Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan and today with once again just me Henry Snyder
world to make it today I have a special guest that is Paulo
Greco of Lost Pages. How you doing today, Paulo?
Hey, I'm really good. How you doing Ryan?
No, not too bad. We are, we are here.
There. No one but us knows this, but it
has been months in the making to to make this happen.
And I'm very excited that that we are finally getting here.
Yeah, but yes, we're here. This is we finally get the
chance to, to, to meet, to say hi, to say hey, hey, I'm a big
fan. I, I like the stuff you make.
So thank you so much for making it.
We're trying really hard starting to say we because like
the Las pages is it's not as much as anymore as like me being
in a bedroom, but I think we're getting more and more people in
to work on books and I'm really happy with like I'm trying to
put together like a core team of people.
It's it's it's fascinating and strange to have like to have a
team. I don't say that I run, but it's
kind of like my publisher. So I pay them.
So like you. Coordinate.
Yeah, yeah, you corral just. Together.
All the cats, yeah. Corral I corral the cat.
So well, so so for those who don't know who, who the heck are
you And, and and what's lost pages?
So I, I'm Paolo, I was born in Milan way too many years ago.
I came to Scotland about 20 years ago, 20 years in two
months actually. I live in Glasgow.
I was in Switzerland for a while and I normally like my day job
is, I do IT for a big Cancer Research charity.
That's my main client and when night falls I take my laptop out
and do open games. Publish open games.
Lost pages. Small press publisher mostly
devoted to arcane cold wizardry stuff.
We've been doing this since 2012, and mostly it happened
because nobody else would publish the spellbooks that we
wanted to see. And I began literally by
annoying bloggers asking them, hey, why don't you publish your
books with a spell to put you on your blog or like, but they're
free on the blog. Why would anybody buy a book?
And like people will buy the book, make a nice book.
And that's sounds and that's pretty much still what I'm
doing. Nothing changed.
It's been, I don't know, 12 years.
Nothing has changed except maybe the production values have gone
like up a bit originally, like in the first few years, I, I
picked it up like book binding, like traditional book binding.
So I was doing some handbound books.
It was like the basic paperback edition of the books, and also
the fancy, the hardcore that was doing personally.
But I don't have the time or want to do that kind of work
anymore. So instead of having just
paperbacks, we've gone back to actually print nice hardcovers
and like for a boxing set or what else.
And for our new titles were actually like couldn't hit some
printers that are used by bigger names like the Folio Society in
order to push production values even more.
Like I feel like I know Foley society is just like these are
targeted ads at me of these like insanely beautiful but expensive
books. Is that who I think it is?
Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
They they. Make some very, very beautiful
books. They do indeed.
And we're going to use the actually like one day.
I was like, hey, how I saw this book, I'm a publisher.
Would you mind telling me which printing which printer you use?
And like within one hour they were like, yeah, sure.
It is the contact like 0 gatekeeping 100% excellent.
Also love their stuff and probably like a small collection
of mostly second hand for the society books in the house.
We have like the Play or taste tapestry, we have the Barbie
launcher and we have the guitar and I'm sure we'll get more, but
yeah. And books are books are one of
those things like once you really start like collecting
them and like starting to like dig into them a little bit,
you're like, fuck, like this is forever now This sucks, but it's
great. But like.
Man, there goes my wallet. It's just terrible.
It's like such a menacing and like the because so books are
pretty also on the inside because they're full of like
good words or images, but they can also be pretty on the
outside. And and then after you start
going after those, you start falling into a rigmarole of
like, you know, materials and techniques and bindings.
And you start, no, not you. I mean, like I went to down this
bizarre winding path of like book publisher history, which
actually led to the book design for book of Gob.
For example, Book of Gob is cosplaying as yes, that one is.
Book of Gold is cosplaying as a book published by the Dove's
Press, which is this printing press that was in London run by
Richard Compton Sanders and Compton Sanderson with a
bookbinder and he was part of the original crowd of the Arts
and Crafts movement. He actually came up with the
terms Arts and Crafts 190 was he was having dinner and like the
wife of William Morris asked him, but Dick, why don't you
open a printing press with your taste?
It would be incredible. It was like, no, I'm a binder.
But Dick, you should totally open a printing press.
And this went on for a while. So he designed this type
together with like some other incredible people, yet it cut
and like you could not buy this type.
