Hello, and welcome to the weekly.
Scroll podcast brought to you by the adventure.
Archive, my name is Ryan. We got a couple of special
guests here from crumbling. Keep first, we have James crane.
Hey, that's me. I'm from crumbling.
Keep and we have Brad Kish ball. Fishbach.
Yeah. Alright.
Hey guys doing today, how are you pretty good?
Yeah, yeah, I was asked this question.
Like we have been talking for like 15 minutes but they don't
know that. They don't sweep it out the
Stalls and rock bottom. Yeah, so yeah.
So for those that don't see the giant thing.
Next to me that says marching order bomb, that's kind of your
guys thing here. This is the solo and or
cooperative dungeon delving game marching order.
So for those that haven't read marching order, what I guess,
what would you say like this is marching order like what is it
to you guys? Well James has the pitch down,
so It's funny that you say that because like, every time that I
have to write out the pitch or like the elevator pitch, I'm
like, could this be better? Like, what really is it?
How do I distill this experience?
And I think what I've settled on and I still think it does.
It really just us. It's like, if darkest Dungeons
and Choose Your Own Adventure style books, had a baby and race
it on cheap booze and Desperation.
I think that at least gives a good idea of the flavor.
I think that's a fantastic pitch.
I read somewhere, that's written somewhere.
And I can't remember where whether it's on the Indiegogo
page or something where it specifically talk about like
this cya and and the darkest dungeon think is a dark.
As soon as I read that I was like oh shit, this is really
like darkest dungeon that's like your guys and they're guys you
know just kind of going like this.
Yeah it's it's you put them in a marching Order.
And then it is just kind of goes.
What was the like impetus for this?
Like who had the original seed for this concept?
That's correct. Yeah.
So he's the story about that design.
It was wasn't last year. We published last year.
No two years ago is it 2020 really?
Yeah. Okay, great.
All right. Yeah.
Our Kickstarter launched in February of 2020 and then we had
the successful thing go on and then And then covid hit.
Yeah, cool success of our game brought upon the apocalypse.
I mean, if you've read the game, you'll know marketing for solo
Rock. Bottom is Miguel place.
So back in 2020, it was a bit before like Zine quest of that
year and I'd never done a Zine Quest Kickstarter before and I
wanted to and Truth be told I have actually never played
darkest dungeons, but I was playing a mobile app on my phone
that reading the comments, people said that it seemed like
a ripoff of darkest dungeons. It's impossible but plank,
right? You know?
And I'm sure like, I just gotta say, oh yeah, how some of the
same elements. But I got actually still don't
know that to this day but I just kept thinking like oh this would
translate real well to like a tabletop experience and like I
think the two things that struck me that like started the whole
thing and obviously there's like a lot more to it now but like
the two ideas I started to work with were it's like combat in a
lot of RPGs especially those that are using a grid and
managers of What Not expositional, Right?
Like you can flank people you move around, you have the
movement speed yada yada and had the thought of well what if it
was in corridors that were too tight and so you're always He's
just in the line and the Tactical part of the combat came
from, where you are in line and how far away other creatures
were in front of you and whatnot.
So that in the idea of having powers that you could reuse, but
having cool down dies for them. So that if you use your like,
for instance, the doctor has a healing power with a cool-down
of. I think it's three or four being
able to use that only that Every like fourth round or something
like that and ways of tracking that on the table top as opposed
to an app or a computer game, where it does it for you.
So that's kind of where it's started.
Was those like little mechanics and kind of grew out from there.
I think it started with a to am message.
Hey I got I got this card game idea.
At the time we were putting out 5e third-party material.
So so he had this little brainstorm and he worked on it
for a while and you know, while we've been building our skills,
Well, I mean for anyone that's played 5e to, I can't remember
the number of times that a fight has happened in a doorway and it
feels kind of like you're in a line.
Anyway, because you're just like, well, I have to I'm
allowed to move, like, through my Ally, but can't finish in
their space. So like you go and then all
scuba to go. And you're going to go in the
bad guy. Will come in and go, you kind of
get the, the little bit of that from that.
Anyway. But um, so it blossomed.
Now, did you guys You decide what you want to come out prior
to covid? Or was it like right totally
wrong? I believe that was 20 21
actually not on the passenger. Okay, great, great.
So, it was last year as like my memory, isn't that bad?
Yeah, because I was like, right, when it was like, yeah, um, I
mean solo games did blow up during covid, you know.
A lot of people like the whole like Gretchen and alone thing
kind of blew up a lot of journaling games did One of the
things I really like about marching order, there aren't a
ton of games that feel like they're still adventure games
that are so low. Like, one of the other ones that
we've talked about a lot is like 12 years from X Moon, where you
actually still playing with like a party of people, and doing an
adventure, you know, you're not like journaling through prompts
and things like that and journaling games are cool.
That's fine. But like I told, I just want to
go in a dungeon and kill shit and if I don't have friends
around, it'd be nice to just do it.
So that's what I think. Yeah really drew me to marching
order. Was that idea like it's still an
adventure game. You just do it by yourself and
it is I mean I know you've never played darkest dungeon but like
it definitely channels it a lot. So like definitely hit that nail
on the head for sure. Awesome that.
Yeah like I mean kind of a happy accident I'm definitely not
complaining about it and I think a lot of it probably the art
style, really goes a long way with that appeal to.
Oh absolutely. We stopping here.
Walk, I saw the art on two things that I really love.
Actually took me forever to notice, but one of the things I
really loved was the the two primary books, The Player's
handbook, and the delve. It's the same image.
Basically, this from like, two different perspectives when I
like eventually, like, for whatever reason to have it both,
like, laying down next to each other.
And I looked at it. I was like, oh shit.
Like this is I, there you go. Yeah, but he that's that's my my
part of crumbling. Keep.
Yeah, that was Brian's idea and then we saw that.
I did a great job, pulling it off and we were just talking Um
yesterday about how we both get like little Sparks of enjoyment
when anyone realizes that, so like this was right.
Yeah, it's great. I think the thank you for that,
if he who is it, am catastrophic.
I maybe it's time at but there's a couple of tapes that were put
out that like old-school dungeon synth and the one.
It there's two versions of the one of them and it's kind of the
same kind of concept where there's like, a party on one
side and back. As on the other and you could
get the cover that had the party on one side of the bad guys on
the other. And then, when I saw that, I was
like, oh shit, like this. Exactly like that.
The other thing is this art style to?
Also, again took me a minute to realize this is the same artist
that does neon Lords, right? Yep.
Yeah, and as soon as you see, I can't unsee it.
They have a very distinct style that I think fits so perfectly
with marching order to is a great choice of artists for this
game. Yeah, I saw his stuff on Twitter
originally like months before marching order was a gleam in my
eye, you know. And The Moment I Saw stuff like
I want to contact this guy someday to do commissions.
I just don't know what game it's for you.
You didn't mention a link that day to me.
Yeah yeah I just this guy out like we need to keep this guy in
mind because this I'm loving this style and it just didn't
really fit anything we were doing at the moment you know?
But then, when marching or it came about us like this, this is
the game. Like, I want his stink all over
it, we got. And I mean, it's kind of it's
interesting when you see games that have a really close tie to
like the artist because I would say now that they the game and
the artists seem kind of intrinsically linked at this
point, like even with the new campaign I assume that stone was
stopped again. How is it working?
Artists and just being like, Oh, hey, I got another project, are
they? You know, is it just like sure?
Alright, let's do it again or I mean, we didn't give them a
chef's kiss for nothing. He's amazing to work with.
He really is, it's, he's been great.
We give them vague descriptions. Like, like kind of a feel and
he'll, he'll be like oh well I'm kind of busy right now but I'll
have it done by like tomorrow morning and we're like, okay,
that's great. Eight years 24, more characters.
So he's his art is kind of established with our game now,
and we really don't work with any other artists for marching
order. Like I generally try to find
royalty free images and keep all the artwork just to his style
and everything else is kind of an amalgamation or Or graphic.
Just stuff. Put together by myself.
I hadn't really noticed that until just now.
But yeah, he's our one and only artist.
Mhm. And that's why do you do that
specifically? Or I mean you just said like you
didn't notice until now is it just because like you feel like
what he does, just portrays what you want to do so well or
because he's so easy to work with or like what as far as
illustrations go. Like, yeah, I'm I use, you know,
some some illustrations from like Jeremy heart or some other
really good artists out there. but they're more of like objects
or you know, a situation I try to keep the The illustrations
that we buy strictly to Mustafa and try to keep everything else.
Minimalized to, like I said, royalty free stuff, just real
images, like there's some mud in some of the picture in some of
the choices that some of the entries in the story.
So they'll be mud on the ground in the background like stuff
like that. I try to keep all the
illustrations just to boost off as like.
Gritty perfectly marching order style lace and it's just Pages.
Yeah, right there. Yeah, I knew exactly what page
you're talking about. Me said that.
And for those that aren't in in podcast land, listening to this,
like, my background is actually the cover of the, this is for
the players handbook in the cover, for the Box said, Rose?
Yeah. But if you are in Pakistan, and
you can see this Go watch on YouTube or go by the book
because it's wonderful. So you guys said, previously
prior you were crumbling keep prior to march in water and you
are doing 5e stuff with how did crumbling keep become about.
How did you guys kind of meet and start that whole process?
Oh man, how did we meet it was in a Boy Scout camp in ninety
two or three? We were both teenagers, Middle
School. Yeah.
And we, you know, had lives and then I think it was maybe five
or six years ago. Seven years ago, we started
playing a role 20 came out. So we started playing virtually
because he was living on the west coast.
I'm on the east coast and it was it was around the time.
I think 5e came out too because I think what started it is I was
like well if IV is like like soon after it dropped and I had
I've been playing D&D and a long time was like I'm really
enjoying this so I'm enjoying it so much makes me want to play to
eat so we started a second dish in campaign on roll20.
And then we're like we're a bit into that campaign and then
we're like, how about we do a podcast?
Well, there's nothing stopping us from doing that.
We don't have any good mics or editing, software knowledgeable.
We're doing, right? And it just kind of kind of grew
we James toiled over that podcast forever.
We had no interest whatsoever from the public, so we kind of
had to Pivot and we've pivoted several times.
Than our toes into the gaming Waters.
And it turns out that our own creation is are greatest
benefit. And marching orders, definitely
the most popular crumbling, keep thing for sure.
And we had, we had some interest in some of the 5B stuff.
It was mostly story based stuff. Though.
There is like we put out a book on items that are made from
Monsters was like a bass list. Stinger, you know stuff that you
can Harvest from the creatures that you kill and then used to
create other magic items or what have you did.
A heck scroll? Yeah, it's gonna get dark woods.
Okay. I thought it's gonna like we're
putting out a conversion soon for it so that it can be used
for like, ose or more Borg or yeah, it was seeing more Borg
and I think that's going to Be really nice for it.
Yeah, you know, I try every week to not bash 5e and I fail almost
everybody, you know? And it's, you know, it's what I
started with. I sent this before I when I was
a kid, I didn't I never played indeed had no idea what it was
even though I read every Dungeons & Dragons book possible
like my dad come on with like just boxes at or books.
I read every Dragon Lane Spokane.
Everything. No idea that it was a game
involved. Probably should have read the
ads in the back. Back not like my parents would
let me play but um so I started with the five you box set and
then just fell hard into it and then eventually like started
reading other stuff and realize like wow this there are better
games out there to play. Um I'm sure there's more than
this right you know combat doesn't have to take four hours.
