Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan and joining me today is wife Marshall of Step
Lead Studio. How you doing this morning wife?
Good. How you doing man?
You know, just trying to get my brain all in the same direction.
And we're slowly getting there. But but it'll happen.
Yeah. So so you're here and we are
talking the grit system today as well as I'm sure a bunch of
other stuff. But before we get into the
conversation, for those that might not know, you might not
have watched your podcast, might not have seen you here before on
the show. Who?
Who the heck is wife Marshall and and what is still Flee
Studio? Yeah, thanks.
I'm wife and I'm a writer primarily and game designer.
When I'm designing games, I do some other things, but mostly
I'm I'm writing the words and talking with artists about the
art and visual design. I also started a company when I
launched a first game that felt like more than just a free thing
for my friends, but something where we wanted to print a book
and different people had different ideas about basically
other products. So it was a game line that was
called Still Fleet and the company's called the Still Fleet
Studio. So that's pretty simple.
The system was fun that we made for the game, which is unique,
and we ended up making other games with it.
And so shout out to, you know, Ethan Gould who worked on Still
Fleet and then Anthony Grasso who was on Weekly Scroll who
made blister critters using the grid system.
Chris Pickett, whom I do the podcast with Why We Roll, which
is about game design, really getting into the weeds of
specifically indie TTRP GS and politics and history basically.
And then Ethan's game is coming out as well, and we have a
couple other games that published a different grid
system game with plus one XP who are really great, love working
with them. So it's kind of grown from one
game, my sci-fi game I play with my friends, to a bunch of games
with sort of the same system, but it's different every time in
the way that I think to some degree games should be sort of
unique little objects like otherwise, why is it its own
game and not like a hack for an existing game?
So we can get into that. But yeah, we we basically make
tabletop role-playing games. We have made one card game
that's a spin off that's very fun.
My friend Aaron made a fast play like set making game in the
still fleet world. It's meant to be actually a card
game about of like ATV show about doctors who help robots
who were broken. It's called Robot Hospital.
So shout out to Aaron H. And that was fun and very
different. I'm not a board game expert.
I like them, but, you know, I'm really an RPG writer.
And where we're at now is, yeah. I mean, we're, we're focused on
expanding not only our own system, but really just putting
out good games that that take a couple boxes, really focus on
politics and body horror as like very, very broad themes taken
very loosely. Like our main goal is fun games,
but we do try to make games that have some sort of intention
behind them. And we're all leftist, you know,
we're basically communist. I don't know if some other
members of the team might be more on the anarchist side of
things, but that just informs kind of how we're thinking about
like, OK, well, if we make a game, let's maybe not say kill
all the goblins for no reason just because they're quote UN
quote evil. Let's think about, you know, a
situation that's more interesting.
So we've we've tried to challenge ourselves and use that
as a three line without actually explicitly sort of making the
games, you know, didactic. Like they're not teaching
instruments. They're fun, so I can go into
each of the games, which again, are not all by me, but but yeah,
I wanted to. I mean, today we were mostly
excited to chat because we've been trying to catch up and it
feels like the right time to me because we're about to launch
our first ever Crit system game jam.
So we just published today the license, so anyone can make
stuff for any of our games for free.
You can make it commercial, do whatever, just credit us
basically. It's pretty permissive and
that's that's how we roll, obviously, and that's something
we support in general that games and we're we've been probably
kind of behind just because we were moving really quickly.
We went from one game to like now there's six grid system
games out there. So we wanted to sort of step
back and say how could we support people who might want to
use versions of the system, but to do their own thing.
They want to do a hack and they're not sure, you know, if
they can put it on the itch or whatever, right.
So we wanted to sort of make sure that people felt like, yes,
please do that, right? And, and also just learn and,
and, you know, see what cool ideas other people have had.
Because that's to me, maybe the most fun part honestly, is, is
not just like seeing my own writing published, but being
able to work with my friends and make new friends, as corny as
that might sound, you know, you know, when it comes to, you
know, to, to game design broadly, I mean, you know, art,
writing, whatever, all of it. So.
That's why a lot of people do it, you know, and getting making
a thing and then seeing people enjoy it and talk about it and
then make things with it is is an incredible feeling.
So like, why not, you know, push that?
But let's let's wind all the way back to the beginning of this
and let's talk about still fleet real quick and and in the
original grit system game. So why so you said Still Fleet
is a sci-fi game you play with your friends as AT&T writer.
Was it actually the first thing you wrote or was there like a
bunch of stuff in docs 1st and that's the one that worked?
Or is that just a home game that kind of developed and you're
like, you know what? This could be a book.
Let's make this thing. Yeah, it was really the first
full game. I mean it, it definitely started
in the era of the blogs, the Grognard blogs, the Black Hack,
and that era of like reading in the blogosphere, different
versions of Dungeons and Dragons.
So we still call the D&D and I've been playing a lot of Colin
Cthulhu in D&D and I had grown up playing like Traveler and
especially the World of Darkness games.
And Trinity was probably my favorite, which is a sci-fi game
using that World of Darkness D10 system.
But I was really into that early like reading on the Internet
even around when Twitter started.
And it definitely Twitter is a part of it.
Like other people's ideas for how to make DND better by like
now, I'd say probably D making it was a lot of the goal and a
lot of it was sort of now you'd say again, like picking
touchstones thematically. So I definitely did that as
like, OK, my world is sci-fi, it's in the far future, right?
So it's not goblins and elves. And here are things that exist.
Here's things that don't exist and that all of those things
have remained true and basically become still fleet.
I've definitely become better at the game design part, probably
the GM ING and storytelling, although I feel like that's what
I came in with it, you know, as a writer and a performer.
That was stuff I found fun. But the game design I spent a
lot of time, you know, I remember Newman Era came out and
I was basically done with still feet and was like, oh man, is
this better, worse? Like we have to sort of play
Newman era now and and and see and that.
So, you know, it evolved. The name changed from 100
million years in the future to I think at one point like Strange
tomorrow's or something to I think at one point all the files
were just a headless giant, which was kind of the name of
the campaign. And still Fleet was much later.
Still Fleet in the idea of specifically the company's role
was the thing I've spent the most time on in terms of
narrative design as opposed to like mechanical like dice
rolling. So the dice rolling was kind of
in the middle. The urge to do a sci-fi D&D that
was good was the beginning and the end was kind of OK.
It's really about quietly quitting space Marines or
malingering. Like now I say it's like
Severance meets 40K. So it's like you are in the far
future, but you know you're a bad guy and you need to change
the dynamic and you're not sure what to do because you're 1
worker and so there isn't really a mechanic and still Fleet one.
I am thinking about it for Still Fleet 2 because we're we're
thinking about that right now. What would a second edition be?
But could you flip the whole story on its table and and, you
know, ally with other workers and actually destroy the
company? Or is it just left open like it
wasn't still feet one where, you know, if you want to do that,
that's the campaign. If you want to do other stories,
that there are other stories implied and there's plenty to do
in that world. But yeah, it was basically a
process of probably for a decade writing, you know, kind of
science fictional adventures for my friends.
The system changed a lot and even the narrative structure was
really tightened right at the end.
But it was pretty much one continuous game.
I don't think at any point I thought, oh, this will be two
different things. Or, you know, it was always
like, you know, using some of the same tropes, a few of which
have survived the whole, that whole like process, which I
think is probably typical from the folks we've talked to and
why we were all, I don't know if that's been your experience.
You know, that there's a few kernels that are like like
algae. I was like, bet this game has
hella algae. There's algae in the beginning.
There's always going to be algae nanotechnology, you know,
certain like Touchstone, just like things as AGM that that I
can throw out there. And even certain mechanics,
certain moments, narrative moments that that the system
later sort of brought together. So having like a named system
that makes sense took a while, but was also useful for going
back and saying, OK, how does this intersect with like those
initial bullet point ideas and some stuff gets lost or along
the way or you have to reconsider it.
But you know, it's a process. Yeah, you know, it's, it's
really interesting the way that games are just like made in
general. And we could got, we could have
a whole a whole conversation about that.
But specifically, I mean, people who kind of like write games
because it's the game that they're playing with their
friends. And eventually it becomes kind
of like more of a product. And to me, those are the ones
that always feel like they have the most depth to them.
They have the most like things going on because it was meant to
be played and it was meant to be played in the way that you like
you, your brain works, not in a way that's like, all right, I
need to make a, an X game because X is popular right now.
You know what I mean? Like you're, you're, you're not
like solving a problem. You're, you know what I mean?
You're not like designing to a thing.
It's just a thing that grew up and out of it.
And I mean, you can tell it's definitely too.
I mean, there's so much like depth in the system, but even at
its core. And like, you know, again, one
of the reasons we're here today is talk about the grit system
and all the things from it. And it's really interesting.
