Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan. And I'm two escaping psychics in
the trench coat. And joining us today, we have
Logan Dean. How's it going today, Logan?
What's up, dude? Good, I guess.
Yeah, that's fine. Everything's fine.
Right. Everything's just wonderful.
The world's completely fine. Everything's good.
We're every. We're gravy.
Yeah, I'm 2 1/2 miles underground.
Here we go. Perfect.
Like one of those buggers from Lost.
There you go. I never watched Lost.
I'm glad I hit. A little button every time the
number gets too low so it flips back up, you know?
So. So for those out there that
might not know who the heck Logan Dean is, who the heck is
Logan Dean? Oh, I'm Logan.
That's me. I don't even know what I do
anymore, honestly. Like I'm still making stuff, but
mostly I'm just doing contracting.
So like, I do a lot of Kickstarter coordination,
Chinese manufacturing, shipping, freight, logistics.
I'm like the guy who does all the stuff nobody wants to do
anymore. So somebody said I was like a
gunslinger the other day and I thought that was pretty cool.
I've been using the term Soldier of Fortune for a while.
I mean, it's going to get to that point where you're
literally going to be like taking shipments with
helicopters, like disguised as stuff just to get books into the
country. The amount of Kickstarter
backers who have straight up proposed smuggling to me as an
alternative to getting their their fledges is a non 0 number.
Yeah, and I have to be like, I appreciate your your idea.
However these are crimes. That's barely a federal crime.
I was going. To say, you know, there's a lot
of crimes happening that aren't being prosecuted right now.
So, you know, we're ready. Yeah.
I, me and Adam Bass are going to go in on like a single engine
Cessna and start running games like 100 like from the Canadian
border, Indian Arbor area for sure there.
We go, yeah, that'd be. The best way to do it?
Just brush the cocaine. It's like tightly wrapped zenes,
you know? Yeah, we're bringing in like eat
the rake. Hell yeah.
Yeah, the the ice agents are just like slicing up with a
knife and be like, this is the Andy shit.
Pulling out the dice and sniffing Yeah.
And. How that's real like?
We're getting, we're getting to that point.
I mean, knowledge is power, you know, and, and you also made the
company and all the, the, the stuff from the company.
Yeah, that was like 5 years ago now.
We did company, we being me alone in my house.
The Royal we. The Royal we working on updating
company actually just had a meeting with Alex Mitchell last
week to finish up some rec league art and then like get
into what we want to do for like an actual 1st edition because
everything's been in beta for five years and I've been busy.
Very mother ship of you. Yeah, I wrote all those, all
these. Oh, you got one of those?
You got one of the, the, the, the Gray, the, the special
edition ones. Yeah.
Chase Cycurs Yeah, Yeah. And then I only got this because
of you the the original company print.
Is that the one you bought on Noble night when I spotted it?
Yeah, somebody. I've never had my stuff sold
into resale it. Was great.
I was looking for it forever and I had told Logan about it
because it was on my list of like my grow list.
And then I just get this message randomly just like, hey, they
have one on open light. I was going to grab it and I was
like, oh, that's cool. And and you're like, but if you
really want it, I was like, yes, I do.
I really want it. So I got it.
So this is an original the company print and as well as the
cards and everything. You were going to buy back a
copy of your own game from. I got to get it out of
circulation like it's, it's the ideal distribution platform is
just leaving stuff in like white card, like wet cardboard boxes
in the woods. And I'm just, I'm just trying to
get back to that. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. A paper bag and a bus station
that. Yeah, do you like what?
Was that was it geocaching? Yeah, geocaching.
People still do with that. No.
Yeah, people still geocache. It's not like it did like. 2008
though you. Know not like when it was a fad,
of course. Not like it's just probably back
to the levels before it was a fad.
Some diehards. There's a guy in my neighborhood
who's always metal detecting the same park and I'm like bro,
haven't you done it? He's got a system.
OK, he's working a grid. It's a.
Very no. He is working a grid.
Yeah, but I'm like, what are you looking for?
The baseball field. Hey, people, people, people drop
wedding rings and shit all the time, you know?
People drop shit all the time. You're right, yeah.
You'll get 110th of what you bought it for.
The second it leaves the store, but you know that's the diamond
market. I mean, it's a, it's definitely
retirement plan. Yeah, sure.
I mean, it's retiring. That's going to exist.
It's. Got a It's got, I think, more
stability than a job I. Mean yeah my job currently and
why I can't leave so I'll just be depressed until I die Is it
has a pension plan in early retirement so I only have to
work for 17 more years. That's actually not that bad.
That's pretty good actually. And then I get to retire with
75% of my health insurance covered in a pension.
So. That's nice, yeah.
See if we make it 17 years, let's see if yeah, we'll get
there. No, we won't.
I doubt it. We'll see.
So for those who haven't encountered the company, what,
what's the company? Because, you know, megacore and
and a lot of things you do all fit under this kind of same
umbrella. So what?
What? What's that?
Umbrella. Oh yeah.
So I started Megacorp in 2019, 2018-2019 to make the company.
But the company, the original game is about private emergency
response teams going to garbage missions to save their, their
employers like proprietary assets.
So it's like the umbrella corporation when they send in
those SWAT teams to like kill everybody and steal the T virus.
That's who you're playing, the core, the good guys, protecting
company assets. If you're watching Alien Earth,
there's a lot of that going on in there, yeah.
Corporate interests are or. Peak the the core, I guess like
feel of the game is interpersonal conflict that I
tried to recreate within the players.
So each one of the roles, which are just careers, the jobs has a
different goal that directly conflicts with another career
school. So the idea is to create
interpersonal conflict without like naturally with a slight
mechanical edge, without the GM being like, you guys hate each
other because everything is on a timer.
Like you're always running out of time and people have stuff to
do with that kind of conflicts with everybody else's plan.
And then it tends to get a little chaotic.
The goal was for me, as a person who runs games all the time, to
do as little work as possible to create tension.
An admirable goal. Yeah.
I'm lazy. So like, the company missions
tend to be pretty cut and dry, pretty simple stuff.
But everybody's always fighting in the middle of them.
So they take hours and hours because everybody's arguing.
And then I just, like, go get a drink or something.
Hell yeah. But by developing that, I did a
lot of research into corporate fuckery.
And it's really hard to write speculative fiction right now
because the universe keeps scooping me like, oh boy.
Like the guy running the CD, like the Health Administration
does a worm in his brain. Like, I can't write that.
Nobody would buy that. But since then I've kind of
worked all of the corpo garbage into like everything I wrote
because I tried to make like a kind of connective tissue
between everything. So the main company in the
company is Wuhan Baxter, which is this big multinational
conglomerate that's legally distinct from Wayla Dutani.
It's your like Wayla Dutani. Yeah, yeah.
And then there's a bunch of other like subsidiaries that put
in all the stuff like Nobarium is in the company and in Sykers.
And Sykers is a, it's a stand alone game, but it it was
developed as kind of an add on to the company.
So those psychic power rules, you can staple those to company
characters. And I think in the reprint we're
actually just going to fold Sykers into the book.