It was just used by internally by dance press.
And then there is this like mystery that happened with like
his business partner. His business partner wanted to
sell the type and he didn't and eventually agreed to sell his
quote of the company to to his to his business partner.
And the day his business partner took over, all the type was
gone. There were no punches.
There were no molds. There was there was no type and
apparently he condensed Anderson across months just like
literally put types in his bag and dump them in the river tanks
at night after he left work. So I use the dump types, I use
the font, and for a while there was a digital font that was done
based on the dumps type. But they couldn't, they didn't
have the metal type, so they just rebuilt it from printed
material, which is complicated because paper changes shape as
you press it. So depending on type of ink,
moisture, type of paper and so on it, and also how tied to the
press is, for example, what's printed is actually different.
So the secured salvage rights from the City of London and they
found a bunch like literally on the last hour of salvage rides
that they had booked, they defined a bunch of the of the
type in the river, which is, yeah, it's a it's a story of its
own. They find it like incredibly
beautiful. Anyway, yeah, the type is is a
kind is a thing of beauty, but it's very decentratic and that's
why we don't use it for everything.
Yeah, So everything that has happened is so weakly scroll
that I it makes me so happy. We it was like, hi, here's an
incredible tangent of this amazing story that just
happened, but that that's incredible.
I'll definitely look up more of that.
But so, so one thing you said in all of that, that kind of struck
me is 2012. I know you guys have been around
for a while. I did not think it was.
It hurts me to say this that long ago because it feels like
yesterday to me because I again am too many years from birth.
But 2012 is a long time, especially in like the Indian
indie publishing scene. I mean, that is like deep back
in, in, in the, in the old days of, of, of this very niche
spice. Yeah, absolutely.
It was the early days of Hulu Plus.
It was when I guess the second wave of the OSR started to
become more like a thing. So we started to, I don't want
to say evolve, but there was like after the first wave, like
reconstruction and studying of the elders, let's say the elders
of the, of the church, there was a second wave that was basically
read all that material and decided what to keep and what
not to keep. And so for example, like people
like personally, something that like, I feel like we pushed for
was like make magic more interesting.
And the magic is very utilitarian and very rigid and
also very, in a way, powerful, but very narrow and small in
their effects. So spells don't usually last
long, for example. So I decided to push against
that in every possible way. And for example, like you want a
weakness with spell levels in Tony codecs, I deliberately push
to have parallel spell casting mechanics with Yeah, that one.
Oh my God, I made that with my hands.
This, this is absolutely, you know, what's funny is because I
opened it up to be like, wait a minute, what's the date inside
this Is this much older than I thought it was 20. 14 It began
writing back in 2012. Yeah, yeah, this for those that
somehow get their hands on cathodic codecs, this is this is
an amazing little box set. I was very, very happy to spend
as much money as I did to to get this.
So this is a wonderful piece of a small press amazingness so.
And yeah, again, wonder we can mess remove spell levels, Tony.
Codecs are like bizarre ways to cross spells and like got away
with thermalizations and in general that's kind of the
direction we're going making making giving more tools to be
more useful to the wizard even at low levels.
Because the wizard gives the as this thing where like often they
do one thing that is very impactful.
Like wizard can save the party in one round.
Like they have this thing that in one round can entirely do the
campaign or undo it, which is strong, but it's very rigid the
way the original design implemented it.
And we're making it a bit more bandy.
Also, we're adding like something that we've been doing
also is make magic more maybe like you can use a bit less in a
Safeway, but you can use more in a Safeway.
So there is this bargain of power going on where maybe you
have like less spells than you don't really have, but when you
run out of them, you can still use magic.
But there is a price and it's not clear what the price is
depending on the circumstances and depending on which rules of
magic you break. That's how I essentially like
set up the system for overcasting.
There are several rules of magic.
For example, 1 is that once you are out of power, it's going to
tax you. So you might take damage or you
might get stunned for a period of time or similar things.
Or like if you cast spells that you haven't learned and there is
a chance that might go astray if you cast you know these
circumstances every time you do it.
We also have to make a charisma rule.
And if the charisma rule is good, that's fine.
If the charisma rule fails, there is a catastrophe and there
is like we are accumulating giant tables of catastrophes.