You basically have like a home system now because like, you
know, one of the other companies that pops in my head when I hear
the way you talk about is a little bit of the, the year 0
engine from Free League, how they there is a core system to
it. But like each game uses it in a
slightly different way. And I really like the way that
you guys are doing the very similar thing with your grit
system. Because when you look at like
still fleet versus like blister critters versus like dance by
Cobb and and all this other stuff, you're like, these are
three very, very different games.
But at their core, the dice, if you really break it down, are
are it's it's the same very, very deep core system, but it's
also designed to be a system that can be used in all of these
various ways and built on top of it in like a cool modular.
It's not like a it's not a system something like ether
Reich or something where it feels like this is a a game
designed for this one story and the mechanics will reinforce
that it you can with each one, but it's still very adaptable.
So for those that haven't read Still Fleet haven't haven't got
into the grit system at all, like really breaking it down to
like chopping off all of like the narrative bits, all the
other stuff to talk to me about the grid system, like why?
You know, I'll pull up some graphics from Still Fleet.
We talked about this before it started.
Let me hide this little window here.
Wonderful graphics from the core page with these like exploded
out dice and everything. So you said you came in as an as
an entertainer as AGM. So system wise, like what was it
like to get that system up off the ground?
What what pulled you directly to this?
And I guess to start, what what the heck is a grid system like
mechanically? Yeah, yeah.
I mean that that's what it all boils down to if you're asking
people to try a new system, right?
Which in this day and age, it's like there's something like, why
not, you know, just do something, you know, DND or
Pbta. But I look short stories like I
did a lot of both of those systems.
And while I like them OK, I wanted something that that had
ranges that were much more restricted to DND, meaning like
if you roll AD 20, there's just so much randomness and there's a
lot of math and even the OSR versions, man, even the Black
Hack and Merk Borg, and now you know, whatever version you want,
you're still doing a lot of math.
So I didn't like the complexity, the crunchiness, as we say,
right of of tradition, I'd say all track games, right?
The D1 hundreds and the D 20s and even the fistful of D 10s,
which I did think was better and probably was in the deep back
part of my brand, the inspiration.
So this sort of World of Darkness rolls a bunch of D 10's
and get successes with somehow easier to sort of parse at the
same time with PBTA. I like PBTA writing a lot and a
lot of the designers, but I don't think that 2D6 make
something up. It feels like you need a binary
like something succeeds or fails to have epic cinematic moments.
And I found for players and I would say for GM's, it's harder
to get into that with PBTA as a engine, as a dice engine.
So what our system is, is just at at core, you're just rolling
a dice that is not AD 20. It's smaller and you're trying
to get a six or better. So these should only be rolled
if there's a big cinematic, hard to do moment happening between
characters, right? Like if you're walking down the
street, don't roll dice. You know, if you're telling a
funny story, just tell the story or say I told the funny story,
whatever. If you want to do something that
a normal human would probably have a hard time doing, we'd
sort of model that by saying, OK, roll AD 6.
If you get a six, you succeed. Now you're generally sort of
super heroic in these games. You're anti heroic.
So you might start with dice that are better than AD 6, but
just to give a sense of like the scale, we're just simulating
everything as a one in six chance if it's kind of hard, but
a normal human could probably do it.
And then you are trained or good at certain stuff, right?
You're min maxed because you're a player character in an RPG.
So it's some kind of power fantasy, whether it's space
fantasy, little messed up little guys, you know, you're rolling
AD 8AD10AD12, whatever you're rolling.
So the different games have different arrays for your
scores, but you're always just rolling one dice at a time, one
die and trying to get a six or better.
The other core mechanic is boosting.
So you have a resource called grit.
And again, it's somewhat different in different games.
Usually you start with around 14 to 22, somewhere around there,
and usually it's determined by your score.
So really simple math and you make a character, you're adding
two scores together, right? So if it's a six and a six, you
get a 12. If it's a 12 and 12, you get a
24. That'd be the maximum range,
which is pretty uncommon to have either a 12 or 24.
And when you're burning grit, you can burn 3-6 or nine to add
a flat just plus 3 + 6 or +9 to your roll.
So if you're trying to get a six or better, if you're adding a +6
or +9, the only way you can fail, the only reason to roll is
if you roll A1. So if you have a really good
dice, you have a you have AD 12, It's very unlikely, but it's
still possible that you roll A1. And of course we do try to
incentivize and a lot of this you can't make GM's do, but you
can sort of teach through the bulleted like GM advice, you
know, fail forward. Like rolling A1 doesn't mean a
hilarious to a 12 year old. Like they dropped their sword
while fighting the dragon. It's like maybe they did hit the
dragon, but that, you know, that the dragon, you know, basically
finds their Achilles heel or there's kind of a psychological
moment, there's a terror moment, you know.
So I think the idea that you want constrained ice ranges that
are really, really quick for GM's and players to visually
look at, you either got ultimately A6 or better.
You did no math or very little math.
You added one thing, right, was the goal.
And once we hit upon the system of the different scores being
different dice types, that was like mechanically it felt very
elegant and it wasn't really, it's like everything devolved
from that. So once we had that kind of idea
for me, Sophie kind of came together very rapidly in a sense
into more of a coherent game and less of like weird GM notes to
myself for my friends, you know, and then I think, I can't speak
for Tony, but I think blister critters, which is the second
game. He he said, I like your system.
I I basically made a hack before playing little animals and he
did change. I mean, you know, there it's a
different game, as you said, but it used that same insight.
If you're trying to get a six, you have different scores.
And it was really fun to play. I mean it again right away, it
was like, yeah, this works. And so from there, we haven't,
to your point, been chasing like market opportunities.
We've been making games where someone says, hey, I have an
idea. Here's how it works with the
system. Here's what's different, you
know, what's new. And basically everyone nods and
says, wow, that's a really good idea.
I'd like, I'd like to play that, you know, and we try to bring it
to life. And what I've found is there
isn't, you know, maybe chasing the market is a Better Business
strategy. I don't know.
I'm not a business person primarily, but I've learned that
there is a sort of, you know, we talk about authenticity or aura.
Like if we're doing stuff we actually want to play and play
more than once, like play maybe in a little arc or maybe a
campaign, you know, then it's more likely that other players
will see that and kind of get like, like you're saying, like,
OK, this is actually something a little bit unique.
There's something there that it isn't sort of IP or chasing a
sort of fad. And the system is is fine.
I mean, I don't think at the end of the day, I'll only ever make
games for the system. But right now we're excited
about it because beyond myself, I mean, there been a bunch of
other creators who made games for it.
And we wanted to kind of make sure that people know like
there's an SRD, there's a license, there's third party
like logos. So like we're giving it away,
you know, we want people to hack it.
Do you make it? Whatever.
And you know, I'm happy to talk more about some specifics of,
you know, some of those sort of sub mechanics.
You're not always just rolling a dice and trying to get a six.
There are plenty of other cool things we've come up with, but
that's that's really the core. Yeah, you know, and it's
interesting. This is one of the reasons we do
the show and love to talk to people too, because the way that
you can read a game and then hearing the person who made the
game talk about why they made the game is always a really
interesting thing. Right?
You? One thing you specifically hit
on is PBTAI. I'm not a fan of Pbta because I
don't like moves. To me, a move, it feels like I
have an infinite amount of choice and suddenly I'm like
funneled into this tiny little space and then once that
resolves, I have infinite choices again.
But I love 2 to 6 mix success. It's actually my favorite
mechanic because to me it's a it's a yes, But and I like that
aspect of Adm kind of feeling that I need to improv as much as
a player's. But I completely understand why
you said what you said about the grit system being like instead
of having this kind of like improv thing, having this like
binary, because the things you're doing are these heroic
actions that think so like having a success, having yes,
you succeed or yes, you fail is a very important for those
moments and running games and thinking about games like it's
really interesting thinking about how those works in
different games. So for example, like with the
PBTA mix success, as I was saying, that mechanic is
automatically saying like there's never really going to be
like there's not often a pure success and a pure failure.
And a lot of it is like the resolution mechanic is designed
to just roll the action forward constantly versus the grid
system where it feels like you said, it's more like if you
don't need to interact with the resolution mechanic, just keep
it going. And the resolution mechanic is
designed for those times where you do need a binary.
So it's really interesting take on that solution and to use it
specifically in the game that you you designed, as you said,
it's like space Marines meet severance, you know, and, and
needing those binary choices. So, you know, again, it's
interesting to think about that and and the 11 in six chance.
Well, I also think it comes down because you're picking up on the
other big part of Pbta, which I would say the grid system is
most close to in my head, Pbta, which maybe makes no sense to
anybody else. But in terms of the sort of like
lineage, you know, there's, there's DND and traveler groups
type systems, you know, D 20s and D1 hundreds.
And then at some point there's Pbta and I'm sure there's other,
you know, I'm eclipsing a lot of time there, right?
But for me it felt like, OK, Apocalypse World was kind of a
revelation. And I really liked a game called
Tremulus, which was like a, you know, love crafty and horror.