Um but like you just had 5 ER o SE and Rick Berg like obviously
Merc board blue. The fuck up.
But a lot of people are putting out more and more and more ose
stuff and I'm seeing a lot of exactly what you're talking
about. A lot of 5e stuff that people
had previously done. They're converting to osc, or
putting things out at the same time.
The number of kickstarter's that are like, this is 45 e + OS.
See I'm like, thank thank you for putting it into a different
system. Why specifically osc?
I know you said you had played a second edition.
Pain for a while. But is a conversion to
specifically, to like gear towards people that prefer that,
or did you want to start, you know, making more content in
like always see and Mark Morgan and non 5e things.
So I think I think part of the reason like, but when we when we
were doing like 5e stuff, the most, like when we were really
devoted to it, we had a patreon set up and we had some
subscribers like we did nothing enough to make it like
financially viable or anything but like Basically paid for the
website. Yeah.
Basically. And like I think one of the
things like looking back now, you know, like I didn't realize
this at the time but looking back.
Now I think a lot of our subscribers were not people that
started on 5e that they have started on earlier systems and
we're currently playing fighting.
And I mentioned that because like Despite the fact that
mechanically the stuff I was making more stuff.
I was writing we were making was like 5e like it never felt like
5e and I think that's why it never really Garnet like a lot
of attention because and I especially like when I you know,
going back to deep dark wood, like it's a hex crawl like that
doesn't generally exist in five years is and it just doesn't
feel by V ish like mmm. I think and you know like
honestly like folks play whatever you want, like I'm
happy for you actually like I've side from this.
I'm also a professional dungeon master so I run a lot of 5 e you
know and people enjoy it and that's cool.
But that said like when it comes to like games, I want to play
for fun like it fuels thematically a little
superhero-ish and I kind of like that more old-school fantasy.
Feel two things where like if you run into like, A bear or a
thunderstorm, it might be a threat as opposed to 5 e where
you like the states or just raised a lot higher you know
like there's a lot more concrete to it but listen it's a dragon
does that mean you said you said stakes and 5e and I don't think
there's really a you know? Yeah.
What's up, for instance? What we are playing now.
For fun is, we're streaming the alien RPG, and we're doing the
Cinematic version, which is, it's basically just like a
movie, everybody's going to die or at least 99% of them.
It's just a matter of when and how.
So, then this, like, no steaks that I, you know, I I mean five
years a, it's It's like it's a hero game you know like it is
designed to make you feel good and be the good guy and
eventually become a God and battle other gods.
Like that is the not like many people actually go from 1 to 20,
but once you get the 20th level, you basically just like fighting
God's thousand hit points and I think, I think a lot of people
eventually are like, I want more.
There was an article I think Stu Horvath from the vending RPG
podcast for at once that I read and it basically said that
earlier editions of D&D at low levels is a horror game.
Like if you have very few hit points and very few abilities
and you go down into a deep dark area, I run into some giant
thing. This is horror, this is what
this is and I really loved that feeling where like I make one
wrong move, I'm dead. If I choose to stay instead of
fight, for one more or fight, instead of run for one more
turn, I'm dead. And I feel like you get that a
lot more in ose. I mean, it is a b x.
It is, it is the Retro clone at this point.
Yeah. That's what Drew when you said
the first thing you said, when you're like, what are you did?
A scroll. The first thing that popped in
my head. Exactly.
You said, well that's crawl. Isn't feel like 5e.
That's not really how five you works.
So being able to get conversions 20s, he would be absolutely
fantastic. Especially like you said I mean
even hearing you talk it, a lot of things you're talking about
sound like older editions to do. ND for something like 58.
So is that of that? I was out of that guided my
thoughts on Martian water, you know, you were just mentioning
like you, like the feel of like going to that dungeon like
knowing that you might have in your thoughts might kill you,
depending on what you choose to do and that if you'd stay for
the X around a combat like there's a risk and reward thing
there and I think Joshua makrooh.
Rise up Como's blog. I think was where I like
originally Saul, something them put these words into or put the
ideas into words like just introducing interesting choices
meaningful choices. And so, like I don't want didn't
want marching order be Justin, and the slew of enemies that you
fight through and get stuff and like, like, I wanted to give a
voice to the player, right? Like, It's, that's why they're
like the resource management. Part of, it is so important,
like, okay, how many torches do I have left?
I could push farther and it might be fine, but I need that
light. Do we have any bandages, how,
many luck points do we have left?
You know, like I want people thinking I'm strategically about
what they're doing and there's was, there's a reason I put
don't forget torches on the tab of the box set.
Yeah, that literally when you open it up, it's like Those are
the secret one. It's the tuck one.
Right, right? Right.
Yeah. So as soon as they open it up,
they should get this tip first tip because it gets really
dangerous when you run out of torches.
Yes. Thursday, bring Leia the well, I
mean, even in the writing you say over and over again, like
the first Dell has like, bring any Venom, don't forget.
Torches like it, like three or four times.
It's like, if you don't get it by the end of reading the
player's handbook, you should get an event of an torches for
the first stealth. Like you weren't paying
attention to look like, because like people going into it the
first time, like they're not going to understand the
importance of certain items. And I don't want to play a
gotcha style of game, you know what?
So I figured out that first out so like oh that's why I need
these things and they can think about their inventory management
more appropriately going in the future ones and I was just going
to say that I set up the character sheets to kind of
mimic like like a like an old-school Nintendo you know,
you bring up the Zelda's you know inventory and it's got so
many slots you know. You got this in here and blah
blah blah. It's is really got that.
Feel when you're like when you're down there playing and in
a dungeon, your You like shit? I got to mark off my torch.
You know weird. Only down to it too.
We're working on the sewers right now and that's extremely
like it's almost there's a cost to what would that be like cost
efficiency? Like we paid for so many torches
to go down in the sewers and we need to like make that enough
gold to pay for more if we want to come back, you know.
Yeah I totally like did. We make enough money to pay for
the bandages. We use.
Last time, we went down there. No.
I and that's one of things. I really, really love about
specifically this game, but games like this is exactly what
you said about choice. You know, one of my especially
when I started gearing harder away from fifth editions, I have
a friend, / Mentor, sirsa Victory.
Who did a lot of like, 40 stuff and but he literally writes
classes on Choice design and tabletop games.
So, and I've read these etana gone over it.
And when you see that, In a game.
You like, yes, like this isn't like there are stakes and
consequences to everything that you do like, is it a Now versus
later choice? Or is it, you know, risk versus
reward. A resource management is huge
part of it. And I really loved going through
the books. Being exactly like you said
you're just like man. Every time I go in a room, I
could have to turn over my torch die and see how far it's like
going down and doing all those things and even as far as the
cooldowns conditions and things like that the exact same thing,
it feels Good luck. It feels like a really fun level
of crunch like it doesn't seem like a lot.
It's not you know. Overwhelming by any stretch of
imagination. It's a fun amount.
You know where you're just like man I got I get to track all of
this and really have to stay engaged all the time when I'm
playing the game. You know there's the feels like
guarded interact with for sure. Like I think you're right to
that's not I mean you know like I might be wrong because I wrote
the damn thing but I feel like it's not an overwhelming about a
crunch but yeah you have to interact with the rules.
That's in the rules are there. Like, if you're not interacting
with rules, why are those rules in?
The game you know, right? When they told us when the when
the first page of your book says, here's all the rules.
But just throw out the ones. You don't want.
Then, why did you write 150 page book?
I don't understand. Hey, Daddy. 22 play cops and
robbers. Motherfucker.
Yeah, I think that there's a nice, like, Trifecta balance,
like, you got the, the choice of, you know, the options.
Things to do, you have the finite like resource management
and then you also have bullshit. Dice was just completely up and
shit, you know, the chaos better have lost characters, just
because monsters have had really good bullshit roles.
Like several roles in a row, you know?
Oh, there goes my doctor. You know, it's there's a nice
balance There Yet. The, the way the book is
written, is fantastic. I love how I don't even say
tongue-in-cheek, because it's more than that.
What we were writing this were you like, what was there a point
where you're like, I either need to tone this down, or ramp it
up, like, which way do I go? Is there a point where that
happen? Or was it always going to be
this kind of like, you know, nudge-nudge fuck you like
throughout the thing. Like I think it started a little
bit like, you know, the voice of the book narrator.
So the speak had that kind of like nudge-nudge.
Like you thing going on and I think like It's evolved.
Yeah, yeah, I think it just like really the more I wrote, the
more I bought into it, you know, like, I think really like, I'm
thinking back to like, just the introduction in the book and the
introduction of the book is very much.
Like this is your life, like telling you what the game is
about, but in that kind of narrative voice of someone who's
like, done it all before taking someone new under their wing,
but also is like really bitter and about it.
You know, right? You're Expendable like you
right? We all are and I think it could
have very easily gone. Like I had a had a friend who
used to be like there's grimdark and then their shit dark like
shit. Dark is like there's just no
coming back from and I feel like it could have very easily gone
that far. But instead it started to kind
of poke fun at itself along the way to oh yeah.
And I think that's like it's the writing style feels evolved a
bit because when I look at what I'm writing for it now, which
is, like, no, we're even on the release schedule yet.
There are times where I'm reading it that I'm like,
honestly, I hate to say if I do this often, like, I'll reread
what I wrote and start laughing at myself again.
But, then, there's other times where, like, I'll read a
passage. I'm like, damn, dude.
You're kind of creeping yourself out here.
That was something with that Pros, buddy. so, it's been
interesting to see, like, It's weird because you design a game
and you think that means you should know what it's doing, you
know. But sometimes you're kind of
discovering it as you go along as well.
And so seeing like we're in future, Dells coming up where
the mechanics are going and also where the style is going, right?
It seems to have like I think it's gotten better honestly,
which I really enjoy the original.
I don't have much bad say about it but it's just it's
interesting to see how that shit grows.
And you know, same thing for like the graphical work.
Like I think the graphical work in the original two books is
awesome. And then I look at Master of the
Onyx Tower which was the first big expansion and Brandi just
like you can see like the kind of level up that happened
between the two and I can't wait to see the next trick you work
on with that of the sewers. I can't the sewers.
Yeah. There wasn't a yeah, but other
stuff to do. I mean, as far as you literally,
you said earlier, there's bullshit Dyson.
It there's literally a mechanic in the game called like the
bullshit Dice. And as you said, you could die
from bullshit Dice. And it just cracked me up, like,
so hard when I was first reading it.
It's just like the It's Gonzo in like a different way than Mark
forgives. You know what I mean?
Like Mark was like, this is kind of just like dying World.
Ah, fuck it. Like, let's get weird kind of
thing. This is more of like a.
I think you described it perfectly where it's like I mean
you wrote it so of course was having a perfectly but this kind
of like you know grumpy Mentor that's like I fucking told you
to take the boys in like you didn't take that Venom.
I mean that was God. like as if it is a narrator not just a
rules text, it feels like you get more engaged in it as if
someone's like kind of work directing you versus just, like
I said, like rules text For instance, the thief, his first
two flaws are one. You weren't using this was you,
you steal 1 D6 coins from a random, a lie or two.
I didn't steal nothing from me. I promise a random adjacent Ally
makes a basic attack against you so you know all different types
of stuff can happen. And yeah I like it the wording
of all the Flaws and qualities for the bullshit is.
