Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan and today we have a very special guest with
us that is Phil from One D 10 + 5.
How's it going, Phil? Yeah, pretty good.
It's it's evening here so just chilling out and looking forward
to see where we go here. Yeah, we, we, we've said this
before. I'm a night shifter.
I think this is stream knows that well enough.
But your evening is my evening. My time is very much.
It's basically do you CTBSTBT which one is?
GMT. GMT.
BST as well in the summer. And then our, our times, our
daylight savings time goes back in an hour or so.
Like this month, I'm like, I have to make sure every time we
get on, it's the right time because like, I know one of
these times we're going to set something up, but it's going to
be an hour late. But regardless, happy to have
you here for, for those that might not know you, what one D
10 + 5 is who, who, who the heck are you?
What? What might they know you for?
So yeah, I guess the thing that I'm probably most well known for
is producing solitary defilement, which is the sort of
solo kind of engine for Merkberg.
It was, yeah, I think it was I sort of got into the Merkberg
thing in in lockdown really, and then kind of shifted into sort
of trying to figure out solo role-playing.
And this is kind of what what came out.
And yeah, I guess we're kind of, I suppose like a lot of people
in this arena are a bit hard up for cash as well.
So decided to make it into a Kickstarter, which kind of did
pretty well. And it's yeah, people have been
requesting it ever since, really.
So I'm really happy that there's going to be a a new reprint with
Max Moon, which I believe has launched today.
So looking forward to seeing how that goes.
And it's obviously going to look very beautiful, as everything
Max does ends up being. Max is Max is one of my favorite
people in the entire world and everything, everything they do
is is is gold. Like I like this entire this is
just a stack now because I've reorganized my stuff.
But my Max moon 12 like 12 year stack just keeps getting bigger
and bigger. And then he also dropped that 12
years box recently, which I think is base is going to be
very similar to the boxes that the new box that are going to be
in, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And they, I think they look great.
I've like all of us, I suppose. I'm a a huge Zine collector of
both role-playing stuff and occult stuff.
And I have AI gave her a lot of work.
So I've got about a billion little church guide books as
well. So I'm always looking for nice
boxes and I've just been playing, you know, I've just
actually re engaged with 12 years over the last week or so.
So now I'm kind of sorely tempted to get that box.
Oh. Well, yeah, I mean, so I have a
so I have a problem. I don't know if you know me, but
I have a problem. I've only taken one out of the
plastic so far because I don't have rooms on the shelf, but I
did happen to get all of them in all four colors.
And yeah, they're they're absolutely stunning.
And as we said, I believe this is similar to the box that that
the new solitary department's going to be in and it's great as
again as everything Max does is great with a magnetic closure
and everything. So I'm very excited to get that
because I do have not one but two solitary department about
this. Do you do you have any idea why
I have two of these? One is did we do 2 printings
already? One's glow in the dark.
As soon as the glow in the dark
dropped, I was like, I have to get this, this is so cool.
So yes, not one, but two of those S Jared of Fivement is a
great is a great game. Again, Max is great.
We'll get to 12 years. Let me write that down on the
note here because obviously we have to talk about that.
But so S Jared of Fivement, you said you got to Mark Borg.
You got in a solo gaming like everyone in their mom got to
Mark Borg. You know, kind of during the
lockdown times it it came in like a battering ram.
But what what was the impetus for actually sitting down,
deciding to make it a role-playing game, and then
going forward from there? Yeah, I guess so.
I'd been out of this whole TTRPGRPG, whatever you want to
call it, scene for a long time. I played as a teenager, then
kind of put my dice away when I went to college.
And then during lockdown, we had a, you know, one of our best
friends had a DND group. So we just started playing DND
with her because it was a great way to, you know, to socialize
and have a bit of fun. And we played lots of board
games and things with her prep prior to that.
And then I guess I was kind of looking a bit beyond D&D.
So I was curious as to what was out there.
And I think around the same time I, I stumbled across the idea of
like, solo role-playing. You know, obviously I grew up in
the 80s with Fighting Fantasy and, you know, all this sort of
Lone Wolf and all those other game books.
But I guess Iron Swan kind of intrigued me.
I tried a bit of for Against Darkness and found it was too
kind of sterile and, you know, sort of on the rails.
But then, yeah, I decided to give Iron Swan a try.
And I think, I think I did that before I picked up my book, but
I was really kind of stunned by Iron Swan again.
I guess like Merkbug, it gives you kind of the most kind of
pithy sketch of what the world is.
But you know, it's loaded with with kind of cues for this sort
of imagination and things. So I remember sort of starting
my first session of that. And once you kind of get into
the kind of idea that you're sort of almost half telling the
story rather than, you know, just responding to dice rolls
and, and stuff it like in in a simple game, it kind of really,
really clicked. And I thought it was quite
powerful. There was a lot of reasons I
thought it was powerful. You know, there was kind of a,
you know, it had kind of woven a whole narrative for me, like
about family conflicts and things that backgrounded my my
kind of little campaign. I found that also there was
something very powerful there because, you know, I found I
could, after playing a session, you know, I might be sort of
lying in bed that night thinking back about it and, you know,
being able to visualize the landscape and environment and
the geography and things, you know, in sort of real detail.
So I thought, you know, that's quite powerful, you know,
relates a lot to sort of some of these sort of esoteric practices
that I've been engaged with since kind of my teens.
So, you know, I thought there's really kind of something here.
So when it came to picking up Merkberg and you know, being
just really impressed with the whole vibe and as I said, you
know, just this the way the world is described in such scant
but kind of powerful terms, you know, I thought I have to kind
of at least try to do something with this on a solo level as
well as roping in my friends to play it.
So yeah, the first draft of Solitude Environment was pretty
crap. So, you know, it was again quite
kind of mechanical, but I suppose just gently kind of
introducing some of that Iron Swan mechanic, I felt like kind
of made everything really click. So, you know, the basic mechanic
for Iron Swan is you kind of do a test and you roll 2D10 and if
both of the dice pass the test, it's a strong outcome.
If both of them fail, then it's a an abject failure.
