew it out systemically, you know, like
it it it, it created that character from within me, which
meant means it did a really great job.
I would definitely love to play, you know, any, any number of
like, lean rules, like stuff right now.
Like Bastards is high on the list.
What's in the mail, What's even coming?
Really Wanna do some tin candles?
And that's kinda hard to. Schedule tin candles is great.
We've run that a couple of times.
Yeah, it's definitely, it's an interesting, well last time we
ran we ran it as kind of a fuck, what is that French?
What is that? What is that French tour game
between 2 fires style like during the bubonic plague kind
of thing as opposed to like the the post apocalypse kind of
survivor bit. Super fun, great game.
Yeah, it's a great game and it's also very flexible with its
world building like it's it's setting is is up to the table to
define. Yeah, no, it was, it's super
great and you know, as soon as you say that like it definitely
kind of. I can feel that as like leaning
into kind of like the vibe we're going for with the the narrative
aspects of play and stuff. Shifting back a little bit
towards shrines though. Sure, yeah it's first of all the
color scheme is fantastic. I love, I love the red and
yellow but it's it is system agnostic.
But it's not necessary it's it's very not culturally agnostic.
Like there's a huge part of, I believe it's it's it's mostly
like Himalayan Buddhism. Yeah.
So what, besides the fact that you were like, took, took a trip
what and spent time in a place or or is that the main impetus?
What is the impetus for choosing that specifically as kind of
like the cultural point for it? Well, I would describe myself as
what people say as a secular Buddhist.
I am, you know, Buddhist Metaphysics are my ARMA there.
I was a philosophy and cognitive science major in college, and I
was interested in philosophy of mine, questions of consciousness
and stuff. And you can't really answer,
like ask those questions without looking at older Eastern
philosophical traditions which have been hammering those points
for longer than the West had civilization.
And so I spent four months in India and Nepal on a Tibetan and
Himalayan studies program. People on the on that program
were mostly focused on the socio political consequences of the
Tibetan diaspora. I was there for Buddhism.
And so I embedded in some monasteries in Kathmandu urban
monasteries, mainly around a very large stupa there, which is
a reliquary mound in in Himalayan Buddhist tradition
called Botanath. And there's a bunch of actually
pretty developed, pretty robust academic monasteries around
that, that one of which had actually had a Western master's
program in in in Eastern and Buddhist studies that you could
go do there. And so there were a number of
Western graduate students who were fluent in Tibet.
And we learned a little Tibetan on the program, but like not
enough to talk about philosophy, obviously.
So I had some really great translators, you know, and I sat
down with like the Dalai Lama's French trans official, French
translator, who had been a nuclear physicist.
And so it was thoroughly, you know, thoroughly fluent in
Western physical theory, which I was trying to, you know, connect
and really answer and resolve some questions with particularly
the mind body problem. Right.
So we had this question in, in Western philosophy.
It was like how can an immaterial consciousness
interact with a a material body without like violating the laws
of the conservation of energy and so on and so forth.
And it's just a natural. It's not.
That problem is a natural question of like Cartesian
dualism and just this general sort of judeo-christian idea
that we have a soul. And I was a, you know, a pretty
aggressive empiricist when when I got there, it was much more
like people in the program were a lot more immediately open to
mysticism and sort of the more emotional answers, I think, to
some of these questions. And I was like, Nope, I'm going
to swing the hammer at this as hard as I can.
And it's the only, it is the only value system and sort of
philosophical body of ideas that survived.
My hammer just kept bouncing off and I was like, this appears to
be true. So I you know that field work
that I did there was specifically on the subject of
emptiness, which is just the it's not nihilism, but it's not
material realism. It's somewhere in the middle.
It's this, there's a school of thought in in in Buddhist
philosophy called the Madhyamika and it it's calls itself the
Middle Way Path. And it is a big delicate idea
and I'm not going to do it here, but it's like I'm not going to
unpack it all here. I saw, but I but I published on
that in a in an undergraduate philosophy journal when I came
back home and I have just generally been a a a a Buddhist
thinker ever since. And so the ideas of of
interconnectivity, interdependence permeate all my
work. I'm not really interested in in
more Western value value sets that pit US against each other,
particularly against our environment.