And there was a version of that derelict adrift that was like
far future. And that got me thinking, OK, I
don't love this mechanic, but I love this.
The the idea of stripping things down to story focused what I
call powers. So I just also decided early on,
very early on, you know, they're not moves, their powers.
I can go into why that is, but in my head it just made it
sounded more correct. It's like this is really what
we're talking about guys, right? Like a move, like the GM moves
in Apocalypse World I think are great, but they're not powers
that have mechanics, whereas the player moves are traditional or
TTRPG powers with mechanics. So I just sort of separated that
out. So in jamming advice, OK, you
have moves, but you're not rolling things.
You're the GM, you're thinking about, you know, noir back
story, like surprises, you know, people's, you know, romantic
relationships or like evil bosses or something.
They said last session it was funny that you could bring back
in that's not really a power. And then the PCs need sort of
interesting stuff to do. Generally, I like adventure
games. We grew up behind them, so we
tried to make better adventure games, you know, so give them
powers that they can use. Those have mechanics.
So for me that insight that powers can be strictly
narrative. Like a power just happens and it
just changes the plot. You burn the grid.
So generally our powers cost grid.
Not all. Some might be, you know, some
passive weirdness or you get an. An interesting item or something
like that. But generally the powers cost
grit and they're they're in time, you know, you have to
choose to use them. They're active, you burn grit,
something happens and it changes the plot.
It just happens and it it's a big swing and I liked that a lot
and I liked the idea that different classes would be
defined by their powers. So it's very simple, you know,
it's a flat hierarchy. There's a bunch of powers for
any game. You group them into sort of
different clusters and OK, that's a class.
Or in blister critters, they're called blister paths, you know,
so your little animal, you have some animal powers, actually,
you have two animal powers, but then you get another couple
powers that are more sort of super heroic based on your sort
of mutations in this body horror apocalypse, right.
And that way to design games felt very natural and it allowed
us to do a lot very quickly across still fleet blister
critters. And then eventually what became,
you know, now dots macabre and and some other games.
And we've been working forever on a couple high fantasy
versions. So now we have 1 Zine coming out
of the sometimes Kingdom RPG by Ethan Gould, but we've been
working other, other sort of skins of like more like D&D
experience, right? But using some of these same
powers tied to the same essential scores and dice
rolling and, and feeling that out and saying, OK, for some of
these games, we'd want to tweak this or tweak that.
But but it, but it's funny, I, I completely hear what you're
saying and I think it is maybe style to some degree.
So for me, PBTA is those two things, the mixed successes and
the the narrative powers. And I love the narrative powers
and hate the mixed successes. Sounds like you're the opposite.
But it reminds me, we talked to Mark Diaz Truman, who I I love.
I think he's one of the better writers out there and designers
at Magpie Games. And he had said, you know, why
do you need another system? When we were talking about grit
and Pbta, he said, you know, there's a lot of good systems
there. You know, people can't learn
that many in their lives and really play with their friends.
There's probably 10 or so at any time that writers are going to
write for. It's not, you know, he he was
saying in a nice way, right? But it was this challenge of
like what, you know, how can you sort of define yours to be
different enough from one of those other things?
So it's not just doing the same work.
And I do think grit is, is different enough.
I would say. So it it isn't as crunchy as the
crunchy ones. It's not super rules light and
with Pbta and fortune the dark and and all the sort of Pbta
adjacent versions, it is similar, but it doesn't have
mixed successes. And it it it really foregrounds,
I think the narrative powers and with boosting with grit.
It foregrounds just player agency in a way where you really
get to say like, yeah, I'm going to like it makes sense, right.
I'm going to really, really, really try at this moment.
And I feel like in all our lives, we know those moments.
We were like, oh fuck, like I have to really, really like
write this report today or, you know, hit this three pointer to
win the game or whatever, right, whatever it is that you're
simulating. And so I think there are things
that the system does that are unique and that that has been
easier to explain over time now having made a bunch of games
with it and and refined it, right.
So that's why only now are we sort of saying, OK, now we're
doing a game jam and here's the license and all this because,
you know, we wanted to kick the tires, it turns out quite a bit
so. I so I'm going to, I'm going to,
I'm going to rant for a real quick second.
I can't possibly fucking hate more.
Anytime anyone says what that person said to you like it puts
me into a blind fucking rage. Who gives a fuck how many
systems there are No one, no one complaints about like another
card game. No one complaints about another
board game. No one says why are there video
games? We've already have all the video
games. Why is it only in the TTRBG
space? Does everyone define it?
But well, there's people only write for 10.
There's six, there's 8 fucking there's a billions of people in
the world, right? And at any given time someone
could see your system versus the other nine that people are
writing for or whatever. So who gives a fuck?
Like I hate this constant like just down putting of system
especially to just like well we have plenty they all work.
It's fuck off. Like just because they've
existed before doesn't mean it's the first one the people are
going to encounter. Doesn't mean it's one that
tickles their brain the correct way.
A lot of systems are written and why people write new systems
oftentimes is it's because like they're writing because this is
how my brain lurks like this is how the system makes sense to me
and maybe other people's brain work the same way because
there's billions of people whose brains work the same way.
So that always sounds to me like what they're what they're saying
is we don't need another system to play.
It's we don't need another system to buy.
And as soon as it starts coming from a product side, I would
immediately tune out because to me, I like games, I don't like
products. And because some games are
products is very different than products that happen to be games
in a way that I think of games and views.
So that that that puts me in such a deep rage every time I
hear anyone say, oh, we don't need another system.
We don't need another book then we don't need another video
game. Then we don't need another
anything then. Is that how creativity works
like? I hear you, but but but I do
think that and again, I I don't maybe I'm misparaphrasing it.
I have to go back and re listen to this very early episode,
which we were Chris Pickett and I who do why we roll our our
podcast about indie game design. We're like amazed, you know,
Mark was super nice and emailed us right back.
Yeah, I'll be on your show. I was like, oh, this guy doesn't
know who we are. He's made a bunch of games.
You know Avatar just made $1,000,000 or something on
Kickstarter. No one plays it, you know, but.
Sure. But but it's PBTA, right.
And his whole thing is he likes PBTA.
OK. So it was really a conversation
about PBTA as a system and we talked about all kinds of, but
to be to steal man, what I remember that conversation, I
mean, he was just being generous on that product business side.
He wasn't saying no one should do XY and Z.
It was like, look, if you're going to run a small business
and you're trying to make money, how are you competing?
And I do kind of feel that way because, you know, it's much
easier now for me to say, look, this is how the game works.
And it either works within, you know, the grid system or if I
were to write something for, you know, let's say it was like
Daggerhart or something, right? I would be able to speak to
other people who can translate that in their heads to the play
experience and kind of quickly walk through, OK, that sounds
fun. Let me let me try that.
And I think it's a little harder with a totally unknown system to
make a product. And to your point, that should
not be the goal. And that's not usually how I, I
don't sit down to make products. I sit down to tell stories to,
to make games. But there is the point where it
does tip over. There's like a horizon.
And I think of that kind of paradox, right?
It's a paradox of like, you want to be a pure artist, either
drawing or writing or whatever. And games are a way to do that
art and with other people. And it's really rad because it's
a community that's it's all about kind of indie home brewed
stuff. And and there is a human
connection even with solo games, I would argue people like then
get together and read their solo game journals and stuff much
more than, you know, maybe video games are much more directed at
sort of like, you know, you the creator are not interacting with
people necessarily that much. I mean, again, I know they play
test stuff, whatever. But for RPGs, you're definitely
with other people as an artist. But if you want to do it
professionally at any level, I mean even a hobby level and just
not lose money, you do have to kind of consider those things.
So I think I, I, I agree with you that like, yeah, we have
room for any nervous systems. There's 8 billion people on
earth. There's going to be plenty of
innovation. I don't think by any means.
And we we can get into this. We're talking for the show.
Like, is the OSR over? Like, I don't really feel
strongly or care that much. But even if it is like they'll
be a new thing, you know, they'll always be innovation.
I, like I said, I probably won't be the great system forever and
ever. I'll probably do it at least for
a few more years because we have a bunch of ideas.
We have a backlog of cool games we think are fun that we're
trying to make better and better.
And I do think from a product standpoint, it is helpful to
say, OK, they're they're in a family, they're interoperable,
right? So if you've played one, you're
going to be able to quickly learn the others and it kind of
quickly give those bullet points like here's how it's sort of
different from other things, sort of the same.
So you you can tell, you know, the 8020 really you want 80%
familiarity, but 20% has to be new or else, yeah, just some
people might say, well, I'm going to buy another shadow dark
thing or whatever, right. And we want to say, no, no, no
play. Try dots with Cobb.
It's really fun. You know, it's really different,
but it's, it's super easy. So I, I, again, I, I don't want
to, I just don't want to speak for someone who, who's not here,
right? Because I certainly agree with
you. I don't feel like there needs to
be any gatekeeping in terms of what is the system.