And if one of them passes, then it's the kind of reasonable sort
of outcome perhaps of drawbacks. So, so I guess the situation
that you could do that in is, you know, if you're trying to
persuade someone to follow you, a strong hit or a pass on both
dies, they will definitely follow you.
Maybe they'll even walk ahead. The if one dies fails, maybe
that means they'll follow you grudgingly at a distance.
And then if both dies fail and they won't follow you.
So it's a really nice way of just spinning out stories beyond
binary success fail kind of approach.
So Iron Swan, that Iron Swan there is like a little bit more
complex because you've got a series of like moves.
And I guess I did kind of bring those into solitary development,
but with things like camping and and so on and fleeing from
combat. But that, you know, on in Iron
Swan, the moves again, are much more structured and often
they're, they're focused on introducing A twist into the
plot or something like that. So I just essentially reduced
most of the the possibilities of what you will do in the game
into just a general adventuring move where, you know, you decide
what you're doing, make the appropriate attribute test.
Is it a strong success, weak success or a failure?
And I found that kind of, yeah, just kind of playing with that
idea. And so it's kind of worked out
really well. And initially, you know, I was
pretty much doing the sort of journaling sort of approach to
sort of say low TTRPGS where you do your thing and write down
what happens. And I think that's a great way
of working with it because it's quite literary.
It's really evocative. You certainly remember things
better because you're writing them down, but I've also
experimented just with a bit more of a free form approach,
just having, you know, maps and, and, and notepads and, and just
kind of, you know, rehearsing what goes on in my imagination.
I don't find it quite as immersive, but the game
certainly plays a lot quicker. But I, I put it on itch
initially in, you know, a pretty rough and ready version and was
really just kind of impressed by how many people kind of, you
know, downloaded it, gave positive feedback and stuff.
So I began kind of tidying it up and introducing a bit of
graphics and, and better typesetting.
You know, I know it's still probably in layout terms, it's
obviously a far cry from kind of anarchic kind of layout, but I
also wanted something that I was like an easy reference as well.
Yeah. So I think it's kind of, you
know, the best of both worlds. All I would like to maybe one
day bring it all together in a single hard bike volume with
some jazzy graphic design. But yeah, I think I just found
it very compelling, very, you know, just to kind of get lost
in these campaigns. And, you know, obviously the
background to this happening was the COVID lockdowns and things.
And I guess that was, it seems to be a real watershed for a lot
of solo TTRPG stuff, you know, people not being able to connect
with their groups or connect with their groups in the same
way. And yeah, I think, I don't think
I would have engaged with it though, if it wasn't for that
Mokbog third party license as well as the kind of, you know,
not only is the world, I guess is Mokbog pretty skeletal, but
the rules are as well. I really didn't have time, you
know, to learn lots of law, learn lots of rules.
You know, the game just fit perfectly with what I wanted,
what time I had. And that third party license,
you know, just being so flexible with what you can do.
I think it's really, really kind of encouraged something
extremely special. And it's, it's kind of, you
know, been interesting to see how many similar licenses people
have put out there since. And you know, I think that the
kind of, you know, thing about, you know, there was lots that
appealed in the license, you know, particularly kind of the
kind of no bigots, no bigoted material thing as well.
Because obviously with a setting like that, it could descend into
kind of a lot of sort of edge load kind of stuff.
But I think that it's just resorted in a really kind of
vibrant community. And I'm glad that it's not kind
of, you know, it still seems to be pretty strong.
It's not kind of just fizzled out after COVID as well.
So yeah, I mean, one of the things I also thought was very
appealing about Mokburg during that pandemic time was that, you
know, the whole apocalyptic slant, you know, yeah, people
might want to kind of just pretend something else is
happening, get on with, you know, something else.
But I think also, you know, some people just want to kind of
wallow. Stuff you know.
We're we're a generation that's grown up with, you know,
constant threats about ecological collapse and, and
things like that as well. So I think it, you know, I think
it kind of really hit something actually deeper than, you know,
just the kind of aesthetics. So yeah, there we are.
Yeah, no, I mean, especially that last bit.
I've definitely always been the kind of person when I'm sad, I
listen to sad music, you know what I mean?
Like I don't go outside. I don't want to be happy.
I well, I need to work through it and the best way to work
through it is to, you know, expose yourself to it deeply.
So yeah, Merk Borg hit. I mean the Kickstarter, what I
think was like mid 2020, wasn't it?
Like it it, it dropped. I mean, I've.
So I have a lot of notes now for questions, but but yeah, you
know, Mark Borg hit and and I think there's a lot of people, I
think it hit the industry or hit this hit this niche in a lot of
ways that people don't really see or don't really like see.
And and you touched on a lot of them, like the license itself,
obviously, you know, there's CCBY and like all these other
license that people have been able to publish under for a long
time, but a lot of games don't like you should be paid for your
work, right? But if you look at games like
Karen and Mauser and things like that, where the game is
basically free all the time, the amount of support in the
community that grows from that is enormous.
And Mark Borg, you know, with the third party license said the
same thing. I mean, we got like mugs and
shower curtains and things, but we got, you know, a huge
community making a lot of stuff. And if you look at idiom
Workborg kick starters after you, you know that they made a
lot more money by putting that license out and having a free
version than by trying to pay all the entire thing the entire
time. And I think that that really
opened a lot of people's eyes and pushed a lot of people to
understand that like, you can like make money or you can build
a community that will like bring you money, yes, but like the
community is also a huge part of it too.
So again, I think there's a lot of ways that Mark Borg affected
the, this the TRPG space and people realize not just like
making everybody use CMYK colors on all of their their layouts
and trying to emulate Johannor, but a lot more than that.
And I'm just going to go all the way back to the top of the list.
12 years, you said was one of the inspirations.
And obviously, I mean, so Max is a huge friend of the show,
amazing human being, one of my favorite people in the entire
world. And he reached out and been
like, hey, you should talk to to Phil.
And I was like, absolutely, let's do this thing.
How did you meet or kind of reach out to Max in the 1st
place? Was it after you inspired by 12
years or like because he you're a bit like Max does a lot for
solitary defilement on the maximum game store.
