Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll podcast.
My name is Ryan and today we have a very special guest with
just me. Hunter's not here today.
We have Di Sugars. How you doing today, Di?
Hey, how's it going? So for those who who might not
know or who don't listen to the show, since you've come up many
times on the show, who might not know who you are, who who, who
the heck are you? Oh well.
The way I always describe myself is, hi, I'm die.
I make books. In particular, I make a lot of
tabletop RPGs. I'm a fairly prolific worker in
the indie scene. If I can be so proud.
Yeah, that's really it. I I make games.
Yeah, it's, it's interesting. I don't remember.
Maybe it was. I know we were talking before
stream happened where I was like, who the heck did this
layout? I need to remember this name.
Like I need to go look at who it was or whatever it might have
been when we did Squishy. And then I would just notice
your name like more and more and more and more.
By the time we got to Gangs of Titan City, I was like, man,
this is a good game. It looks good, it feels good.
And you know, and then you know, obviously we work with we, we,
we are, we are close friend to this jerk at this point.
And you are very, you are part of Space Penguin, which, which,
which we'll get to eventually. We have a list of things to to
talk about, especially on your website, which for those
watching is in the opposite corner that I just pointed to.
But but I guess let's like this is the beginning is probably a
good place to start. So what, what, what was GMDK?
Let's start there. Oh OK.
So I mean GMDK is not actually the start.
The start was me working with scruples back in 2017, back when
I was like completely a nobody taught myself like how to use.
I was using Latex at the time, which is like a markdown program
to do designs. But, and I did that for like the
first 3 or 4 books. But GM Decay was a publishing
company. I did me and a few friends
decided like, well, we wanted to get our books out there and we
were having a hard time finding other publishers for it.
And so I'm like, yeah, you know what?
I got a pretty reasonable, reasonably secure day job.
I can take some financial risks. So I'll be the one to head this.
We released three books, The Demon Collective Volume 1, which
was pretty much like, I would say like the mission statement,
you know, it was an anthology of horror adventures designed,
written, illustrated, edited by an entirely trans cast of
creators. And then that was reasonably
successful. We'd made like 7000 out of a
1000 budget, which was phenomenal for us at the time.
And then for the next book, we decided to publish an English
translation of the French game Librette by Phoebe Fay, which is
to this day one of my favorite games ever made.
Like, I truly believe that just one of the most beautiful art
works of art in the RPG space, that's the one.
Yeah, yeah. So I, I definitely had this book
long before I knew like was aware of like who you are or
like even now, like what GMDK was and stuff like that.
This is a book that I've I've maybe seen like one other person
talk about and it's insane. Like it's insane.
Like it's incredible. I'm just there's a whole like
segments of the teach RPG niche that I can't believe that they
don't ever shut the fuck up about this.
But like I never hear them talk about it because this is a very
like story forward, dark as hell and just incredible, incredible
game. I actually and.
I actually just wrote, sorry. No, Go for it, please.
Yeah, no. So Liberte is the basis like
that, the mechanical basis for a game I'm designing right now
called Half Light. And I just spent today writing a
like 1700 word blog post about why I think Liberte has the
single most sublimely beautiful mechanics of any game
whatsoever. Like the sort of Powered by the
Apocalypse system, but you invest points and you're trying
not to get like the highest number, but the, you know, 8 to
A10 as opposed to like a 12 plus.
I think it's fantastic. Yeah, yeah, I very much like the
PBTA adjacent. You know, 2D6 mix success is my
favorite, but moves make me want to RIP my eyes out.
So anything that you know, leans into those kind of nothing never
happens mechanics, You know, like one of the worst things
that you can do in the game like 5E is miss because then it's
just like, OK, well, you miss that sucks.
Like that's the end. I guess someone else gets to go
but. You're turning 15 minutes.
Right. Like please don't play on your
phone and invest in the game, whatever.
But yeah, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a beautiful game.
The mechanics are fantastic, but the setting itself and, and
everything that you do with like the little kids and the bullies
and the little one and everything, it's just, it's,
it's, it's so good. It's very, it's very
interesting. So, so, so why?
Why like what? And even how like with GMDK and
putting this out as one of the three books they all put out,
why this one? And how did he, how did you even
get like reach out to the French creator to make an English
translation of this? Well, we were actually friends
beforehand. So GMDK grew out of a, a discord
server called the Demon Collective.
That was me and a bunch of friends.
And in fact, Jean Decay stood for Good morning Demon kind,
which was our, our customary greeting every time we will wake
up. And we just, yeah, we the first,
the Demon Collective in particular was based off of like
every, all the members of that server coming together and be
like, oh, wow, I'll write this, I'll write that.
And then Vivian came in and Vivi came in later.
And yeah, it was just one of the things where it's like they had
a game that was very successful in France, you know, successful
in in so far as India RPGs are. And yeah, she was looking for a
translator to try to get an English version out.
Like, oh, yeah, totally. I can try.
We'll see what we can do. I had never done a translation
before. We had the same team working on
it, on the same editing team. What would eventually become the
Moonrat conspiracy. And Phoebe herself did the
translation from French to English.
And yeah, so that's how we ended up doing that.
Nice, nice. I mean, of all of of to only do
three books in GMDK and one of them gets to be this one is an
incredible success for for a, for a publisher, I think.
And then and then there. Was things to do more.
I mean, hey, listen, the future is bright.
It exists for all of us. GMDK 2 on the horizon?
I really would have wanted to do more.
I just at the time, I was like, you know, I feel like as a
publisher, I'm not doing as much designing of books and I'm doing
a whole lot of other stuff. And I felt like I absolutely
just had to focus on my design chops and develop my skills in
that regard and stop doing so much talking to distributors and
making spreadsheets. Again, the future is bright.
So so three books you put out Demon Collective volume 1
Liberte and 3rd 1 is. Float them all the you Liberte
supplement. The supplement, Yeah, perhaps
cheating considering it was part of the same Kickstarter, but I
consider it three books. Hey, listen, the book, there are
it's two separate pieces here. So I, I will completely agree
with you. And, and it's beautiful.
I mean, even just honestly, even just like cover when you're
flipping through things and you see this.
And I especially, I love the back.
I love when it like is completely full like this.
And you really, like, in the throes of war, only three
children survived, the belligerent, the beauty and the
beast. I mean, I don't, I don't know
how anyone pass that up. Again, I'm shocked that this
game is not talked about more. But I feel like we're going to
say that once or twice more throughout the rest of this
interview. I'm I'm a creator of sleeper
hits. There you go.
I I couldn't possibly agree more.