But if you ask me business advice, I might say, OK, let's
think about it and, and how much you want to do a new system and
how much you think that is what people are going to buy.
And for some games, especially for Zenes and for story games
like that, energy is 100% there. You know, it's all novelty, but
I think for big adventure games, bigger books and campaignable
adventure games, I do think people when they're spending 50
bucks on a book, they might think, you know, how, how much
do I need to learn a new system versus, oh, I'm going to get
this quickly? And so it's a kind of gamble, I
think from a business perspective, which again, it's
not my main perspective. It's something I have to like,
keep in mind, so I don't, I don't lose all my my, my money
basically. Yeah, you know, I also feel to a
point without without and again granting more the the there's a
community in TSRP GS and just like this, this baggage mindset
that I think as a community, which can never get this
community all move in the same direction really needs to be
shocked. It's because someone said this
the other day about and I of course, I rented because that's
what I do, but no one no one made me anything else where
people just do 1 of it, right. There's no one out there that
plays one card game forever. There's no one out there that
plays one board game forever. But this mindset, this like
self-imposed mindset that honestly, I really think that
don't even get me started on like the ways that 5E has like
destroyed TTRP GS in a lot of ways.
But a lot of it comes from that baggage where their business
model has been to tell everyone you only need this one game.
So it becomes stuck in people's brains forever that you only
need this one game. But again, no one plays one
board game. No one plays one card game.
No one plays one drinking game in college.
Like no one's just like, I got King's Cup and I'm done.
You know what I mean? Like, I never needed, I never
need to play beer. Paul, what is this?
So as a product, I completely understand where you're coming
from, but I do think part of that, like from a business
perspective, yes, you have to make it a game that people want
to play and make it approachable and make it reasonable.
But I do think as like a community, like I really wish
people's mindset would switch away from I need the easiest
thing that makes my brain work and blah, blah, blah, and this
and that and, and be more open to it.
And again, I do think that that is like a bit of brainwashing
bit of propaganda that's put out there that you only need one, so
stick with one, but that, you know, that's neither here nor
there. And that's, that's not something
that you need to worry about Indesign.
But I understand from a business side that is something that
exists and it's something that you have to think of when you're
when you're making a product. Because still Fleet's not a
Zine. It's a bunch of books, you know,
and they're hard back and they cost money.
So like it's, it's reasonable to to have to have those things on
your plate once you get to that point.
Well, it definitely and it and and look at what we're competing
with when we do that versus if we were making, let's say, zines
or printed home small sort of board game like experiences, you
know, solo duet games or even party games, but they have an
RPG component. So again, sort of store novel
story games that are, are cheaper to make and cheaper to
buy Arc arc rad and I so again, I'm a big fan of plus one XP and
I think they put out interesting stuff in that world.
And there's plenty of other folks out there, you know,
working in that vein. You know, again, I'm, I'm in my
40s, man. I grew up playing, you know, D&D
and vampire traveler and, you know, I had the big books and I
wanted to make and I, I play campaigns.
So I was playing campaigns and still Fleet before it had a
name, you know, before the grid system.
And I wanted to consolidate that into a big book to start.
And I was very insistent. Let's do a big book.
We did actually do a quick start first, which is softback.
And after that we did a bunch of softback.
They're all softbacks are in the main book.
But yeah, it's a big hardback book and they're expensive to
make. And so at that point, who with
whom are we competing? But we're not really competing
with Azine, with that product. You know, it's not apples to
apples if someone's at a store and again, I buy both.
So I'm, I'm you know, please, if you can't support all these
people, you know, I'm not I I certainly don't want to limit
anyone, but but in terms of big adventure games, it is like
we're competing with other people who are like, I don't
know, my whole group wants to switch to blank or like and, and
and more of that campaign experience.
So I definitely agree. It's not that anyone's only
playing one thing in their lives.
I just think of the way I collect and the and the shelfie
thing on Reddit right now. Everyone collects a lot of
games. I don't think they're all played
equally. I think let's again just say
because it's a thing that business people say like 80
twenty, 80% of them are red but not played.
I think might be played at most once, right, But probably not
even 20% of them are played a lot and those might be
principally 5E now. Maybe like, you know, you get
your mother ships and hopefully, you know, still feeds, inspires
and stuff. And then there's also a lot of
legacy games like Warhammer Fantasy where like I don't know
anyone who's played it, but it I see it whenever I go to smaller
cons, all the the older heads have all of those hardback books
that are expensive and they're nice books and it's just like
this must be a thing that they're elf quest, right, That
had like a a billion hardback book curbs.
So I think that when you have a product line and you have
hardbacks and you have just like box sets, you know, SKUs that
cost like, like products that cost more money to make, you do
have to just consider like, why should someone not just buy like
one thing, but buy like 3 things for the system?
And I think at that point you do have to sort of say, yeah,
there's, they're all fun to read, but ours is going to be
the most fun to play. And here's why.
And again, like maybe define that experience pretty
specifically. Like with that's we tried to be
really real with people and like, and we've seen it.
Like Chris and I have played games with people who literally
thought they were sitting down to play Shadow Dark and then
they were pleasantly surprised. They're like, wow, that was
really fun and red, but they literally were just confused.
They were like, I don't even know what this is.
It just looked like you're, you know, it's in that same vein and
or they thought it was a zombie game, but again, using like a 5
E kind of engine and they were pleasantly surprised.
They liked the grid system and they said it was really fun.
I'm glad I learned that. So we've we've had to really
like as a we still are new, right, The grid system is new.
I don't know for sure if it will be a thing that people keep
going with. I hope so.
We're going to start this jam and see what people do, but
we've had to kind of, you know, do that like one-on-one
education with players and be like, why don't you try it for a
couple hours, see if you like it.
And if you know, you don't have to buy a big book.
You can just play a game for free.
And we, you know, we play games on Discord every week on our
server. If with that idea in mind that
like, hey, you don't have to buy anything.
You just come up, come and play and we'll walk you through it.
There's free quick starts, you know, there's pregens.
So I definitely don't think people should feel limited.
But I will say again for a business perspective, if you're
going to commit to even one big ass hardback, much less like a
hardback and in our case like a couple soft backs, it adds up
pretty quickly. And so it is just like a
different, it becomes a small business right away, which is
not good or bad. And it used to be, I think
easier. And we live now.
And hey, like we're in World War Three, maybe, you know, it's
like it's, it's getting worse. Every day, who knows?
I'm going to get nuclear fallout, you know?
No, no. I.
Hear. You, I hear you coming from
yeah, no, it's and, and I have the, the, the, I guess benefit
of, of being on a podcast where I can pick what I want and, and
it's not a business and all this other stuff.
So like I, I'm on a bit of my own, you know, high horse that I
might need to step down from every now and then, But it's it
in a, in a perfect world, we wouldn't need to worry about the
business side of it and the product side of it.
And like the fact that paper is not going to be super expensive
because meals are starting to get behind again and all that
kind of stuff. But you know, that is
unfortunately the reality we live in.
And for, for people that run businesses, it's, it's, you
know, it's, you know, things that have to be brought into the
conversation above and beyond, like the artistic aspect, but
even artists sell art. So it's, you know, it's a thing
that always has to be done. But winding it back like again,
me stepping off the high horse and everything stepping down
from the, from the soapbox, the system itself too.
So for me when I look at the grid system I see three things
and tell me if I'm completely wrong.
What I see is dice mechanic we've already talked about which
is get higher than a D6 and then it's your stat array because you
have it's 5 stats. I believe in Still Fleet, but
you have an array. So when you were designing Still
Fleet, I'm going to pull that up too.
Was there an inspiration? Because we've already talked
about the PPTA inspiration with the sixes and and the binary and
stuff. Was there an inspiration to go
with something like the array? Because when I've seen dice
assigned to arrays, I've seen like, have you, I don't know if
you've read like Ryutama or like Red Giant or anything like that,
systems that assigned different dice to different like stats or
different actions and things like that.
Where does that something that just like popped up or were you
inspired in some way from, from a previous system or anything?
No, I have found that that there are other designers who use this
core mechanic of your scores are different dice types, but I did
not know that at the time at all.
So this was a product of really my two friends I grew up playing
these games with who are really amazing.
And neither are involved at all, as far as I know, with any
gaming. But my friends Patrick and Paul,
I was just like emailing a lot of we all, we'd all moved away.
So none of us were in New York City anymore.
And it was the first time in in our adult lives, you know, we
weren't like hanging out together in Brooklyn.
And we're like, they're getting married and having kids and I'm
in Boston and doing being academic.
And I really, I wanted to, you know, create this game.
And early on, I mean, we were talking about these different
systems and we really went deeply through just back and
forth kind of again, old blog style, long e-mail threads about
like things we liked it didn't like about D&D, different kinds
of systems that aren't D&D or PBTAPBTA Numenera.