And I don't know if he does that for really anybody else, but
like every time he does something, it's like, you know,
things like this like to the wall for this game.
So obviously you guys are friends.
What kind of precipitated that? Well, I feel very honoured about
the way he's kind of, you know, done a lot of the labour with
producing the new issue issues and things.
You know, I'm very grateful in that respect.
But I was actually kind of thinking about this earlier
today and I can't actually remember how, how we got talking
in the 1st place. I think he must have contacted
me about doing an addition of Solitary, Solitary development.
And maybe that was off the back of me doing the 12 years Quick
Play app kind of on Itch. Because yeah, I think yeah,
that's probably the way it worked.
Although they might be able to correct me if I'm wrong.
But yeah, I kind of discovered Max Min's stuff because I think
through 12 years, I remember that I was actually a an occult
conference on the borders of Wales.
And I was there with my wife and she wanted to listen to this
guy, Christopher Hughes, who's the kind of art steward of
Anglesey do a talk. So I took my kid for a walk
around the gardens of this castle and ended up chasing
Peacocks. And we took a break in a little
grotto. And I was just kind of browsing
my phone and I think it was probably possibly on the dungeon
dive or something in Facebook group and and YouTube, you know,
that I think think is a really great.
I think it was there that I saw a thing about 12 years and I
thought, you know, this actually sounds great.
It had a lot of things that tick boxes.
So I think both Max and I are very interested in the fairies
or the Fae and these kind of ideas of other worlds.
So, you know, I thought I have to check this out, you know, and
actually, yeah, when I got a copy, I was kind of really
entranced. You know, in some ways maybe
it's a little bit like for Against Darkness, you've got a
kind of group and you go on dungeon calls.
But it's such a charming, evocative setting, you know?
And I, I've always been, you know, love those stories about
people going to the fairy land and time passes differently and
they, they come out, you know, and it's, it's years later.
And so, you know, I thought, you know, this is great.
And I think that the way the game has so many kind of twists
of fate is also really good. I mean, some people might say,
oh, this isn't balanced, this is really swingy.
But you know, I feel that that's kind of also something I
actually quite enjoy about Merkberg as well.
And, and in Merkberg, the swinginess is always in the
combat. And it's like, you know, that
means you've got to think of different solutions.
Than just smashing everything over the head, you know.
So I guess it's a little little trickier in a game like 12 years
when there are kind of possibly less things to do than evade or
attack. But yeah, I just love the whole
vibe of it. So I just actually, I just kind
of finished playing a game like Max was saying on on the
appearance earlier that, you know, it's a great kind of
lunchtime kind of game. You can kind of dip in for half
an hour. But the fact that it happens
over 12 years or so kind of feels like it's a kind of epic.
But yeah, I just played a game of the Demon Lord expansion for
the first time. That was a pretty great.
It ended, you know, terribly, of course, one part.
Yeah, I've yet to beat it. I've yet to beat it and and for
the same thing as you said, like I literally have like I think
two or three different travel journals now that I have like
multiple copies in like 1 literally stays in my locker at
work because I'm like I got an hour lunch.
I'm not doing anything today. I'm just going to play some 12
years. So.
But yeah, Deep mood's great. Yeah.
So we kind of yeah. So yeah, my, my games standard
very abruptly because I was on year 10, rolled up a party who
had a magic mushroom, got lost in the fave for 10 years, and
the world ended. But, you know, there you go.
So yeah, one of the kind of reasons I did things like those
quick plays is literally so I could just pull it out of my bag
and use a phone. You know, if I had five minutes,
I was on the bus. And that actually kind of
extends from the way I also digitized the oracles for
solitary defilement, you know, so I didn't need any dice.
I could literally just do the whole thing on my phone with a
notes app as well. You know, I'm always trying to
maximize what I do with my time because I have so little free
time. So yeah, I think it might.
Getting in touch with Max kind of happened, I think via the
sort of 12 years route. But it wasn't necessarily so
much an inspiration for soldier development because that had
already been out, you know, by that time.
But it was an inspiration for Basilisk, which is a sort of
roll and write type game or yeah, in your, in that
incarnation, a kind of, you know, board game type
realization. And it was, yeah, it was really
inspired by the game Dungeon Quest, the old Games Workshop
game. Again, that really appealed to
me because like Mark Berg, you know, it's just one of those
kind of games where there's an insane twist of fate.
You can die on your first turn practically.
It's actually still one of my favorite games.
You know, I don't know if my friends feel necessarily the
same way, but I just love to pull it out because it's just so
ridiculous. You know, how someone could
escape with 50,000 gems and someone can die in like their
second, first or second term. I just love, love that approach.
And also, you know, Games Workshop grew up with that stuff
and love the aesthetics and and all that kind of stuff.
So yeah, Basilisk was basically a kind of merkbug kind of riff
on Dungeon Quest. So you can, if you got to enter
these tunnels and give a petition to the Basilisks to
hopefully at least get your ass out of whatever apocalypse is
coming. But you know, I think the main
influences from 12 years there was that you have a party.
Well, you can generate 5 characters and send them in one
by one. But it also has like an
advantages and disadvantages system.
So, you know, you might have one character who's a nudist who
can't wear any armor or anything and you know, other characters
with other powers. It's actually been a while since
I've played it, but you know, I thought and had a lot of fun
working on it and, and designing it.
And I think so, yeah. And the aim with Basilisk was
also to just produce a game that could fit on two sides of a
four, you know, and be a complete game.
So, you know, it's definitely working within some self-imposed
kind of creative constraints, but I think it turned out like
as a really good game. And I guess the thing about
Basilisk is you can play it in half an hour, whereas with a 12
year session, you know you're looking at several sessions to
actually complete the 12 year period.
No battles is great and the physical edition this is this is
all Max too, right, Like it's the the folder and everything
like the I mean Max loves screen printing stuff and he's and
they're great at it, but this is this is gorgeous.
When this drops. I got he sent me that right
away. I mean you make great stuff.