And, and, and again, I need to make a little note for myself to
remember to bring that up again later.
But after Jim decay because because this came out according
to the front of the book in 2020.
Interesting year, quite, quite the time for us.
What what happened after Jim decay and and and kind of like
how did Jim decay like, I don't want to say end go on extended
hiatus to to move away from that since you only put out the the
three books. So Liberte had a bit of a
troubled lifespan due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the time, I was working in a major hospital in Florida or
the. At the time, I was working in
the emergency room, but not as a nurse or a doctor.
I was sort of working in the pharmacy adjacent to the
emergency room pharmacist and I was working so, so, so much.
I had we were Florida handled the pandemic particularly badly
thanks to our governor and the I was just getting so burnt out.
You know, I was working 12-16 hour days and then coming back
and trying to fulfill a Kickstarter.
And I think that that it didn't really remove my love for the
project or my love for the work, but it did make me think, OK, I
can't be, I have to choose one of the other.
You know, publishing was not the financial windfall that I was
perhaps hoping for. You know, they say that if you
want to make a big fortune and or you want to make a small
fortune of publishing, you got to start with a big one.
But I was like, you know, OK, if I'm going to do this, I have to
do this in a way that's sustainable.
And for me, that was design. I decided to focus on being a
graphic designer and I took every chance I could get to just
try to do as many books as possible.
And in that, that leads us to, for those watching in podcast
land, you should check out dye sugars.com so you can see this
beautiful page, very informative, this huge list of
covers that I'm scrolling through right now that has hits
we've talked about on the show and or we'll be talking about
especially when we look at things like inevitable and
Moonlight at Roseville Beach. I'm surprised you haven't done
Roseville yet. Roseville's awesome.
Listen, I had to wait for the hardcover to come in.
It came in, I got my T-shirt, I got all the zenes and it's on
our list. Trust me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, that's the problem with
some of the projects that we we want to do is I'll be like, hey,
we should do this one. And then they just announced a
Kickstarter for like a new version.
I'm like, well, we got to wait a year now.
It's one of the reasons we only have we haven't done Karen
either is when your two E was creeping up so.
Wanted to. Yeah, well, I mean, I keep
getting the I got, I think I got an e-mail today from from a
mutual friend. So I'll see you there.
So, so you kicked over from gym decay into focusing on graphic
design and layout and stuff like that, which is primarily what
you do now post, well, the pandemic still going on, but
after gym decay and when you decided to move into that, like
what, what, what were the next steps that along along the path?
Well, so we'll say 20 late 2021, early 2022 is why I decided to I
shuddered. GMDKI decided to devote myself
fully to design the big one around that time.
Gracious. And I'm trying to remember even
what I was doing like because I did magical industrial
revolution was actually before Liberte.
That was late 2020, 2021-2022, 2020.
OK, let's just skip a year, you know, because I even, I don't
remember what I was doing at the time, but 2022 was really when I
hit my stride. I think, you know, that's when I
did Gangs of Titan City. I did the monster overhaul.
I, I started branching into the PDF remediation for other
people. I did the Avatar RPG for Magpie.
I did the Alien RPG for Free League and I think even later
that year, maybe early 2023, I did Mark Borg's core book.
What So what I I was, I was going to ask for the show and I
made myself not ask this. What is PDF remediation?
OK, so this is actually something that I, I, it's a bit
of a passion project for me. So PDF remediation is the method
by which you take APDF and you make it accessible for screen
readers or other assistive assistive software.
So like if you, and this is something I did for all the GMDK
books as well, like if you take a regular PDF and you try to run
it through a screen reader, particularly something that has
a lot of graphic design elements, you know, 2 column
layout, big interplay between text and art, it's going to come
out really garbled. You know, the screen reader is
going to attempt to read left to right, top to bottom.
And sometimes that's just not the way the information is
supposed to be presented. So PDF remediation is taking an
existing PDF for now. I work from layout files and
going through and setting all the metadata saying, no, this is
a header, this is an image, this is a page number.
Don't read that. This is a map.
Here's a description of the map and making it so that like even
the people who are entirely blind or heavily visually
impaired, they can still read the book in a in a sense or have
it read to them. So, so here on the show, we kind
of have an obsession with PDFs and hyperlinking and
accessibility and usability of PDFs.
And now I'm going to be obsessed with PDF remediation and knowing
whether APDF is, you know, remediated for a screen reader.
How? How would I go about even
knowing that besides running it through a screen reader?
So is there pretty much the best way to do it would be to open it
in Acrobat and check the tags pane?
That's tags are basically the way you tell a screen reader how
to read something. Like I was saying, this is a
header, this is an image, etcetera.
If APDF has no tags whatsoever, you're basically flying by
whatever the program thinks it's supposed to read.
It probably won't have any way to navigate it.
So like most screen readers allow you to hit tab to
instantly navigate between headers.
That's extremely important because otherwise there's almost
no way to say I want to go to page 60.
So yeah, if you don't have any tags in APDF, then it's not
remediated, it's not accessible, and I would say that's the
easiest way to check. All right, well, so I do have
Acrobat. So every future review blame die
when you get a point off a usability for not having the
accessible accessibility to screen readers with your PDF.
So you already beat up enough people about their PDFs.
Like how do you how do you not have bookmarks?
You know, but but but now this is right, right.
Come on. If your if your table of
contents isn't hyperlinked. I wrote this way like way back,
and I think it's probably gone by now, but I wrote an article
called Utilize the Medium back in the GMDK days where I was
like, I was basically like, OK, PDFs are they?
They're a unique medium. They can be.
They have advantages that you can't get in a regular book.
And one of them is the ability to instantly go to a particular
topic with the click of a button.
Another one is layers, like you can layer APDF so that the art
can be entirely hidden with a single click.
That makes it fantastic for printing.
And so many people just don't bother with that.
And I feel like it's really it's a waste of the thing that they
treat PDFs as just digital books.
And they are, but they can also be used in different ways.
I could not agree more. I I'm obsessed with the way that
PDFs are. They function, especially in
this space, especially in an indie space where like printing
cost money and some people have great ideas and they don't have
money. So access to the digital medium
is such a great way to get those ideas out to people.
And if you can do it in a way where you can reach more people,
which means accessibility, which means being able to give it to
people that might be blind or or can't see or, or any other
varieties, a way you can do that make it easier to print.
You can do anything. There's no reason not to do it.
You know, And like this is, this is a personal gripe that no one
gives a shit about but me. But there's a difference between
the PDF you send to the printer and the PDF you should send to
people as the PDF. And like the one thing that I
would just beg people to do is if you, I know people send it in
spreads and pages a lot of times.