Nice. Because it it really fits, it
nests in really nice. The company WB exists in
Triangle Agency now, which is great because I was, I helped
produce Triangle Agency and I wrote on the vault.
So I've made Caleb put WB in there.
So now my company is an enemy of Triangle Agency.
We've established like a whole Canon behind it.
So that's fun. It's just nice to grow it out.
And then like it's a little Easter egg and everything.
Like I think yeah, Baxter Co-op is in didn't fuck Cleveland.
I'm sure there's some company reference in metro skate.
I just don't remember what it is, but I try to put it in
everything just because I think that's fun.
And I love I love the Dark Tower by Stephen King.
It's one of the it's one of the books I think he did a good job
on and he's always seeding that shit in like all his other
books, which is hit or miss. But like I love that shared
universe like author mind palace garbage.
Are you? Are you in any of your games?
Can we meet you? I'm not in any of my games.
Oh wait, that's not true. I think I'm the head of Novarium
Pharmaceutical actually. Like according to psychers, I'm
in a bunch of liminal horror games.
They cause goblin archives. Like put me in a bunch of them.
So I'm in like the mall and like, I think I'm in Hunger
Hollow. That's pretty funny.
Yeah, I mean, if you're going to make stuff like, why wouldn't
you just do shit like that? That'd be awesome.
Why not? Yeah, I think it's.
Funny, I mean, if you can meet Adam or Adam is in canonically
he's in cyber metal 2012. Like why wouldn't you just put
that like specifically all the timeline like right before
Reagan dies is like Adam S is born.
So just as important, you know. It's like meeting Hideo Kojima
in Cyberpunk 2077 and then he's just hanging out and you're
like, what are you doing? Like he's not even going.
To care solid, you know, Yeah. Yeah, no, I, I, I'm, I'm having
fun. And now that writing stuff and
producing stuff for Mega Corp is kind of a back burner thing,
it's just become like, what can I make to get my head into a
space that's not like work? So yeah, since I left my big boy
publishing job, I've mostly been doing a lot of, like I said,
kind of freelance work, mercenary work, a lot of cool
stuff. Triangle Agency.
Just want a bunch from words. That was really cool.
I've been working a lot with Tyler Kramer and over at
Possible Worlds to develop out a lot of.
We got a lot of cool projects coming up.
We turned and burned a Kickstarter in 52 days.
Can't actually recommend doing that if you value your life and
health, but we did it. We put out Better, Better
strangers and tackle box. The two card games, yeah, yeah,
yeah. I think those have a gym con.
Yeah, those are good. Yeah, those are moving really
fast. People really like those.
We got a new campaign coming out next month with Megan Cross,
James D'amato and Tyler's games Homecoming.
I always want to say Koreans Clearwater Provable, but it's
called Cosmic Century Nights and Chuck.
So we're doing a three-game Kickstarter where if you buy the
1st 2, you get the third one for free.
A little a little Maple game. And that's all building out to
Realis, which is Austin Walker's big opus.
And we're we're really excited about doing that next year.
So that's been a really interesting process because you
know, Tyler was just doing stuff by himself for years and years
and years. We started around the same time,
like Tyler and I did the inquest in 2020, like the same time,
like he did Feather Beacon Bone and I did the company.
So we've been kind of contemporaries for a long time.
And when I put out a call that I was looking to help people do
more production work, keep baby up and here we are.
And so it's been fun to help Tyler like grow possible worlds
from like just a one man show into like a full on publishing
company. Yeah, yeah, we've talked to.
Tyler on the show What My brain is breaking.
That's fine. For when we had Tyler on, it was
the game where they did like the art mixed with the narrative
with the the people traveling and you could stop whenever you
wanted. What am I talking about?
Details of our escape. Yes, details of our escape.
Yes, Tyler was on to talk about that.
I don't know what episode that was.
We have a list of running though.
If you do we, we have reviewed a bunch of your games and because
Hunter did the work, I want to say it the company was episode
104. Cykers is episode 133.
So that was only about 170 to 150 episodes ago episode.
Was 137. Oh, so right after we did
Cykers. So there you go.
If you want to, if you want to hear more about Cykers or the
company or hear from Tyler Crumrine, you can listen to
those. Here we go.
Now are is the company in Rec League?
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, got a, got a Segway, got a
transition, you know. Yeah.
So yeah, let's talk about right click.
Since what I used to do was party games and card games for
bigger publishers and I kind of got pretty good at making card
games, like doing layout for manufacturing.
I'm proofing all that stuff. Been doing it for a while now.
So in my what what counts is spare time.
I have been developing this game rec league for about 3 years
actually. Yeah, it's kind of weird.
It's I don't Full disclosure, I do not want to make a trading
card game. Like it is too much work and it
takes too long. I am just saddled with glorious
purpose on this one. So like, of course, it's kind of
this thing that has been needling into my brain over and
over and over again. And I've been slowly kind of
tinkering with it. And then one day I had like a
game and I had to now I got to finish it because if I don't,
I'm going to look like an idiot because I've been talking about
it for two years and I think it's good.
Which is honestly one like I never say that about stuff I
write. So like wild, but it's the the
conceit is that it's a card game that we developed in 1998 and
then subsequently lost. So it's from the like heyday of
like the Deckmaster games from Wattsy.
I've been, I've been designing in like a what if 911 never
happened type of space, which is really interesting because I've
been getting real into how cool that world would be.
Like what if Al Gore won the 2000 election?
We'd all be like fucking billionaires in space hanging
out drinking sweet tea. And then I come back to reality.
I'm like, oh man, this is fucking sad.
But the I I took a bunch of stuff from card games I love.
The biggest one is Magic because it's like the biggest card game
in the world. I play a lot of commander.
So the central kind of selling point is to give people a
commander type experience without let having them have to
interact with the Wattsy War machine.
So like, 'cause that's obtuse and like ridiculous and you have
to spend a ton of money just to be able to like actually play.
So how do we create a type of experience like that without
people spending much money? I also love Net Runner like so,
so, so much. And you know, like that runner's
been the most cancelled card game in history.
This has been canceled twice and it's still going because fans
are running it. And then there's a there's some
Digimon in there a little bit and quite a bit of just I played
a lot of Wipeout Wipey Audi on the PlayStation one.
It's a racing game in the future where you have these hovercraft
racers and everything is like corporate sponsored and it's got
that like late 90s, like Japanese futurism type of feel
wonderful game. So a lot of the design elements
came from that. And then Mex, because MEX are
cool and, and Evergreen and everybody likes MEX.
So the you know, the, the elevator pitches, it's MEC,
NASCAR, it's all competitive. It's all like blood bowl or like
roller drone or like robot jocks.
So we're it's it's it's all kind of tongue in cheek while also
being extremely violent because I, I'm a big fan of violence.
I think it's cool to watch and entertaining and most of these
games just violent simulators. So that's fun, but yeah, no,
like I've been having a lot of fun with it.
I wanted to figure out how to make a deck building game, like
a construction game without having to sit with hundreds of
cards and sort them out and like building it out.