I'm so glad that, you know, one of the things that I love, so I
love Dark Fort. Like Mark Borg is great and
that's cool, but I really love Dark Fort And a lot of that
obviously comes through in solitary development and, and a
lot of the solo stuff. And I dipped into journaling
solo games a little bit and bounced off of them super hard.
Like I'm just my ADHD is too bad to sit and like write that much
at one time and focus on it. And 12 years is the game that
got me into like solo, solo like adventure gaming, I guess.
And I'm going to be obsessed with it forever.
But it's it's great for, you know, all the reasons you said.
Like honestly, like if I'm just like hanging out somewhere, like
a lot of times I'll leave a copy of it in my car.
If I'm going to go to a doctor's appointment or something and I
got to sit there for 30 minutes, I can just open up a journal and
start playing the game. And it's so much fun.
And you know, you mentioned balance and stuff.
I'm like, I couldn't possibly care less.
Like I think we all played solitaire when we were younger
or older or whatever. Like, you know, especially on
the early computers when you had that and like Minecraft, like
the mind game or whatever, you never win.
Like it's so rare that you win solitaire.
But no, there weren't like I don't think that they were like
Twitter and Reddit threads about like how unbalanced solitaire is
and how you can't win. So like I like when it all dies,
it's hysterical to me. You know, I get to put up a
little tombstones, come, come loot corpses later, you know,
right up their obituaries in the back and, and move forward.
So you know that that's one of the things I really loved about
it. And, and both solitaire
development and bass are just such fun games, you know, like,
you know, for the reasons you said and, and, and more and, you
know, and on top of the fact that one of my favorite people
in the world gets to make them, so I get to own things that they
make that are also really cool is is really fun so.
I was in, yeah. What you said about kind of when
you were younger playing solitary, that actually just
triggered a, an old memory that, you know, when I was like 1314,
I was obsessed with like playing Advanced Hero Quest, the
solitaire rendition. So you know, it's basically kind
of, I guess it was built. It was so unlike regular Hero
Quest, it was basically built on like the Warhammer Fantasy
role-playing kind of engine. But you know, what I thought was
great about that was that it did have this dungeon generator and,
you know, I would just stay up till like 1:00 in the morning
quietly rolling dust, seeing where my heroes were going and
kind of playing out this kind of epic campaign, you know, for
like months in my in my head. So yeah, that was great.
And I guess Games Workshop did also dip into some of that more
solo focused stuff with stuff like Chainsaw Warrior and stuff
which I remember also enjoying quite a bit.
You know what's crazy? So I, I'm, I'm so deep in
Warhammer right now, but I only really got into like the
beginning of the year. And if I, if I think about how
much money I've spent on Warhammer novels, I would pass
out again. I have a problem, right?
But we're, we're actually going to be starting up a Warhammer
fantasy 2E role-playing stream soon.
Like I really want to do a lot of the stuff, but I've been
finding some of the older games that they did like they had like
these Warhammer warriors games or it's like a 1V1 game.
I don't know if you saw those really great.
You got to look into them, but so I'm now I'm deep diving these
things that you're talking about, like all of these really
cool games, works up stuff that they did before and man, they've
been killing it for a long time. Oh, yeah.
And I think one of the things that I also didn't kind of carry
forward from that era in sort of some of my own stuff is like
that the Games Workshop stuff in the 80s and 90s, it was so like
political and satirical, you know, And I don't know if I've
not really engaged with any of it, you know, in the present.
I don't know if that thread has kind of been lost or or, you
know, not kind of really taken on board by kind of new
generations. But I think the first kind of
Warhammer supplement I ever got was Mac Death.
And that has a whole like satire about kind of the miners strike
and things going on, you know, that kind of, I didn't know
anything about that. You know, it's like a kid.
But, you know, it made me find out about that.
And it was quite cool how people were bringing, you know, these
ideas kind of blurring the line between fantasy and reality or,
you know, kind of, you know, that sort of thing in the game.
So I think some of that stuff kind of also appears in some
aspects of solitary development. It certainly appears in my own
games of Merkbug that I run with, with a group, with groups,
you know, where I imagine that King Fathmu is kind of like some
kind of Perubu type character or Boris Johnson character.
You know, the Shadow King is just kind of a misanthropic
sadist who you know, even the most vile acts no longer excite
them and that sort of thing. But you know, some of that stuff
also comes through in the adventures that came a sultry
defilement, sort of like in Aqua Mortis where you sort of you're
trying to escape from the tunnels of the the Shadow King.
And the final kind of stage, you reach a picket line at the sewer
Workers Union and you've got to decide whether you smash smash
them or whether you wait for the strike breaker to come and join
them. You know, so I thought, you
know, I like to add, add kind of little bits and pieces like that
in. And, you know, I think there's
also something that's another kind of thing that I think is
kind of actually integral to, to Merkbug.
You know, it's often all, you know, aside from this sort of
wretched royal who's like a, you know, a caricature of the rich.
You know, most of it is about punching up.
You play reprobates, you know, you play the the drags of
society and you know, you've got to kind of survive and the law
is hassling you and all that sort of stuff.
I guess that also plays out in things like Dungeon Degenerates
as well, which has become one of my favorite games over the last
few months. So yeah, I really like that that
there's kind of a little bit of a kind of class sort of critique
kind of element going on in Warhammer, in Merkberg, Dungeon
Degenerates and all that, sort of.
Yeah, it's interesting because like I've, I'm drawn to all the
same things that you're drawn to, especially dungeon generates
is great. I don't know if you played like
this game from Dark Castle, but that's also really good.
Not quite as quite satire in it, but I love it so much.
But yeah, it's interesting. Oh, go.
I was just going to say that was actually the game that got me
back into this whole area as well.
You know, just obviously lockdown broke me kind of back
into RPGs, but it was visiting my friend Mark Cole Kington,
who's a publisher runs a thing called Stranger Track to Press.
And he pulled out that castle and was like, you know, we've
got to play this. It's just like, you know, was
blown away by the atmosphere. You know, the, the cards just so
much evoked those old 80s role-playing, you know, game
books and stuff. And you know, immediately went
out, bought a copy and played it with my wife quite a lot and
then got all the expansions and the big box.