It's all, there's a lot of referencing going on.
I think James reference every Android movie possible for the
construct character to they're in there for sure.
I've just always loved James is writing.
Wow, just why? Oh yeah, it's great.
But we literally deliberated over the name of bullshit dice
for a couple weeks and we're like there's just nothing better
than bullshit. Yeah that was that was the
stand-in name for the mechanic until we figure out what they
call it. But it just felt right it does
feel right like when I got to her I'm like yeah that totally
makes sense like that's that's reasonable right there.
Like especially as like I said is if as you've read all the
rest of it it's a guy do I can't think of anything that would be
better than it is to be like that?
Like it like it's still it feeds back into that.
Like I said that like a little bit of just like gone zone is to
the game. There's one line I was trying to
find it in here that it was in the mechanics that when I read
this on like this is You're such a perfect way.
To even say this, it's when you're talking about, it's in
combat and basically it's like you can't do this or this or
this out of combat. Doesn't make sense.
Know who cares? Like you know.
Oh yeah. Like you can't, you can only use
actions while in combat. So yeah.
Looking please kahlan items. And yeah, which and your
cooldown dice, don't go down between combat.
So like if you have a power that can only use every third, Rounds
that just magically goes on hold before.
The next thing. And that because I think there
is a certain time where you have to admit, like, I would rather
and then there's like, it's this is more Continuum than a like
yes-or-no thing, but I would rather play a good game than a
like good simulation, you know. Yeah.
It's a fucking really good. Yeah, I would rather have fun
then be like, well, this doesn't exactly make sense, but
sometimes it helps to admit. That's what you're doing, right?
Yeah. No, there's no problem.
Gamifying a game. It's a fucking game.
Like you just said it doesn't have to be a simulation.
It doesn't have to be completely historically accurate.
But it doesn't have to be realistic.
Like it doesn't, I wouldn't even, I would even say like, it
shouldn't be realistic, like it is a game, we're all playing a
game to have fun, doesn't mechanic need to have a
justification in the real world for it to make sense in the game
and be fun. Abso-fucking-lutely not, you
know what I mean? So when you people can like just
say, like, it's a game, like you can just play a game, it's fine
and and that comes up I think a lot in March of water were, I
mean in that instance Call it out where you're like, does make
sense? Who cares to play the fucking
game but like there's a lot of parts where you're like this.
It's a solo game like or cooperative but like there has
to be a set. There has to be a certain amount
of I don't like AI or something involved in.
You just have to go with the process of the procedures
involved in it and if you were to make this completely real, I
mean a, you would die immediately, but be like you
wouldn't be as fun, you know. Yeah, absolutely. lutely that So
you like shit. How did I just roll ones like
consistently for 10 Rounds? Yeah, it's It's so much fun than
built-in mixed into that, like the choices that you do have.
You know I who didn't love a Choose Your Own Adventure book
back in the day like yeah. Surely.
And like I said, the tone that we're writing it in it's like
it's just we giggle so much. Just playing ourselves.
Really true just like giggling during play testing.
Oh shit I forgot. I wrote that.
You know. And, you know, like we generally
play test with numerous people, so that we just can't ignore
Minds on it, you know? But we do know that he doesn't,
let me read anything until we play test it.
Apparently he had values my opinion or something.
Well, you know, we have don't really, you know and where your
choices lead before you test them out, but even when we play
testing, despite the fact that like You know, being as it's a
choose-your-own-adventure ish type experience, like there are
like definitive end points, right?
Like, there's choices to be made that you can't really deviate,
right? But despite that we find
ourselves like role-playing and characters and like yelling at
each other, like they are in a line and screwing up and falling
over each other. I love there's no good people.
And not bottom is just a bunch of filthy Rogues doing Rogue
shit. Yeah, I mean, there's a new
tagline for the game right there.
If you need another pit, she'll be Rogues doing bunch of filthy
drug to drug shit. Yeah, exactly.
No. Um, look, but like I said, I
mean, this is, It's I love that we're doing this now.
This is the kind of game especially now and I mean for a
while, exact I want to play is this isn't like gleaming armor
on a paladin like while you're battling a dragon.
Like you just said it's filthy Rogues doing Rogue shit.
You're just like stomping through.
Through like monster shit down there and and stabbing stuff for
gold. Like it's so it's fun in a very
different way than like I said, then like hero Adventures or
things like that and especially the solo play options for it.
Are absolutely fantastic. Like it really feels like it
balances. Well, you know, because you go
like you can either play, you know, one player, four, players
and ago, this is this third player, I you get a contract and
then like, you know, fourth player.
You keep going it. Feels really good.
I don't know. I know that sounds like basic as
fuck, but like it, flickers, you're reading through your just
like this, all make sense. Like I totally get it like just
because like, if you added in like another person, it's not
like it completely break the game, but Are there?
I know you just said you have a lot of stuff play in and you're
happy with where the first books are in stuff like that.
Do you looking back on it now? Are there things in it?
Where you're like, mmm, like maybe I could tweak this for a
second edition or is most of the stuff you're working on now.
Yeah, 100 per se. Character sheets are way too big
if you're playing by yourself. Like, it's just the what are
the, what do they call it James? The table, the table footprint
is. Yeah.
Pretty big. And I feel like the balance
sheets actually, do a really good job of mitigating that
available on our current campaign.
Like, we expected this to be a much smaller project, like it
was fours inquest, right? We thought it was going to be
one little scene. Stay stable.
Obviously. It wasn't.
Yeah, stable bound. We thought we were going to get
away with one staple pound scene.
Instead of like two books in a pack of cards and because of
that like like now after the first two books we have
everything going through an editor that did not happen with
the first book. Unfortunately.
I'm like I don't think there's anything glaringly horrible
about it but it could be clearer, you know.
And also they escaped rules. I have regrets about the Xscape
rules and I think I wasn't even thinking about offering an
alternative in an upcoming Del just to, like have something
that's a little better because like the way they're written.
Now if you wanted if you want the whole party to escape it's
going to take them four rounds to do so.
And if you're trying to run away like four rounds, someone's
probably gonna be dead by that point.
Well, especially one like, if you have two people left in
there, still, like, for bad guys, I mean, you got a lot of,
you know, right? Right.
You're like, you're taking away, the amount of people that could
be fighting wild, like, and if you're running away, things are
probably already going wrong, you know.
Um, I agree and disagree. I mean, maybe we could tweak
them a little bit, but, you know, most people that died in
battles were during a retreat basically.
So, Axl opportunity simulation game game?
Yeah, I did actually recently have some thoughts on that.
I'll talk to you about eventually grab.
So all right so is there potentially a future plan for
marching order to e? The Kirsten Cohen Edition?
Yes. Yeah we haven't named we have an
ongoing document of like these are things.
We want to change and I think also also a big part of it is
going to be like, With every well with a lot of the Dells
that come out, there's new mechanics, being added and new
monsters and stuff. Like, I think Onyx Tower didn't
really have too much in the way of new mechanics, but the
noodles too quick and dirty, he's currently available on
Indiegogo, they yeah, those are all vegetable oil.
One of them is like an escort Mission which introduces a new
mechanic trying to get, sir Graham for through the woods and
vanity and asshole. And the other one has a
everyone, like my favorite, one of them, like, I don't love all
my children. Equally my favorite one of the
new Dells is pendulous pillaged. And the idea behind that one is
like, pendulous is like the most well-known wizard in Rock
Bottom, which means he has those good wizard drugs, you know.
So he's On a bender, he's out on the town, square, yelling
prophecy, that makes absolutely no sense.
Last time that the guards tried to do that.
Lord tried to like, rain, a man and get him back to his house.
Most of them were turned into like puppies with diarrhea.
So, like, everyone's just kind of letting him wear himself out,
but because he's not home, your Rogues are like great.
Let's go pillage a Wizard's House and you have to actually
set up a little deck from like a standard deck of cards that are
kind of like your Random Encounters for it.
But it also is like a Form of timekeeping, right?
Because like, I forget what card it is.
But if you draw it the first time, it's like, okay, put it
back in the deck but if you draw it again, the Wizards coming
home and you're gonna have to deal with them.
So it kind of puts that like time pressure on their in a
different way that torches do. But yeah, like I can see like in
future editions a just to get general cleaning up like some
rules tweaks, but also just like the the far like the lurker and
the dust clue. Would, which is, like, a really
big deal. I'm currently Reading Writing
that won't see the light of day for a while, but like I have a
lot of new fun mechanics, I'm putting in there with it, and I
could just see a second edition. Also being used to consolidate
them all in one place because that's it.
Is now like if they're only in the 1, Del when I want to resume
in another do that, probably means I need to have a Rewritten
there or at least have some way for people to access it via
email, right? So, short answer, yes, you talk
to you talk to a couple of times about, like, things that aren't
going to see the light of day for, like, the long time, like,
how, like, how rough estimate? Like, how many things is, are,
are in the queue right now? Are we gonna like, see multiple,
like, delves a year coming out? Because I know the Indiegogo
campaign. It was, I mean, it was
relatively small. Like, I was surprised, the, the
fun and goals, only $500 for it, and it fucking blew past that
Are you planning on a lot of small kind of projects like that
project was or bigger things like Onyx Tower?
Or so we have the sewers is next or at least part 1 of the sewers
that'll be a randomly generated dungeon that can people going
for as long as they want to go down there and then the quick
and dirty tournament are going to be kind of a recurring thing
where you know maybe in the future, we'll do a monthly
subscription or something like that.
But for now, those are going to be kind of the in-between.
The bigger books, just to give people stuff to do.
Yeah. Because like the bigger books
are a lot of fun, but they think alike, they take us alive for in
time to put out. So that was kind of part of our
experiment with the quick and dirty is that are going on right
now was like, can we get these like single-serve dials out
there and are people going to be into and yeah, like I really
enjoyed playing third of myself and they lasted about like three
hours. Or so a piece, which like feel
like that's pretty good for a single Adventure, you know.
So they're like, we don't have any more quick and dirty is
officially on the docket yet, but also like they're in a much
easier thing, this slip in. But yeah, the sewers, the sewers
is the farthest along, right? Now the sewers is all written to
Services, play tested. Brad is like on the precipice of
getting into layout for it. We have the art for it as well.
And I think that's I think that's I think people are really
going to enjoy that one because I think a lot of people have
been maybe a little hesitant of getting into marching order
because you're relying on the Dells.
Like if you play through all the does your kind of at the end of
marching order but the sewers has that random dungeon
generation to it that yeah you can keep going for as long as
you want and I think it does it in a way that is Unique, and
also works to keep the tone of marching order and doesn't feel
like just a okay and your room new group of Monsters, new room,
new group, of monsters. Yell like doesn't just feel like
I can repetitive fight forever. So yeah, the sewers are next on
the list. You're talking about new
mechanics, that introduces something called an escalation
dice, that ensures that you're not going to just be going
through. Like random rooms consistently
it's going to every time you come to an encounter, it
escalates things. So the next time it might be a
even stronger boss or might find better loot.
Yeah, yeah, like dude, what's in the rooms is are a bunch of
random tables and you roll a D6 and add whatever the escalation
dice currently is, so like the higher up options in the table
are more dangerous. Monster encounters were straps
but also better loot. So the longer you're down there,
like the risk-reward. Both keep ramping up as your
resources, have already been drained a bit, but that's also
goes back to life. I think before, de-escalation
dice, the reason the sewers took so long to come out is because I
had to do a whole rewrite around that escalation dice.