I think it wasn't a weakened as there are 82 and they think
there are 100 in book of Gob and those are for the moment enough.
Yes. Yes, so, so lost pages, you said
it started in 2012. Why lost pages?
Like what was the impetus for for that kind of name?
Because it kind of sets the vibe for a lot of what you guys do.
I got to step back a bit and I had a Google page.
I don't know if you remember the platform Google Pages, but
basically it was a way to have your web pages hosted by Google.
And there were very basic pages. And my web page name was taken
by my favorite Indian adventure, which is the lost color of
Soykan. So my e-mail also is
soykan@gmail.com. And so I made a page on the page
called the Lost Pages of Soykun and that was the original name
of the blog and then it become just Lost pages because they
couldn't use Soykun. So I contact wordpress.com steal
my blog address after I don't know how many years.
So that's that's the reason Lost Pages has also this like strong
tone of Soykun misplacing his notes but also recovering old
spellbooks and old books. Yeah, no, it fits.
I I love it. It's so vibey.
It's interesting to be like, I loved this thing and then I took
out of its name and now my press.
Like it just fits. It's great.
One thing that I've always wanted to ask is, is the
numbers, the numbers in the book.
So you number the issues of your releases.
I think the earliest issue of something that I have is
probably Cathodic Codex. This is issue 4, so I don't know
what 1-2 and three are but. One, I'm sorry, yes.
No, go for it. No, please explain this.
No, no, this is. Just ask me.
So well, so then we'll get to
it. But some of some of the books,
though, are not numbered. They're like extra.
So this is issue 14, but I believe it's like mock out on
monsters is like an extra numero.
Is that what it is like extra numero issue?
What What's what's that? What's up with that?
Every numbered issue is an arcane book and it could be
there a spell book could be like a book about portals like if
it's a hydra Alco could be like a book about a whale God like
genial drug. So issue 1 is programming a
Barocco, which is this weird spell book that we're going to
Kickstarter revised edition possibly later on this year.
And that's what this for your Society printer comes into.
And the 1st edition was a concertina book hardcover that
they bound myself. And it was about 20 something
pages. And it was meant to be a
vertical scroll, but then it was like 3 meters of vertical
scrolls, 4 meters. And nobody has a wall that is
that tall in the house except if you have stairs.
But then it's not easy to read all of it because it was made to
be use of the table but also displayed all at once.
Books are these unfortunate thing where they are almost
impossible to be displayed all at once unless they're
concertina books. Back to the books.
So the first one is actually Programming Baraka by Roger.
Roger has this blog that has been going on for even longer
than mine. It's called Rolls and Rolls and
rolls. And you put up these these
baroque spell and basically every spell instead of being
like, you know, these spells are literally like a couple of
paragraphs that kind of dry the way they're written.
So Roger wrote spells that were one or two pages long with this
very atmospheric period public domain illustrations.
And so he was the first one that they reached out and said, hey,
why don't we make a book with a spouse from your blog?
And so that's issue #1 and then the people that bought the
hardcover, it was only hardcover, like you could not
buy in any of the formal issue #2 is contraband.
As in like when you bought Cargamino Barocco, you got it in
a box. Within the padding of the box,
there was a hidden compartment where a tiny spellbook of black
magic was hidden. And they wouldn't tell.
I would not tell people. Basically I made this like A7,
possibly A8 spellbook. With some truly horrible spells,
one of them for example, it's called reverse, reverse
transubscation, which is transubscation is what happens
to the Holy Host and the wine when they become the flesh and
the blood of Jesus. And you cast the spell in Rosso
in reverse on somebody, so their flesh becomes bread and their
blood becomes wine. And it's terrible.
You have basically 2 saves and one of them kills you and the
other one, I can't remember what happens.
You take a lot of damage anyway. And this is the possibly mildest
if not like it's a bit blast rules, but whatever.
It was contraband. It was not even publicized, it
was there. You were technically not buying
it, right? The the purchase was not for the
supply of a blasphemous book. It's raised for the supply of
Pergami, Morocco and the. Coalition I've ever heard that's
the like that's the kind of like artifact stuff that you have no
idea what I would do to find It's like I don't know if I've
ever like people have made awesome shit in this space right
but if you if you said hey this is like the first thing that we
made and like there's a secret tiny book of blasphemous black
magic like secretly tucked away in it good luck if you found it
we told nobody might be the coolest shit I've ever fucking
heard and. And this was 2012 or maybe 2013
I can't remember. Anyway, that was number one and
two. Number three is Kefit Sahaderak,
which is this book of portals. And it's like I played a lot of
I of the beholder when I was younger.