Yeah. And then dark sector drop and
I'm like, I don't even like space that much, but I got to
get all that too, yeah. I mean, I've only got, I've only
got the core and one expansion for Dark Sector and I've never,
I've never even beaten it. I found it much more difficult
to play, but definitely Escape from Dark Castle playing that
was kind of real watershed moment.
And the fact that it's so easy as well, you can introduce kind
of non gamers to it and it only lasts half an hour.
You know, it's kind of really the perfect introductory game.
It's, it's so good because you, I mean, and you can bring in
like rope, like RPG elements into it more too, for that, for
that kind of table. And just, yeah, like I've played
it with people that have never, that have never even heard of
D&D or anything like that. And, and got them to start
getting into teach RPGs because of that game and, and the
introduction to it. And like the first time I saw
it, I'm like, I got to get this. The first time I got it, I was
like, damn it. Now I have the vinyl and the
tapes and like all the, yeah, the big box, the expansion, the
T-shirts, like, yeah. So yeah, kind of went, kind of
went hard on that. But slight dip into the politics
stuff. I will say, like, I love, I love
where I'm, I wish I would have found it as a kid versus a lot
of the stuff. I mean, I read a lot of books
and they were great, but Warhammer art is amazing.
But it, it shocks me how many people, like, I don't know,
don't get it. Like they don't get the satire
of like space Nazis, like murdering, like casinos and
stuff. And I'm just like, they're not
right. They're all wrong.
This is one reason I love Chaos more than anything, because
they're all genocidal psychopaths.
But like Chaos is honest about it.
You know what I mean? Like they're like, we're the bad
guys. That's fine.
We're doing literally the same things.
But anyway, so solidarity department box set.
I believe you said it dropped today.
I mean, I know it's out because before stream I was like, shit,
wait a minute, when does that drop?
And I click the links, Max and the disc one, I was like, it's
here now and I like bought 1 real quick, but that is that is
the thing. Oh yeah, let me bring up at
least this banner page that that that Max put here because it is
gorgeous. So the box set, talk to us about
like what people are going to get from this new beautiful box
set. Yeah.
So you get obviously the kind of core solitary department book
which has it's pretty much kind of just explains the basic kind
of role mechanics and love it is constituted by oracles.
But again, I think, you know, people have kind of said, oh,
there's not enough oracles. But I mean, personally, I think
there's there's plenty, you know, it's just I don't like
that. You know, if you do get the mass
too many, then you, you know, and you get that one that's like
100 village situations, you know, then it just keeps coming
up and it's like, I want to riff on this, you know.
So I think with the design of the oracles, just if I've I, I
know I'm going to, I'm going to talk about what's in this book
set, but just to go off on a tangent.
Go for it. Please do.
It's a team of the. Show one of the things that
really kind of struck me about Noor's rock black sludge
adventure is how often instead of going for straight for visual
descriptions of the spaces, it will tell you how something
smells or feels you know so it's got this kind of element in
solitary developments. I call it sensorium because I
think that is like, you know, obviously we we think visually a
lot and when we think about role-playing games, we're often
thinking about the kind of you know, mental imagery and things.
But I think that engaging with this sensorium is actually makes
it much more immersive, you know, and embodied because
you're thinking about your other senses.
So I think often instead of an Oracle kind of immediately
giving you a situation, when I'm playing it, I like to
concentrate more on the sensorium like, you know, to
look on those tables, think, you know, how's this smelling or
what's that sound? And then use those as cues to
kind of them develop kind of what happens after.
So for me actually amongst the oracles, it's kind of like the
sense stuff is, is actually probably the most important to
me in many ways. But yeah, you've also got kind
of tables of NPCS, you've got a kind of travelling loop as well.
And a lot of people said that was really useful like to think
about in terms of how how how a merkboard day kind of works or
how travelling works even in their own kind of tabletop
games. And you've also sort of got a
dungeon crawling system which is based on the idea of kind of
hitting a number of kind of waypoints.
So in the actual little leaflets that come with it, it usually
gives you like four kind of what's called special rooms
which structure the adventure. But what happens between those
is completely chance or random or part of your storytelling and
engagement with this, the system of strong and weak hits.
So it might mean that when you reach one of those kind of
staged parts, actually the whole environment could be completely
different. You know, you could have
completely offended things or you know.
So I think that I played the Shadow Clink Adventure so many
times, like while writing it and testing it every time was a kind
of whole different experience, despite the being, you know, a
kind of semi structured approach to it.
So I really like that approach to kind of creating solo
modules. So I'll talk a bit more about
what those are or what the themes are in a bit.
But yeah, then I guess you've also got concepts like micro
crawls where it's, again, I guess there's a possible year, a
resonance with 12 years, even though I thought about this
before I'd engaged with 12 years.
But a micro crawl is like, oh, you're going through a tunnel in
a hill. You know, you don't necessarily
want a whole dungeon. You want one to four encounters,
basically one to four spaces. So the micro crawl kind of
allows you just to quickly do that.
And the whole thing I think is focused actually on, you know,
not kind of getting too bogged down and planning everything,
but just kind of reacting, kind of telling the story and seeing
where it spins. And I think that's a lot easier
to do in workbook, again, because it's not so loaded with
mechanics or law, you know, pretty much anything can go.
So I think it works really well in that respect.
There's also quite a significant kind of playthrough example,
which shows you exactly how everything works and fits
together. Amongst the PDFs that I made
available with the full digital edition of Solitary Development,
there's actually a book dedicated to playthroughs as
well that has playthroughs of Shadow Clink and one of the
adventures. There's a mini adventure in the
supplement Alone in the Crowd as well, which is a kind of city
crawling adventure. And I even looked at ways that.
You can actually take a MacBook adventure that's pre-existing
and kind of also abstract it into this four special rooms
kind of formula. So there's also a play
throughout there of a kind of radically different take on rock
black sludge where, you know, I took 4 four key areas and then
kind of generated a lot of other stuff around it.
So yeah, you get the core book. You also get this book called
Alone in the Crowd, which is a city crawling kind of
compendium, or you know, it goes from the smallest kind of hamlet
or settlement to, you know, city level.