So like the actual deck building is super fast.
All the rules are pretty cut and dry.
Like it's turn based. You're building up energy like
Hearthstone instead of mana. I mean, I have it set to be
switched. I'm sorry, I'm not looking.
Look at. That oh, so this is my desk.
I cleaned it off for you. You're very welcome.
So Rec League plays in turns, you know, like a game.
It's crazy. But the first thing you do is
you build a Mac and the way you do that is you choose A-frame,
which is kind of like your, that's your Mac, your frame,
your access and you corporate sponsor here.
We'll go with WB because we love WB.
And that becomes your commander type of area, right?
Like these two things have different powers.
Each mech has 2 powers assigned to it as well as a structure
which is your HP and a heat cap, which is the capacity of your
heat. The corporate sponsor has a, a
kind of a meta breaking rule. So I, I play a lot of board
games. So like there's a lot of like
mechanical stuff I really like from other stuff kind of pulled
in. And this creates kind of your
course like engine. From there you put your systems
in and each system is consisting of five cards.
So like this is the SMG system. Each card has cost and energy
cost and an effect that it does either damage or some kind of
like persistent effect. But you choose six of these with
five card suites to create a 30 card deck.
So I don't know why. I'm sure you know what, 2
cameras. All right, so instead of
choosing 100 cards for commander deck, you're really just
choosing 8 things. The system, or I'm sorry, the
core frame, the sponsor, and then six systems.
There's three different kinds of systems.
Reds are weapon systems, Blues are primary systems and greens
are auxiliary system. So you can have like, you know,
like guns or swords and then you have like, oh, these are my
firewalls and my defensive systems and then you have
missiles or Shields and stuff like that.
These are very. Nice looking cards by the way.
Thanks, I am a professional. Yeah, if it keep repeating now
it makes it true, you know. Yeah, so I did all the layout of
the cards. I did everything but the art on
the system cards, actually did all the Mac art, and then all
the Mac backgrounds are. That's just World War 2 combat
photography from the National Archive, because that's cool.
Public domain. All the iconography is public
domain shipping iconography. So it's just the same symbols
you see on like shipping boxes. That's why structure became a
broken wine glass. And like it's, it's like, it
really kind of like, it's the weirdest one, but it fits.
So yeah, after you create your deck, you shuffle that up and
you start to play. This card is the pilot
interface. It's where you keep track of all
your resources. This is kind of my favorite part
of the game because it creates a sort of personal resource
management game that you have to play in order to actually be
able to fight, sort of like piloting a mech.
So each turn your energy goes up by 1, which allows you to play
cards for their energy cost, but that one's free, but this one's
one that goes down. At any point you can increase
your heat to put more energy into your pool.
So at the beginning of your first turn you really only you
have one energy, but you can go up as much as you want if you
want to push your luck. Heat can be reduced by either
purging your heat for three energy or discarding cards one
for one. Your hand size is your
structure, your maximum structure.
So like some mechs are bigger, so they have a bigger structure,
so they have a bigger hand size. Some mechs are smaller so they
have a smaller hand size. On your off turn, when you
receive an attack, you have to discard cards from your hand
equal to the damage received. If you can't discard any cards,
you reduce your structure by that much damage.
If your structure ever gets zero, you're dead.
Thank you net runner for not nailing that down.
And on your attack, you're spending energy to do damage.
Then the opposing player can, you know, ditch their stuff.
There's also defensive cards that give you more defense if
you play them for their face value.
But every card has three uses, the face value ditching it to
produce heat and then becoming a defensive card.
So there's nothing that is a single use, and there should
never be a turn where you can't do anything.
Thank you Rad Lance, for let me RIP that off.
This is a game of a bunch of ripped off stuff that I stapled
together because that's. Every game.
That's every game, so secret, that's all of them.
And then like that's the basic loop.
There's a bunch of like there's other actions in order to get
within. This was a fun thought
experiment. So mech games are usually
miniature based and they have a spatial kind of awareness to
them. And so in order to figure out
how we how do we do that with cards, right, without putting
them on the on the board. So there is an engagement for
disengagement mechanic for one energy you can get in close or
move far away that allows you to use melee weapons.
But if you're too close, you can't use range weapons.
So yeah, if you have a sword, you have to get it.
You have to spend the energy to get in and actually sword, you
know, as a verb, the main Oh yeah, then you can draw cards or
reduce your heat. And so it's just a, a turn based
brawler. The main issue we had in play
testing was that it was too fast.
People were just banging it out in like 5-10 minutes.
So I created these event cards. Each round after everybody takes
a turn, an event card is flipped.
The first event is always the same.
Everybody kind of gets a buff like you just spawned and then
you're blinking. So it keeps people from blowing
each other up right out the gate.
And then the events get a little like hit or miss.
Like this one is super cool. So everybody ditches all their
heat. That would be really great if
you push your luck really apart. But some of them are like 0
gravity. This one makes it cost more to
engage or disengage. So they're like universal
modifiers. Yeah.
And then there's the resource management aspect of it.
Every turn you're getting more energy until you get up to four
and putting heat into your tank if you ever overheat.
If you go beyond six to seven, if it's your turn, you ditch all
your cards and your turn ends, which makes you really
vulnerable to attack because your cards are your defense.
So it's really important to watch your heat and like be
mindful of where you're at near your cap because some attacks,
hacking attacks, actually give you heat instead of damage.
So players offhand can kind of fuck with your heat.
So it becomes this kind of like, what am I willing to push?
What am I willing to save? A lot of the time the cards you
draw don't make it to the next round like because you're using
it for defense or you're like using them for discards to cool
down. So it's it it, it leads people
to take really big swings, which is awesome because that's what
we want. We want people to be having fun.
So after a round or two, people start to understand that and
then just start going all out. And the most satisfying thing is
almost every play test game I've ever played with this has had
the group say let's play again. And so like, that's how I do
like, OK, this is something that's the basic loop of it.
You just play into there's only one person left, but I've got a
couple. Like there's a couple of other
ideas, like there's some expansion ideas I have in mind
as well as like using it to tell like campaign type stories
because like it is instead it's you could do real playing with
this pretty easy, But that's not what I'm out to design here.
I'm just out to design a straight up crawl card brawler
that is easy to play and pick up but has like an infinite amount
of combinations. So the main thing is not
balancing it at all at all, because like, that would drive
me insane. There's like original magic, you
know? Right, yeah, there's just shit
that just isn't broken. And I wanted to feel like
playing with toys so you know, you're, you're snapping parts
onto an action figure and playing against them.
And that's been really fun. We don't do deck construction in
play testing anymore just because it takes too long.
So everything is pre pre built. But I do have a second, I have a
second deck, a second set of cards that if people want to
build a deck and play it, they can.
And that's been really fun to see like the, the systems people
mix and match and see what kind of combos they come up with.
Because I, I'll be honest, I haven't had the time to test
every combo because I am busy making money and not wasting my
time on this. So it's been really fun and
really satisfying to see people kind of like really, it's like
turn on to the game and then like get into it really fast.