I think it was missing that interesting choices thing,
right? Because it was all just random,
you could run into anything at any time and so it's like the
escalation dies, kind of put that timer aspect to it.
Of the longer were down here, the worse.
It's going to get but also the higher the possibility of awards
So in this is the so the next two things I haven't really
talked about a lot yet because they're not far enough allow
around on long for me to really like talk too much about, but
let's chat about him a little bit.
So I'm in the midst of like to larger projects right now that
are rock, bottom focused. And I can't wait to get one of
them done because I don't know why I'm doing to larger projects
at the same time but The two things I'm writing currently
what is called lurker and the dust plume would at least for
now it is I think that's probably going to be this title
and it kind of goes back to the original delves in the Dell vers
guide and plays off of them with some of the ramifications of
what came before. But it's also going to be like,
it's going to be massive. I'm currently at 600 entries,
which is more Then all of the entries in the original book.
He's put together, I don't think it's, it's still going.
I think it's, you know, like a lot of the focus on the tell so
far have been killing things getting looped and like it's
just been kind of like a fun mechanical romp and like which
is cool. I love that and I want to do
more of those. And I think that's like a lot of
what quick and dirty is will do I think Master of the Onyx tower
started to get more into a like Like oh there's a cool story
behind this and worker is going to be likely the first in a
multiple dealt book series that it goes off through a little bit
more of the like Rock Bottom metal story while still being a
bunch of Rogues fucking up and trying to steal shit didn't
rupture. Which oh yeah, James because
we've talked about it before we want to slowly evolve.
L've rock-bottom, like because we both love world-building and
yeah, that's really true about us.
But we don't want to shove too much into each book, you know,
because, you know, nobody wants to read, you know, a thousand
pages on the dark or not the dark domain.
Forgotten. Those forgotten places.
Like, it's Realms, that people, maybe don't remember.
You know, those people that do want to read that.
Probably have the similarity in in hand already.
Sure. Sure.
So, when you try not to shove too much into people, but we are
definitely evolving the town. And like, It's fun.
Yeah, it is like I'll talk about the next project and sackbut for
a while and these are still available on our website.
We were doing the Rock Bottom gossip, which was like a little
newspaper out of rock, bottom, that was used to partially, fuck
around, but also, partially to introduce more story about rock,
bottom, and Rogues, and how they all came about.
There's actually one issue when into the like, why are there so
many roads and rock? Bottom and gave the Historical
reasons of like, well, there's a great war and rock-bottom hired
a bunch of mercenaries just in case it spilled over into their
bottom of their borders, it never did, but they spent the
whole treasury on these mercenaries who ended up
settling into town. Once they were, unemployed spent
all their money gambling and drinking and the Next Generation
basically, like, did have any life skills and became the
Rogues of Rock Bottom, we know today, but yeah, it was just a
fun way to like kind of up the World building of the whole
thing. So the other project started
when we were doing fulfillment for this first project which
like we do The Fifth Element by hand, like we sort the cards, we
packed the boxes. So like that marching order box
set like we got all those components separately folded
together, two boxes, put the books at etc, etc etc.
So it's very our first Kickstarter where we were
sorting like thousands of cards. We are like around the table and
just like had Stacks a card somewhere walking.
And the table placing a card in each stack.
And then starting over again for like fucking out.
Not hours days, really know. It was literally nice.
Yeah. Yeah.
Literally days. And in the midst of that cards,
well we're questioning like all of our life choices.
And if we ever want to do this again, I turned a Brad and I
think like I just gave you the title first.
Like, I don't think I explained myself.
It's just like Brett gangs of Rock Bottom.
Can I explain? Yeah, please don't you have a
bite memoriae. Yeah.
No, I think we were up late like till 1 a.m. or something like
that, working on it and then you were able to wait for sure.
And I was, I was like just drifting off to sleep.
And you came back in and you're like Pratt.
Gangs of Rock Bottom. Just hear me out.
I don't know how many times I've
heard those words just hear me out like, you know, since you
normally we're not in the same place, I just message you at
those times. Night and be like Brad.
What about this? And so that you behind gangs of
Rock, Bottom is actually going to be a new game but set in rock
bottom and it's going to be a mint like Miniatures, agnostic,
Skirmish game kind of like forbidden forbidden Psalms or
Frost grave or things like that. Rangers of Shadow deep in the
thought was like, okay, so each person and then there's like
definitely gonna be a solo. And like ran right into it.
But each person plays a gang of Ruffians which are like ropes
going to dungeons. Ruffians are in The Gangs right
at in rock bottom and the first It's going to be a similar
format in a sense of like there's going to be a book of
rules of how to play the game and then there will be a book of
scenarios I most likely. This is all very much in the
works of the different scenarios.
You can fight each other through and whatnot and it's going to
start down at the Docks of rock bottom.
So you're like fighting to control the docks and so like
you by your Ruffians just like you would buy your roads and the
outfit with Beer soda, mechanics are going to feel familiar.
Earlier, but it's meant to be played like two dimensional
instead of one dimensional. You're not all going to be
aligned like you're moving figures around terrain and
whatnot and like there's good you're trying to get the like I
wanted it to be. I'd like a lot of the like
system. Agnostic Miniatures games out
there but I wanted to have more of a like More of a campaign
structure to it that like you get to develop through play.
So just like in marching order, you can get your coin and you
can upgrade your roads, you can upgrade your Ruffians.
But you can also like, take over pieces of turf that give you
static ongoing benefits. Like, if you own the local bar,
everyone gets a bonus morale because they're a little bit
happier at the end of the day, you know?
Yeah. And if you can basically like,
you win by getting a certain amount of currently called
Prestige points. And if you can get enough Turf,
fill that up and Prestige points.
But you can also get patrons. If you give them what they want,
like one of them might want you to have a cache of weapons but
also kill this monster or something like that.
So, It's meant to have a lot of thought during play but also
like in between games, the thought of like okay what
location do I want to go through next?
But patrons am I going for how? I want to upgrade things, I
wanted to put like a lot of emphasis on the campaign play
and the in-between game aspect of it.
I don't like when you're advancing your character in most
RPGs and you're like, what skills do I want to take?
How do I want to level is personal, you know?
But it's set on a crew, right? Right?
Right. Instead of just a single person.
Has a like a blades in the dark, kind of that's third came,
right? James.
Yeah. Yeah.
Blades. In the dark goes to Rock Bottom.
Yeah, it happened after I watch Gangs of New York, honestly.
Yeah. I mean, five points and
everything you gotta Daniel Day-Lewis, I mean, totally, most
underrated actors of our time, my opinion.
And that was Kind of watch out again, because good flick.
Yeah, no, it sounds. I mean, that sounds amazing.
So that, I mean, it's still marching order but like, it's
going to completely new game, like Isaac.
Still gonna is just going to be marching order gangs of Rock
Bottom, like, it's still gonna, obviously be under the same
umbrella, it's same world, but I mean, you're pitching.
It is like a hole, literally, a completely new game, like, just
like, kind of the brother, of Martin were right?
Yeah, yeah there's going to be like Like a lot of things out of
his tell Yer. It's built its unforgotten
cousin. You know, like the a lot of
times when I was like, figure out inventory and things like
that and stuff you could outfit, your Ruffian switch with.
I went back to marching order and looked at the General Store
there and like because I wanted to feel like a coherent world.
Like these people are existing in the same place but while
these Rogues are going down into forgotten Crypts and Dungeons
and Like other places in the future.
These fools are like Mooring in the streets and robbing
warehouses and like are just like totally different life
path. Just kind of existing in the
same city, you know? Well I mean and you there's docs
to so in the future you could have Pirates of Rob bottom two
and have a whole seafaring. Think it's funny because like it
does cause me to think like when I realized this was in the docks
I was like oh so Rob Adams on the see.
What does that mean for future Dells and World building?
You know, like definitely mine. and I think we're going to be
able to, like, you're gonna be able to use the same gambling
games in the core book of rock, bottom or marching order fin,
Ruffians diet. But so far, I think that's the
only crossover mechanically between the two that you need.
One for the other. Yeah we also have in the works
some like Characters that you can not Rogues, but people that
you can bring along with it, we're calling them, the Richards
of Rock Bottom, because they're all dicks.
Like you're you're opinionated uncle or your drunk uncle,
there's like a puppy. So the idea oh yeah, your X.
So the idea would be that they have, you know, they're a
actions and such, but there would be more of like They are a
detriment because you're you're taking something that doesn't
actually isn't going to be in the fight but they would have
some kind of added benefit at the end like like what did you
get this personal and through Liddell.
Yeah yeah you get this or that you know.
So it's it's less like it's less like a companion or like a
hireling and more like a ball and chain is yes?
What it is. Absolutely.
What are would be a reward for it?
You know, like a lot of like you know I like I feel like they
need to give this cleaner when I feel like one of the characters
is your ex like we advocate for healthy relationships in the
world world and treating people with respect that said, when
people in Rock Bottom, they don't have a lot of Social and
Telecom motional intelligence. So that the say that Yeah, which
is why there's an X through until finally leave you alone,
you know. And they re yeah, yeah.
And like the puppy, if you bring the puppy along, it's going to
be like, really cute looking but like, it's bullshit.
Rules are going to be literally, at shits everywhere, like things
like that. That's awesome.
I mean, that sounds very important order.
Okay. Yeah.
This was Brad's brainchild and I kind of love it.
Yeah, no, that's awesome. So is that just going to be like
a kind of an add-on like in a delve?
Here's like. Take this fucking puppy like
have fun, right? Yeah, it won't be a probably
won't be a delve in and of itself.
Like I'm thinking about really you for the sewers, right?
Right your in-law. One of their bullshit would be,
you know, when my angel was a wee one the effect is stuns
through boredom, so no probably its own little Zine, that's
awesome. One of the things you said, at
one point that I guess I didn't really put two and two together
with it is that March wonder is really dependent on the delves
though like one since it is kind of like a, like you said, almost
kind of like a monkey gamebook. Like Choose Your Own Adventure
kind of path. Like I guess people could write
their own delves. But if if you're playing through
and you get through all the delves I guess it's kind of it
so it is interesting and obviously you've run across that
that's why you're doing something like Like the sewers.
Do you think that a lot of the Dells going forward or going to
have more of that aspect? You talk about the sewers where
there's more like kind of like infinite random generation along
with it. So that there is a lot more
playability with it, or is it going to kind of be a?
It sounds like they're just going to mix them all sorts of
stuff like some quick and dirty. He's some kind of more said some
like you know a little more broad like sewer.
Yeah like I think you know at as it stands right now you know
like this this isn't something that we started to work on
passing. the first installment, but for that random generation,
we're going to have the sewers, but we're going to have like The
first installment of the sewers is pretty expansive.
It can keep you going for a long time.
It does rely on monsters and everything from the court book.
So like you are a little bit Limited in variety there but
still like with the because it's not all combat by far.
There's like I think there's Encounter table.
A trap table, a loot table. Yeah.
And then there's a special table and I missing one Monster and
the special table is a bunch of, like it's a d66 table, like,
special encounters at wouldn't really fit elsewhere.