And it's just full of oracles and encounter tables and that
kind of thing to kind of try and flesh out what's going on in a
city. So there's an adventure in there
as well called Chalice of Ruin, where you've got to kind of
essentially poison someone using a sort of cursed chalice.
But again, it's like a city crawl, but it's structured on
this kind of four or in this case 3 special areas.
So you're kind of wandering through the city looking for a
contact and then I think going into some kind of games and
catacombs and then eventually fight like sneaking into the
House of your target and things. So I kind of like, I like doing
those kind of little modules as well as playing more free form
because it's sometimes it's nice to have very definite aims and
and things. And I find them really kind of
rewarding to write. So yeah, the you not only get,
of course, alone in the crowd in the core book, but there's four
of these modules. So there's this one called
Shadow Clink, where you kind of escaping from the dungeon of the
Shadow King after being wrongly or probably possibly rightly
imprisoned. Once you kind of escape, that
actually does lead on to a second adventure called That
Commotus, where you kind of escape into the sewers and you
got to get out of there. And there's also a couple of
other ones. There's one called Park Pale.
This was actually inspired by some of my kind of work in the
kind of occult area. So in this adventure, you're
kind of trying to hunt down to necromancers, to kind of
aristocratic necromancers who who have made that, who are kind
of doing experiments and in this kind of in their kind of country
house, in the grounds of their country house.
So this was actually inspired by some work that I was doing
around a guy called Humphrey Gilbert, who was Walter
Raleigh's half brother. And he was a real colonial
bastard. Basically, he was part of the
Tudor kind of colonizations of Ireland, you know, did some
absolutely abysmal, despicable, cruel things to the Irish.
You know, you'd like, you know, cut off all the heads of the man
and things just to make a statement.
And then kind of he went back to, he was sent back to England
with some dispatches for Queen Elizabeth.
And he took a little sabbatical when he decided that what he'd
do would be basically go to a shed in his garden with his
friend John Davies and try and conjure the Princess of Hell.
So I basically came across, or sort of came across Humphrey
Gilbert's Diaries of this magical working.
So it's extremely rare to come across things from that period.
I think John Dee's records of his scrying and Angel
experiments, you know, that's the most complete.
I mean, much of this stuff wasn't written down or has been
lost for one reason or another. So it was amazing to actually
find the whole record of, you know, this magical ritual or
like, it's actually a series of workings over several weeks that
had happened. So that kind of I did a
transcription of that and wrote some kind of commentaries on it
with my friend Al Cummings, Doctor Al Cummins.
And that was published about in about 2020.
But this kind of really riffs on that story.
You know, you can come in to kind of deal some pain to these
kind of really despicable necromancers.
So that's part pale and tragic. Catalog session is a kind of was
a new addition to the set with the last printing.
It's really inspired by the kind of black metal band Old Nick.
I don't know if you've ever come across them.
Their music sounds, yeah, it sounds like kind of umpire bands
and dance music and all sorts of stuff kind of makes with black
metal. It's extremely stupid, you know.
And there's a whole album which is just obsessed with vampires.
So they've kind of carried on into this, this adventure where
the tagline is vampires, vampires, vampires, everything
is a vampire, even your water skin, because there's this kind
of cursed moon that can actually make anything into a vampire.
So I had a lot of fun also writing that.
And this one, it was actually done as a full adventure.
Yeah, a chat book by Max Moon. So this is more kind of laid out
in this sort of rock black sludge type vein and actually
this kind of adventure was it was really the output of a solo
solitary definement session. I find that doing that is
actually a really good way to come up with situations and
ideas. So you know, I thought, OK, I'm
going to do this session where I'm kind of exploring a vampire
castle. Let's kind of see how this goes.
And then eventually, you know, the many of the best parts kind
of worked their way into the adventure and like I was talking
about taking rock black sludge and reducing it to this kind of
four special rooms type approach.
That's kind of exactly what happens in the additional
pamphlet for solitary development to ask you.
That was the question I. Was going to ask is I have I
have both of them obviously because again problem so the the
newer version because I know this did come with the second
box that not the first box that because the second box that all
of them are on this like like thick textured paper.
I got to say so this is a filing down of this not vice versa.
You didn't this guy down it didn't go up.
I mean, it's quite, it's quite I.
Guess weird like this. You know, the adventure version
kind of came out of a it's playing a solitary Parliament
session. Yeah.
And then it was boiled down actually into another.
We got levels to this. That's cool because like, again,
like you said, like with with rock black sludge, like any
adventure, if you if you take out the key parts and then put
like the the the random parts in between, you can turn into
something. So it makes sense kind of in
that context that you would go down or like boil down versus
like expand up from from that, because they're great and the
cover is is stunning on on both of them.
But again, on the the newer version or the the boiled down,
just kind of like, you know, one paid version, like one full paid
version. It's it's great.
And and again, the cover absolutely slaps.
Oh, thank you. Yeah, I.
Drew that like just on a a morning before going to work.
I think so. You're, you're, you're.
You're. I don't know if you've.
Touched on your music, but you're you're.
You're an academic that finds like the writings of like, you
know, people trying to some of the demons of hell.
Musician, teach, RPG writer, artist, kind of a little, kind
of get a little bit of everything, huh.
Yeah. I mean.
I have incredible imposter syndrome, so I don't think I'm
any good at any of them. But you know, I'm glad to just
know that I enjoy it. I enjoy everything.
I've got from you, so I I appreciate it.
I was just going to say there is one more element.
Of the book set, which is Records of Ruin, which is
basically your sort of campaign journal, which has, yeah,
entries for kind of dungeon crawl, city crawl, kind of main
map and these kind of Rd. maps. This was actually also inspired
by looking at 17th century kind of atlases.
So there was one that it gives, I can't remember what it was
called, but it gives like the routes to every kind of like
market town. And they're always drawn in
these kind of roles, like showing the road to where you're
going, kind of going down and you know, the turnings for the
different cities and the landmarks you'll see on your
way. So I thought instead of doing
like hex crawl or that kind of thing, that I would kind of
imitate that by doing these sort of Rd. maps when you do your
traveling. But of course, you can do a hex
scroll if you want. I'm not not averse to that.