Thank you, I appreciate that. But when you send out the pages
1 and some people will look at pages in A2 page spread.
And if you don't put one extra page in after your cover or
title page, your spreads will be split across two different
windows. So put in one extra page in the
beginning in your pages versus your spread so that they can
still view it in spreads if they want to, no?
One cares for any designers in our audience.
Here's a little tip I learned from from Jez Gordon.
For APDF, take your back cover and set it as the second page of
your document. Completely ignores that issue.
You you don't have to put any weird blank space.
You know it's APDF. You don't need to back cover in
the back anyways, Throw it up front, more art.
And there you go, you've just completely fixed any issues
you've had with spreads. All right, listen, that's Word.
All the criteria for usability is redone.
Sorry everyone, going forward, you're all fucked.
I can't wait till we find that one PDF that does all of that
though, you know? And I'll be like.
Oh yeah, you. Guys, you know, yeah, only only
one, only one, only one book has ever got a 10 in like our
usability like layout design thing.
So we'll, maybe we'll get a second one in the future.
So gosh, I look at this list and we didn't even talk on some of
these. Like you said, you did the
remediation for, for all these projects.
I can see again, if you go to dye sugars.com, you can see this
huge list. Incredible website by the way.
Like I've never seen as much information about projects like.
There's more information from you about projects than from the
creators of some of the projects that are listed on here just by
clicking on it, going in, seeing flip throughs of the books,
breakdown of the Kickstarter pages.
It's incredible good. I mean, good job, you know.
Thanks. Thanks.
Yeah, I, I did a thing a while back on Twitter where I was
like, would you be interested in reading like sort of a, like
the, the equivalent of a of a dev log for games or programs
where it's like, I just do a breakdown of what went into my
thinking when I was designing something.
And I'm like, would you find that useful or cringingly
masturbatory? And most people thought it would
be useful. So I was like, OK, I'm going to
sit down one week. You know, I would go through all
of the projects on my website and I will type it up.
You know, I will go back into my my archive projects list.
I will pull up the research I did, I will all the the mood
boards I made and finally get it out, you know, as a public
service. I mean that this is an
incredible public service. I wish more people would again
do all of this stuff. And hey listen, if you anyone
out there needs APDF or mediator, I feel like we found
the person for you. Hey, that's what I'm here for.
It really is something I'm quite passionate about, you know?
Like, I mean, this is usually the pitch I use when I cold call
publishers about it. But it's like, I feel like
RPGRPGS are a uniquely or a medium uniquely suited to being
played by the blind as they are mostly like a collaborative
storytelling medium. You know, you've got dice that
have bumps on them and you you have APDF that's properly
remediated. You can run an entire game
without ever needing to look at anything.
And with the advent of virtual table tops and everything like
it, it is a lot easier to play with a properly remediated game
than to play almost any video game in the world.
Yeah, I mean, you know, it it it is definitely different medium
just because you have the freedom to not be constrained
by, you know, the the games mechanics and and it's space and
whatnot. So yeah, you have that access to
it in another way. So I again again, you're you.
If you have one fan for PDF remediation, know that it is me
and I will now Rep it constantly so that more people would do it.
I got a few fans. I'm a mod with the Knights of
the Braille discord, which is a community of blind and visually
impaired gamers, and I get messages from time to time being
like, yo, I'm so glad I can read Mothership now.
You know, like what? I recently did the entire
Mothership 1 E box set and that was like, like Sean's a
fantastic dude and we've been talking about that for years.
But I'm really glad that, like, someone of that higher caliber,
like arguably one of the biggest names in indie publishing, is
going all in on this sort of thing.
Again, we will be singing it from the rooftop so that maybe
we'll bully enough people. I, I, I have a list and I, I do
have a list. I did keep a list of all the
people that are like, hey, I heard you were reviewing the
game. Didn't want to get yelled at.
So we hyperlinked to the PDF and I'm like, yes, all right.
That is our legacy is bullying people in the hyperlink in their
PDFs PDF remediation is next. There we go.
So, so after that, I mean, we have a timeline on your
beautiful website, so might as well go through that APDF
remediation. We got OSC listed on here, we
got Ether Wright listed on here, Moonlight and Roseville Beach
layout and design. We we just talked about that a
little bit. That's a, that's a project that
we are, it's on our list maybe sooner than later.
And it originally came out in paperback recently had a
hardback addition come out using this as an example of kind of
like the way that you get projects like did, did they
reach out to you? Did you reach out to them?
Like how, how does one go about being like, Hey, I want you to,
to make this great game with me and do all the layout and stuff
like that. How does that process go?
Because we've talked to editors and stuff before, but not really
a layout and like design person to be to, to kind of go through
their process. So so as an example, you know
how how does that? I'm probably actually like the
worst person to talk to about this because I am outside of my
website. I am terrible at advertising my
work. Most of my projects are pitched
to me. I've got like a stable.
If you'll notice if you go through my work, I I work for
the same people multiple times. You know, I've worked for a row
of what is it done our publishing, Richard Rain several
times. I've done like 4 books for Soul
Muppet. I've worked with scurples for
like the better part of eight years now.
So yeah, that it's like, it's not great advice for up and
coming designers, but most times when I get a project, it's
because I woke up and I checked my inbox and someone's like,
hey, I've got a book I want you to do.
I'm very. Very lucky in that regard.
Here's the thing though is if you do something want then they
want you back. That says something, right?
I, I like to think so. You know, like with Soul Muppet,
like I did four books in a row, like four of their major
productions, back-to-back to back-to-back.
Oh gosh, what what all did we do?
We got so we we definitely have gangs.
Titan City, we got Throne of Avarice, we got inevitable.
What was the 4th 1:00? Orbital Blues, Afterburn, just
Afterburn just went to my shop. In fact, I was going to do
Gardens of yen, but I was too busy with Afterburn.
Very excited I some up. It's doing such great stuff and
and again, I would say again, we we talked about squishy before,
which is project you did, but I feel like it was gangs of Titan
City or and I I feel like I said this already on the podcast, and
I know he said it before the stream where I was just like,
damn, this game is underrated and it looks fantastic.
I need to make sure whoever made this game look like this is a
name that we remember. So now I then I would just like
go to my Dropbox and search die sugars and I was like, Oh, this
is a log list of games that this person has done, but that might
have been the one. So if you if you if you want to
see a game, first of all, that's fantastic from Soul Muppet, but
that just looks great and in my opinion, really sings for the
way that you do layout stuff like that.