I I think that climate change and environmentalism in general
is like the OR problem, you know and it's like it's easy to say
as, like as as as one who is relatively spared the pain of of
other socio economic problems socio cultural racial problems
and was a white dude, you know, so like I don't feel day by day
other problems but I I do think that the the umbrella problem
that our civilization faces is an ecological 1 And so I think
Buddhism is is a philosophical tradition that is inherently
ecological like ecology as a practice is about the is about
sisters systems of interconnectivity between
organisms in an environment. And so I'm way off topic, but Oh
no. But there is no no you're you're
doing. Great point in the show like.
Generally, I as a creator have a Buddhist value set and I'm I'm
interested in. I remain interested, even as an
empiricist, as like a secular empiricist.
I'm very interested in the aesthetics of mysticism and the
actual methodology of of of contemplative practice in terms
of the means of of acquiring and experiencing truth like we can
understand. I wrote a paper about emptiness,
but doesn't mean it doesn't make me enlightened.
I don't go around and like perceive the interconnectivity
of phenomena around me that would take meditating in a cave
probably over multiple lifetimes.
If you accept reincarnation as a practice, as a you know, as a
part of the process, blah blah blah and so.
That just means that reincarnation.
I did, yes. Because we don't have time.
We do not have time, you know, so, so like, this is to say that
those values are present in all of my work.
That said, as I as I mentioned, I'm a white dude, so I'm and
I'm, I'm playing with ideas that are religious in in nature.
There are institutional, widely practiced, you know, like
cultural practices and and and conflicts around these ideas.
I may be interested in the ideas more specifically, but I'm also
interested in the people who practice them and the you know,
I deeply disinterested in in stomping around like a tourist
in in people's faith. You know, I I like Buddhism
because it is not a faith. It is an empirical tradition.
It it specifically asks you to not have faith, to suspend, to
believe something in the absence of evidence, which is I think,
foolish and and dumb and bad. We should not do that.
I I would agree with that. Yeah, you know and so so that
said we've really exciting cultural consultants on this
project. The the most exciting novel of
which is an actual ass Tibetan monastic scholar.
He's the founder. His name is the Kempo Pema Wong
Duck Kempo is a is a a formal title in in in Tibetan Buddhist
sort of hierarchical structures that that basically denotes
academic and scholarly mastery over all of the schools of
thought. So he knows way more, way, way
more than I've done. Madiyamika is just one of the
several schools that he is required to be fluent in.
And you know, he's been teaching the Dharma across the world for
like 40 years. So having him involved as a
cultural consultant is so cool because not like the the bare
minimum, the absolute bare minimum.
The first box we want to check is like, hey, are we not
offending anybody? Are we, are we not playing fast
and loose with action with real religious concepts, Are we?
We're not actually depicting any of them, you know, directly.
They might inspire something, the mythology might inspire
something, but generally it has to be obfuscated in the in this
kind of remixing of fiction. But what's what's the real value
add out here is that I'm going to let that guy drive a lot of
the writing. I'm going to I'm going to it's
you know he knows he hasn't he has he's he he has a deeper
degree of of like experience with and understanding with the
mythology that inspires some of the existing writing right now.
So the conversations are are often just like hey where else
could this go like what else what am I not seeing here what
do you what what cool angles do you see here And it's like I'll
I'll do the translating into a gameplay mechanic if it's
appropriate but he can open the door to just you know influences
that I don't have. So that's that's really, really
exciting. When you reach out to a scholar
like that and you're like, hey, I'm making something for a
tabletop for tabletop games, like what is that conversation
like? Like what is his opinion about
like the medium that you're creating for?
He's so stoked. He had no idea what I was
talking about, but he loved it in the beginning.
He had just done cultural consultation just like this in a
in a play on a on some some theater in New York City.
The foundation that he runs is in New York, so, you know, he's
a pretty worldly guy. He understands the sort of like
Western cultural discourse around art making.
There's another cultural consultant on board, James
Mendez Hodes, who has done some much more visible in this space
cultural consulting work. He's even more fluent in the
sort of like the online discourse around around of the
medium. But he's hardly ignorant.
He's he has an Eastern Eastern classics degree.