It's one of my favorite games I played.
They all the 1-2 and three. They all have a bunch of magic
portals and soon love the sheet of the magic portal.
I mean like a pamphlet about magic portal doesn't bring.
There is, then there is Tonic codex.
Then I believe there is Wonder of Wickedness, Marvel and
Madison's. I have a list.
I'm not sure you want me to read the list.
I don't. Know no no.
I would like you to send me the list, but you don't have to read
it. Like part of the plans to revamp
the site is actually make a checklist, like a fancy
checklist that somebody can print and you know, Mark like
these fucking. Bucket list books.
Back at least from last pages and eventually like the plan is
to make them all available in print, but some of them were One
of them was like promotional material for a convention.
Another was just like APDF that I made on the site and it was
meant to be part of a book binding tutorial because if play
a wizard maybe you could bind your own spellbook and.
It's it's funny because I literally this week, like made
my own book. Like I got into a book binding.
I bought all the things and I put it together and sitting in
the other room like I finished it.
What's today? I think I finished it like
Sunday morning at like 5:00 in the morning.
I was like, it's a book. It's I'm going to do more to it
because I'm going to experiment with like, you know, in bands
and stuff like that. But I, I, I made my first book
and so you're like, oh, it started with book binding.
I'm like, is this where I'm going?
Is this my future? Because that would be completely
OK with that. I kind of stopped because they
got like a mild anxiety about glue and ruining because I
ruined the badly a couple of books that they spent so much
time working on. And yeah, Tony Codex was either
in two editions, there was either the box set or 33
handbound Coptic books and all of them had different were
different. So there are different cover
materials, the different styles, the different note work, the
different treads, there are different all of that stuff.
And I was hand stitching even headbands it's yeah, I have some
pictures on the blog. Some of them had like papyrus
based on as cover material for example.
Some others had like fancy Japanese washing paper and bone
toggle to fasten it. Some other had a tread of
different color for every section.
Some other twine double collar in this peculiar binding you can
do with Coptic with two threads and they're all alternating.
We don't expose. We don't expose not work on the
spine. I don't do that stuff anymore.
Well, I said I don't do that stuff anymore.
One hour ago. I just finished literally the
first video tutorial for book binding to put on the YouTube
channel. And it's about like stitching a
small pocket Zim, but you go through like folding the paper
from a folio. So from a folio you get to your
signature, then you stitch it, then you trim it.
Like, like that's all the techniques you'd need to make a
bigger book. So yeah, that's.
I I'm very excited. And and so you're saying that a
lot of this is you're going to like reprint and, and, and be
people like we'll be able to, I mean second editions.
It's not quite the same as like, you know, the hidden black magic
books, but I I would still, I would, I would.
There's a lot. Again, there's very little I
wouldn't do to get to collect all the lost pages.
So I I think, OK, I'm going to say it here and then I'm going
to never going to mention it again.
But for the Pagamino Barocco like actually adding the book to
secret compartment in the book, it would cost the unit price.
It would raise the unit price so much.
I don't even want to begin thinking about it.
What we're going to do is we're going to put like like printing
reverse a TinyURL, basically making an LG like an alternative
reality game sort of, where eventually you can download the
PDF of the booklet and bind it yourself because again, it's too
much work. Yeah.
Oh yeah. Yeah, I also the trick can be
done once like the second time is just like again what the I'm?
Going to spend like the rest of my days now hurting down.
Yeah. I'm going to spend the rest of
my days hunting down an original 1, though.
And like, there's got to be one out there where someone, like,
has it and doesn't know that it's there at all.
Like find and buy it, like open it up and yeah.
The paperback edition has the spells in the back and
explanation of what we've done, and they're printed to scale.
So like basically a page has almost all the spells.
But yeah, good times. Yeah, I.
But yeah, other than editions were more like revising first
editions. I don't think that they have to
be to. I'm going to make them better,
but I'm not going to. And they're going to Polish them
a bit more and might add some content, but it's not going to
be second edition. So I don't think that what we do
need needs or actually is improved much by that kind of
treatment. Except like rule books.