Definitely for those listening to check out gangs of Titan
city. And as far as I mean, we're
we're we're we're getting to the point now where we're up to date
in 2024. So as far as your layout style
and design everything. Did you go to school for layout
and graphics or did you is this something you learned?
I know you said after GMDK you were like, I'm going to focus on
on layout and that's what I'm going to do.
Like kind of how how did that kind of happened where now
that's what you do full time? I did not go to school.
I considered it, you know, I, I tried to, but yeah, I, I don't
really have much in the way of a formal education, but entirely
self-taught the way that I went about like learning design
principles, like after I had the basics, you know, which was
mostly just me futzing around in a program.
I went on, went to the library and I found every single book on
graphic design this high. And I read through every single
one of them. I'm, I'm somebody who can very
easily grasp information if I read it.
And like, even to this day, I've got probably 30 or 40 books that
I haven't read that I still flip through from time to time
because I'm just like, I'm insatiable for trying to get
better at this particular thing. So yeah, I, I it's mostly just
drive. Yeah, just self-taught and you
did it and now you're still doing it.
And as far as like your your process for actually getting
into doing layout and design, first of all, how do you feel
about writers writing directly to layout and then and then
calling you? Is that a thing that happens?
Yeah, and I'm actually not as opposed to it as some, you know,
I, again, I think in fact the most of the opposition comes
from writers and editors because I feel like they think that it
constrains them, you know, if you're working within a page.
But there's a monster overhaul in particular was written
entirely in layout. You know, I had set up the the
template, it was similar to the one we used for magical
industrial revolution. But aside from that, it was, it
was the only way we could possibly get that book to fit
all the information onto each page.
And that was the goal. You know, we have one page is
for Barbarians, the next page is for minotaurs.
We are going to fill the barbarian and Minotaur page
margin to margin, you know, and that's really only possible if
you're working within layout. Well, because, I mean, otherwise
you're just going to go and go and go and be like, damn, like,
this stuff's important, but somehow I have to cut all of it,
you know? Absolutely.
So so. Another there's a writer.
Let me let me find that person because I showed this on
Twitter. Natsuhiko Kiyogoku, he's a
mystery writer, a Japanese mystery writer who also writes
that he sets all his own books. And his idea is that, like, a
sentence should never cross over a page break because he wants
his readers to be able to stop reading whenever they want to.
Whereas if the sentence goes over a page, people who are
really weary of reading, they must turn over the page to
finish it. And I'm like, I thought that was
always a fascinating idea, how it's like, you know, if you
don't want to force your reader to go beyond where they want to
stop, just out of the sense of like, I have to finish the
sentence. I mean, that's, that's a great
thought because that happens all the time.
So I read, I read a lot, I read quite a bit.
I've been reading a lot of Warhammer lately.
And one thing that they do in a lot of their books is a lot of
perspective changes and stuff. But like in between them, there
will be like not the end of a chapter or even like another
thing. They'll just be like a couple in
like blank spaces. And I'm like, thank you.
I don't have to read to the end of the chapter.
I know I can just read to this little section here and, and
that's enough. So it's nice to kind of have
that like, never explained, but kind of like innate permission
to be like, this is a good spot to pause.
And you don't need to read like the 30 more pages in the
chapter. So that's information, yeah.
And which is fantastic. You know.
And that is one thing that's great.
I mean to, to there is no, well, there's, I was going to say
there's no wrong way to do TTRPGS.
There's no, there are there are ways that are more right, and I
do I do it is nice, like you said, with the monster overhaul,
like, you know, sometimes it's great.
Sometimes you know, some you need to do a little different.
But to be like this is a barbarian page and this is the
only page I need for Barbarians is a really nice way to do that.
Or even like constrain it to a spread or something.
You know, whenever it's feasible to keep something within like a
set things is it feel like you're breaking it apart or it
has a nice in between sections and stuff like that.
It's really nice. Like, I love when I love when
like books are color-coded and stuff.
We recently went over Heroes of Cerulea and like all the rules
are like red and all the adventures like green and stuff
like that. And then, you know, it's really
nice to have those kind of breaks and those kind of like
anything's built into into those kind of things.
I don't know what I was even talking about before I just
started railing about all of that, but no.
No, it makes it makes perfect sense, honestly.
Yeah, the I'm a big proponent of the object.
The object you're designing needs to be designed for its
particular use. You know, I'm reminded of a
story by Bruno Minelli, who was a Italian mid century designer,
and he talks about wooden spoons.
And he's like, if you look at an old wooden spoon, you'll see the
one side is worn down and that one side is because it's been
stirred in the pot and you've eaten that part of the wooden
spoon in 1000 different soups and stews.
But that wooden spoon, that shape is how it should have been
sold. Like the, the act of using the
spoon has, has shaped it into its intended design.
And I've always thought about that.
I was like, oh, well, the way that a book is used should
influence its design. You should put your mind, put
yourself in the the shoes of someone who is using the book
and then design around that. Yeah, I mean that it's profound
in in the simplicity, but what you're saying is exactly what it
is. Like a thing should be what The
thing is for. I've I've been playing around
doing a little bit of layout stuff and some private stuff
that probably no one will ever see.
But so I've been reading a bunch of of things and then you look
at examples and I'm like, man, like newspapers and magazines
make fucking sense. You know, when you explain,
like, why they do. And then I'm like, every time I
flip to a page where I'm like, this layout would be a great
teacher RPG layout. Why aren't more teacher RPGs
designed to evoke things? You know, because newspapers,
magazines, especially magazines with spreads and articles and
stuff like that, they are literally designed specifically
like knowing that, like this is how the human eye crosses across
a paper. Like this is these are the
colors that work. This is the boxes that really
draw. This is, this is how you make
sure that the the most important information is most important
information on the page. And it's like, man, this is like
an intro book. Like it's so, so I could think
of like 5T RPG that if they would have just like flipped
through these 3 pages, like they would have looked better and
been easier to read. So it's, I mean, that's why you
people like you though. That's why we have layout people
and stuff like that. And I think my question a little
bit ago, if I remember my tangent before the tangent
before the tangent was, so what's your process like when
you get someone says like, hey, I, I have this stuff and I would
like it to look like a game and they hand it to you.
How does that work for you? Well, First things first.
I read the book cover to cover. I generally refuse to take on
projects that are not finished. I mean, if you're still waiting
on a piece of art or two and you know the dimensions of it,
that's fine. I can work around that.
But like the in my early career, I took a few books where I would
have ended up having to redesign the whole thing because entire
chapters were added and it really threw off my spreads.