And ultimately it was probably just my experience trying to GM
Numenera and feeling very frustrated, not with Monty
Cook's amazing writing in the art, but like this system.
It just was like, I don't like fuck this.
Like I remember just late one night writing the what became
the grid system, sending it to my friends, you know, emailing
it to the then players and just saying, I think this is could be
something like, what if we just rolled an individual dice when
we call for a check, you know? And it worked really well.
I mean, it worked from that first play test on.
It was just like, yeah, this is it.
Like, let's focus on this. Now.
To your point, other people, I've not actually read this.
I know what Reutam is. I think Chris is a big fan.
I don't speak for them, but, but I know there's other designers
who've done that. It is a cool way to do it.
It's not the only way. I do think to me, it's a very
satisfying range. That's always, it always kind of
makes sense. You know, if you have AD 12,
you're pretty good at something that's hard to do.
You know, if you have AD 6, you're a quote UN quote average
at it. And it allows you to make those
gambling choices around burning grit and whether you'll be
exhausted and you're out of grit.
You can't do that anymore and also use your cool powers.
It allows you as the player to have that agency and to say, you
know, fuck it, I'm, you know, Leroy Jenkins, I'm going to burn
9 grit and roll whatever dice I have and add 9 and just hope I
don't get a 1, you know? And it allows you as AGM to
really quickly say, OK, this is a little harder than average.
You got to get A7 or better instead of a six and all the
player, oh, or even like, hey, that's kind of impossible, but
I'll let you try like you got to get like a nine or better, you
know. So again, it's very fast
compared to say AD and D and to me, again, for the as we
discussed, it's a little quicker than a PBTA to resolve those
kind of cinematic epic moments, which was more how I was GM ING
right. And it's it's again, not the
only way to GM, but it but it was it was born out of like, you
know, kind of like having just watched like the expanse or
whatever had just started coming out of the TV show.
And it's like, Oh yeah, this is cool.
What how can we make this? But out of the parts of what?
What now we'd call the OSR, right?
This is, I'm a systems guy. I love systems and I love and
someone does something unique with systems and, and this is
one of things I like about the grid system specifically is that
you have this like as a standard core difficulty, you have 6 as
your number, you have these array of dice.
So people like you said, it's really easy.
It's more intuitive than like, for example, one of the things
that I find a lot of people that get away from D&D don't like
about D&D when they look back, is that you roll to get a stat
that gives you a different number, that gives you a
modifier that gives you like a number that then Adm has to give
you like, there's all this stuff.
You know, that's why roll under is better.
You can just like, you know, roll to 1 number.
So I really like that you have this basically target number and
then you're just looking at the math, like if you have AD 4 and
you need a the six, you can't do it.
Like you just can't do it. And if you have AD 12, you're
probably very good at it. And I, I really like that.
I think it's incredibly clever. I think it's incredibly simple.
And those to me are the best mechanics where you just go,
this makes sense. Just looking at it, you go, Oh
yeah, I have a 12, I need to hit a six.
And, and so I really like that. And I and I, we talked about
this before the show, but the design of the graphics you did
in still fleet or that were done in still fleet with the blown
out dice to give you the number of options.
That makes my brain so happy to just look at it and go, yes,
this is so nice. Like when you look at like AD
the D8 and you see 3 red triangles, you're like, yes,
that makes so much sense. Like that's how the math works.
I love it. But then you do have, you do
have an array of, of difficulties.
You have easy, standard, difficult, very difficult,
impossible. How often do you find yourself
like deciding like we're not just going to owe sixes across
the board? Because the declared difficulty
is one of the things that I'm not as big a fan of in like D&D
where the GM has to be like, well, is it a 13 is a 14?
If you get a 12, what does that mean?
How often do you really find yourself?
Deviating from the standard versus letting those different
dice numbers, you know, 468 kind of pick, you know, the success
or failure. Yeah, I hear you.
I mean, I, I hated personally when I was doing the 20 games
more and, and 5E when it's like, oh, you need to get an 11 and
yeah, what's the difference between 11 and a 12?
I mean, you know, it's, it becomes pointless if you're
like, oh, well, then just do steps of five.
But then it's like, well, why do I have AD 20?
It the whole thing becomes a push and pull with math that I
found is just always inherently unsatisfying and goes nowhere
with like the higher level you get.
It still feels just as confusing it there's never a point in the
sort of campaign arc when it, it like makes sense.
So for me, that was never a fan, even when, you know, again, from
the earliest days, I played second edition Dutch the Dragons
with my friends and loved it because I love role-playing, but
I hated as I was always the GM, like it was the forever GM,
quote UN quote setting those difficulties.
So for us, it's like you're trying to be the six.
It's pretty intuitive, I would say to say, well, I kind of want
to make them roll something. You know, there's a moment of
tension and they're kind of unsure what you do.
Let's let's call for a roll, but make it a five.
So the only thing that's going to matter is if everyone really
screws up, you know, and it's really much more tension
building to call for a 7, you know, OK, well, it's pretty much
similar to a six, but you want to emphasize to the players that
this is important and difficult. And then what matters more is if
they're trying to do something that just doesn't really make
sense and then you're sort of punishing them with like, all
right, well, it's got to be a nine.
You know, at that point I just started doing threes 912.
I don't think I've ever called for anything beyond that.
It's pretty much 567912 and almost always 6.
I to give an example, one of the writers who wrote a chapter for
dots Bacab for the setting guide about abandoned Lithuania, the
last Pagan stronghold fighting off these big Christian
colonialist basically from Germany is a writers in Greece
called Constantine Pradius. He writes video game stuff and
and he wrote a cool game using grid system and pitched it to
us. It's a Zine.
It's kind of a annihilation, you know, roadside picnic stalker
kind of zone fiction book. So aliens have come and left and
they've screwed up a bunch of places on Earth and you want to
break into the zone and steal alien tech, but it's dangerous.
The government is just cording it off.
So you're a delver. You're kind of a normal person.
You're kind of like a parkour expert.
Maybe you have a YouTube channel about climbing, you know, but
you're like a normal guy. Maybe you have a flare gun or
even a pistol, but you're not like a space marine.
And it's a really cool game. And we're going to print it in a
couple months. And, you know, recently I was
playing one where he has all these set alien biopes inside
the structures. And 1 is very windy, so it's
sort of opened out of this alien atmosphere and there's this
horrible orange rusty wind. And it's something that's
recurrent and it's meant to be a threat where whenever the
players do anything kind of dangerous, they have to also
roll to see if the wind like throws them off a Cliff
basically. And that was fun to play with
the difficulties and really and have there's like a wind meter
and it can change. So IRL I just had every 30
minutes I was like, let's see what the wind, what you know,
what direction the wind is going.
And it felt like that OSR kind of a randomization of the
environment that was very, very simple.
And all it was really doing was changing the difficulty of a
move check slightly, but it made a it made a lot of tension for
the players to decide, do we want to keep exploring?
Can we drag back the stuff we found in this tent?
Am I about to fall off a building?
You know, so I think it's nothing new.
It's just modeling the same thing if you could do with D&D,
but trying to simplify it down much more quickly.
And I would say it maintains the adventure.
Some will they won't they cinematic moment that that that
we like in terms of traditional adventure game jamming, but it
simplifies it to generally it's a six, but yes, you can go up or
down by 1 and the players will sort of react and they will
think and and they will burn grit differently depending on
it. So it it just is that like
unconscious, like it shouldn't be a thing that wastes a lot of
time. It shouldn't get in the way that
I should never get in the way. Right.
But it does let players know as a signal about the environment.
And that's I think why we mechanicalize things at all.
Otherwise we could just have purely improv conversation
games. And again, some people do that.
But if you want to roll dice, we like to make them maybe not as
minimal as possible. I don't know that I'm like
obsessed with we. That's why we don't say the
system is rules light, although I kind of think it is.
But I think we're more obsessed with like systems that really
help you tell good stories. So that's why I focus more on
like player empowering or, you know, like narrative structures
and less on like lightness per SE.
It is pretty light, but. Yeah, well, one thing I noticed
about the numbers and maybe this is wasn't the intent, but I
really like is that 6 is your standard and then most of the
rest of them are one more than like one of the other dice.
So like easy is still like one more than your D4 and difficult
to steal one more than your D6 and very difficult to steal one
more than your D 8. So I didn't know if that was an
intent where you're just like, well, difficult is a is now a 9.
So like if you only have the eights now it's kind of getting
beyond without burning grit and things like that.
Like I really like that. And if it wasn't intentional,
good fucking job because it worked out great to be like,
yeah, like it's a nine now. So that someone who might have
succeeded last time, the D8 goes, fuck, now I got what's my
grip pool at? What's this?
It creates these different complications and interactions
with the system in a fun way that I found interesting.
Yeah, I mean, it's I, I, I like to call it medium crunch, but
really to me, it's almost like fake crunch because the math is
either no math or very, very simple math.
You're adding or subtracting one or three generally.