Yeah. Oh.
Yeah, I meant more of like a second edition.
Is it like the? I mean like a print second
edition, not like a read Do the thing second edition, yeah.
Yeah, they're definitely coming. I I you I you have no idea how
happy and excited and how I'm already thinking of saving like
so I can so I can get all these things.
I am because like even this like as soon as I got the I honestly
think the first lost pages I got was probably a book of God.
I saw, I saw this and then the second this arrived, I was like,
well, I'm obsessed now. I have to find everything.
And that's when I haunted down like gathonic codecs and
everything. I mean, you do have a couple
print on demands and then obviously mock out of monsters.
I think I actually got mock out of monsters and then was like,
wait a minute, this is lost pages too.
So that was that was good. But but yeah, I mean, you know
it, it's eBay is a hell of a drug, I'll tell you what, but.
Most of those, well, maybe not the the box that said, but those
are mostly available on free to demand.
Like I, I, I, I, I don't, I don't like that people profit on
that. Like, OK, like the reason why I
don't do hard covers anymore by hand is because I, I physically
don't want to. But I don't believe that like
making a limited edition of a book has its own value.
Like that's just like gate hitting.
And that's why like, we're not going to do a paperback of gold
unless there is demand and we don't want to repent it because
it makes no sense financially. Like it's like, I don't like
making special 1st edition that you have to be there.
And actually like, I'd like, I would like regrets about making
the patch of Beyond the Pale there only for day one backers.
Like a couple of people pointed it out.
Yeah, that exactly. A couple of people pointed it
out and I was like, Oh yeah, I should not have done this.
This was dumb. They felt like a person was
like, yeah, I just feel punished that it wasn't there and they
won. Now I just can't get the patch
and I'm like, huh, yeah, you're right.
Yeah, You know, that's an interesting take because like, I
fully, I hear what you're saying, but I am the kind of
person who was like, if there's like a small run of something
like, and you, I'm the kind of person who likes that I missed
it years ago and then now gets to hunt it down.
You know what I mean? Like, of course I want it.
But when I find out that it exists, I'm like, God damn it, I
I will search. I will search to the end of
days. I will put it on my list.
And when I actually find one of those, I'm, I'm, I'm very happy
to be like, because Cathonic codex was not easy to find right
away. And eventually I found it.
And that to me, like the dopamine hit I got from like,
oh, I wanted this and like I missed it.
But now I have it looks like a big thing.
So I mean, there's definitely schools of thought on it, but
from like from the producer side, not the consumer side.
That's a great view to have from yours where you're like, I don't
want people to miss out on my stuff.
So here it is, you know. Yeah, it feels like it's
gatekeeping you like, you understand what I mean?
That's why I'm. Oh.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, yeah.
The hardcovers because one, I think it's time to I believe so
Pergamino Barocco had this thing like the concertina book where
it was made to be also a new word art.
So it's, it's entirely written in a way as in like from within
the world. And so when the players find the
spellbook, you are supposed to just like go like, and now you
have it. And that's also something that
we suggested with Gob and also something we suggest with the
Book of the Night Wanderer from Beyond the Pale.
One of the reasons why I did the book binding tutorial is because
we recommend to hand over the Book of the Night Wanderer to
players after we find it. I wish I had a copy of the Book
of the Night Wanderer here. It's in the other room.
And now I think like back in the day, I did have the cache.
No, no, I didn't have like I was nobody.
So if I said, hey, I'm going to make a handbound book that costs
a lot, but it's an it's like it's a played artifact.
People will say, OK, then you become a publisher that says,
hey, this file book, but it's going to cost a lot because it's
it's any word artifact people like, but now I'm big enough
that I can justify a print run of that that is not that big.
Like I have enough people following me that even if only a
small part of them buy the hard, the fancy hard cover with a like
that is going to cost something like $2530 for 25 pages or
something stupid like that. Given what it is, they might
still be enough to justify printing a hard, a very fancy
hardcover with gilted with a gilted title, a vignette like a
stick on vignette in the middle of the cover, a butter paper
wrap with printed seal. It's going to be a nice
production. Yeah, I, I'm.
I no, I can do it. I can do it again.
Essentially I can do stupid books and wolf also with stupid.
Not stupid, but they're beautiful, amazing books.