So I don't do that anymore. So yeah, First things first,
I'll read the book. You know, if it's an adventure
for a system I'm not familiar with, I'll read the system.
Going back to the idea of like, I have to know how this is
supposed to be used. You know, if it's ADCC module,
you know, I need to figure out how people play DCC.
You know, how people read DCC books.
What's the, the, what do? What do official DCC modules
look like? What can I take from that?
You know, once I'm done that I will usually take the text and
I'll go through blocking, you know, which is just throwing the
text on the page, setting my margins, my grid and everything,
getting a general idea of where each bit of text is going to go.
And then after that, that's around this time, I'll also
start making my mood board with figuring out what I want the
book to look like. And then finally, I'll put the
art and then I'll go through and design every page and make it
all pretty. And then afterwards I'll do my
like finishing touches, manually, break line so they
look all pretty, go through and check I've got all the right
apostrophes and hyphens or M dashes when they need to be, and
so on and so forth. Love a good M.
Dash Yeah, me too. Love them so good it makes me
sad I don't have alt keys on this keyboard so anytime I need
to do that I got AI got a just copy paste an M dash nerves
myself. There was a.
There was a, I forget who makes it, but there's someone that
makes like a a single command button.
It's like a gigantic big red emergency eject button that you
can program as a hot key. And I've always wanted to get
one and set it as like an M dash.
Just one M dash. That would be awesome.
I wonder if I can program the Eno.
I'm not even going to worry about that right now, but but
yeah, I mean, and then you have again, a vast list of games that
you've done. One thing that pops out here
though, cuz a number of these comes up is this, this little
Kitty right here, Space Penguin, Inc.
For those who watch the show, we talked about Space Penguin a
little bit like in our monthly scheduled conversations with a
good friend and human being, Jarrett Crater, which I know
that you had worked with the Moonrack Conspiracy and Jarrett
all the way back in MGNKMGMGMDK. But I guess A, first and
foremost, like, how did you meet Jarrett to to get into that?
And then B, how did working with Space Penguin come about years
later? So to be entirely honest, I
don't really know when I first met Jert.
I I know I met Jert through Fiona Geist, who long term long
time friend, founding member of GMDK.
And at the time she was working with Jert as what would become
the Moonrite Conspiracy. So that was before Jert worked
with Exalted Funeral and way before Space Penguin.
But yeah, ever since the very first book we did together, him
and I have been friends. And when it finally came time
that he was like, OK, yeah, I'm doing my own thing.
I want to become a publisher. I'm like, hey, that sounds
awesome. And we got to talking and we
were just like, he's just like, you know, the one thing I'm a
little concerned about is like, I don't know how to do any sort
of marketing. You know, I've never really, I
don't have a. He doesn't have a personal
Twitter. He doesn't really have any
social media. He has a Discord that he used to
occasionally post in, but like for the most part, he's like, I
don't really know how to do any of that.
And I'm like, yeah, well, you know, man, I can help you with
that. And so now for the most part,
like I handle all of the aesthetics of the company, you
know, the, the posts on social media, the product photos, the,
well, he takes the photos, but I edit them and everything I
write, the press kits, I do all the interfacing with media,
journalism reporters, all this stuff.
I make the Kickstarter pages, the backer kit marketing that we
did for Karen. I did all those images and yeah,
basically everything that is not he, he does all the back end
stuff, you know, actually managing the projects and
finding distributors and all the other, all the stuff I hated
when I was a publisher. He's fantastic at and yeah, I
get to continue to being an artistic person.
You go and then so, so I mean, it's listening to our upside.
There's like social media manager or something like that.
Is that what it is like marketing social media?
It's funny you do marketing and then you're like, I'm so bad at
marketing for myself, but I'll do it for this entire company.
But do you? Do you also do you know, cuz
obviously Jerk and Space Penguin, they usually have
monthly releases for things that are coming out.
Have you, do you do any of the work within those as well?
Are you primarily like when it comes up or is it, are you
primarily just with the marketing, social media?
Depends on the project, you know, with the So I was the
designer for Resonant, which is a book that jerk publis Space
Penguin published. That was a project between me
and Tony Tran, Amanda Lee, Frank, and I believe maybe every
Lockhart was also involved. I can't quite recall.
I think she did a proofread. Cover that cover slapped so
hard, I mean. Tony's fantastic, yeah.
Never, never going to get over that.
For those that haven't seen it, I mean, it's up on the screen
right now and definitely go check it out over on the Space
Kingdom site. But the second I saw that cover,
I was like, I don't even care what this is.
I'm getting this because it's beautiful, but so.
Yeah. So yeah, I occasionally I do get
some, some design work, but for the most part, yeah, like
occasionally my job does crossover.
When it came to Cairn, there was some conversation between me and
jerk about like stretch goals and funding tears and
everything. And I, I as the person who was
designing the Kickstarter page, I had some input and hey, maybe
this is how this should look. You know, this is a, a mock up
of the box. Maybe we could do something like
that. And yeah, so Jurt's a fantastic
person to work with because he, I mean, you've, you've spoken
with him, you know, he's an extremely humble and down to
earth guy. And you know, despite his
success in the field, he really hasn't let it go to his head.
I mean that's extremely true, like the guy's name is in more
teach RPG books than anyone on the entire planet.
Like I don't think it's even close.
Yeah, I think he's got like half a dozen ennies, give or take, or
has been attached to like half a dozen.
Any projects? Yeah, I mean the nominated for
like 3 or 4 just this year alone the ennies, but.
I don't have a single one. My shell is empty.
Hey, for now. For now.
I mean, we didn't. We.
If I had if, if either me or Richard had thought to nominate
Moonlight as that came out last year, if we had thought to
nominate this year, maybe it would have gotten something, but
who knows? How, how, how far from like
release can things be nominated? Or is it just like forever?
I think it's just anything. So the 2024 and an Ennies, if I
recall, are for books that were published in 2023.
So I don't think maybe we could sneak in with the Moonlight
hardcover, but I'm not entirely certain.
Listen, that's exactly where I was going with that.
I was like, hey, we just got a hardcover.
We just got a hardcover and it's a beautiful.
Book Breck Breckneil Horror is coming out soon, or Dim All the
Lights is coming out soon and that that is going to be some of
my best work if I do say so myself.
We will have to get it, find it, see it and and check that out as
well. But I had a question more about
space Penguin and I totally lost on on what it is.
So for the foreseeable future with space Penguin, the goal is
exactly what you what you just said.