I, I'm excited about it. I, it's, it's again, like not
something I really like thought I'd see myself producing, but
the, it just won't go away. Like the, the thought won't
leave my head. And we're at a point now where
I'm just kind of too far gone. I mean, look at these beautiful
cards. They're gorgeous.
They're. Really great looking cards.
I cannot tell you how much I want this to play it so well and
show. You got to show some of the
cards because they're like, oh, you want to see some more?
They're funny, though. Like what's one that I was
cracking up with at Gen. Con?
Isn't there one that's just like big gun or something?
Oh yeah, a lot of these still have some of their old names and
1 is just the big rifle and the card is shoot big rifle and like
I meant to change that and didn't.
My favorite set in this, and I don't know if it's out, is the
knife printer, which is just a 3D printer built into your arm
that prints dives. And so 3 cards are stab, stab,
stab, they're free. And then two cards are print,
which is just take all the stab cards out of your discard and
put them into your hand. Cool.
So stuff like that, jump jets dash is really great because
it's a reaction card that can like let you engage or
disengage. So if somebody plays like a
missile launch at you, you can actually like go under the
missiles and get near them. Or like if somebody's trying to
swipe out you with a sword, you can get out of the way.
Reloads are just free draws. Cause draws are kind of
expensive on purpose because like you shouldn't have to draw
cards. Oh, I should note that you're
drawing at the beginning of your turn, not the end of your turn.
So any cards you have leftover at the end of your turn are your
defense cards. You can't draw at the end.
But some some platforms like Tango, because she's so fast,
you draw at the end of the turn to kind of like represent that.
Yeah. It's been fun kind of thinking
of how to do this type of game, which is very well trod
territory. I mean, Mex have been around
since the 70s, like in popular media with Gundam and like, like
I'm going with like Pat Laborer and like, there's a lot of
Pacific Rim in here. So you know, and the idea is not
that these are shiny big, like corporate produced robots.
These are like battle bots people made and then they got
corporate sponsorships. So there's there's no uniform
mech type like tango's like a little bipedal mech Echo's the,
the, the war machine, like the, the leftover soldier mech.
One of them is just a construction rig.
And then like there's like a hazardous material research one
and then like I have a bunch of other ones.
One just looks like a frog and I love that one.
But I haven't given it good powers yet.
But it's, it's just been fun to kind of play in this space.
I love Lancer like I'm, I think we've talked about this before.
I'm like crazy about Lancer. I was one of the, I was like in
the original Kickstarter. I've run probably 100 hours of
Lancer. It is my baby and like, but
that's because I love tactics games and and it's just got the
right amount of role-playing to like pass into my group to be
like, it's a role-playing game, you guys.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely.
Definitely. Yeah, totally.
Yeah. Sure, for sure, for sure. 20% of
it maybe is role-playing game. And then I make them play X and
then I basically make them play X COM for four hours.
That's. So OK with me.
I would so love to be part of that group, honestly.
I mean like I, you know, I love. Lancer.
I love Lancer so much and Lancer's one I.
Think we've said it on the show numerous times, Lancer is one of
those games that a lot of people would love to play, but very few
people will actually run. Yeah, I'm not running.
Oh, it's, it's, it's it's like running a small business like
like there's so many tags, like if you get more, if you have
like more than three enemy Macs on the board, you're like
managing things. But I bet I I've I've a lot of
it. I got it.
They they have a great app that helps a lot with the Compcon
amp. Yeah.
Do you? Yeah, I see.
I assume when you're running it you really employ that app.
Oh, it's just easier than character sheets.
And like, everybody can have it on their phone and you, they can
track their. I can't track everybody's stuff
and land. Yeah, I just can't do it.
It's too intense. But Compound has an encounter
builder. It does, yeah.
For the GM that you can put all of your, you can put all your
enemies in there and track all their stats and stuff and like
let it lets you know when they're off turn and stuff and
and like it. That's really nice.
I I actually don't think you can run Lancer without that I.
Was going to say I I don't think it's possible to really run it
effectively without without the app, which is crazy.
And it's, it's free and it's like really good.
And that much so like that type of support is, is awesome.
Like Mothership has a great third party app Mark Borg's got
so many cool like little character generators and dungeon
generators. Like I love that stuff.
Karen's got a great character folio app.
The company will probably never have that because I'm not, I
don't have that patience. And it should be paperwork for
the company. Like, yeah.
It should be in triplicate like you should sell or you have to
like tear off. Like carbon copies?
Yeah, carbon copy character sheets will be incredible.
We have to fill everything out in triplicate before you can get
your stuff. Yeah, how will stamp for the GM
to the, you know, for? Company games at cons.
I actually bought a label printer and like there's a
there's a labeled printer version of the character sheets.
So people and it randomizes a character.
So you just hit the button and it prints one out and then they
pop it into a folder and that's their character for the for the
one shot that's. Awesome.
We're trying to Caleb and I Caleb over at Honda table and
I've talked about getting a just a straight up ID printer and
like just printing people employee IDs at cons.
I don't think that'd be hilarious.
Really expensive. I can't imagine.
And it takes like 10 minutes. Like, it's got to like, put the
image on the thing and laminate it.
And then like I think it like blows on it gently and then like
pushes it out. Yeah, we have to have our, our
employee ID badges at work are magnetized for like all the door
openings and stuff like that too.
So they literally have to like select which doors you're
allowed to have access to and stuff.
This is mine from the Art Institute of Chicago when I
worked there for like 11 years. And it's got like a magnet key
in it and a barcode and everything.
And I look like absolute garbage.
And I was supposed to turn that in when I left, but I didn't
because I left on March 13th, 2020 and I never went back.
So like, it's not like somebody came and took it.
I just like some stuff happened. Yeah, it's weird.
March 13th, what was in 2020? What was happening there?
Something. Yeah, I refunded a almost
$40,000 purchase that day, actually.
So fun facts from my job that that didn't exist in same form
after whatever happened at that time period, you know?
Yeah, just some stuff. Yeah.
Just when I was, when I was in Essendon a couple of years ago
for Spiel, I went to the Folk Wing Museum and they it's, it's
a wonderful modern Art Museum. They had an incredible
collection, but they have a a room that's just like, this is
all the art that this would would be here that we lost from
19391945 when some stuff happened.
It's just like, OK, yes, cool, that's what the.
Smithsonian's going to be like in like 20 or 30 years from now
and be like, yeah, this is here's all the this.
There was a bunch of stuff here and in 2025 something happened.
Something happened. Yeah, now it's just full of
Confederate statues. Yeah, weird.
But yeah, that's, I mean, like that's pretty much yeah.
I always feel like I'm missing something with Rick I.
Want to play this fucking game dude?
Dare. You bring this on the show and
make me want to play it so bad. Yeah, I'm sorry.
That was the point. I.
Love so I like in in theory, I I loved magic for a really long
time. Like I really like like card
battle games, you know, and I fucking love mech shit.
Like I'm such a mech boy and we've been playing MEC 20 on the
show on our not weekly games and that's been.
Tomorrow. We're playing it tomorrow and
I've been reading Flimps or Ryan.