He's also, you know, you know, going to be a great voice in
terms of the content itself, but approaching the Kempo, right.
So I did this through 1/3 cultural consultant.
His name is Jeremy McMahon. He's a museum educator.
He worked at the Guggenheim works at the Guggenheim.
Now he worked at the Rubin Museum in New York, which
specifically dedicated to Himalayan art.
And he actually, he and I were on that program together in in
India, Nepal, the Tibetan Himalayan Studies program.
So I asked him, he was the first person I reached out to.
I was like who who do you know in your network that I can
include in this project to really drive it and and take it
somewhere, you know further than I can And so he connected me to
the Kempo and that like it's great.
It's really great. He's he's not the Kempo himself
is not. Like I said he he's not new to
this process. He's really excited about it and
I'm. I'm even more excited like I'm
I'm, I'm honored that. I'm honored that he's even given
us the time. I think that is so incredibly
cool. I was also just thinking, like
explaining tabletop games to my coworkers.
They like they they're nothing. Nothing sticks.
So nothing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I mean, when you're talking to someone who's a scholar of
like so much stuff, I can only imagine that their ability to
like entertain an idea is like their their like brain is
already like like not susceptible, but like much more
able than like our, you know, I. Don't know.
Kevin, who works right next to me, is incredibly scholarly and.
Yeah, the guy's got a great brain, no no doubt.
And he is excited about the creativity aspect of things.
Where I'm saying like, look, we're what we're doing is what
we're we're providing material for people to tell their own
stories. We're we're we're making we're
making Buddhist tradition and mythologies available to people
to explore in a in a distant, fictionalized, you know, arm's
length way. But we're we're like translating
it to this medium in the way that like Eurocentric fantasy
has been. You know, it's it's inseparable
from it. It's so endemic to the to the
thing that it's actually just like a core component, this idea
that like you have a knight, you know, who plays fealty, fealty
to a Lord and that there is like you know one very specific Lord
of light deity type thing. Like all these tropes derive
pretty directly from from Western Christendom.
And so it's not my job. It's not to be very clear, it
is, it is not my job to bring Buddhism to the West, to bring
it into into gaming in this way. I can only make the the, the,
the work that is in my heart, you know, and that resonates
with me. And I can bring on people.
I can surround myself with people who can help credential
and and authenticate that effort.
So I want to be very clear. I do not, I do not consider
myself sort of some sort of like evangelist.
You know of these traditions. They are however you're.
The new Buddhist Messiah of the West, right like that.
Would be. That would be a terrible claim
that I would never make. It is however, very critical to
who I am as a thinker and as an artist, and so it would be
disingenuous and bad and wrong and just kind of self defeating
for me to exclude this dimension from my own work.
Yeah, no, I mean it's it's also cool to have just much more
like, God, just stuff that's not Eurocentric race war fantasy,
you know what I mean? Like it's really nice to have
like stuff that's, you know, other other thought processes.
And especially with with not only it, it's not just like,
God, we we could have a 10 hour conversation on all the shitty,
like, quasi cultural stuff that D&D has put out for the past 40
years, right? But like to actually have not
only a creator who has experienced that and has gone
over there and had those discussions, but to be able to
bring on not one not two, but like multiple cultural
consultants to make sure that not only is it, as you said, not
offensive to anyone, but like accurate and inspired by yeah,
written by to actually to actually give you not.
Not. And it's not even just that.
It's it's you're reading it And here is the truth.
It's that like you are now going to have these generative
processes to create within that space in a correct way to expand
on that style of stories as well.
Well, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thank you.
I think shrines could, could have been or might still be more
Buddhist than it is like it. I've been a little a little sort
of negotiating with myself the degree to which shrines should
include that dimension. Like how how Buddhist should it
be? Is it like am I going to go out
and be like that's what this book is and I I've elected to
not do that because I don't feel comfortable making that being
that guy, you know make making that choice.
It is however really resonating with people because of that
novelty. And so I think given the the
like the depth of the cultural consulting bench and and the
sort of the interest I'm getting in in response, I might lean
into it a little more. I might, I might go a little
harder on that dimension, but we'll see.
You know, if we don't, I think it'll be it'll be something we
might do in the future, particularly if we if we can
find an artist, an illustrator from that region.