But yeah, I like it. Despite the limitations of the
Mountain Monsters, what not like I feel like it stays fresh for
really long time so that said we do want to do more random type
things in the future. But as of now it's probably
going to be under the sewers banner and there will be
different levels of the sewers. Like right now it's all on one
level and then the next time we'll add rules for like binding
staircases to go down to the next level which would be a
whole different set. Of tables and what not and
probably include new monsters. There are some you monsters in
the sewers but they're all like the boss ones but they are
pretty fun. It's right to do so.
I mean, we do still want to keep the aspect of like a single
story adventure and unfortunately, like we were only
gonna be able to do that like every so often like the dust
whom dust Gloom would that he's working on.
I mean that's going to be Replayable, probably just
because of the amount of options that are available, that's,
that's true. That one does have like the most
varied amount of options to it so far.
So you can show me the web like the, you know, my string Like
It's All Digital but like the strings connecting all the
options. It's a, I don't know.
It looks like a nebula or something.
Actually I'm going to see if I know this won't be great for the
podcast but I think I can do a screen share with it in a sec.
So you know we mentioned this will make sense to you because
you read it we mentioned that's like a choose-your-own-adventure
ish type thing and in Choose Your Own Adventure type things
you generally get the if you choose X go to 127, if you
choose why I go to 128. I think such of that and so I
kind of had to figure out a way to like, okay.
So what if you agree to help this person back in entry number
27 and that changes how entry number like 352 works.
So I think it brings that like interesting decision making home
in a way that The other like yeah, there's definitely do that
but I think it just doesn't a whole new Manner and like it has
much longer ranging consequences.
One of the things we introduced in this is companions which are
basically like a fifth Person. You can have in your marching
order that work, say, I like like a monster would, but
depending on what companions, you have different things happen
in different locations and like there's different Lauren info
and different places that you may never get depending on the
decisions you make. So it's it's been really
interesting figuring that out and this is oh no can screen
share? Never mind.
Okay, yeah I'll give you. Actually I think it.
I don't ya should just take over.
Just Shores here. Let's see, let's let's see what
happened. Yeah, I think it like Otto says
like don't do that. I just really I call it pain
during my orb when I'm working on it because it's the program.
I'm using those this really cool thing is that coming up facing a
black ski. Okay so each of these dots on
this thing is a Dell Venturi. And every line going from it,
are different decisions and paths that lead to and from
there. So it's just really neat to kind
of look at it as fashion of like, this is what a delve looks
like if you're mapping it out. Wow, that's caliber.
Yeah, I'm really excited about this one but man, even just have
a lot more to write and even when I'm done writing, the play
testing is just I don't even know how I'm gonna go about play
testing because of how many options there are, you know.
Yeah. That's a lot of options.
I mean, especially if you have to like sit and check every
single one, it's going to take you along to play test.
It is to write it. It's crazy, you're not wrong,
that's what I'm saying. Like it's not even on the
release radar. It's going to be interesting
awesome when it comes out, but it's going to be a man.
Opus. All right, then I just retire
after that one. I'm really happy that you did
that though. James, because that, that will
make it much easier to like ensure that all the numbers are
correct. I mean, with six hundred
entries, that's like a lot of tracking to yeah.
Take care of anything with 372 s.
Right. Exactly and you know, just to
like going through Entry and being like, okay, this says, to
go to 121 but his 121 actually the right stuff or that I
accidentally blink twice to the same thing and forgot.
Yeah. What the program is dreams, it
is called obsidian and my wife actually introduced me to it.
She uses it for note-taking for research and so like it's, it's
a really interesting note taking program and also like I start to
use it to DM games as well, because the way you can
interconnect your different notes and whatnot, and you can
just bring up various pieces of information on your screen
altogether, like it in your notes, you have.
And here they fight this. And you have the stats written
out for this. You can like pop it up on your
screen just from like your control document and right now
that is neither here nor there but it's a cool tool.
Yeah. No, yeah.
I friends that use OneNote for the same reason that you mean
like link. Within itself to like other
things and stuff like that. But that's I mean, I it's gonna
be I can't wait to see what that looks like.
That sounds like it's going to be really interesting and like
you said, like even just a plethora of options, it feels
almost Like it's got almost be as big as the sewer and just
like the potential for random generation.
Especially if you saying that like, you know, this point here,
if you go A or B, if you change all of this up here and play the
different way, that's sounds really interesting.
I'm excited to see like, how how you do that, like, how it all
actually ends up working together because that sounds
like a huge pain in the ass but also super, super great.
A little bit. Like I had to put my hair back
to figure it out and what I settled on is like, so, you
know, you're going to have to tell book like normal.
If you make this Choice, go to whatever yada yada.
But you're also an addition to your character sheet, you're
going to have a thing that is currently called a fake card
title and progress. Don't know if I'm gonna keep
that, but there's just gonna be a bunch of numbers on it.
And if you make certain decisions, it's going to tell
you Circle this number. So later on in Adel, like in an
entry, a might say, it's a circle.
Check this out over here, which might be one of your companions
if they're with you saying like, hey, I know these things.
Things. I like the companions.
I have to Like it feels weird to say I guess because like it
feels a little like writing. I guess I am.
I just really like the writing in this one so far.
Like it feels the closest thing between all them to like reading
a novel as well as playing a game where the other ones feel.
Like I like I like a lot of writing in Onyx Tower but it's
like it doesn't have, I guess the scope and presence that I
think markers going to have, I mean you should like your own
writing like when you read your stuff back because you just feel
like fuck. Yeah, I did that like, that's
awesome. Like, that's right bragi it.
Like if you if you if you put out a game and you look back and
be like, man, that sucks. Right - here, Do something like
15 rooms ago and then I get to a car that says, if you did this
thing 15 rooms ago, do this, I'm gonna be, like, fuck.
I don't remember what the hell? I don't remember what I did
yesterday, man. I'm trying to remember what it
is like. So that's such a great idea to
have, like a tracker for that and like, even some of it, like
there are some locations like if you're there, one time,
something's happening. But if you like trigger
something on a fake card and go back, you're going to find
things you Applying the first time.
That the complexity involved. Like, I can't even, I mean more
power to ya, like that's it sounds like a lot.
Um, Switching gears, just a little bit here.
One of the questions I want to ask that.
I finally remembered was Indiegogo which you know, this
is on right now. Go check it out, I'll put the
links and everything. Um, your first project was
Kickstarter this is Indiegogo Indiegogo.
I mean, I've backed plenty of projects on a He go go, but
it's, I don't think it's as a well-known, I guess as
Kickstarter obviously, or or even like game found has a
bunch. Now, what made you go with
Indiegogo as opposed to, you know, the kind of plethora of
crowdfunding platforms are out there.
Now, they reached out to us trying to poach us from
Kickstarter Yeah that's just kind of cool.
Yeah. And within like we really yeah.
Well we'll try one of our projects on there and they met
with they met with us video call like three times or something
like that before the launch. They followed up with us.
They take less money. Yeah.
They're just a nicer to yeah. Like yeah, they just have so
much. For support like you talk to
regular like, actual people so much more.
Like they've had me talk to like their marketing.
People, they've had me talk to, like, just people checking over
the campaign and make sure it's good and like making sure stuffs
integrated and hmm. And when it comes to like
Kickstarter, like kickstarter's to big kid on the Block for sure
like everyone knows Kickstarter and in sometimes like what I'm
talking about this campaign, I still find myself saying like oh
we're kick-starting a tour The kickstarter campaign because
it's like a Band-Aid, right? Like, no, it's not.
He's a bandage. But you say Band-Aid because
that grinding is so in your brain.
But they've been great. They've been very kind.
They've been very helpful. Like, I don't even know if real
people work at Kickstarter because I've never talked to
him. Like, I've talked to more real
people, that work at Facebook and that's saying something, you
know? Ya know, it's interesting to me,
we, I mean, we so we have a second for long term called
kick, start the podcast and it was all crowdfunding because
like, you, Kickstarter like the name in it of itself, a lot of
people associate crowdfunding with kick-starting, right?
But it's interesting because we've heard we've about a lot of
different platforms. Like everyone, pretty much.
Just like you said, like Kickstarter it exists.
It is there a lot of people know it to you use it may be through.
Yeah we've heard about game found.
Don't fucking use it from every person we've ever talked to you
that use it said stay away from game file.
So sorry that's good to know. Okay yeah I will give you Names
of people if you really want to talk to them if it's okay with
them. But yeah, I haven't really heard
a lot about any go go. Like I said, it's one of the
smaller ones in. It's really interesting to hear
that they were like I'd only they poached you but there
seemed awesome. They just decide.
No, the project is six hundred and sixty-six percent funded
right now. I thought that was a fun puzzle
number shot. And yeah, by the way, the
project is Hundred and sixty-six percent funded and you still
have ten days left to go. And this was really a 14-day
campaign to. Yeah.
I think I think we talked about that a little bit in on Twitter
as well. When you told me it was only
going to be a two-week campaign and that's another thing that I
hear all the time is people that do 30-day campaigns and more of
their like ripping their hair out by like day 18 because
they're still like 12 fucking days left to go.
You know what? You don't get anything in an
adult. Yeah.
Like every campaign on Kickstarter, like never days
were in the middle, like in that like dead 15 days in, we're
like, oh, we lost some money today.
That's cool. Like, well, the things it gives
you to give people time to just be like, you know, what do I
really need that and then they're like, nope, I can cancel
that pledge. I do that all the time.
So, especially when it's like, well, this other things backing
right now, and I got to choose between the two.
Yeah, every campaign we've seen the most action, the first, and
last week, and the reason these crowdfunder things work is
because like it's instant hype. Like there's a timer on it and
if I tell you like, hey if you don't like I don't know.
If you don't go to the store and buy me a sandwich, I'm going to
shoot you in to toe you have three years.
Like what the hell? Yeah.
Get it done in three years, whatever, you know, like, I'm
not worried about my toe that much, like, next time I'm out,
I'll get a sandwich, right? But not like you got 20 minutes
to get me that sandwich or say goodbye to that toe.
Like, first off, you here, like, why am I so shading with this
fucking madman? But, secondly, you're getting me
a thing. I mean, that was probably the
most interesting way you could put that in allergy.
I don't know where that came from, but besides, right, to
shoot not toes, but I guess, It. I mean it makes sense.
And, and I can tell you the right there, all the writer for
marching order but I would have. So I'll take that as a
compliment. Or that?
There we go. Another way to say it.
Um, did you, are you? I guess the question is like,
with any GoGo like, they seek, they sounds like they're great.
Are you getting what you expected from like the campaign
and things like that? I mean because like I said, you
know, you had a pretty small funding goal for this and I took
didn't even take a day to get funded.
They took an hour. Yeah, five minutes.
Yeah. So it which, I mean, says
something, maybe we should set our bar a little higher next
time, but I mean, it feels good to be funded in an hour.
Yeah, totally. And it's interesting because
like, you know, like if we compare this campaign to
campaigns, we did in the past on like Kickstarter the Kickstarter
campaigns absolutely brought in more money as I'd like As of
now, right? But that said like, this is the
lowest cost campaign. We've done, you know, the delves
are like 12 bucks. like as opposed to like the 50 dollar
box say or like What's it called?
Onyx Tower, there's 18 bucks. So like it doesn't surprise me
that. This is the cheapest one we've
done that. Obviously, we're not seeing as
much money on it right because there's just not as expensive
but looking at it like so far does seem to be bringing in less
new people but that could be for any variety of reasons.