I also just played through Armored Core 63.
Times a huge influence on this was fucking AC6.
It's unbelievably good. It's so good, and it's such a
From Soft game where if you want to get all the endings and learn
everything, you have to play through it three times.
So this is like really cool and I I really enjoy the concepts
that you've like freely ripped from other games.
Like I love the cards in your hand being defense and not being
like a very like strategic resource to like use or hold on
to. I think that's incredibly
interesting. I also love that every MET game,
no matter what, has heat, you know?
You know, it pops in a little different, you know, and
everyone uses a little different.
But like, everyone understands that you can overheat a MET like
that's just gets Canon, you know?
I think it's an interesting, I mean, like that's just straight
Lancer, right? Like it's they do heat so well,
but I think like there has to be a mech is such a power fantasy.
Yeah, there has to be some foil to that, some kind of
vulnerability. So making it that, oh, this is a
machine, like there's it's got flaws and you're a professional
who's knows how to use it so you can manage it.
But like, you know, you got to have some kind of like Achilles
heel. Like it's I just backed Mac
attack from Chris McDowell mobile armor classes.
Like the way I I, it's a Mac game.
I can't come on. Yeah.
It's my whole and the Doom. The Doom was good, so I'm really
excited to see what Mac attack does.
I'm very excited. It's but like, yeah, he like
managing the managing the core. Like what is this?
What is this thing, this unwieldy thing you're you're
piloting. How can it be taken down right?
Like what? And you can't, it's like some X
are just too strong. You can't hit it too strong for
blasters. So like, you got to like get in
there and start, you know, like heating them up and making them
vulnerable. It also provides a different
vector for tactics. Like if it's not, this goes two
to four players. So when four players are really
rolling it out, it becomes very chaotic and you have to pivot on
the fly. You can't really have a
strategy. Your MEC and your Corp are going
to give you a trajectory, but they're not going to be your end
all. That's the cards.
So, and you can't count on your cards being in your hand because
they're constantly being rotated.
So you it, it's a game that doesn't let you kind of sit on
your system, like it doesn't let you sit on your, your, your
engine, unlike commander, which is I, I, the way I describe
commander is you get a bunch of people together who have all
designed their own board game and they're going to play their
board games at each other. And.
Do they hate commander? Honestly.
I love it so much because I love that type of mechanical
interaction, but that's because like, I'm in there like making
weird combos to exploit the game.
That's it was made for me. This is my whole right.
That's what we're trying to accomplish here, but without all
of that shit. So like, there's not somebody
that comes in and is like, I paid $500.00 for this deck and
it's yeah, that's garbage. But if you do some clever like
interactions or you find a cool mechanical exploit, that should
be rewarded. And like I want to see people
play like that, that like a big influence for this is Radlands.
I really love Radlands because it is all about finding broken
card exploits and like finding these card synergies that should
be busted in order to win. And I think that's an
underutilized design philosophy. We talk about balance a lot in
game design. And maybe you fucking too much,
honestly, like maybe too much, maybe too much because like at
some point over balancing something takes a lot of the fun
out of it. And like, and then it becomes a,
like a, an analytical thing, like a, a min Max thing or a, or
like I need if I do this, this and this that, I'm going to win
every time. And that isn't as fun.
That's not exciting and that's not fun for normal people to
play. I think balance matters most
when you're going to do something repeatedly, right?
So in like video games, for example, like Apex, Apex
unbalanced, you're going to have thousands of people playing
hundreds of games like each a day.
The balance is going to create a meta that people will then only
do one thing. If you're doing like an
individual experience thing or something, you're not going to
do a lot. Like balance is totally fine.
But if you're doing like 10 year campaign and something's broken,
you got a problem. So I you know, for something
that you can just pick up and battle and whatnot, you know, if
it develops a meta, I think a balance is an issue.
But like otherwise I you know. And like my, my fix for that is
just like adding carts that are cooler, like break the meta.
That's what net runner, I think when it was with Fantasy Flight
never really kind of grasped. And when it's grasping now with
null signal because fans are making it, is that as the meta
evolves, you have to go bigger. And like Fantasy Flight was
developing a meta for net runner annually, not in real time.
So like when they were redoing cycles and these packs that were
coming out monthly, which was a really cool district like like
product like release concept, but they weren't responding to
the meta in real time. They were products that were
already planned to come out months and months in advance.
And once they came out and people play with them, they
broke them just kind of where Magic succeeds sort of a little
bit because they're in the trenches with the cards being
like, Nah, this one's a little busted right now.
This one's not good. And they're doing these bands
and stuff sort of, it's not great.
This is, but like at this point, I for this, I just want it to be
as big and loud as possible. So like people should find those
exploits. They should break it so that
other people have to respond. Like if you hate that exploit
and think it's broken, find a more broken one.
Cool, cool. I have I can get a hold of the
company and and say hey, we need a cooler car than this broken
one, let's get it out. I have AI have two non related
questions. The first one was you kind of
made a reference to it earlier and I don't know what you ended
up saying. You said originally the the
Browns were going too quick. How long does Like a Game last
now? Like 15 to 25 minutes, maybe 30
so. Amazing.
I love that so much. My biggest issue with commander
other than like it's a it's a money grab by fucking Wizards of
the coast to buy 100 non repeating cards is also that
it's like my friend's like oh come on, it's even longer than
standard and I'm like that's actually bad.
That's a bad selling point. Yeah.
I like it when, like, I get knocked out in 15 minutes and
then my friends are playing for two more hours.
Yeah, it's really cool. That's awesome.
No, like the we were doing rounds before I introduced the
events. Rounds were going like 5-10
minutes and they were fun and they were fast and they were big
and people were enjoying it. Me as a designer, I was like,
that's too fast. Now with the events it gives
people, it gives an even playing field.
So like it help. It's helped.
I this has three uses to the event cards do even playing
field so no one can run away with the game.
They create a a universal tactical change that everyone
has to accommodate to. And they function as round
counters so you know how much energy you have.
So like you can look at how many event cards have been played and
know how many rounds you've played.
Let's say everything in the game has multiple uses.
Has to. Very clever.
And then I guess my second question was you, you also kind
of made reference to there being like some sort of campaign play
aspect to this. How do you see that working and
how would it like actually work at the table?
Is there like a game master? Like what are they?
What's it look? Like the concept for it right
now is sort of like, hey, you know, this game Magic, I'm going
to talk about it somewhere. It's sort of like arch enemy
where there's an overarching like a non player character that
all the other characters are fighting against.
So that's represented by a mech card that has its own stats and
then a deck that's off turn deciding what that enemy is
going to do. But it's it's like a Co-op.
So all the other players are banding together to try to beat
this like big mech. But in concept you could do that
with any type of encounter. Cool, so the so the Kaiju
expansion pack is what we have to look forward.
To, you know, like, yeah, something like that or like, I
mean, the I wouldn't put it all out there.
There's a bunch of lore, like I wrote a whole bunch of shit
about it. So like there's the corpse are
bad crazy. And you know, like, and then
like these were these were mechs that were used for warfare and
for construction and for colonization and for oppression.