If you're listening, if you're, you know, if you are of Tibetan,
North Indian, Nepali heritage or you're really just anywhere from
the Buddhist practicing world and you're interested in making
tabletop role-playing stuff, please hit me up.
I can't find you. I'm trying.
There aren't that many of you, as far as I can tell, and I'd
love to work with you. Well, this, this message on this
show will really get out to like Switzerland and London and some
US and I think Brazil. I think we were going to Brazil
last year, so. Usuk Canada are definitely our
top, our top listeners but if you're if you're out there those
but we we've definitely, we've definitely got at least one
person in a lot of places that have listened to at least one
episode. Well what's interesting I mean
it's it's an interesting line that you're thinking about
following too because like a lot of this project is really based
on trusting the people that are supporting it.
So that that line between like how hard do I push into it and
how hard do I let people come to those conclusions when I've
already added so much trust into the process.
Anyway, is is an interesting line to walk, especially as a
publisher. I would think that, you know,
how much do I trust people to just make those assumptions
versus how much do I try to make that like a a focal talking
point, is it? It would be an interesting kind
of like thought process to go through.
Yeah, I I don't think we have the answer yet.
I I I certainly don't think the press, you know, has any hard
and fast rules about what that is.
I will say the name Empty Mountain Nothing Can Die is a
yarmulke sentiment. Mountains are a actually
universal cultural symbol for the numinous and the holy.
They emptiness, obviously as a sort of a description of
Buddhist description of how, how, how phenomena exists.
It's not saying that nothing exists or emptiness, that
emptiness itself exists. It's saying that emptiness is
the way in which things exist. There are things, they just
don't exist by virtue of an essence.
They are empty of their inherent nature.
They only exist by relationship to other phenomena, which is to
say are dependently arisen. And I promise that is the, yeah,
as much as I will go into that. But but the, the, the sort of
parenthetical component of the title, Nothing can die is sort
of an implication of that of that idea, right?
Where it's like nothing exists at all, right, in the way that
you would expect it to given what death means.
Like birth isn't possible, death isn't possible.
Existing at all is impossible. Like there's that phrase in the
West. It's like, you know, no one, a
man never steps in the same river twice.
The Buddhist version is like, nobody steps in the same river
once. Like there's no river.
There's there's there's no you in that.
In that sense, in in the sense that we mean it, like like I I,
I have a soul, right? There is a thing that is me.
If you were to make a list of all the things that make me up,
eventually you would find you would find that kernel of of
substantial being. But that that's specifically.
That's quite specifically what what the Magyamika dismisses.
It says there is no such. There is no such underlying
essence. You will just make a list of
other stuff, and each one of those other things subdivides
into infinite other things until you just have to stop.
I so I love the title that and and or the the name of the press
and like how much actual depth there is to it.
But also, like, it's clearly a a specific choice to be like, just
like pretentious enough to be cool, you know, like.
I hope it's cool, yeah. It's definitely pretentious.
I didn't want to just like make another thing be like such and
such games, You know, like. Yeah, I know.
I mean, you know, games of Nervous is not just, you know,
like Nervous Games publishing House or something, you know
what I mean? Like there's there's a depth to
it as well continuing along with like this kind of publisher line
not only. So the print process for Shrines
and I think a lot of your kind of thought process behind the
actual print process, manufacturing, distribution will
I assume carry forward. Can you talk a little bit about
that because there is a lot of depth to that process as well?
Yeah, sure. I mean, it just matters to me a
lot how the thing feels in your hands.
If it didn't, I would not be an analogue.
I'd I'd, you know, focus all the time on video games.
I'm just, I'm sick of ephemera. I want to hold something and I
want it to. I want the texture to feel good.
I want the weight to feel good that.
Artifact You feel of things, yeah.
Yeah, I think, I think I'm really Oding on the Internet.
I was a techno optimist my whole life.
You know, I spent, I've spent most of my life in front of
screens. I'm in front of one right now
you know and and part of this effort is is to push away from
that. And so if you're going to do
that, if you're going to embrace the physicality of the object,
then I think you materials matter and I think print quality
matters. And like you know if we're
taking, if we're taking seriously books as art objects,
which they are and or can be, then I think printing is really
important. And recent printing is, you
know, as far as I know the the, the highest quality method, you
know, it's also far and away the most ecological method.