So it's kind of like, OK, I can do that, you know, I can handle
D 6 ± 1 or +3, you know? And what it does is, I mean, to
answer your question, no, I didn't like a lot of this was
emergent because we're playing around with small numbers.
And so there's kind of a law of small numbers doing interesting,
beautiful things mathematically. I'm not a mathematician, but you
can kind of look it up. It's like these numbers will
have natural like residences because they're smaller.
When you get into D&D level, when you're in your elevens and
your fifteens, it becomes harder to have moments that players
care about specific to the number.
They do care about the outcome of the action.
You can tell good stories, obviously, but they don't care
if it's 11 or 12. They just want to know if they
hit with this system, it's small enough where you get that
gambling mentality where they're like, oh, yeah, I'm going to
burn grid. Oh no, I'm going to, I'm going
to, you know, free ball or whatever.
I'm not going to roll and you know, and burn anything.
I'm just going to see what I get.
And because the system always, you know, in any version,
there's some rule about like if someone helps you to plus one.
And usually I do it as everyone who helps you get you a + 1.
So it depends on the what you're trying to do, if that could be
possible. But if it's, you know,
everyone's trying to boost you up over a ledge or everyone's
trying to help you calm down a situation and they're all being
reasonable and they're all aligned, then you're going to
roll and add those small bonuses and they actually start to
matter to your point. Let's save AD 6 and you're
trying to hit a 7. You could do it with just one
person really helping you. It's it's still unlikely, but
it's possible. And that again, feels kind of
Fair. It's it's like a simple way to
model reality without getting too into like, you know, again,
the goal isn't like strict realism.
It's just like big cinematic moments that the players get to
embrace and they're they're telling the story.
They know what it means to roll. So it's not sort of it's
transparent in that sense. I do like transparent jamming
with the numbers. So it's never behind a screen.
It's just, yeah, that's the number you either rolled or you
didn't, you know? And again, I, I love that that
is something that emerged from the play testing and from the
developing and from everything you weren't like trying to hit,
like you didn't go into the gist preconceived.
I must have this. So let me figure out how it
works. It just kind of like came from
and I really, I really love that.
Like I said to me, there's three parts of the grid system.
We've already talked about two of them.
One is, you know, the cordized mechanic.
The second part is the assigning those scores.
And the last one to me that we've hit on a bunch, But to
talk a little bit more is the pools go.
I hate this when the stupid thing pops up and it doesn't go
away. But so you have two pools in in
the grid system. That is your health pool and
your grit pool. We've talked about grit a lot,
but when we talk about the health pool, it is a combination
of two of your stats and in and and still fleet.
It is your combat and your movement.
To a lot of people, they're going to say hey, and those have
nothing to do with health. Why are they your health?
But like, why? So why?
Why do you put those two together to create the pool?
Is it just like 2 of the stats because it's the dice array?
Or was it just like the way it worked out?
Like why? How did that pool become what it
is first, specifically the health?
Pool. Yeah, that's a good question.
We tried different versions to answer your question of of to
keep it simple, let's not add different EPI values like
modifiers and stuff. So it's like you have these five
dice, that's it. So how do we derive your grit?
For one, you start there and then also, OK, we're going to
have traditional D&D style health, you know, hit points
where where do we derive that? Right.
Movement is supposed to represent your whole physique.
Anything you would do physically in three dimensions other than
hurting someone and hurting someone is combat.
And that's again kind of coming from Pbta, the differentiating
other aspects of your life from violence and violence being a
very intentional choice. That's almost more narrative,
right? If I'm going to try to kill
someone in real life, like I'm a tiny, I'm small as a person.
But killing someone nowadays, I mean, you know, modeling sci-fi
games, modern games, yes, now we have fantasy as well, but it's
really more about guns. It's going to buy a gun and
shooting someone, which doesn't require a lot of strength.
It does require some level of aim, but you know, it's more
like an intention. I would argue so yeah, sure, you
can play the space Marine class, the still rider and still fleet
and they have D12 combat to start, meaning they are actually
soldiers who were trained to fight and they're supposed to be
physically robust and they're wearing an ecstasy to powered,
you know, armor. But you know, you can also play
just some other class and decide you're very deadly for some
reason and give yourself a high combat score.
So to to tie them to help. I think it's just sort of the
the, you know, convenient inverse.
It's like if you're probably obsessed with fighting, you're
probably pretty good at survival in some way that I think, again,
isn't necessarily about physical size.
It's sort of tied to like mentality and paranoia.
So we're just we're, you know, OK.
Yeah, if you, if you put your high dice into combat and
movement, you'll have more health.
But that, you know, the inverse is you're going to have less
grit than you would if you put those dice into the the mental
scores that give you grit. So it's just a really simple, I
would say that it does fall still under this Cartesian
dualism philosophy idea of like mind and body being separate,
which I don't love. But it is very, very convenient
for game design because it does let you have different tropes.
It lets you have the small, unassuming person who's
actually, you know, a ninja like killer, right?
It lets you have hulking big types of characters who many
players really want to play for whatever reason, you know, they
want that trope available. And it lets you have this sort
of mentalist. I I only do mental things that
lets you have the because we have charm as a score, which is
slightly different. I can get into philosophically
that's different charisma, but you know, it's the same basic
idea, right? You're rolling charm when you're
doing social things. You can have high charm.
I like to play high charm characters.
I think it's fun and you know that that lets you model the
whole traditional adventure system with just those 5 scores.
Other games do have other scores.
They name the scores differently.
They use them a little differently.
But in still Fleet, yeah, we did start with sort of two physical,
three non physical scores and just break up health and grit
that way, if that makes sense. Yeah, no, absolutely.
And then the other half of the pool is grit, which I mean it is
grit, it is the grit system. It is a kind of where like
everything comes from. So like the final part of kind
of like again, the three aspects of the game.
So so where did what made you want to do grit?
How does 1 derive grit? And then how does grit work in
still fleet versus something like blister critters versus
something like Dance MC Cobb, like where since the grit system
like that feels like a through line obviously through
everything with the system. Why?
Where did it come from like and just talk about grit, I guess a
little bit. Yeah, sure, we we've joked that
we could do now this grit system Grand Tour, we might try to put
this together if anybody's interested in in playing with
us, you know a stream where we go from game to game and it's
the same characters, souls or whatever minds being downloaded,
different bodies and. And.
It's like a very stupid like what if idea, you know, like a
weird like, you know, somebody at Marvel got the permission to
do 2 two issues of a comic version of our games.
I don't that's not the intention, but we just realized,
yeah, we have enough of them. We could see how that plays
almost as an experiment. But to answer your question,
yeah, grits the through line. The idea is that it represents
your energy, your attention, your willpower.
And over the course of a day of doing not normal things, again,
I stress, but epic, heroic adventuresome things, you lose
that attention and energy and you know, whatever.
Again, simulation. You want to imagine lactic acid
builds up or if you were a robot, you need to defragment
your drives, you know, whatever. And so you know, when you're out
of health, you die. When you're out of grit, you're
exhausted and still fleet. That just means you can't use
your powers because you really do need a lot of grit and still
fleet. It's more epic.
The other games are tend to be lower power and some of them
actually punish you for a minute.
Running out of grit. You're rolling with
disadvantage. But in some ways it's easier to
not run out of grit because you don't have as many powers.
They don't cost as much. They don't all cost grit at all.
Some, some are just passive bonuses.
So depending on what you're trying to model, again, the the
grit has been used very differently.
The three line that's the same in all of them is the boosting.
So plus 3 + 6 or +9 on a roll, that's huge.
And that means that you always are asking players to gamble and
to take it upon themselves to have agency over their sheet.
They're only really tracking one thing because health, again,
they may not get hit the whole adventure or whatever.
Players are always going to know if they're dying or not.
But grit is going up and down much sort of faster.
And generally over the course of one session, it's just going
down. So there really is a curve
that's interesting where by the end of the set, you know, it's
to start, everyone's very conservative now I'm just going
to roll and see what happens. By the end of the session,
everyone's like, oh crap, I burn another three grit.
You know, I have to make this check.
I have to get away from, you know, the race that's attacking
me. And that's fun.
And it's fun to see. It's almost like I would say
comparable to a game that's using kind of panic and stress
to to boost the cycle of attention for players to by the
end, they're really freaking out.
But it's again simpler, I would say, and it and it models
anything. It doesn't require a unique
stress table. It's just players will stress
themselves out when you give them 22 grid and they realize
that certain their powers cost 6 grid.
Sometimes they want to burn 3. They're going to pretty quickly
run out and be like, Oh, shit, I need to like drink a beer, take
a nap, go to the doctor and that that will interact.
That will change the narrative, right.
So it it again, feels realistic quote, UN quote in the sense
that their epic characters will sometimes not have the energy to
do what they want all at once and they will have to do a
strategic retreat. And that, you know, for us has
worked really well to model different big moments, those
kind of empire strike back moments where the players kind
of they see that they're like, OK, GM, you got me for now.