And now they're being used for sport.
So like, like you don't just build these.
I mean, we should just build them for sport.
That'd be fucking cool. But they're billion dollar war
machines. Like they weren't originally
meant for this. That's where I would really like
the stuff at Lancer where it's like the Everest, the basic
bargain Mac is really good if you know how to use it.
But everybody wants all the flashy shit.
So like so the Everest, the the humble Everest usually gets left
behind, but you start with a solid mech that's really
customizable. And so like these are kind of
based off of that Everest, like multi, like customizable or like
an armored core, right? Like you can swap out whatever
you want to make this bigger thing.
So you said you didn't want to make a TCG?
This is a battle game right? This isn't Pokémon.
You're not going to have like foiled full arts that people
aren't even playing the game to get yet.
No. So I don't want to do blind
boosters because that's madness. I am taking a living card game
model, so there's a core box that is.
I mean, I can discuss the product.
The core box plays two players. It's got all the stuff to play
two players. So in order to play four players
you need 2 core boxes. But the core box is also going
to be 20 bucks so like it's not too expensive against. 3 core
boxes. Really.
Yeah, I. We're doing, I have a tier for
the the Kickstarter next year that is like it's a discounted 4
player bundle that's 2 core boxes for less.
But that I mean that I took from Corp, like from actual
publishing, which is, you know, like make it a smaller price
point and you'll sell more units.
But the expansions are just Macs.
They're just a deck like a built Mac with its sponsor and its
frame and its systems. And then you can take those out
and mix and match them with anything else.
So it's a, it's a set like a box that you know what cards are in
it. But we're going to do like 10 of
those. Are you going to do?
This is what I'm envisioning. Maybe like con exclusive foil
packs with with little little extra like system cards or or
sponsors. Or something.
I want to do full art cards. I talked to Alex this week about
full art cards because we're also doing.
I really love the black and white art on the cards because
it makes it feel like manga panels.
But a lot of players want full color, so we're testing out what
the full color cards look like. I want to do full art, like
borderless cards. I think that'd be fun for like
promos and stuff. The Pilot interface card is a
thing that's really open for interpretation as long as all
that information's there. Because it it consists of both
your resource management and your player reference card.
And they're double sided. Are we still on my feed?
They're double sided. So like you can put them on
either side depending on if you're left or right-handed.
That was just for accessibility, but these can look like anything
because they're kind of universal.
So I was thinking of doing like limited edition of these, but
you also just can make one. Like that's the other thing.
The main model and distribution for this whole thing is there
will be no monetary barrier to play.
A print and play set of this is free.
So like if you want to print the cards and put them in a deck at
home, do it. If you want to buy a print on
demand set, it will be cheaper than buying the full retail
version. So there's 3 levels of
interaction to engage with the product.
But there there's never a a paywall.
Like you should be able, if you have the resources to print them
out and put them in sleeves, you can play the game, which is
another me kind of like shoving it to Wattsy, right?
Like you should not have to be rich to enjoy a game.
You shouldn't be or or to win even.
Like, like that's bullshit. That takes away all the fun.
So like, I don't want to lock anybody out ever.
So yeah, everything will be available.
Print, print and play. Like just print it out.
Play it. I don't give a shit.
Hell, if you want to put on nice cars, put on nice cars, don't
give a shit. Like please play it like my
whole model, the whole mega Corp model for years has been pay
what you want because none of this stuff should be gate kept
like it should be for everybody. And like, if you want to give me
some cash for it, that's fucking awesome.
Please do I accept cash, But like I I don't want that to be a
barrier to play. Yeah.
Man, if, if, if only the indie scene felt that way right now,
maybe a lot of people wouldn't be getting burnt out on it, you
know? Maybe, but like, I don't know, I
took AI took a long break from making stuff in the NDC and to
help people kind of become bigger and like grow as
publishers because that's the step, right?
Like that's, that's what we're all working towards, but that's
very few people know how to do it.
And so scaling and like figuring out what you're good at and what
you want to do and like helping having people help you with the
other stuff is great and helps a lot of people.
And like it's, I'm really proud to be doing that with a lot of
publishers and to help them kind of scale up and to find out how
to make this into a career and how to make it into something
that like produces folding money that you can pay your bills
with. But it's hard work.
And it's not just being like, here's 100 things you find in
the ball pit at the Disney World, like, and here's a book
of that, like it's production and like making sure your
margins are good and not paying, mix them too much money to print
your books And like people paid way too much to make stuff.
And so like, you know, figuring out what a margin looks like
that's affordable where you're like, Oh yeah, I can do some
offset printing and pay like inside baseball right now I'm
getting these for about $0.75 a deck.
So like, that's really good. And so like I can, I can keep
the MSRP really, really low, which is, which is the point and
more people should be doing that.
But it's hard. It's, it's tough.
Like if you think about it like I'm making AZ and, and then you
have to make the logical jump to, I want to print this in
China and make 5000 copies of it.
The gap in knowledge between those two things is enormous and
and intimidating. And, like, you get a lot of
imposter syndrome and you're like, if it's worth it, am I
good enough for that? Is this a lot of work?
And it is a lot of work. But like, once you do it one
time, the second time becomes easier, The third time becomes
easier. And it's really like not
stopping. It's about continuing through.
Yeah. You guys know you're doing a
podcast. So many podcasts get started and
stopped every year. But the people who are success
are successful at it are the people who keep going and like
you're you because you have to. A lot of people want instant
gratification on their endeavors because we live in a, in a
culture that like does like you can order something, it'll be
there the next day or later that day.
Like you get instant gratification so easily and
people think they should be good at everything, but it is OK to
not be good at everything. I have to tell myself that all
the time, right? We should probably all tell
ourselves that more often so. Maybe, but I I like, I like what
I do. I like bringing this type of
like hard won, cursed knowledge to people so that they don't
have to learn it. But I also think there's room
for all of us to grow and figure out more economical and, you
know, lucrative ways to make this stuff that's not us wearing
a barrel at the end of the day. I tell a lot of my clients,
like, I can't guarantee you I'm going to make you a lot of
money, but I can guarantee you that I will make it so you lose
the least amount of money. So like, and people seem to like
that. They like when I'm like, you're
going to lose less there. You go, I mean, that's ideal in
the current city of the economy to just not lose money is is
fantastic. I mean, that's tough, especially
man, there's so much the economy.
It's. Great.
Yeah, it's wonderful. The president.
And his team keep telling me how great everything is.
Is that. Is that not true?
I picked a really a hell of a time to get into like
international manufacturing and logistics and superior. 2 Two
things, is there going to be accessibility wise?
Also, maybe when you come back on the show again when this
launches we can play a little bit of it.
Is there going to be a digital version of this game?
Have you thought about putting the cards even just scanned in
so they can be put into like a deck build or anything?
I don't need to scan them in because everything is a digital
file. So already done.
There's a TTS mod for it that we've been using for play
testing. Oh, really?
Why? But ITS every week.
We could have just been in TTS, right?
Now in BIOS bro, we've got to play.