And you know, people have produced some really great hex
crawl stuff, I think. Was it Paolo you had on the show
a while ago? You know, that that guide to the
dying lands, you know, I think looks, looks incredible.
And I, I look forward to seeing how that works with solitary
development. Yeah, they do.
A a bunch of amazing stuff on with I mean, heretic to the
dying The the the yeah, the guy the heretic side of the guy
dying lens is the one that you're talking about, right?
Yeah, but they've, I mean. Korborg and like all the.
Stuff the the people that the Corp Mark Borg people that are
still doing work work stuff have so much more to do.
It's crazy, you know, because there was this big like, I don't
know, a lot of a lot of output of like third party stuff that
was like very like supplements and like little bits and pieces
and stuff like that. But then some of the stuff like
pobble stuff and like your stuff like the, the, that really kind
of like settled in and then became a thing that other people
like the second generation of things that people were building
off of is just so great. And seeing this kind of stuff or
the, or the the heretics guide stuff is, is amazing to see.
And like you said, like, it's not like it just happened in the
Merkboard community faded away. Like there's a really strong,
you know, current of it still moving forward.
So there's actually a question to chat real quick.
So I'm going to ask, would you ever consider working on a
Merkboard solitary definement? I guess there's been some third
party attempts, but it says 1 gets close, but some of the
references, like they're not quite getting it right.
Like have you thought about doing a Cyborg solitary
definement? Yeah, yeah.
I mean I I. I was actually looking for my
notes on my phone earlier and I saw, yeah, there is there is one
in there called Silentry definement.
But I think basically my parents had some health issues and then
I kind of had to pause my PhD. And then when that was resolved,
I was just fully into the PhD then.
Now that's finished. I'm kind of like trying to carve
out a little research area. So I mean, it's something I'd
really like to do, but unfortunately, I don't think
I've got the time right now, you know?
Yeah, bring on another lockdown, see what happens.
OK, Now listen. Hello.
Now I will say if there's any silver cloud that came out of
just that awful time and the health crisis that struck the
entire world still happening now in the TRPG space, like you
said, the number of solo games, but not even just solo games,
but games in general. The kind of TRPG movement that
happened after it very much based on I I can do anything,
but I can't do anything but like be in my head and, and maybe
this is the time where I can finally sit down and get done
with this thing that I have. There is definitely like a a pre
COVID and post COVID indie scene, especially in like you
said, solo games, But there's a lot of things there's there's a
lot of games now that are kind of staples that came from that.
So if there is any silver lining at all, at least in this space,
it is the the amount of creative output that came from being
forced inside. Oh yeah.
And I think it. It, you know, yeah, it was, I
guess, a very isolating time. You know, I felt, you know, went
through some fairly down patches.
But yeah, like you say, a lot has actually come out of it.
And also in music, you know, I was talking to some record
producers and studio owners that conference a while ago.
And again, they're saying they're still actually dealing
with people's creativity that came out of that, that, that
thing, you know, because people started, you know, playing audio
interfaces, recording their album at home.
And now, you know, they're still kind of just finishing these
things, tinkering them, bringing them into studios for that kind
of last bit of Polish and kind of validation from an actual
kind of engineer. So yeah, it's it changed so
much. And you know, I guess also as a
teacher, I'm still feeling the effects of that on my students.
So yeah, kind of maybe it was a bit of a flippant comment, but
but certainly, you know, also changed my whole relationship
with this spare. I was also kind of asked by
Limnethrone to do a kind of pirate Vogue version, which I
kind of, again, time just didn't allow.
But I got into that. And, you know, I was framing it
as like a manuscript that had been discovered in a kind of
drifting kind of sea vessel because the captain had been so
busy playing, something terrible had happened.
And he's just like, oh, wait, what?
What's going on? That that's fantastic.
I mean, it sounds like you have like way too many irons in the
fire, but hopefully these are these are ones that might
eventually get put in there as well.
Because again, I mean, it doesn't seem like Max is going
to slow down on putting your stuff out.
This is going to be the third box set of solitary defilement.
So if I had someone that was willing to to put out such
gorgeous versions of my work, I would I would have to keep it on
the back of my mind at some point too.
So But yeah, so so the answer in chat maybe, maybe, maybe
eventually, you know, and I. Will say like very like I jump
between things all the time and you know, I really loved like
Cyborg, you know, it's just such a great production and the
graphics are brilliant and but I've not really had time to kind
of get my teeth into it and it's the kind of just a tiny bit more
complicated than MacBook. So it is it it definitely is.
We we played. Both.
We played both a lot on stream and Cyborg definitely has it's
it's denser. It is it's it's still not like
rules medium by any stretch. It's not AD and D.
It's not even like 5AD and D, but it's it definitely adds a
little bit more. I personally prefer Merck Borg
cybergs. Cool, but I'll take, you know,
picking my nose until it bleeds and like, stabbing goblins and
stuff in the apocalypse any day. And I'll stay away from the tech
stuff. Yeah, I mean, I.
Think again. It looks great also because it
does have that kind of was a slightly kind of political kind
of edge to it as well. And I think this stuff was
slightly. Kind of miseries is.
Great, You know, like it's all kind of about geopolitical stuff
and things. You know, I think, you know, I
read and I think, wow, this could be like a fantastic
campaign if I ever have time. Well, I think, I think if I'm
not. Mistaken.
There's only like 1 true rule on the game and that's that you
can't be basically like working for directly or like being
allied with like the cops, the corps or like the government or
anything like that. And I'm like, I mean, we could
just. That could just be real life.
But like, anyway, yeah, a little bit of political overtones in
that one, but the. Box set it.
Is up. I mean I don't know when it
dropped. It is on the Maximum Game store
right now. I think it was just this
morning, like a few hours ago. Really.
Well then, Perfect. So so.
If you're listening to this go buy it.
This is the pre-order it is for the entire box set with
everything included. It's $75 plus shipping and then
for just the empty box full of nothing but hope it says it is
$20.00 for the box plus shipping for everything.
Unless you can go pick it up locally.