Not necessarily and you go girl. Like we may have just like reach
everyone in our Market already, you know.
So do we got a lot of looking into it to figure out and part
of the reason? Like honestly part of the
reason, we wanted to do this on Indiegogo with the quick and
dirty. He's because because it was a
cheaper product and it just wasn't as much of a risk to us,
to try it out and see how it goes.
You know, so we have some number crunching to do.
But one thing about Indiegogo that we have liked is the
there's a pre-launch and then there's a, like a post kind of
launch so you can sign up for to be notified but that also gives
us their email that integrates into our email list and then
afterwards they can pre-order or essentially, Still pledge after
the launch is over, or after the campaign is over, then I split
that right. James I don't know if I can
stand it. I think I was like a few maybe
clarifications on it, but like, I think he said it right?
Like, when you, when you do a campaign on Kickstarter and you
have you ever like pre sign up thing, right?
Like you have the like just title card up there.
People can sign up to get know when it gets launched.
Like basically when they enter their info in there, that goes
to Kickstarter and Kickstarter sent.
Something I didn't probation whereas an Indiegogo it goes
twice and it falls on us to give them that information but also
that means we get to give him Information, like how we want to
like we get to like, you know, an email from Kickstarter being
like, hey, this product product launch doesn't contain the like,
the language and feel Rock, Bottom, like emails.
Like we can craft and things like that.
So that's kind of cool and Indiegogo does hat.
So yeah. And like we can let these people
know about future marching order stuff afterwards.
Now, as well, and Indiegogo does have an option where like after
your funded and your campaigns over you can continue take
pre-orders. Through them.
Like we will not end up using that because we just do that on
our website. But it's a cool thing for
creators that are like thinking about like what where do I want
to do this at? Because while you're working on
it, and while you're like getting it printed, you can
still have orders coming in without having to have that
infrastructure setup yourself, which is kind of a big thing
because that's a lot to do when you're starting out, and I just
not possible on Kickstarter, right?
Yeah, it's over. It's done.
Well, there's also something to
be said, Just about even if it brings in like little bit less
money, the fact that they take less money from you but also
like that they're just cool like and they make it like an easier
kind of process for you. Is something to be said to, you
know, like I mean I'm sure Kickstarter was not the way they
are. Now when they first started,
they were probably a lot more responsive and things like that
and eventually, you know, you get big enough, you can.
Yeah, you can stop giving a shit.
People are going to use your service anyway, but there's
something to be said about, like, working with like good
people, you know, and feeling good about the project that you
Putting out instead of having to fight through the infrastructure
the entire time, they're a project and afterwards.
So yeah, like I like the underdog as is you know and just
like tacos like the week leading up to the launch.
I talked to when they're marking people at least twice who had
great advice and was also like did what they could to like they
got our project on it. Front page of, didn't he go?
Go you know, they got it to whatever specialist.
They could like it felt like they were rooting for us.
And on Kickstarter, it feels like they're rooting for you
kind of just because they want you to make more money because
they get more money. But they don't tell you that
like, they have enough people that if you fail, they'll make
it a elsewhere. But like Indiegogo, it really
felt like they were part of the team, you know, they cared, you
know, like they cared like I expect a Christmas gift from
them this year, you know, at least a card.
So are you thinking? I mean you guys are going to
number crunch, you know this not really but, you know, it's a
possibility for future projects, even if it's some of the smaller
ones in the future to just because the process was like
sounds like better than Kickstarter at least easier or
nicer the process. It was 100% better for sure.
I thought this percentage is that we like percentage of
pledges that we got through Indiegogo Was probably about the
same as Kickstarter wasn't James like the percentage.
Yeah. And I figure that's like That's
a good metric to look at like, how many people did we bring in
versus? How many people did this
platform bringing? Because at this point, like, I
love this. Like we have marching order
bands. You know, like we have the
marching order, Facebook group, those people are loving it and
so like they're going to when we were doing this, we knew we were
going to bring a lot of people with us.
So like yeah the metric of like how many people did we bring in
persons? How many came from Being on this
platform is an important one because one of the other things,
honestly, we thought about doing in a future.
Like we could proud fungus ourselves on our own site, but
then we just miss out on, like, whatever an individual platform
might bring in so softly, we won't do in the future.
It's an option. We talked about, like, we'll
just for exploring will feel things out, right?
I think if we get enough audience that we can, you know,
guarantee a certain amount of revenue from our own site then.
And it would be more viable. But right now these platforms
are are definitely helping us. Yeah, they're helping more than
they're hindering for sure. Switching gears again real quick
because this is a question I think I mean to ask all the time
and forget 100% of the time. And I'm going to remember at
this time, mechanically because like I said, a hunter and I are
going to, I'm going to sleep soon.
And then, when I wake up Hunter and I are going to review this
book, I think we're just going to go through the the player's
handbook. Are there any easy to miss rules
that? That if someone's reading it for
the first time, you'd be like, actually, yeah, this one I
could, I could, you know, give you a little tip on that one.
There's there's one that I comes to mind.
Yeah, there's one that definitely comes to mind that I
will like every few months Post in the Facebook group.
So new players can see it in just like hey this is really
important. I think I know.
Yeah. Do you want to take it from
here? Brad.
You do know I do. Yeah, you totally know.
Yeah, 100% points can be used to re-roll any role any role
whatsoever? I monsters attack your Escape
roll. Whatever.
It doesn't matter, one point of luck re roll that dice Like the
game's chaotic feeling which is on purpose, but to a certain
extent like it can feel a little swinging when you're rolling, a
six-sided Dice and you roll one and you roll one more roll one.
And what points was kind of the way to like mitigate that I'm a
little bit nervous because it's it is like any role any role at
all. You can redo like if a monster
rolls it's like worse bullshit and you're like, this has a
possibility of killing every single Rogue right now.
Yeah, anyone have a lot Point left.
Yeah, and they might take the entire parties.
Roll luck points. Scotty has sometimes you play
testing, but that's just it, like, it's a, it's a, it's an
ugly part of the resource management as well, right?
Like, oh, you're getting low on health, that means you might die
soon. Oh, you're getting low on luck.
You're going to run out of your ability to mitigate the really
bad shit happening. So just like torches and like
Anti-Venom and bandages. You're like, okay, how much luck
do we have left? We want to keep going, you know.
Yeah. Um can you and just to clarify
poor go through the last night. Then can you luck a luck like
can you just keep being like nah.
I don't like that role. Then be like, alright, this out.
Like now I don't like that role and just like use them like it
10 lakh if you want all on one. Yeah.
You can use it all up. Yeah, because somebody has just
keeps getting worse and worse. Oh, man.
Like, finally, we got one little left and it's like, oh, they
rolled a one. Thank God.
When we play tested protecting surg Rumford, what are the quick
and dirty is currently available on.
Indiegogo, we had a scenario where like Yeah, I don't give
too much away but there is like a horrible trap going off.
And like we knew if we didn't get rid of, it was gonna kill us
all. When we spent all like, so much
luck, we must have rolled like five or six times and it wasn't
that hard like Now, if probability line of have a
three, all right. Well, with three or something we
only had one person. Get out of that one alive.
Everyone else died. It was a messy messy situation.
Interesting. All right.
Well so I did take a note. So when we're going through the
game tonight, we get to that point.
We will be able to tell people, hey, directly from the writers.
This is don't forget this. And I wish there's there's so
many games from like fuck. I wish I would have asked that
but I remembered this time and maybe I'll remember next time.
Oh, I'll say um, And it really doesn't matter but qualities are
generally a six. Like, six is the good roll ones
the bad roll. So use your flaws at one
qualities at six and that's your bullshit.
Yeah, we've seen some people on playthroughs, like, kind of do
the opposite when they're setting up their ball days.
It works the same either way. But, yeah, I think just
bookkeeping wise, it's easier to be like, six is good one.
Is that right? And this is mentioned a few
times throughout the book because I can understand how
people would want to do the opposite, but I've seen people
still do the opposite conditions in cooldowns.
Don't reset between encounters. So if you have a condition
that's going on, it stays till the next encounter.
If you have a power, you used in your cooldown on it isn't kick
off yet, it continues to the next encounter and stays where
it's at. Yeah, you I mean that's written.
Probably what? At least three or four times
throughout the book in like its own space.
Enjoyable, ladders. Yeah.
You can't really do more than just get it its own page and big
red. I feel like, that's one
certainly pretty hard to miss. Yeah.
All right. And that's like a suspension, a
reality but, you know, it's a game, right?
I mean kind of, but if you're thinking like you go from one
room to the next room, it's not like you're suddenly just gonna
be like cured. Two fucking everything.
Like in the, you know, one minute takes to get to the next
room but I mean, why do you talked about?
Like, there's no reason not to gamify a game.
It's a game for a reason and you get a fun with the game.
And like you said, especially with, I mean, with the early
marching order stuff, it does feel a lot more.
Like in a more mechanic focused and you were talking about like
your later, delves like having more lore and more Choice
options and really expanding it into a little bit more.
But in the early stuff, like you said, there's like a, the delves
kind of feel like, exercising them in the mechanics, kind of
going through. So it makes it makes sense.
That would feel that way at that point.
But I'm really like I said, excited to see like the sewers
and the other thing you were talking about the evolution of
the game going. Word post quick and dirty as it
sounds like there's a lot of awesome expansive stuff in the
works. And it also sounds like there's
not really like an IND insight for marching order anytime soon.
Are you guys gonna is that until until, you know, it kick it.
Like we're just marching order till till the end.
Yeah, I mean, if watching find it, we're going to keep making
it, you know, like I think I mentioned this like every
crowdfunding campaign redo the best part about Exceeding is it
means I get to keep doing it. Right?
And like now we've that love this.
Yeah. Yeah.
We have a blast, making it, we have a blast, like, playing it
like the play testing. Sessions are always great like
provided that were, like, not spending tons of time on
something. No one ever sees like.
I keep doing it, right? I mean somebody gives us a
Cookie like we're good, right? It just felt were pretty at the
very least we'll keep going. I mean it's that being said,
that being said, we've also discussed, you know, in the
future, putting different skins on it, like we could do it, you
know, space Chandra we could do, you know a kid's version
Western? I think I take kids version
would be, would be interesting a very desolate versiv.
Yeah. Subversive of the original tone,
I think complete. It will still have its humor.
You know, space sounds great.
Like I love a lot of these games are come out there like grungy
space. You know what I mean?
Like not like super sci-fi. All lasers and everything looks
great. It's more like like technology.
Like we got in space, doesn't mean that shit's not.
It out and like super crappy like you have like I mean the
elite is like awesome spaceships and you guys got stuff you have
to stick together with glue to keep the the void out.
I could easily see marching order to fit again to like,
grungy spaced elves and doing, like almost like Salvage Mission
since, like, bigger ships and stuff like that.
And haven't felt like that. That'd be awesome.
Yeah. Mustafa's will probably still be
artist. So it'll still have that.
Yeah, I'm looking at you. I'm Lourdes.
It works. Yeah, I mean right there.
So like the only thing that's kept me from working on this
since I'm working on too many other things right now.
But I do have some definitive ideas about a cyberpunk version
and the changes I want to make between the two and it would be
crunchy and subversive of shape. Yeah.
I mean this feels like it would definitely lean into like, more
like the cyborg style of of cyberpunk.
The more kind of like grungy esoteric e kind of snow board
baby. Yeah, cops are never your
friends. There you go.