Let me, let me clean it up and I'll send it to you because it's
got some old cards and a bunch of old art and stuff.
Cool. I haven't put the new designs in
yet. It was just something that we
were using to kind of like get through reps I do have.
Say we will definitely add that to our our not weekly war Games
list if we have the GTS mod for it.
So in my previous life, in my previous career, I was in charge
of some development of mobile ports of card games and I have a
good connection in that space. The problem is, is capital.
Yeah, those cost a lot and in order to make that money back we
would have to make it paid app or ad supported and I do not
have the bandwidth for that right now.
The core accessibility focus for this at this time has been pre
manufacturing localization contracts.
So I'm working with a localization partner to get
localizations for this game in English, French, Spanish,
Italian, and German prior to manufacturing.
So we'll be able to offer those during the Kickstarter in order
to get larger offset runs. So if I can get like an extra
1000 orders in these languages, then I can payless for each unit
and I just want to offer that. That's such a rare thing to
offer and if I can do it, I'm gonna so like we'll have all of
the different levels of interaction, print and play,
print on demand and full retail product in those languages at
launch, which is I'm it's fine. It's totally fine and it's not
stressing me out at all. No, no, no, this kind of shit.
This is why we love Logan Dean and and even just to the point
that you have the the pilot card where you could flip it so that
left-handed people can use it effectively like the level.
I. Mean.
Well, there you go. If you want.
Yeah, but but that's crazy. And like, you know, when when
people have like I got a Spanish version of the game, that's
fantastic. But like the fact that that's
such a rare thing in the space when especially the Latin
community is enormous and incredibly talented is is crazy.
So they'll be able to like add production, be like, here's this
box that is not expensive. And if you get 2 of them, it's
even less expensive. And we'll offer it to you in
like, what was it? Was that 55 languages four or
five? Languages English, Spanish,
French, German and Italian 5 languages to start. 5 languages
is crazy like that's, you know, and and again with the thought
process that you know, no paywall, you know, with the pay
what you want stuff like the the accessibility across the board
for all of this, especially financially, especially as we've
joked about the entire episode as this world is burning and and
the quote UN quote economy is caving around all of us making
it accessible to play a Ford. And and run is huge, you know,
and and navigating and you're just the perfect person to be
able to navigate the current, you know, de minimis bullshit
and like all the rest of the stuff that's burning
international stuff. So it's, it's, it's crazy.
I don't know if someone says de minimis.
I take like 10 points of psychic damage.
Yeah. I will say personally, I thought
the reason we loved Logan Dean was the mustache, but I think
that's also a great reason as well, so.
This is the stash cast today. It's this is.
No, I, I, you know, like I, I've talked about it before.
I have a very, I come from an art history background working
in museums and I was radicalized really young because of like the
Iraq war and stuff. But like, working in museums
really made me realize that we keep a lot of cultural assets
behind lock and key, and we make it so that only the affluent can
access them. And that's fucking bullshit,
man. Like, art is for everybody.
Games are for everybody. We should be creating spaces
where those things are accessible to everybody.
And I know that goes in the face of capitalism as a whole and
like making as much money as possible hand over fist, but I
don't care for that cause like I've never had a bunch of money.
So that's never been an issue for me.
I've just always wanted to enjoy art and play games and like like
I used to pirate games all the time.
Like that's how we played games when we didn't have any money.
So creating products that are both financially viable so that
I don't like carry myself in debt, but also we're able to
create them sustainably and to welcome in people that might not
have the means to actually engage with them at a full
product level is the most important thing to me.
Again, like all the company stuff is free.
Like you should, if you haven't checked it out, you should.
You probably have it, honestly. It's been in a bunch of those
really big bundles. So, you know, check it out, play
it. You don't have to play them out
of your dad, but like I love to be able to offer that stuff
because that is who I'm designing for is for the people
who just want to play it might not have the money and those
there's so many of those people. There's so many players that are
just like scraping by like getting like a Warhammer team
together out of like extra pieces or like using a second
hand commander deck or like building Magic decks just to
play. That shouldn't be the case.
Like you should be able to interact with the hobby without
being hell, without being employed.
Oh yeah. Completely agree.
I mean it's a great ethos to have.
Once again, I wish people need to listen to you about a lot of
things. You're right, you should tell my
clients that. I should Speaking of.
Clients in this. Episode yeah.
Speaking of clients, are you, is there a way for people to reach
you to help them not only with like, like because you're cool
and stuff, but also like the international shipping stuff?
Is that the thing that you're still doing?
Do you reach out to clients? The clients reach out to you.
Can people reach out to you? What are you doing with that?
When's your when's your webinar coming out for for?
I I got AI keep pitching a panel to every every con I go to
called how to be a better Kickstarter backer and it's just
me yelling at people and it always it it always gets
rejected. No, I I do consulting, I do
contract work. You can contact me at Logan Dean
dot games. That is my website.
There's a contact form there that goes directly to me.
I haven't had to like reach out for leads in a while.
I've been getting a lot of referral work.
I'm about to take on some long term contracts.
So I think I'll be kind of focusing more on consultation
instead of coordination, but I try to work within everybody's
budget. I don't like, I have a scale
that I work with an hour or two of my time is not going to break
your your wallet. And I'm happy to connect you
with people because I also have a ton of inner in like contacts
within the industry. Like I've worked with a bunch of
big publishers. I'm still working with a bunch
of big publishers, but like retailers, distributors,
manufacturers, logistics professionals, like all the
people who are getting their hands dirty in the supply line,
Like those are the people I work with.
Like there's tons of hands that make it so the game gets from
it's manufacturing to you. And each one of those people is
integral to that process. And I've just happened to like
make a little list of who the best people in each one of those
roles is. And I love working with these
folks. And like everybody's super
passionate about it. I love working in games because
people are like, it's not something that is important.
Like it's not, we're not manufacturing insulin, but it is
something that means a lot to a lot of people.
And the people in the industry that most of them are really
passionate about providing experiences.
And then like a small few of them are really passionate about
making as much money as possible.
And there's a you, you can tell like it's not hard.
It's not a big industry. So like we all kind of know each
other and we all try to help each other as much as possible.
And I, I like that way more than academia.
Whoa, like don't work in action. That's not true.
I'm going to, we do need teachers.
Please become a teacher. Yeah, but I mean, I also think
there's a difference between teaching and academia.
You know, 1 is like educating our youth and 1 is like, you
know, getting college tenure. Oh my God, like just people.
College politics bullshit. Oh my God, I worked in museums
and it's like you're not even educating the future.
You're just like seething because you couldn't do it.
And like the the rivalry between like big art museums is so
silly. Like the Met and the Chicago
artists are Chicago like hate each other.
And it's like, OK, well, you're different museums.
You guys know that, right? Like, man, I could talk about
that for another 20 hours, but I'm not going.
To yeah, so, so talk about where people can reach you to teach
the consult stuff like that. Yeah.
But the company for everything where, where can everybody else
find all of your other things? There's links to my itch on
Logan United games. Most everything that I made
personally is on Mega Dash Corp dot itch dot IO.