It's like as a company expands and grows, you're going to
continue to do like basically all of the I don't even know
what to call like keto's back in it's not front end, is it like
all of the visual aspects, all the aesthetic aspects, every
that. And then occasionally when
projects come across that need work like that's, that's the
future of of you in space Penguin, right, Is to to just be
growing with the company and, and continuing to expand and,
and work within that part. Yeah, that's the plan.
We've got a few other crowdfunding endeavors lined up.
We're I'm working on one right now that we're just about to
announce for backer kit. And yeah, it's, I don't know,
Jurt is really determined to try to keep things small scale and
really focused on the game. Like we, if you look at our
catalogue, it's almost entirely adventures because you know, not
a lot of people publish adventures and, and people have
said this before and more games need adventures for them.
So we're, we're very much trying to stick to the third party or
like third party creator space. We've got a few systems that are
big sellers, like the Forbidden Psalms line is a, well, the
print version is a Space Penguin exclusive, and that we release a
new monthly edition of that every single month.
But for the most part, yeah, we're just gracious.
Not all of it, but it's it's it's the majority of my
forbidden song collection. For those in podcast land, I
just picked up one of the doom piles on my floor that just
happens to be entirely forbidden song.
What looks to be like 1718 bucks.
Oh, it's everything that's ever been put out in hardcover and
soft cover. Yeah, no.
So yeah, we've got Forbidden Song.
We're going to be supporting that until, until its creator
stops writing books, which just not, does not seem to be anytime
soon. And aside from that, like I, I
mean, I've seen our release schedule for the next like 2
years because again, Jared is fantastic at all the back end
stuff. He's really got a full plan for
this. And yeah, we got some really
awesome stuff coming out. And none of it is the, you know,
Bloodborne official tabletop role-playing game.
But people don't play those games anyways.
Wait, wait, wait till they do a real PC port and then maybe
people will be will be clamoring for it.
But just like all of them, you'll just have to convert it
to 5 E right before you release it.
But but yeah, for those that aren't aware, maybe in those in
podcast line, we do have a monthly monthly episode with
dirt. I think our our episode this
this month got a little pushed back.
One of us was not feeling super well.
I don't know when we're going to reschedule that, but we have I
literally have the releases right next to me.
I don't want to show them all before before you have dirt on
to do it, but definitely huge fans of Space Penguin here on
the show. 1 reason that I wanted to reach out and talk to you.
First of all, of being a fan. Second of all, knowing that you
were doing all the work with Space Penguin, even sending me
like graphics and stuff in time Dirt's like here, I got this
thing from diet, throw it off. I'm like, all right, I got this.
So we had to talk eventually and I think the last, not the last
thing, I mean, we're getting towards the end of our time.
But one of the reasons, the thing that kind of pushed me
over to be like, I have, I have to send an e-mail to this person
was the game that you were talking about.
You had some beautiful graphics went up on on the inner webs.
Did you want to talk at all about the the the the the game
that you're working? On yeah yeah or.
Not or not all. Right, so this is a game that
I've been working on for a few years now and outside of a
single adventure in the Demon Collective and a very angsty 4
page game I designed for H dot IO some game jam years ago, this
will be the very first writing credit I've got.
And so the game is called Half Light Gothic Horror
role-playing. It's a horror dungeon crawl game
that is designed around like Libra tase dice mechanic system.
It uses a, what I would think is it what I would consider like a
fairly novel stress and sanity mechanic.
Unlike most sanity mechanics, which I think are actually a
little able to sometimes, this is not a game where you see a
big scary monster and your character goes insane and you
lose control of them entirely. Instead, it's more like a
overwhelming amount of stress. You know, we, we call it frenzy.
It's the momentary loss of composure, which can have fairly
damaging effects on your survivability and the morale of
your party and everything. And yeah, it's it's actually my
only other podcast appearance. Back in like 2022, I talked
about the game because I was writing it still then.
It's it's ever since I saw Liberte, I was like, OK, this is
the perfect system to adapt for like a Darkest Dungeon inspired
dungeon crawler. And yeah, I've just been
tinkering away with it and I've set a goal for myself to have it
published this year. I so I know we've talked about
this before. Liberte is incredible.
It's it's a game that is extraordinarily underrated and
have there ever been other hacks for it?
To my knowledge there have been no third party hacks of Liberte.
The it's creator Vivi has produced a Mecca supplement
called Bio and Steel, but to my knowledge it has never been
translated into English. It is a French exclusive.
Sounds like we got to get GMDK. I've been running again so we
can get. Another I That was the plan and
then I shouted the company. So blame me for that.
You can blame me entirely for there being no sad children in
neck game. For now.
For now.
I mean, it's if only you knew a
publisher that that made games, you know, Because I think
there's a lot of people out there that not only would they
like sad children, I guess is a weird way to say it.
But like Mech, it's Neon Genesis I.
Was going to say like sad children in mech is literally
just neon genesis like why are we not playing this game?
So I mean after after half light, I think we we have the
plan for the future. I wanted to throw the the one of
the graphics up but when I save it from your Twitter send it JFF
file which I don't know what. That is, I can send it I mean.
Oh no, I can just copy this, but Oh no, you're good.
It's it's gorgeous. I love the graphics that you've
been putting out for it. They're absolutely insane.
And let me just hit save on this real quick.
That'll be APNG and let me throw it up again for those in podcast
land. Hey, come watch the show
sometime. It's the vibes, the layout,
everything. So and again, I don't know when
I'm I'm sure I talked about on the show already.
We were emailing back and forth and I was like, Hey, I would
love to talk about half light. You're like, hey, it's kind of
dark. It's based on Liberte.
And I was like, oh, OK, yeah, never mind.
That's really, really dark. I don't know if we're going to
play that on the screen. Yeah.
Yeah, you had asked if I wanted to run the game.
Yeah. And yeah, I'm happy to talk
about it. But yeah, I.
The game traffic's in heavy scenes.
The the system is entirely about giving, taking and managing
trauma. And I've got a panoply of
content warnings and safety tools in the book.
And one of the big ones is I straight up say, I don't believe
this is a good convention game. You should not play this game
with people that you do not know personally and people that you
do not trust. You know, like one of the key
mechanics of the game that I revealed on Twitter a while ago
is called Nightmares. And the idea is that if you make
camp without the proper precautions, you know, it's
entirely possible that one of your characters may find
themselves in a nightmare and all the characters are pulled
into it. But it is a manifestation of
that one particular character's trauma.
And in the, in the GM's guide that I'm writing, I give a few
examples of this, and they can be difficult topics.
You know, the, the, the scholar who is a disgraced academic has
one where they are basically being run out of their, of their
institution, you know, desperately trying to explain
themselves and to a unfeeling crowd, the, the leader is
reliving their worst mistake that got all of their, their,
the people under their command Guild.