I can't look at the book of man's but yeah, I mean same like
I can't wait the role I think I mean if I think of all the
genres that it could be, I think those two feel really really
like just Prime for marching orders.
As you know, technology always gives you that underbelly of
broken technology that just feels, you know, roguish and
grungy. And it feels like marching
order, just as the Lord sits now.
I mean, cause you could take the mechanics and make this as
highbrow as you wanted to. But yeah, there's nothing
stopping us from having people writing on Pegasus sand knights
in shining armor and Paladin's, but other than our own sense of
Aesthetics, I say, like, Daddy, You know,
Vibe the vibe, The Narrative, the writing and stuff like that.
Like is such such a fun part of the game.
Like I said, if you strip this down to Justin SRD, like it's
mechanically, it's really interesting.
Like I'm super excited to dig through it tonight.
But the, the writing, the vibe, the art, everything you guys,
put together all it. Is like a complete package and
we've looked at games before where it's like, this is really
good, but it could use this, or this is this.
We really love this part, but it can tweak this a little bit.
I really want two things. I really like about, this is the
cohesiveness of like all the aspects.
Like, the art really fits the narrative really fits the
mechanics, really fits the way, you guys Incorporated the names
and everything like that. It feels incredible.
Incredibly well-rounded as what it's trying to do.
Thank you. That's really kind of you to say
and, you know, taking that back to what you're asking earlier
about Mustafa like, no, we couldn't imagine anyone else
doing it because his illustrations feels much of a
part of marching order as cooldown Dyess and Brad's layout
and like, yea, the rioting, like it just It doesn't feel like we
could change any of those elements and still have what we
have. Right?
But you didn't mention an SRD and I do want to mention.
We have an open game license. So if anyone is feeling frisky
and wants to like make their own thing based off of it or like
more Dells or anything like please go for it.
Like we we want, find are gonna see that in the world.
Yeah, you can, you can find our license on our website.
Oh yeah. No.
I thought very absolutely right on and that not Like the points
matter. I mean, it's whatever.
But when we do our value score, like the other options for
third-party licenses or definitely factored into that,
the, the option for more is, is fantastic.
You know, addition to like the value in the bang for the buck
for the game that like if you did run out of delves there
could be other people making do so there's always an option to
have more. So it's really fantastic and I
really love that like a lot of more Indie creators and all the
people in seeing are realizing that like the more you let, Our
community play with your game more than just like what you
make but also let them make stuff to the bigger, the game
can get in the tide of your community can get.
I mean, you can literally just look at Mark Morgan Mothership
to see how they feel and blew up God.
So much that specifically because, you know, we're put out
the The Merc board cult and allowed.
All these people to make some stuff and support it and
Mothership, what they did, you know, especially when you know,
they were dropping one e and just literally in the background
saying, like, here's the rules, do this?
Do this. Do this in building the
community. You know, the more you support
the community and then give them the options to build an IT.
The bigger the community is going to be and it's really
fantastic. That you guys put out a
third-party license and that a lot of creators are leaning that
way. So yeah, yeah.
All the reasons you just said, it's right.
It's all we just want to keep doing marching owner and if
other people are doing it and creating, you know, a demand for
it, like why would we have a problem with that, you know?
Plus we were I'd like to see what other people put together,
right? I would love to see how someone
yeah seriously. I'd love to see how someone
takes this and what their take on it is because like you know
we created it but our our thinking on it is still like
staring down a hallway. You know what I mean?
Like to us like these mechanics do these things.
Like I'd love to see someone just like, take some duct tape
and a hammer to it and be like, okay, cool, what if The emerging
water heck, yeah, people in putting together a lot of like
table space items. Like you know, we have plans to
make them play mat in the future so you can keep track of your
conditions in labview. There's a, you know, for our
next Edition like I would love to see more feed not feedback.
But like you said James like The stuff that other people can come
up with that. We wouldn't have and maybe even
incorporate that into the next Edition, you know?
And yeah well it's interesting you mentioned like the play mat
and stuff because like one of the areas we have gotten like a
good amount of fan. Innovation is like, okay how do
I set up my table space, right? Hot, which is like what birth
the battle sheets and things like that.
And so like just the Facebook group.
One of the gents is like he does a lot of like custom game
crafting and Pedro Wayne and it's it's just neat to see.
Like he has a concept of table footprint that we don't, you
know, from his continually like crafting things for games and
setting it up to play. And so it's just like need to
see how that evolved in. Like it's just another aspect,
it's a real thing. You don't think like Okay,
you're making a game and you have to figure out like,
especially game like this, you have to figure out what it looks
like on the table and we didn't as much woman.
Ate it honestly. But seeing what fans have done
to innovate in that area like makes us think about that.
Like the brain part of playing is all there but what is the
physical part feel like you know?
Wow. Have you guys had a lot of
people create had delves or anything like that, anything
more than like, kind of small pieces or, you know, these
Innovations. Are you talking about Not yet.
Wonderful sisters, created the rat catcher for us.
That is true. I'll be in the sewers far,
right? As far as any delves know, we'd
love to see it. I mean, it does feel a little
bit. Um, what I'm trying to say for
it. Like, the delves are very much
like, like kind of your brain coming out.
I like into the into the thing. Like, I think a lot of you.
I mean, if you look at drug RPG and all that kind of stuff, 90%
of it is like items or extra classes or stuff like that.
Like, you know, a lot of people, your some people put out
Adventures go to bed but I think it's a lot easier to create
something that's generally just story based then something like
the Dells because the devs are so they have that kind of like
Choose Your Own Adventure. Enter aspect.
Like if you do this and that it kind of feels a little bit.
I don't know why the words not coming to me, but there's a
sense of like I think it feels like it would be a lot harder
like like it's a little bit less approachable that feels like
right off the bat, to just be like, okay, let me You know, do
this kind of Choose Your Own Adventure style room by room
thing. Versus just write a narrative
and then you know, get my players, your order.
Yeah. I mean that's actually like
that's super good to hear honestly because, you know like
it's weird when you make a thing because you made the thing and
like that's it goes back to like trying to figure out the tagline
for the thing. Like right, it's hard to see it
with eyes that aren't your own. No.
So like it's really cool when people do testimonials and stuff
I'm like oh this is what's resonating with people or this
is what like I think about that part but like what you said
there I'm like, oh yeah, I guess that would be Hard to do.
And it makes me think about like what resources could we create
for the community to maybe he's that like what kind of
spreadsheet flow to help? Do the if-then things for folks
or something? Yeah I mean that's you know
right? Yeah like I helped you or
something. Yeah I mean you know it again
going to 5e the thing with 5 e is a lot of the ventures are
incredibly linear in. I mean, like, it's very like me
wrote a story and I'm going to guide you through the beginning,
middle and end of the story that I wrote, It's versus, you know,
a lot more like the osr Our kind of games that are coming out now
or NSR whatever where it's like, instead like I built a bunch of
locations and then your guys actions will create a story over
time when you go through it, which still feel like more kind
of like Point Crawley or hex Crawley.
Delves, definitely, don't feel like any of that, you know what
I mean? Like, I wouldn't call them
necessarily Point crawls or any or obviously, not Hex Girls and
it definitely doesn't feel like linear in the same way.
So, I don't know what you guys could possibly do that, would
make it a little bit easier because it feels so, you know
what it is. But like you said, I would be
interesting to see what someone else comes up with.
And if you and if you look at it and go, aha, like the eye that's
something that I could have done.
That's exactly the way that I would do it versus a different
style. So, yeah, I'd like to hear this,
like other people's voice to, to the writing lie.
Yeah. because, I mean, James has a very unique Style there that
he's created and he just made it up as he went, let's be honest.
No, like I try to sometimes respond in our chats and a lot
of times, I just let him do it because he's got a way better
voice responding to things. I kind of like you do that
period. Yeah, really care deal with the
people Dirk. Is this guy's being a jerk,
please respond before I do. It's interesting the way you put
it out like like X, Rawls, Rawls and whatnot and it's might
actually help any folks are thinking about doing something
like that, like I actually start with the map first.
So you know, in the Dell verse guide we look through that and
you have all the different entries with.
I doubt my personal background will show this but you know you
got the different entries. With the different places you
can go and you're in one room. It's like if you go out the
door, go to 222 or whatever. So the I guess I'll start with
like an entire map. I'll make the map out of the
location and deciding what's location.
So in a sense like Ian, this is maybe less true in their core of
the Dust Gloom. Would it's a little more
expensive this, but like, for the most part, they're like
dungeon crawls. Like, if you're in this room,
this is what's happening. But here's what you can do about
it. But I think it doesn't seem that
way because you're not looking at the whole map at one time,
right? When you're going through it,
you're looking at where you are, and if you've mapped it along
the way you maybe get a better idea of that.
So it feels like guess maybe. Yeah, it feels like you're like
more player playing like an old-school AT&T uricani game
where you're mapping as you go but you don't get to see it from
the other end of the DM has that all behind this DM screen.
Well, kind of like a hero Quest but theater of the Mind almost.
Yeah, that's, that's an interesting way of thinking
about it and absolutely correct. It kind of seems to go.
Yeah, like, I mean, you know, when you said that I imagine
like putting App down and then putting them was like a story
web on top of the map. I don't know if that's how,
like, literally almost like the dot thing you had earlier, just
being like, all right, there's ten rooms then I can just say
boom-di boom-di boom-di boom-di boom.
You know and go that way I mean that makes it feel a little bit
less less. I don't say unapproachable.
I don't know why the words not coming to me because I'm tired
but you know what I mean? Like like a little bit more that
makes it a little feels a little bit more accessible.
When you think about it that way to just be like do them at first
and then just put all the just Just put all the pieces
together. Yeah I'm happy to part and put
some numbers on it. You know there you go by lurkers
got more dialogue trees. So that's I think one of the
places that really starts to differentiate is and most of the
Dells, your decision making is locational based what location
you're going to be and and then each location might have a
little tree based on like, do you really want to ponder that
orb, you know, decisions you make in the room?
But yeah, well, it really comes down to like those first steps
or just get that map and key it up like you would any other
Adventure you're writing? Yeah, yeah, I know I'm good.
Not just can say I'm like, you just had like it that makes me
even more excited to see what someone else could could
possibly write for this. And here, as you said like Jane,
there's a very distinct voice to the way that it's written.
It would be really interesting to see if someone tries to mimic
that or goes off in a different direction.
Yeah. Right.
You'd spoken earlier about the
the evolution that like, these newer books are going to have
more dialogue, more kind of in World information and like more
of a campaign feel like there's an actual story there as opposed
to, you know, the first delve the decaying manse in the
developer's guide. It will where it's more of.
I almost feel like we're doing a good thing here that it gets
more evolved with each expansion.
So that like by the time you get to the tougher like Onyx Tower
is actually kind of tough. I think we lost 2.
M 1 had to go back out and get more roads.
It gives you the option like the opportunity to be better at the
game by the time, you know, those bigger things happen.
You get only. We're aiming at the complexity.
Yeah. Well yeah, exactly.
I mean, that's a great. That's I mean that's a fantastic
way to do it though. Is like, if you start with, you
know, simpler delves like you said to get people actually
understand how the game is played and kind of forgot the
nuance and the way that they want to play it before they go
into more advanced stuff, you know.