You can get, I mean, a bunch of my stuff that's all over the
place by code design 1978 with Adam Vast.
You can buy that at World Champ Gameco I'm pretty sure.
Plus one Exp has physical copies of Demonfuck Cleveland still
somewhere bouncing around. They always seem to be finding
more, which is weird because that was a limited run.
We're going to do a reprint to the company once I make
$1,000,000 on Rec League. Cool.
I have another board game I want to make that's basically like
Battlestar Galactica, but you can play it in an hour because
Battlestar Galactica is like favorite game.
And I don't like the Cthulhu one that Fantasy Flip put out.
Yeah, I think that's it. I mean, I'm all and then like I
have a bunch of Kickstarters that I've been like helping
collaborate on. So we have 50 days.
That time, you know. All the possible world stuff.
Check out Possible Worlds. We have a Kickstarter launching
next month. I have one I consulted on La
Vente Rouge that launches next week.
That's about like a team of thieves trying to RIP off French
nobles. Cool.
So like that one's pretty dice like assignment game.
So you're rolling and then like a signing dice to to cards to
like pull off heists. It's pretty cool.
I don't know if I can talk about that one.
Yeah, we got a lot of stuff in the fire.
I wish. Like my Kickstarter profile
showed all of my collaborator credits because it shows the
ones you make, which is 3. I have like 50 collaborator
credits. So when I go into my
Kickstarter, it's like, which project do you want to go to be
like the damn it, you know? Reach out to Kickstarter.
They're they're, they're like, I think in the CL, like all blue
sky now, trying to make people not hate their their company.
Sign the letter, the petition for the Kickstarter Union to get
a fair contract. They've been negotiating for
almost 2 years now on that and like management is not doing
great. And I'll tell you what, as much
as I would love to see it, you guys do not want the Kickstarter
union to go on strike. Like if that happens, a lot of
bad stuff happens for a lot of small indie creators who are
just trying to make stuff meet. Like if you sign that petition
that's going around, you can check it out at Kickstarter
United. Like let your voice be heard on
that one. Because like those guys, they
are the working class heroes of this industry and they're not
getting a fair shake. And like, it's really important
that we keep them happy and fed. And like that unions.
I, I, I work with them a lot and I care about those people and
they deserve better. So I take the time to check that
out and sign it and let management mode that they're
they're just not being cool. Yeah, yeah, I'll, I'll try to
remember to put that link down below too.
So if you're listening and it's not there, comment and remind me
and I'll put it there. And like.
Kickstarterunited.org I just signed it so.
Cool. Yeah, Check it out.
Like they, they, they hit their goal of 500 signatures, I think
within a day. We just, we need those people
and they need that. Yeah.
And like, Kickstarter is a necessary evil at this point,
but it's getting better. And I work with Kickstarter
quite a bit to the point where they actually listen to me when
I give them feedback. And they've been doing better.
And like, the pledge management system is finally live.
It's 15 years late, but it's finally there.
And it's good. It's fine.
It does what it needs to do. Like, it'll only get better.
So like, if you want to keep that platform around, you have
to be vocal about it because otherwise Game found's going to
eat it. And Game found is like a bank.
And I don't like banks now, I like game, it's fine.
But like they, they've got a very like top down corporate
mindset that kind of skips me out a little bit.
No, I hate that. And they're very.
Bored and war game focused. Yeah, and it's too, you know,
those are expensive products that cost a lot to make and you
need to offset them with crowdfunding.
That's why I don't make those. But like, come on, at some
point, you know, maybe making people pay in four for a $500
game is going too far. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I did. I did.
I did do that though. But like, yeah, it's too far.
I did. It for AI have one of these
X-Men animated series Magneto action figures that I did.
AI did a pay in four on because it was too expensive but it's so
cool. It sounds neat.
I I think I probably spent too much money on 1490 Doom, but
we'll see what comes from that. That sounds cool.
Yeah, yeah, that that back that reach out to Logan.
Definitely go check out the company, check out Cycers, check
out all their stuff. And I can't wait for Rec League.
Logan come back on the show. When is a Kickstarter probably
dropping? That is, that's a great
question. It really depends on my contract
load. Is it to run a Kickstarter for
myself? I'm going to need a little time
and so, but I'm planning on doing like the current
trajectory is next summer, probably around Gen.
Con time because some of that sweet cross promotion.
Yeah, very useful. Yeah, it is.
And by that point I should have like I am also of the mind of
like, I don't want to kickstart before I have production on
rails. So I should have by that point
like actual manufacturing proofs, full products ready to
go. Like, I'm not going to ask
anybody for money for something that's not done.
So like. Very honest of you, it's.
Broken, but like I think it's about ready as some art assets I
need to finish some product stuff.
Yeah, I got to make dice, which is a whole thing.
I wanted them to be spin down, but that's a whole nother like
level of cost that I was just like, you know what, people can
turn the dice. Yeah, it'll be fine.
It's not, it's not that that much more convenient, so.
And they're going to be smaller than these.
These are 16mm. I'm going to get them down to 10
I think just because like, I like that smaller feel.
Teeny tiny dice. Yeah, you know, like the card, a
card game is one thing and then I have this one has components
which I'm like. But if you if.
You have the Mothership Deluxe box.
There's those like drawers, like these cabinets in it.
So we're doing something like that.
I have like a prototype here, so it comes out like this.
And then there's all of these little boxes in here.
Oh, hold on, we're not. Well, let's put that Cam back.
No, you're good. Yeah.
So it, it, this is the the rec league box and then it pops out
and then there's all these little like each one is the as a
deck and then kind of put a little like one of those little
cabinets up here. And that's where the dice and
the little chips live. But this is about the form
factor of the set, very large, a little bit bigger than like a
like 100 card deck box. And like I said, that'll that'll
have enough for two players in it.
But if everybody gets one, then you just need the whole set.
Like this is a personal set. And so I wanted it to be a like
a deck box that you could carry your whole game in.
That's awesome. I cannot wait to make my fiance
play this with me. I can't wait.
To hear how that goes. Yeah, she'll win.
She's she'll, she'll get first couple rounds, you're like
what's going on? And then suddenly she'll reel,
she'll sharpen up real hard and start beating me.
So I. Have never won this.
Nice plastic. I always swing way too big and
then somebody comes in and just like, which is fine because I
have to take notes, yeah. Totally.
There you go. I'm sure at some point you'll
get one, but I. Thank you.
Let us know, But yeah, come back on again, demo the game, let us
know if we're allowed to stream the TTS when I bug you until you
give it to. Us Yeah, yeah, I'll get it.
I'll get it gussied up. I just I've been neglecting that
with like paid work. If we can't, it's OK, we're
still going to play it. We'll.
Still play it, yeah. I don't give it all day.
Yeah, absolutely. I love coming on.
Thanks for having me. Yeah.
Great to have you on. Yeah, and that is going to be us
for today. Catch us tomorrow if we wake up
for not weekly war games, for some more mech 28 if you want
some more mech action and then more stuff next week.
No game this week. But again, Logan, thank you for
being here and we will catch all of you later.