You just get to do fun, cool out there things with it.
But so you said Wolfwald. So so the new things.
And you know, when we were talking about finally getting
together, it was like, well, let me get Wolf and be on the pale
so I can have it when we do whatever and and I actually have
them. We have both Wolfwald, which is
a gorgeous, beautiful box set. I have to say real quick for for
people out there, they make box sets.
Please take this one into account because the the title is
on every edge. So however you decide to want to
put it on your shelf, you still get to see it when I get a box
set. And then like there's like
writing on one side but not the other.
But it goes this way in America and this way in Europe.
I'm like, no, please put it on the other one.
So this is beautiful. And then this book is beautiful
as well. Beyond the Pale, which very
closely mimics the book of Gob in like the the style of the
fabric and the embossing and everything like that.
So these are your most recent outputs, one being from Yohai
Gaul. How?
How are these processes? I'm going to say We Beyond the
Pale because it's easier. There was a trans bar here in
Glasgow and it was a trans bar karaoke night.
I was tipsy and I was steaming in the corner reading Twitter
and Yokai for some amazing illustrations that I some of
them, they were quite obscure and they recognized immediately.
Some other are were quite obscure.
And I'm like, what the hell? And so I reached into no, what's
the expression? I slide into Yukai's DMS.
I mean, we are Yukai. We've been doing each other for
a while. So it's not like, it's not like
I was just a rando. I think Yukai has literally
every single thing I published and what happens?
It was like, hey, that book is amazing.
Like looks amazing. Can I have a copy?
Do you have a publisher? It was like, no, it was like how
you do if you want and like literally this was May 2023.
We kick start like we do the entire book production in six
months. Like we layout editing, not
maybe not editing, but layout, book design, whatever else in
six months, start the Campaigner in early December and we deliver
it early. Because actually doing that, a
fancy hardcover like that is not complicated.
It's something we can do quite reliably.
Woofold has been 10 years of development.
I think I started working on Woofold when I was in Japan in
2014, like on a trip 2014, not 24.
Yeah, that one. And I didn't think I was going
to do a box set. But anyway, we went on and on
and on. And I we hired Ross Nicholson to
do the math and then we hired Ross Nicholson to do the
character classes. And then Ross Nicholson shed had
structural damage. It rained on his material.
So he lost all the classes, all the art that he did for the
book. So it would have, it would have
had even more rust art in it. And then what happened is that I
did the Kickstarter after Gob. The Kickstarter didn't do well
for being what it is. I like basically almost nobody
covered it. But for me, that was not a money
project for that. For me, that was like a love
project. And eventually I got in like
terrible, like abusive relationship.
It took me a while to recover. That's why the Kickstarter was
so late. Then we had some massive
problems with the printer. Not to, no, not with the map,
but just like with the books themselves.
Eventually it shipped. And now that people have it,
it's it's, it's selling well. I'm really happy about it.
But that also went through a number of writing of parts.
I did. I did a good amount of like
development as in like working on the rules after they've been
designed and nailed down etcetera.
You basically hand them over to somebody else that checks for
these things and these things that interact.
Well, maybe we could provide them to be more, more similar or
more different or why do we have these and not these for these
two different things and so on. Mostly that was there for the
spell book and then I asked Lee to write some parts.
I asked these two other things, like, for example, like more
encounters for the campaign book, refresh out some of the
monsters. We got an editor that is Arizona
Killea. She's an Irish.
Doctor in the biblical reception of Beetle.
So not biblical in the literary, In the literary reception of
Beowulf. And she collects Beowulf
translations. She's doing her own.
And she was incredibly delightful to work with.
And yeah, Wolfeld has been a trick.
Not for the reasons that have anything to do with their
physical, with the physical aspect of Wolfo.
Like the box set, the map, the favorite booklets, whatever the
the the text was the the origin of the problems.
I mean the problems. It's like the publisher job, I
guess. Like yeah, if if books were
simple projects, the world will need publishers.
Right. You can just make your own,
yeah. No, but I can make their own.
They're fine. Yeah, but so it is this is I
listen. So I recommend every lost pages
thing, right? Like obviously, please go buy
everything you possibly can from lost pages so we can get more
lost pages. But Wolf Wall is is fantastic,
right? Like this is first of all, as I
said, the box set is absolutely stunning.