And it's fun. It's fun to model those
conflicts in a way that feels for both sides, transparent,
easy to do the math right and really let's the players tell
the story in that sense. So that's the goal anyway.
I hope that made sense. And yeah, how you derive it, you
get it from. And so it's still fleet.
It's basically your reason, your will scores combined.
So it's similar to sort of combat and movement, but it's
your mental scores representing, you know, it's, it's a matter of
willpower. Ultimately, it's a matter of
attention and willpower. So that is purposefully
asymmetric. And the classes then tend to be
classes where you're probably going to be fightier and have
less grit for your powers or you're going to use a lot of
powers. But you're quote UN quote
squishier in terms of health, right?
I know, and I mean, good thing to call the system because
you're right. Like I remember when we played
blister critters, that's exactly how it felt the whole time.
When you start, you're like, look at how much grit I have.
Like there's so much here, like I can do it all day.
And then when you're fighting the guy at the end, you're just
like, shit, man. I I really wish I wouldn't have
succeeded on that. Like jump over that whatever
role so that I could use it for my hit the guy in the face role
here. Like it, it, it really does.
And the thing too about number go down is whether like you're
actually in danger of it like disappearing or not, your brain
will tell you that you are, you know what I mean?
When you once you hit below like halfway, I think something
triggers in your brain where you go, Oh man, oh, now I need to
conserve it. Now I need to use it
importantly, when you were like really, you know, Wheeling to
dealing with it before. So it creates like an like you
said, like this urgency in the mechanic that is like really fun
and really interesting tied into these other like you said, like
pretty. I hate using the term simple,
more like clever and and approachable mechanics to the
game where again, pass out your scores, you roll a different
dice at a standard, you try to hit 6.
If it's something that you can just do, you just do, which
again, it's something that we, we didn't touch on a ton and a
lot of games say like, you know, every, I feel like every OSR has
this like this thing where it's just like if a normal person
could just do it, then you just do it.
But like people like when they see dice in front of them, they
want to roll the dice or whatever.
So it makes a little bit different, but but I really like
and like I said, those seems those are the three aspect of of
the the grid system and each one is really clever, really unique
and really like ties in well to everything else.
It's going like it's it's a great system.
Like when again, when we play blister critters, it was so much
fun, not only because the system is fun, but also Tonys art is
incredible and and jamming it is really fun and you're playing
fun like cartooning creatures or whatever.
But even within that, like you can see the differences in the
way the system can be used. Because if you hold up, I think
we said this before, if you hold up stove fleet, you hold up
blister critters and you hold up dance MC Cobb.
They're not even in any way, shape or form, like really tied
together at all. When you go from like, like you
said, like Space marine and Severance versus like literally
like Saturday morning cartoons versus just like medieval, like
extremely dark game, like the fact that they can all be used
in similar systems to tell this narrative forward stories.
It shows that the system not only is clever, but it's also
approachable and, and variable in different things.
And that's part of why you're running the game jam, I assume,
is to to really pull in people that are using in different
narrative ways. Yeah, exactly.
And I think to celebrate the fact that we've had these
conversations as a team across the people who've made, you
know, these games, but also with our players.
And a lot of our players are GMs themselves and have good ideas.
And you know, I think it is, again, there are, there is that
feeling because of fighting in the OGL, which you hit upon and
they did to some degree the right thing, right, of opening
up the OGL forever. But it's, it was after a whole
kerfuffle around they'd stoked all these community creators to
use their license and then they wanted to take it away or, you
know, so it's it's kind of craziness.
And I think good game design now should sort of embrace the idea
that like, look, you can't patent these mechanics.
And what would that even mean? And it, you know, is that in the
spirit of the thing, but you also just can't patent them.
So you can copyright your own book.
But if you have a good idea, somebody could just take it and
that's a good thing. That means that was a good idea.
And how do you have conversations to kind of see if
someone can do it better or do it better in a certain context?
Because I will say, for example, I love blister critters is one
of my favorite games. I was never going to make a
cartoon animal apocalypse game. I mean, it just was never going
to happen. I love water ship down.
I've played mouse writer, you know, it just it wasn't
something on my To Do List. So Tony wrote it and it was
like, all right, well, now this is great.
We have to do this, but it's also great because I wasn't
going to. So I think to some degree having
game jam is about all of the cool ideas.
Like you said, there's 8 billion people, there's hundreds of
ideas. I don't have time to do them
all. I mean, we try to do 1 big game
a year and some scenes and it's, I don't know that we're always
successful with that. But you know, like this Dots of
God was a lot of work. We did multiple books.
It's, it's an amazing game. It's really, it's Chris's
vision. It's, it's very well researched.
Lots of people came together. We, we talked to all these
historians and learned a lot. But it took a, you know, at
least a year, right to do that. So I think, you know, I want to
do stuff like 2. We do have to sometimes Kingdom
coming out or first high fantasy, which will be, I think,
a series of scenes and we have ultra dove, which is for now 1
scene. I do think we might do a second
because it's really cool at minimum.
And I I love this kind of zone fiction, near future sci-fi,
very urban. You know, I love urban
exploration. I'm just a big I'm a city guy
and it's got great alien environments and stuff, But
that's, you know, that's probably that's a lot of work
and to do still think to to maybe do more for blister
critters. That's going to take a couple
years. So if people in the meantime
want to run with the system and come up with good ideas, by all
means. I mean, you know, you can pitch
us, you can probably talk to, you know, people like plus one
XP, you know, if you have some Zen idea.
But you can also just publish it yourself and we're happy to
promote. And that's, that's another
reason I'd like to do the jam is if somebody has a good idea and
they want to promote their their thing, I'm I'm happy to promote
it and say, look, this is really cool.
I didn't do anything. I'm just telling people that we
at Sophie, you think it's a cool idea.
I made a whole list for the jam page of just genres that like I
have not written a, you know, a game about.
And it's like everything from cyberpunk.
We don't really have a cyberpunk thing.
And I know there's certain stealthy players want to do the
cyberpunk version right to, you know, sports ball like, you
know, do what if there's like a World Cup like sports?
Ball. Positive socialist vision using
the grits. I don't know like.
Clearly big sports fan here talking about sports ball, but
yeah, no, I mean from a creative side, yeah, from a creative, No,
no, all right, all right, Jeff, from from a creative side, like
obviously that's awesome, right? Like you having people make
stuff in your game is is awesome.
Having it approachable, having something that also sting people
make things. It's got to feel.
What's the word I'm looking for? Empowering.
Like to know that like I made a cool thing and someone is so
inspired by it that they also made a cool thing.
And it also is like validating to a point, I assume where where
you're just like, OK, someone does like it.
You know what I mean? Someone likes it not only enough
to play it, but also make something with it.
So from a creative side, that's really, really cool.
But also realistically actually, you know, kind of bringing it
back to a business perspective too.
When you look at the biggest games, indie games, small market
games, I'll call them. And 5E is not part of that by a
new strategy imagination. I don't even call it AT TRPG.
It is a monolith unto itself. It is it is all by itself.
We merely live in it's very, you know, poisonous shadow.
But from a business perspective, when you look at the biggest
games in the small market space, when you look at things like
Mothership, when you look at things like Merkborg, when you
look at things like like Mouse Rider, a lot of the third party
community and allowing a third party community to prosper only
benefits not only but like benefits the primary game,
right. So if you want your game to
succeed, having a bunch of people making other stuff for it
is marketing that you don't need to do is is is products that you
don't need to make. That still filters people down
into the community that you built for yourself.
So that is also a a a big part of it that also just happens to
tie into people making cool things.
No, totally. And we just so, for example, so
on why we roll, we talk to creators about as individual
indie TTRPG designers, their create creator journey, 90%,
maybe 10% of their politics. And we've had great
conversations recently with, I'd say I'm going to shout out
Roderick Maxino from Alewood Games, who does some thirty
party content for Mothership, which is amazing.
I actually think it's really cool because it's like, what if
you're the documentarians who get hired to do like an artsy
documentary about the asteroid where all the miners got killed
and like maybe the alien is still there.
And so it's like you're not space marines, you're
documentarian. So it's great.
It's like totally almost a different game.
It's AD makeup where you're like doing art about space horror and
we talked with, you know, Adam Good stations, Adam and Jamie at
stations. You've done a bunch of cool
stuff third party for different systems.
And a lot of that has been around their own ideas of sort
of poetry and like writing weird lists that are just really,
really useful in games and trying to figure out the right
list for mothership or for liminal horror.
We talked with Josh Domansky that was, along with Adam, part
of Orbital Blues Month. So we're talking about basically
people writing third party content for Orbital Blues and
very different approaches to adventure design.
And what does it mean to write an adventure coming into a
system where in a way you're agnostic to the system?
You're saying, yeah, I mean, I understand the system, It's fun.
But you know, that's I am not the creator of the system.
I'm not changing the system. I'm trying to tell good stories.