And it is my ideal that this can actually lead to some very
interesting conversations with the players and how they are
reacting to how their characters may feel.
But yeah, I would never expect, I would never want a player to
suffer for the actions of a player character.
Yeah, or the. Actions of GM I.
Mean here's the thing though. Here's the thing.
So I feel like the best games that are not the best, the best
to me, the games that I really want to play are definitely ones
that probably won't make it on the show.
And this is exactly those kind of things.
Like I love like Kingdoms from Sophia Tenney, for example, is a
game that and we say almost the exact same thing when we
recommend it to people. It's just like, you should play
this with friends that like are OK with you stabbing in the back
like super hard and like, you know, dealing with these like
adult themes and stuff like that.
And like half Light sounds like exactly that kind of game.
And Liberte is definitely one of those games where I'm like, so
let's just talk about also this, the giant stop sign in the front
where you're like, hey, here's safety tools.
But then like underneath it's like, no, no, no, no, no.
It's like actually read the safety tools.
I'm explaining why this is important and how this is heavy.
So, I mean, and this is just about like water and kids not
like, yeah. So this, this.
Is my own design like the the stop sign and everything that
was not in the original manuscript?
I was like, this is reading the book.
This is important. Yeah.
Are we going to see a similar stop sign motif at the beginning
of Half Light? I don't think so.
The visual design, The visual design of Half Light is actually
heavily inspired by William Morris, the, the works of
printmaker, textile maker, writer, poet, artist, designer,
William publisher William Morris, who I'm a huge fan of.
And so I, in fact, the, the body text I'm using is called a
golden type, which is one of the fonts that he designed.
And so I'm, I'm really trying to go back to basics with this one.
It's going to be a very, very standard, sort of like 18th
century manuscript style book that I think is going to end up
looking really, really good. But it also is, yeah, I'm not
going to do anything really wild with the design.
I feel it's going to. I'm hoping that the words and
the art will stand on their own merits without needing a very in
your face design. I that's a nice looking, it's a
nice looking it's a nice looking font there.
I'm excited for that. I will say this one thing about
your design that I really, really enjoy and like gangs of
Titan City again, is one that I show people all the time where
with like I'm trying to even think of like specific pages
where I know in character creation, there's this giant
black bar across the top that and with the book is like white.
It's it's black and white, but it says in white in that bar.
It's like, hey, basically do it the way we say first, but then
after you get that down, like come up with your own and do
your own thing. And the thing I really like
about even the way that that's laid out is like it's impossible
to miss, you know, And there's a lot of ways that you do that in
an extremely clean way. Or even where you do like it'll
be a full page spread, but then like one of the pages is like
1/3 or 1/2. So it's like 3/4 white across
the whole spread and then black on the side with like important
information there. And stuff like 2, there's really
like simple, elegant ways where you make sure that important
information is communicated in a way that's like interesting, it
fits in with the themes. And you know, we've come across
like a number of books where like even through reading it,
even when I read it, when Hunter reads it, when we read it
together, we'll miss something. And maybe we're just dumb as
shit. But like, if something super
important, you know, bolded words, keywords, or even just
subtle, like, hey, put it in a slightly Gray box or a giant
black bar across the bottom. Whenever I've read books where
you've done the layout and for, I don't really.
And now that I know to look for it, I noticed that you don't
really miss those things. The important information is
displayed in a in a way that makes it easy to not miss and to
understand. So I I really appreciate that
way about the way that you do your layout.
Yeah, something that has always stuck with me.
And I, I can't quite recall where I first read it, but back
when I was teaching myself graphic design, I told you I
read a bunch of books. And I, I in particular, I read a
bunch of manifestos, like a designer trying to put down in
one or two pages what they believe the purpose of design
is. And somewhere in one of those, I
read something that's always stuck with me, which is that
when the words are good, the design doesn't have to be or I'm
sorry, when the words are good, the design should be invisible
or something to that effect. And it's like, yeah, you.
I believe that in particular when designing a book, my job is
to get out of the way. I present the information, but I
don't occlude it and I don't try to cover it up and I don't try
to grandstand taking attention away from it, you know?
And in particular, with a book like Gangs of Titan City, going
back to the fact that I read all this stuff and I take notes as
to what I feel is important, it's very like, necessary in my
mind for the person designing a book to know what should be
highlighted and what shouldn't be.
And sometimes the the writer will make like, little comments
in the doc saying, oh, there should be a sidebar or they
should be bolded. But for the most part, yeah,
it's just knowing or making a judgment call as to what I think
is most important and what I think the person reading the
book needs the most. That's what I highlight.
Yeah, you know, it is, it is interesting, especially again
when you say that and then you think about some of the stuff
that you've done and it is, it is very true.
Like there's, you know, they're not like art, art, art, like the
art punk books, like Mark Borg or anything like that where it's
like that. But when you so us on the show,
you know, we we do review games we're supposed to and we do give
metrics at the end. We give numbers to our opinions
just to at least be able to quantify in some way.
And one of the things that we ended up kind of evolving, the
thing I think we evolved the most in the way that we did that
metric is, is the art and layout specifically where we ended up
splitting it into like art and layout as a number and usability
as a whole nother number. But layout comes into both of
those. So layout actually ends up being
in two metrics, not just one, because of kind of just how
important it is. So you can see a layout where
there's in art and layout, our first metric, it's just like
visually, how does it look? Is it pretty?
Does it look nice? But and then usability also goes
directly to layout 2 for things that we talked about before is
like hyperlinks and are things in the right order?
And is it, it might be pretty, but is it fucking readable?
Like, you know, all of the other aspects for kind of the behind
the scenes, quote UN quote of layout and exactly what you're
talking about, where aesthetically it looks really
nice. But like from the usability
standpoint, it should all just be there.
Like you should need to hunt and dig and look for things when you
have a really nice layout, again, like you have in Gangs of
Titan City, you you don't need to hunt for things.
You don't need to look for things.
Things are presented in such a way where you can just continue
with the flow of information. And not only does it look nice,
but it it's fed to you in a way where it's easy to digest.
So. Yep.
No, I agree entirely. You know, the the most useful
book, in my opinion, is the one that is easiest to read.
If it's the designer or the writer's intent of the book be
difficult to read or, or challenging in some regard,
that's fine and the design should reflect that.
With Librette, there were some pages where I tried to echo the
words that were on it with the design, particularly with the
monsters. There's A1 monster that is sort
of a the how do I put this? It's the personification of
intrusive thoughts and and loneliness.