The inks are made of rice bran. The printers themselves don't
have a heating component. They don't they don't use toners
right. They don't like.
They don't heat up and in order to apply to it here the ink to
the page, they do some other thing and it just takes less
energy, a lot less energy. And the machines themselves just
like kind of don't break. Toners break after a while and
they just like produce e-waste and show up in a landfill.
But it's like literal millions of copies can come out of a
single single resale printer. So I'm not saying that we will
resale print everything, but I am saying that we will care
about the material itself dramatically.
The next printing of Sanctum, for instance, will probably be
resale printed. Just cause like, you know
earlier printing is getting your feet by figuring it out.
But it's like I'm I want the, I'd like the, I'd like the pages
to have like a grain to them, you know, Anyway.
Yeah, I mean, reader printing obviously feels fantastic.
And also, I mean, it looks fantastic.
Even we talked about it. One of the ones we reviewed
recently was like Obuchon Panic and the brightness and the feel
that you can get from a nice reader print versus just the ink
print. It is gorgeous, feels gorgeous.
It's a little bit more expensive, but it's fantastic.
Actually, it's. A lot more expensive.
Yeah, just a touch, just a bit. It's worth it.
I'll spend the money, but it's not only the print process too,
but even the materials you're using to ship as well.
Yes, exactly. Thank you.
So we as a press as a publisher, commit to, for all time 100%
compostable materials for all of our packaging.
I cannot make that guarantee for like a retailer who might ship
you our products. But if it comes from me, if I'm
going to, if I'm going to go down to the desk where I have
all my set up, I'm going to put it in a Mailer, a bubble Mailer
made of corn. I bought a bunch of thermal
shipping label paper. The actual printing label itself
is compostable compost cardboard already is selected.
A little structural thing in there.
It's good to go. I haven't pulled the trigger on
any compostable bubble wrap yet but I'm probably going to for
the shrines fulfillment because the books themselves are really
nice and I want them to arrive nice.
So yeah, I I just. I just can't imagine.
I cannot imagine throwing our. I cannot imagine contributing to
it. I'll plagiarize myself from the
from the Kickstarter patriot but I cannot imagine contributing to
our civilizations Trash vortex. I cannot do it.
It is why would I do that. I want to make art that is good,
but not at the expense of like our biosphere.
Why would what? A what?
A disreputable choice.
Yeah you know it's it's it's one of those things especially it's
like a small press it's it's much I don't say it's easier
it's the right thing to do all the time but you know it's gonna
make the margin smaller. But you have to look at the the
how you not just the profit margin but like your margins of
of everything else. So like ethics, morals, and like
everything else, the things that you choose to be as a company.
In order to go those routes and and being able to to choose
those things thoughtfully and and go in those passes it it's
great to do especially you know if you're starting like that
being able to have a consistency of that because you'll be able
to kind of level that process up versus being like putting a
million out now and suddenly having to switch.
So it's nice to It's nice to have.
Well, thank you. Yeah, I'm we're definitely gonna
have to scale up a little bit. I don't think my printer is
gonna be able to handle the volume of even trying
fulfillment. I'll get a new printer for it.
Yeah. Listen, this project, it sounds
absolutely fantastic. I'm.
I'm really excited to get it. I know you said you were hoping
for a little bit bigger push at the beginning but as as a as a
relatively small press and having your first project go on
Kickstarter, the fact that you're over $5000 going to be
like the first week Ish is a lot more than a lot of people put
out on Kickstarter and you got more than three weeks left in
the project. So you know, plenty of room to
get to. What I'm really excited for is
at least, I mean getting all the way through all the stretch
goals where you can actually make a a contribution to the
foundation, pay your artist more and things like that's
fantastic. But I'm getting to the point
where there's a little bit of foiling on the front at $10,000
would be really exciting. So plenty of time to get to
that. So if you're listening, you
definitely want to make sure you get over to Shrines.
We'll make sure, obviously we'll make sure like the link to that
everything is in there. But for for people that are
looking for empty Mountain, for people that are looking for
Sanctum, for all of that, where can we find you and that now?