How do you do that? And I think for me, it gets my
brain going. It's not what I spend my time
on. And like, say you only have so
much time and it's business. You only have so much money, you
know, when you shoot your shots. But I would love it if other
people had those ideas if they want to tell their own stories
for Still Fleet, I will shout it again.
The stuff it's currently being used somehow amazingly by
world's beyond number and they're telling very, very
different stories right than I would still in the same vein.
I mean, I think we probably share the same politics, you
know that, but but it's a different world.
It's an Asimovian world with no aliens, I take it.
It feels like and my game is full of weird aliens and bio
punk stuff and it's it just feels like they want to do a
different sci-fi and that's great, right?
It's like I'm not I wasn't necessarily going to do that.
And it's great to have some of the the better artists out there
having examples so people can listen to it can can get that
idea. So I, I would love it.
Yeah. I mean, that's our dream, right?
As if people do want to engage with the system as such or one
of the game worlds and they want to tweak it in their own
direction. Whatever, man.
You know, I mean, we, we've seen that happen for games like
Mothership and Orbital Blues in the Little horror, just to name
a few, where there is a cool community.
And we really respect that. Troika, you know, and we, we
like a lot of those writers. We, we have been, you know, on
around that, right? Merk Borg especially, like I
think Tony and I have have we, we know it pretty well and we're
we're fans. It's just I don't usually run it
and I don't, I don't think Tony does anymore either.
I think mostly we're running our own system.
So that makes us feel like, all right, well, let's throw our
sort of ring in the hat and see what happens.
You know, and hey, if people pass, that's that's cool.
You know, at the end of the day, it's like it's a free thing.
So I do hope people check out the game jam.
And we are going to give away some prizes, TBD, but we are
going to give away books, PDS. So, you know, we want to make it
a fun community effort where if people submit stuff at the end
of the summer, yeah, we'll send you some books.
You know, that's awesome. So yeah.
So yeah, yeah, I have the game gym up here and I guess I guess
maybe for people that are in the space but maybe haven't done a
game jam before, I have the game jam page up.
So, so I guess just talk about the game jam real quick.
I know we've talked around it a little bit, but you know, like,
what is it like, how long is it lasting?
Like what do people have access to, to be able to to do stuff
with it, you know, all that kind of stuff.
How do people submit? Yeah, so we are running a game
jam on Itch, which if you've not done is really fun.
I've done a bunch now, mostly one page games.
And it's a fun way to just kind of really practice your your
art, maybe meet some folks, have a deadline, some people need an
artificial deadline. Sometimes you have an extra idea
it doesn't really fit with some other project you're doing.
And there's so many game jams on Itch and honestly, they're,
they're just fun, low stakes ways to get your stuff out there
and kind of engage with other people.
You can always do another version, right?
I mean, in general, unless it's a very restrictive one, which I
maybe have seen, but but it's not the norm.
You know, you're going to own the the content, right?
So I do encourage people not just to sit at our game jam, but
any game jam you think is appropriate if you want to do,
you know, for Halloween, there's always like cool, like vampire
themed or love crafting horror themed or slasher fiction
themed, you know, and there are on Itch, obviously game jams
that are for video game designers, you know, computer
engineers. Our game jam, we're thinking
about TTRPGS. If someone made a video game,
that's cool too. Like, I guess we'd have to
figure out judging there. But yeah, we're we, we make RPGs
so you could submit APDF. It's really easy.
It's free. And again, you keep the rights
to your PDF. The only thing with our jam is
we are asking people to use a third party license and the
third party logo that says that it's made for the grid system.
But again, you, you're the creator, you keep your own
copyright, all that stuff. So pretty similar to Borg or
other licenses, similar licenses, Mothership I think is
similar. So it's not like we're taking
the IP. We're just asking that you
credit that. It's it's for the grid system.
And that way, yeah, hopefully we get a community creators and we
can look at all of it holistically and sort of, you
know, celebrate it, give away some some books in terms of
dates, we're starting May 18th and ending August 24th.
So that gives you basically the whole summer.
So we will be sort of focused on this for the summer.
Just trying to get the word out. And we're hoping to get some
guest judges, the TBD on that. And they would judge it, you
know, in August and, and we'd announced a little after.
But yeah, it's, it's something we haven't done before.
We've done a smaller game jam, I should say, for Blister
Critters. We've never done them for the
whole system. So the Blister Critters 1 was
amazing. Thanks to everyone who
submitted. It was a lot of fun for Tony and
me to read through other people's ideas.
And they were really, really good.
I mean, that's I think something that is one of my favorite parts
of making art. These are the indie RPGs is the
barrier is lower. I mean, a lot of more people do
have access to let's say Canva or GIMP or some, you know, tools
scanning cool things you drew to notebook, right.
Shout out to Hodag RPG we've worked with who does everything
like drawing by hand. Ethan cool often is drawing
stuff physically and scanning it and it looks cool and then in
Photoshop or whatever you give, you can mess with it.
We we still use Indesign and and whatever Adobe products because
we're a small business and you know, my wife and I do this
otherwise for a living. So we, you know, we know how we
make stuff, but what I like about the game jam also is it
really incentivizes like you have a one page game, Literally
just take a picture of it with your phone and upload it.
I mean, you know, slap on the logo or we'll help you, you
know, just contact me. So we we don't want it to be
like a big deal. It's not like you know it's for.
Fox into APDF like it works. You got it.
It'll work. Yeah, great.
Yeah, I'm, I'm really excited for the we will make sure that
the the link to it is below so that you can access all of that
stuff. But as far as everything else
that you guys have made, still fleet, blister critters, all
that kind of stuff, like where can people find you?
Where can people find your stuff?
And then obviously we'll make the link for the game jam.
But if they want more still fleet, if they want more
ballistic critters, do more, more dance.
Matava, where? Where is that on the Internet?
We are everywhere at Still fleet.com and on social media at
Still Fleet. So pretty easy to find.
I think we have all those, Yeah. So fleet.com is everything.
We're very we try to be active on
discordsodiscord.stillfleet.com is a short link.
You can probably just Google it and we'll try to respond.
I'm at Still Fleet on Discord, so if you have anything you
wanted to chat about, just feel free to hit me up.
I'll try to be responsive. And yeah, we're doing our best.
I mean, we are really truly a small, small, small business and
we're we're trying to make a bunch of games.
We love games, we love playing games.
But yeah, we'd love if anyone wants to check out anything or
has questions, you know, hit me up whether it's about the the
system or or anything else. And hopefully we'll announce
more about the jam beyond just it exists.
But you know, prizes and guest judges soon.
I think that's about it. Oh, and hopefully, I mean, if
you know, again, I, I still think you, it would be fun to
play down some Cobb and have that experience because that is
a special game. It's very different.
You know, you die, you come back.
So it's kind of like a lot of OSR horrific, you know, dungeon
games, but it it has. Which is my shit, which is my
I'm an edge Lord garbage person and I love that.
And yes, we we we. So for those not to know, we did
we we tried for a while to get on the show and then, you know,
I had some stuff happen in in IRL and and then again we got to
run into each other at packs, which is fantastic.
But we've been trying to get dance McCabe on the show for a
little while. The summer's coming.
I think we're both kind of settling in.
So expect wife back on the show. Maybe, maybe we can try to
schedule a bit the jam or something so that we can we can
kind of again talk about the jam, actually get it on the
show. And O Hunter was excited to play
as well. So expect wife on again this
summer, probably, I assume Chris as well to see some dance
macabre. It is one I'm very, very excited
for. Still Fleet's fantastic because
I am a big, you know, 40K guy too.
But dance macabre is is the one that's been out so far that I've
been like, yes, this is this is the one that I really want to
play and I would love to have on the show.
So again, expect wife to come back on the show sooner than
later. And when the jam happens, you'll
hear about it again, whether we're doing stuff or not,
because the grid system's great and I love all the stuff you
guys are doing, and you guys are doing it in a way that I think
is really fantastic for the space.
So I want to say also, thank you for coming on the show again.
It's been too long and it should have happened sooner, but it's
been wonderful talking with you about it.
Yeah, thanks so much. Well, I hope Chris, I hope Chris
can come on and play Dots cop with you.
And I'm happy to just be long for that ride because that's
that's a weird fun one and and hopefully Hunter as well.
So thanks so much for having me. And yeah, I appreciate helping
us get the word out about the jam and and yeah, in general,
you know, maybe, maybe a still fleet 2 develops too.
We can discuss that because again, we we at least for the
next year, I don't think I'm going to stop it.
World War three aside, we're going to keep going.
We're going to keep making games so and we're going to be
watching weekly Scrolls so. Yeah, nuclear fallout aside,
we'll we'll, we'll definitely we'll definitely be talking more
still fleet, more grit system and more dance Magap here on the
show. But again, thank you so much for
being here. And that's going to be us for
today. So thank you all for listening
and we will see you all later and bye.
Thanks.