I will say the only, the only thing, the only thing that I
think I'm missing at all is the covers are not in the PDFs.
I would love to cover. I think I added last month.
I'll just have to redownload because yeah, because the covers
are absolutely stunning. The art, the art on the cover of
the box, the art throughout the thing throughout their each one.
But like the art on the covers are are absolutely gorgeous.
The map is stunning. I mean, this is a absolutely
wonderful box. And it's interesting because
like the way that beyond the pale came out and the way Wolf
all came out, it like I, I got both in the same box, I think,
like they both arrived. And I will say that it might
have been the nicest smelling box I've ever had because the,
the little bag of bits that came with me on the pillows, like
what what's funny is as soon as I got the box, before I even saw
the address and stuff on it, like I smelled cinnamon or
something. I'm like, this has to be lost
pages. This has to be the thing I'm
waiting for. And then I open it up and and
yes, in fact it it is and it's still it still.
Smells wonderful. I forget about the the Ouija
bag. Yeah, monster hunting bag.
Yeah, there are spices and other things in there I forgot.
Oh yeah. I didn't think about like the
the box without like a strange smell.
Oh, yeah, no, that's, I mean, they had to go from from from
Europe to over. But yeah, literally, I opened my
door. I pulled the.
Box they have a We ship them from the US.
Oh where? Where did they ship from here?
Sparewich. Oh, OK, no, I yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember now.
I. Buy so much stuff from Spirits
too that I'm like, Oh no, I know what those look like.
But yeah, with Jared over there. Yeah.
Yeah, that's, it's interesting, like I said, that they ended up
coming out at the same time outside of those two projects
that just drops and as you said, like the the, we'll say reprints
of the older stuff. Is there anything that you're
working on right now, anything that's going to be dropping
coming out soon from those pages that you're allowed to that you
want to let us know about? South Friday, Saturday and
Sunday, as in like the first weekend of September for those.
I don't know why this episode is going to come out.
There is table tops and it's a local convention that's grown so
much and I absolutely love it. And every year I try to make a
scene. Maybe it's an ashcan.
Maybe it's a weird attempt. Like you have a copy of
Beautiful Yet Loss there. That is part of it.
That was for last year's Tabletop Scotland.
It's beautiful, yet Losses is stuck in a weird place
development wise. This year I'm I'm trying to make
a Zen that is about Wizards before we had spells.
So this is tied to the general vibes of Lost Pages.
As a strange horror publisher, we don't really go for vanilla
fantasy here, and usually the adventurers are breakfast and
cannot escape, which are what makes fantasy and horror to
different genres or else that would be the same essentially.
Well, not not entirely, but like a good part of it.
And what happens is that there's going to be 3 classes and their
basis around the idea is that humanity has not found a way yet
to create magic weapons or to cast spells.
And so there are three ways to solve the problem.
The first one is basically a witch class, the cunning folk,
and uses natural, what's called natural magic.
So the hidden proprieties of so for example, if you're naked and
you wear a goat skin and you start to bleed, you change shape
into a giant goat, stuff like that.
Or you learn to speak the language of of foxes.
And if you wander around the forest and you meet a fox, they
will always bring you to a hidden place.
Could be good, could be bad, could be the bed of a dragon,
who knows. And also they do herbalism.
The second class is the exorcist.
So we went straight to the source of Middle Eastern.
By Middle Eastern I mean like pre Islamic mid Levantine magic.
So it was a time where Christianity, Judaism, classical
Greek religion, mutualism, they were all like blended together
in like a post Hellenistic very complicated word.
Also Egypt, let's not forget Egyptian magical religion and
the old blended it was like it's incredible.
And essentially that is a strong part of the like a strong base
for all the development of Lake European magic.
What happened there is that they had exorcists and they would
exercise diseases to heal people and they would exercise demons
to improve like mental health of people.
Or at least they tried. Like it didn't really work.
And essentially I'm making, I made an exorcist class that can
fix things by casting the demons away or the spirits away, but
can also bind demons. And you can also control demons
and also summon demons. And if you make them a nice
offering of incense and a line of salt, maybe you can bind
demons. You can someone like, I don't
know, Dukes of hell. Or maybe you can control and
dance and make them do whatever you want or even like drop them
into your items and at the point you can channel their powers for
the item. So it's basically a Pokémon
trainer with demons. OK.