It's it's stunning. If you are in podcast land, go
go to maximum games, go find this.
We'll make sure that the link directly to the box that is in
the description stuff below. But my goodness.
So did you and Max work on like so I actually got to see some of
the previews for this. Max asked for some insight and I
was like, holy shit, that's awesome.
So did you guys work on the design for this together?
Was it was it Max mostly or Max? Yeah, I mean.
It's great that Max is incredibly proactive because
half this stuff would not get done if the ball was in my
court. So yeah, Max kind of came to me
with the sort of idea about the box.
And, you know, I thought it looked, it looked great.
You know, we he sent a few kind of images and we kind of, you
know, asked for my input. So, you know, I'm always happy
to give that. And I think we kind of zeroed
down on the kind of praying skeleton kind of thing.
I think, you know, it is quite funny that I'd actually sent him
a postcard with that image on in at some point in the past.
And then, I don't know, he rediscovered that as well after
kind of we fixed this box design.
And yeah, I think we talked about kind of, you know, I think
just things about the layout of the text and stuff.
But, you know, I think he's really great strong kind of
graphic designer as well. I do a lot of of stuff kind of
in that area, you know, design gig posters and album art and
things. But, you know, I think that he
does it really well for his stuff.
And, you know, it always looks great when it comes out of the
screen printing process. And, you know, I'm a big fan of
screen printing. Just the texture of the ink and
the paper and things, you know, I think it's all great.
So yeah, I'm sure it's going to be look, yeah, when I grow up,
only be Max Moon. Is kind of what I figured out.
I started getting into book binding recently.
Definitely a lot of inspired by the book binding that they do
and screen printing is always in the back of my Brian.
So anytime I do something I'm just like, hey Max, how do I do
this? He's like, here's a cool book
and it'll be great. All right, I got it.
But yeah, the prank skeleton's great.
I love like the morning skeleton on the side of the box too, just
like head in the hand instead of towards the sky like it's it's
just vibes all day and just with that like bright gold on it, It
looks absolutely stunning. So definitely do not want to
miss this. I know it's a pre-order.
I I highly doubt there's a limit.
I don't think Max is going to do like a million of them, but that
would be dope. But you definitely want to go
snag this and if you don't have the the previous stuff from the
box, again, worth, definitely worth grabbing.
And while you're there, you know, if if basilisk or anything
else from Wendy 10 is on the Max moon shop, just grab that and
you can just stuff it all in the box.
That's that's my plan. I don't here's the thing.
It's like, I don't know, like I'm going to have three solitary
deployment boxes, but I'm just going to like stack the one up
this way and these this way so I can see all the covers in the
glow in the dark. So very excited.
So again, this is out on Max Moon games again, I'll put the
link below. But as far as where Bass Lisk is
where I mean so much stuff that we didn't even talk about with a
quick flip through here. We didn't talk about a painful
at all. We didn't go through like a ton
of the generators. You do.
I know we touched on briefly that 12 years you do the
generator for that, but there's way more on.
So if you go to the one D10, where can people find your
stuff? Yeah.
So it's. Mainly H really, that's my only
presence at the moment. So because it doesn't allow you
to put a plus in your username, it's just one D105 dot H dot IO.
But I'm sure if you search solitary department and H,
you'll kind of find it. So yeah, that's kind of pretty
much where I'm just archiving everything that I produce,
really. So you can download also like
the sort of demo version of Solitary Definement, which gives
you the call book and the Shadow Clink adventure to kind of dip
in. And there's a bunch of the stuff
on there. Yeah, lots of generators to
support Merkburg and other projects like the Pain Flail and
Basilisk and some of the stuff I've done for the game Fallen,
which is a kind of gothic horror I'm very into.
So yeah, one thing I meant to ask at the top.
And I completely I forgot on I know I know that we I mentioned
in discord the other night. But if you want to say like why
one D 10 + 5? Yeah, it just came out of those
D&D sessions that I was playing with my my friend Emily and my
wife Layla, and I just had something that was like 1 D 10 +
5 damage. And I thought that just looks
like the word idiots. So when it came to, you know,
putting out my first bit of Merkbug content, which was it
was just for the folklore jam. I can't remember who was kind of
producing that jam, though. It's really bad.
But you know, I thought, Oh yeah, Merkbug, I'm really into
that. And I'm also really into
folklore. It's been a major kind of
musical kind of or in part of my music for a long time.
So I was like, Oh yeah, I've got to got to create some stuff for
that. But of course I was kind of
stuck for a name. So I just kind of typed that in
not, not expecting to do more than one or two little bits of
modeboard content. So I wasn't really thinking,
thinking it through very deeply. But now it's great.
Oh, there you go. It's funny because right next to
me like. I I so my ADHD is awful.
I have like whiteboards and pretty much all of my rooms.
So I can just like keep notes and I'll have the same notes on
all of them to remind me. And my payment chip is terrible.
So I wrote like all this thing I'm supposed to do and I wrote
one D 10 + 5 and like, do the overlay, do this, do that.
And my payment was so bad. I came back to it like two days
later and I was like, why did I write idiots on the board?
I don't understand what this is. And then I was like, oh, wait,
no, that's one D 10 + 5. And that's when I messaged you
in Discord and it was like, Hey, did you know it says this and
you're like, yes, that's why I did it.
So that's great. That's awesome.
So hey, listen, I'm, I'm so glad that you came on the show.
It was fantastic talking to you. I feel like I could talk to you
for like 3 more hours. We again, we didn't touch on
painful at all. We didn't touch about your
academia at all. So next time you're doing
something, you know, hit us up. I mean, we're Discord friends
now and we'd love to have you back on the show and talk about
more of your projects. But yeah, it was an absolute
pleasure getting a chance to talk to you.
Maybe Hannah will get to be in on the next one.
But again, everyone listening, go buy this game.
It's a fantastic game put out by two fantastic people and it
looks fantastic. So again, the links will be
below and thank you so much for being here.
Thank you very much, Ryan. Been great to talk to you.
I'll catch you later. Bye everybody, we'll be done
for. The day, have a good one.
Bye.