And for that page, the I tried to bring the margins in as tight
as I could. You know it, the entire page is
black. Even some of the space between
the lines is covered because like, I just wanted you to focus
entirely on the words and feel like even the page itself is
pressing in on you. That's what's up.
That's again like. This is why.
This is why we hire good layout designers to do the layout for
it. One thing, one note I wrote
here, so I'm gonna bounce back three tangents.
When you were talking about, you said it was William Morris who
you were kind of using as a reference for Half Life.
Yeah. So, yeah, so.
One thing you said about. Like impressed moment.
Well, so even within the design that you were talking about, cuz
clearly you said you're using him as a like holding him up as
part of it. The design that I have up on the
screen here, half light, the gothic role-playing game, even
the art on that looks kind of like woodcut or lentil cut.
Is that so you're going like deep with all the aesthetics
kind of head in that direction, huh?
No, all of those are actually woodcuts I have.
I have a gigantic folder of probably 50 or 60 woodcuts I
pulled from various like not only Wikimedia Commons, but I've
also pulled up like individual pieces for museums.
I've contacted several museums and tried to get scans of them.
So yeah, I've got all of this stuff is public domain.
So the graphic that's on the screen right now that I'm
looking at right now that I keep pointing in the right direction
to. So all of those are actually
wood cut art that has been adapted to use for half light.
I cannot see what is on your screen, but I'm assuming yes.
It's your most recent Twitter. It's the thing that's at the top
of your Twitter page with the three or like 5:00-ish figures
at the bottom. Yes, yes, that is.
Oh, who is that? Let me see the a particular
German artist. I could probably find out who it
was if I can recall correctly. Yes, a German expressionist,
Kertha Kolwitz is who I believe is the the artist for that.
Yeah. And so it's a it, it looks
significantly worse the way I found it as it is about 150
years old. But yeah, a little bit of a
Photoshop cleaning up and then deliberately dirtying again gets
you the the look I'm going for. A lot of the work that I've
pulled there is that one particular Norwegian artist who
basically made woodcuts about the ongoing plague in his in his
country. So that's where you get those
really cool images of like the skeleton man manning the
guillotine and everything. I'm like, Oh my God, this is so
dope. And yeah, I one of the cool
things about designing your own game and doing everything from
the writing to the art to the layout, as you can let each
piece sort of influence the others.
Like when I was writing the book, I had a certain aesthetic
in mind. And then when I found those
woodcuts, I'm like, OK, I can totally pivot to this.
And so I started referencing and reinforcing those ideas in the
writing and in the layout. Now that I had, I knew what sort
of art I was going for. Yeah, yeah, I mean, the second
that I saw the first graphic of you, but on Twitter posting half
light and then I read like one line about it, I'm like, OK, you
got me. Like I'm I am, if nothing, an
edge Lord piece of shit. And as soon as there's like dark
themes and stuff, you should only play with friends and
stuff. I'm like, you won me over.
And if we're talking about woodcuts of skeletons and
guillotines, you're at worst writing directly to an audience
of 1. So I'm very, very excited for
for for Half Light. Can't wait to see it.
It exists. It is coming out.
I, I have a, a, a hard limit of
2024. I've already created the
Kickstarter page. I'm just waiting for it to
waiting to feel like I've got it ready enough that I can hit go,
you know, So October, maybe late October, maybe November, it's.
Right around the corner, Halloween's a great day.
You know it exists, it's out there now.
Is this something just through you?
Are you, are you working with Jurt for like distro and stuff
like that? Like how are using the whole
field advantage or? I will be working with Jurt
through distro. I will be working with a print
shop out of Philadelphia. Assuming we fund and everything,
a pretty awesome local indie print shop.
I say local, but I haven't been in Philadelphia in years, but
really awesome indie print shop called Fireball is that I will
hopefully be printing the books through.
And yeah, I'm really hoping that this product, like I'm putting a
lot of effort into it and I really wanted to hold up as a
truly, truly, truly beautiful book.
You know, I want the same way. I feel like Liberte is a truly
beautiful book inside and out. I want this to be my magnum
opus. I'm, I'm very excited for it
now. I think we had previously talked
about the potential that coming out in October and either, I
mean, A, you're always welcome back anytime you want to come
here on the show and talk again. We're not really going to run
the game. But for those listening or
watching, this will not be the last time you hear about Half
Light. I'll probably not shut the fuck
up for the whole time. It's crowdfunding so that it
exists so that I can own it. So trust me when I say that you
will all hear about this again. Hi, it has been fantastic to
finally get a chance to talk to you.
I have been looking at your work for a long time and and this is
the thing that finally made me go fuck.
I like I said, I got to e-mail this person and I would you
know, talk to Jared about you all the time.
So it's wonderful to talk to you for people that are going to be
A looking for you to do layout PDF remediation or B looking for
information on half light as it starts to drop and what not.
Where can people find you and find your stuff?
Well, I mean, first of all, the pleasure was mine.
Thank you so much for having me here.
I'm on Twitter way more often than I should at Die Sugars.
That's DAISHUGARS. My website is the same Die
sugars.com. I have a blue sky, same name.
I don't use that one as much, but might switch to that.
Half Light can be found at any of those, and I also have a
dedicated site for it called Play Half light.com.
All one word and yeah, that's pretty much it.
Discord dye sugars. It's a pretty unique name so I
really had no issue getting handles for it.
Yeah. All right.
Well, just bookmark that half life and this is exactly what I
should have just brought up originally.
And there is the skeleton. Of the DTS.
It is. It will now.
Now I have to show it. Now I have to show it to to
stream. Let me let me re rearrange real
quick some of the stuff behind here.
Look at look at look at that look at that skelly boy right
there with with all of that that's going on.
Here's my my my capture. It's absolutely stunning page
and let me get it to where it's actually in the thing here.
My goodness, that skeleton on the side again.
If, if, if there was one thing that was going to make me back
this project, it's skeletons and and guillotines and heads.
There's the whole how do I play section already listed here.
I mean features knowledge to the game.
Like there's already so much information here about how the
game works. Like what is half light?
Who is the adversary? My goodness.
So again, I'm not going to shut up about this.
I'm very excited for this project, very excited that we
got a chance to talk and I'm sure I will continue to talk to
Jerk about all the wonderful things that you're doing there
as well. Again, can't thank you enough
for being here. And I will make sure that all of
the links for those, as we say every time are in the
descriptions of wherever you're listening below.
So you can click on that. And our links are the same as
they've been for 200 episodes. So that is us for today and and
we're out.