All right. And the third class is a
Starsmit. So there is a Schmidt astrologer
that goes around and collects mentors and then uses them to
forge magic weapons, as in like hammers them and forges them
into magic weapons. There is this old mechanic that
depending on the time of the night when they fell and
depending on the orientation for which they fell and the month
they fall from a part of the Zodiac.
And so there is this diagram that you fill in with the
fragments and you calculate the, the mental essences, the
mobility, sorry, mobility, cardinal essences and the signs.
And depending on how well balanced they are, they have
different magic powers. And with these, I'm like the
first, let's say 2 tiers, there are plus 1 + 2 + 3.
And you know, the basic DND magic swords like light or charm
or protection or not or whatever.
But if you have enough in a single star sign, you can make a
unique sword. So for example the sword of the
version, I don't remember what the name is, it has the powers
of its element and also the strong power of its element.
But it also has the power because Virgin is very much tied
with like perfection. You can roll 6 dyes every day as
a unique power for the world, and there are all plus three
swords that for D&D is like the place to be like.
There is nothing new to +3 swords in traditional D&D, and
it's also a lot of +3 to hit. But also when you forge them,
you have to make a number of roles to forge them well.
And if you forge, if you fail a role, you can either reduce the
powers or make it intelligence, because intelligence in a sword
is a curse on the barrier. Yeah.
Yeah, so you could have a + 2 sword that does a lot of stuff,
or a + 3 intelligent sword that does way more things.
Intelligent swords are also a curse to the GM too, because you
always forget to make him talk. But that's terrible.
That sound, that sounds extraordinarily lost pages.
I'm, I'm, I'm very, very, very, very, very excited for that.
So God, I want to talk for like 2 more hours, but I know our
time is a little bit limited today.
I have to though. I know, I know that we took
months and months to get you on for this episode, but I promise
that it won't take that long to get you to come on again.
I is there. I would love to have you.
I would love to have you back, especially once you start doing
like the reprints and stuff like that.
Is if that's going to be a thing that you want to talk about.
I would, I would love. Oh yeah, if you would come back.
Anytime. Yeah, yeah.
Listen, at this point, you know, we're really peeling back on
interviews so we can focus more on interviews.
But people like you are open invitation.
If you're just like, hey, how does October look?
I'll be like, pick a day, I'm down, Just let me know.
Yeah, that's fine. We should do that.
I, I, I, I'm super down, but for so where, where can people, all
the things we talked about today, where can people find
those? Like if you're watching at least
on the screen, you'll see the website in the corner.
But but where can people find all of the lost pages stuff?
Where they where can they find you?
So we have a generic homepage which is very bare and it's lost
pages.co.uk. The shop is at
shop.lostpages.co.uk. We are on Blue Sky.
I think I'm lost Pages or Lost Paulo there.
I'm lost Paulo on Twitter and Lost Pages was taken already and
on Instagram my page is lost and I'm trying to put some more
content on Instagram because I feel it's a platform that has a
bit more traction for our stuff and have a YouTube channel where
there isn't much. It's usually the place where we
put our Kickstarter videos, but there's going to be a new video
on the YouTube channel this week and then going to have the link
to the homepage. We also have a newsletter that
goes out like 3-4 times a year for new titles or for
conventions, things like that. Or before Lasagna Con, which is
my local micro convention where I make 80 portions of lasagna
and we play for an entire weekend.
All the school stuff and board games.
And the newsletter is at dream.lospages.co.uk and there
will be all the links in the homepage and.
Yeah, and, and just just like always, for those listening and
or watching, I will remember as many of those links as I can and
make sure they are in all of the descriptions below.
So make sure you click on those. Just got to say Paolo and and
the Lost pages are one of my favorite publishers out there.
Probably top two or three of the people doing the things that I
love the most. You know, people like people
like lost pages games, omnivorous people that do it for
love and and make them so beautiful are are definitely up
there, especially in this scene. So I just want to thank you for
making awesome stuff and thank you for taking honestly the
months it took for us to finally have this meeting.
But I hope this is the first of many and I just want to say
thank you for coming on. Thank you for having me.
Thank you very much. I'll be up.
I'll be back very soon. Awesome.
So yeah, click on the links below, make sure grab some lost
pages and we will see all of you later.
Bye. Bye.