Well thank you for asking. The press's website is empty
mountain hyphen NCD for nothing can die.com Empty mountain
Hyphen ncd.com we. I'm hand fulfilling orders
because it's just me right now. The the only thing we have for
sale right now because it's you know again just me and brand new
is Sanctum and I will ship it to you from my house and you can
also get if you if you wanted to pick it up from an established
retailer by all means. It is currently being carried by
exalted funeral spear, witch and Nave of Cups.
I believe Nave of Cups put Sanctum in a vending machine.
In the TPK Brewing vending machine.
I might make something for that machine.
What an idea do? It do it.
I went there a few weeks ago and it's fantastic.
I'm so happy to hear that and it's like it's Sanctum is
actually a perfect choice for that.
Like it's designed for a second bottles of wine.
Play it in a bar. Please stay with your sit with
your friends and make up dungeons over drinks.
I actually kind of want to I've been thinking about been
thinking about a drinking game one like just like embracing the
fact that it's four it's four drinking and it's like we have
we have this idea right in in drinking games.
Let me just humor me for a second.
Let's just spit ball. Let's spit ball some design real
quick. So like, you know in drinking
games, right, it's a penalty to drink, which is dumb because we
like drinking. Theoretically we're here to
drink. If you don't drink, it's fine.
But like you're probably not going to play this game then if
you're if you're not drinking. So if you are drinking, you want
to drink and it should not necessarily be a penalty for it,
but if it were, the drink should be bad, right?
So like imagine a game, imagine a a, a, a game you would play in
the booth at a bar where someone buys at the beginning of the of
the game. Everyone has, you know the round
includes XN plus one drinks, where N is the number of
players. So there's an extra drink
sitting in the middle of the table.
And if it's bad that no one wants it, then drinking is a
penalty. But if it's good and everyone
wants it, then drinking is like a reward.
And that's all I've done so far. So as far as I've gotten in my
thinking, but I think there's something there.
Well, you know, King's Cup, King's cup is the thing and that
is your like hodgepodge mix match of everything.
So by the time you get to wine, whiskey and beer and everything
in one, it is a bit of a penalty.
So I've. Heard that?
I was thinking on the flip of like you cannot drink until you
do a thing, and that way your rate's not a penalty at all.
Like drinking is just the reward.
Right. Yeah, we we can have a whole
freaking episode just about drinking because sometimes it's
the volume is the problem. You know, that's that's the
penalty. Yeah, but.
Anyway, my point, but the, the, I think the, the, the, the more
interesting point to say about this is that games should be
aware of where they are played, context of their play, and they
should make efforts to not be at odds with, to be conducive with
those dynamics so that they you actually want to play them.
Yeah, gotta hit that flow state, you know?
Gotta get that flow state. But and and also just saying
Nave of cups, fantastic press. Please go check out nave of.
Cups of cups. They're fantastic and we've had
them on the show before. They're both they're both
fantastic and a great press and I know Hunters actually gone and
visited the machine so I would if those could pop up everywhere
that'd be fantastic. But but James listen super
excited for Shrines If you haven't checked out Sanctum
definitely go grab that from their website as well.
But really appreciate you being on here.
Please come on again and let's have like, no, not a time.
A time that we need to end by so we can just have like a 10 hour
conversation on some of the stuff we talked about today.
Because my goodness, you have no idea how much honor of I have
struggled not to, to really let this run forever on some of
those topics. So that's a great discussion.
Really appreciate you being here.
Hey, thank you very much for having me.
I live for these. These are tons of fun.
Yes. Blessed.
Yeah. This.
This is great. I'd be happy to come back on.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Absolutely. So listen in the descriptions
below everyone that's listening or watching just like always.
You can find the links to the Empty Mountain website to the
Kickstarter. Please go back that definitely
love to hit all those goals and would love to get a press that's
doing interesting things that the James is trying to do with
MD press up and running and and and more successful because
that's definitely the kind of stuff that I I want.
The reason we started the show is so that we can get more of
the things that we want and this is what we want.
So please go support that and you know you know all our link
to link tree at the weekly scroll.
So thank you so much for listening James.
Again thank you so much for being here and that is going to
be us for today. Bye everybody.
Thank you everybody.