And the way That you guys even release the stuff, you know,
there's like the quick and dirty is after really something a
little bit bigger for our next, our kind of gives you that
opportunity to like you said, sit down, do three hours getting
out and then level up a character a little bit, bounce
into something bigger. So it's like use, I think it's a
fantastic way to do it. Thank you.
My favorite encounter so far, is the first encounter and the
first Del Sol the decaying manse.
Like the very first thing. It's if it's a spoiler but won't
be for long because I'm anyone plays.
It's a person you're going to run into you go to open a door
to a place. And you run into for giant rats,
would you like kind of like the easiest thing to kill in the
entire game? Like if you roll one on their
bullshit, they just Keel over dead themselves, right?
Wait, it was that easy. And they're dead, which
generally happens in that first encounter because there's so
many of them, but you like is always entertaining.
But I did that on purpose because like I've wanted to get
folks used to the mechanics before they are in something
higher Stakes, you know. So they have a chance to like,
figure out their movement, figure out how their powers work
while the rats, only the one in front can attack any other one.
Like if it can't reach you, it moves up in the marching order.
So they just spent a lot of time scurrying around Around each
other as you, like, stabbed, and Bash on, and they end up dying
on their own accord. So, it kind of is like, the
tutorial session of the game. However, their their quality
bullshit is like attack a random Rogue.
It doesn't matter where they are in the order.
And in that first encounter, you also find out that bullshit,
like, you may find out that bullshit like works hard against
you as well, you know, I think I'll The character in that first
room just because a couple of rats got sixes and made a tax
that normally wouldn't attack me.
Yeah there's it. There is so much learning in
that first room of how mechanics work and it was a great idea.
James yeah. I mean I suppose it feels like a
tutorial. Yeah.
Like once you get through it and
like one other encounter like it just it sir.
It's flowing really quick. You get the like, You get the
vibe down you like, okay. Now I will for bitrate and then
on to the next one and like so like combat starts to go like
decently decently quick, your diesel engaged all time after
that. And so I feel maybe like a page.
Scroll. What's that rule?
No, I might. Like I said, I can't.
I'm excited to go over the game. I'm excited to see the the
direction that this goes and we me and hotter, keep tossing
around ideas of just a man, we should really play solo games on
Steam. I got it only takes one of us.
We just got to do it. But again, we're both, you know,
kind of lazy and have terrible ADHD.
So if I could ever actually sit down and and get some time to
do, this is definitely on the top of the list for solo games.
That would be awesome to play something to chat said it's
cool. There seems to be a good amount
of material for the games. Speaking of that, we are still
doing the giveaway. I think the plan is to do it at
the end of the review. That's what we did last time and
that gives people all day to enter but did want to just kind
of show some of the people that are that are looking because
podcast land, I'm sorry you don't get to see this but so I
would you were like, hey, you know, I would you like to do a
giveaway? I can send you some quick and
dirty as and then I got this bought this box.
That was much heavier than I expected.
This is pretty much all the content you is this all the Do
you have for marching order now? First of all, we got the
mudblood box set which has the actually to original games or
I'm sorry to its original books. And as I said before that, it's
like the same kind of image, but just from different perspectives
like the goblins on one side and then like the heroes on the
other deck of cards, this Old art gallery here with cool ship
and loot. The dad, all of this right here.
We got Master of the Onyx hour. And we have one of the quick and
dirty. He's now, you said the this the
one that we're giving away, the only thing missing was the back
card, so you put a printed backyard and right?
Yeah, yeah. So for the quick and dirty for
the Indiegogo campaign itself for protecting serve Rumford, we
printed out a exclusive Edition limited edition that's when look
for a limited edition that aside from the actual I'll delve
itself. It actually contains a little
mini game within the do. That's on the backing card but
that's like the one thing we don't have printed printed.
So I printed out at home, one side is something we haven't
announced yet, so I'm not going to talk too much about that, but
the other side is part of the protecting Cirque Rumford deld.
So yeah, whoever gets that one. I swear the backing board in the
regular one is better. But that said I do You can't
really complain and you're getting it for free and not only
that you're getting all of this. So all you have to do to enter
to literally get all of this stuff is to just go onto the old
tweeters find the tweet that says like this tweet to enter.
And then what we did last time was right at the end of the
review will just go to a random number generator.
Say hey there's 20 people in will start from the bottom up,
you know? And then we'll just Roll a
random number on stream and then we will pick that person.
I will message them, I'll get your address and hopefully
quicker than the last one. I will get it in the mail and
get us into but since this is already in a box, all I got to
do is tape it up and actually make myself go to the post
office. So that is the plan for this
evening. As I said, we're just going to
be going through the players book, just the Rogues handbook
tonight partially because we don't read through intro.
Oh, the adventures or anything on suryam are thing is always if
you want the adventure, go by the fucking book support the
person that's making the game and give them your money, so you
they can keep making that kind of stuff.
So we're going to dig through that tonight.
I'm trying to think of what else I could possibly ask you.
This is one of the longest interviews.
We I have ever done on the thing.
We you, when you were in the beginning, I was like, oh what?
How much time and you're like less than three hours?
I was like, oh that's no problem.
We usually go for like an hour and 10 minutes.
We're over two hours at this point right now but it's been
really, really how? Yeah.
Yeah, it's been really fantastic.
I'm super excited to go over this tonight.
I think mechanically and like I said, Vibe and everything.
This is such a fun game. Exactly what I'm looking for
right now. As far as like as a personal as
a player playing the game and I can't wait to see what Hunter
thinks about it. So, be really interesting to
see. I'm super excited to see the
review later tonight. I will almost certainly be in
the chat for to. So if there's questions, right?
Not do you mind if I blather about the campaign itself for a
moment, but please do. Yeah.
And the website. And where can people find all
the stuff that were giving away and and all of that kind of
stuff? Please do so.
First, the Indiegogo campaign, everything you just saw there
that for the giveaway plus a lot of cool merch.
So if you've never gotten into game before, we have a great
intro tear called the high sorcerer here.
Yeah, I almost said got a I'm like, no, this isn't doomed.
The high sorcerer tear and it comes with everything you saw
there. So like every delve that is out
there for marching order. Now it also comes with some cool
merch. It's got some stickers, it's got
the bat. Well sheets which are pretty
dope and the the can kuzey because if you're playing need
to be keeping your beverage School in style, so it's like
over a hundred five dollars worth of stuff.
We have it available right now, for this one, my favorite thing
to do for how much Brad $69 nice because we couldn't charge for
20, because that was more than the cost.
That was so yeah, like the base game itself is 50 bucks.
So 419 two more dollars you can like literally get everything
that we have, but even if you don't do that, we do still have
the base game available as an add-on with the quick and dirty
delves and it's on sale there as well, and everything is
available on PDF if you're not Able to go as for the print
versions or you live in some random spot in Europe.
Yeah. Like oh, yeah, we got worldwide
shipping. But yeah, it gets expensive and
we wish we can make it cheaper than we did, but yeah, it's what
cost. So, yeah.
Look for marching order, a quick and dirty.
He's on Indiegogo, I believe there's like a link attached.
All the post about the reviews and podcast and why not aside
from that. You can find Dust at crumbling
keep.com if you just want to check out all the things like
deep dark wood is there and we will actually be launching
provided all goes well and I think it will be.
We're going to be launching an expanded deep dark wood and pain
in a little later this month. And that will be good for five
years, Mork board or ose. And like I said, I think it
feels more old-school. D than anything else anyway.
Yeah, marching order.com. You can search for marching
order on Twitter while it hasn't yet burnt to the ground or
Facebook or Instagram with are also.
Hold on. Also available at the site, you
can actually hire James to run a game if you.
Oh yeah. That's good point to, as I
mentioned, professional dungeon master like I mostly do 5e stuff
but that said like I mostly do find me stuff because that's
what people contact me to play. I have a lot of games and if I
don't have it, I'm happy to learn it and I would love to be
running something not by V naught because I like 85e just
because I do it a lot and I like variety.
Um so that's that Jaime from have you two?
Finally the last thing I think I want to mention is so we have a
daily email list that you can sign up for a die.
What's the best way to do that? I haven't thought that through.
I think there's a link on the Indiegogo campaign.
I think you can probably find it on the Right.
But we do like RPG content every single day.
We sent out through there, like, currently, we're doing stuff for
ose. We got cyborg stuff going out
every day, on their started a dorm rooms dark domains, which
is one of my favorites, like documents is like, maybe
marginally fifth edition. Normally, it doesn't have a
mechanics involved at all. It's, it's for copyrighted
campaign world that exists in the midst and as scary as A
bunch of little spooky encounters.
You can run people through and then do some higher leagues and
it changes up on occasion to. But it's like every day, there's
like new RPG content coming out through that.
So like that's kind of my pride and joy and also the best place
to find out about whatever else we're doing.
So sign up for the mailing list and I think that's my long spiel
of please love us and give us a tension.
I will say that I think of all of the stuff you're talking
about that last bit, is the part that just blows my mind?
The most that you can? Put out daily content.
I have not actually updated our Instagram in over two months
because I can't, I just don't have the spoon.
Stephen do one post a day. And you're literally, like, I
signed up for your newsletter when I sign up for the Indiegogo
campaign and its daily. It's not just like a little
thing either. It's a whole thing every single
day and it just every time I get it, I'm gonna get blows my mind
that you doing this every single day because if I did one of
those, I'd be like, fuck I'm done for a week.
Like that's that's my whole that's my output that That's it.
I mean for what it's worth because of the professional
dming, like I get to do it full time, you know?
And that helps. So, like I say that for anyone
who's like, oh man, this is so much.
How can anyone do this like 40 hours a week?
That's how like don't beat yourself up.
It's a fucking nightmare out there.
Yeah, yeah. Not every day new RPG content
and I guess it's great. Like, I'm really enjoying it.
Getting it every single day. If you're listening, they're
still 10 days left in campaign. I will this podcast and the you
to know everything. What's today's Saturday, June?
Only be up by about Monday. So if you're listening to this,
when it drops, you still have plenty of time to go back the
quick and dirty is number one on Indiegogo.
You can search it on Indiegogo or you can literally just do
what I do. Just go to your address bar and
type marching order quick and dirty is no.
Probably the very first thing that pops up.
Highly recommend, getting it as part of the giveaway.
James also sent me one of these and I got to crack it open and
it is wonderful. And for what, what's the base of
this? Like $12 to actually get it
printed, so it's like four bucks per delve, incredibly worth it,
like super well done like very, very, very excited for this.
So highly recommend getting that and for 30% off to get fucking
everything that you guys have put out is such A fantastic
deal. So very very, very much
recommend going in. Snagging all of it, if that's
possible for you guys to do right now.
And that's that's it. We are, I am the weekly scroll.
If you're listening to this is probably not the first episode
so you know where to find us. And if you're watching all of
the stuff is right down there below and definitely go check
out Kremlin keep marching water and all that stuff and if you're
in chat come back tonight at 7 p.m.
Pacific time where we're going to dig through.
She water again. Thank you guys so much.
You're awesome guys. It's been fantastic talking with
you, and I'm excited to see especially if you're in the chat
what what you guys I'm stuck to go through this.
I'm really excited to hear what Hunter has to say it and get to
the the score at the end. So we'll see how that goes.
But again the other wonderful. Thank you so much.
Yeah. Thank you so much for having us.
This is been great. Absolutely.
Great talk. Um, we will see all you guys
later. Bye.