1 00:00:14,720 --> 00:00:17,080 Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll podcast. 2 00:00:17,080 --> 00:00:20,920 My name is Ryan and today we have a very special guest with 3 00:00:20,960 --> 00:00:22,440 just me. Hunter's not here today. 4 00:00:22,760 --> 00:00:24,720 We have Di Sugars. How you doing today, Di? 5 00:00:25,840 --> 00:00:30,360 Hey, how's it going? So for those who who might not 6 00:00:30,360 --> 00:00:33,400 know or who don't listen to the show, since you've come up many 7 00:00:33,400 --> 00:00:37,120 times on the show, who might not know who you are, who who, who 8 00:00:37,120 --> 00:00:39,680 the heck are you? Oh well. 9 00:00:41,120 --> 00:00:43,840 The way I always describe myself is, hi, I'm die. 10 00:00:43,840 --> 00:00:47,960 I make books. In particular, I make a lot of 11 00:00:47,960 --> 00:00:52,160 tabletop RPGs. I'm a fairly prolific worker in 12 00:00:52,160 --> 00:00:55,160 the indie scene. If I can be so proud. 13 00:00:56,880 --> 00:00:59,160 Yeah, that's really it. I I make games. 14 00:01:02,080 --> 00:01:05,239 Yeah, it's, it's interesting. I don't remember. 15 00:01:05,680 --> 00:01:07,400 Maybe it was. I know we were talking before 16 00:01:07,400 --> 00:01:10,280 stream happened where I was like, who the heck did this 17 00:01:10,280 --> 00:01:11,720 layout? I need to remember this name. 18 00:01:11,720 --> 00:01:14,200 Like I need to go look at who it was or whatever it might have 19 00:01:14,200 --> 00:01:17,400 been when we did Squishy. And then I would just notice 20 00:01:17,400 --> 00:01:19,440 your name like more and more and more and more. 21 00:01:19,440 --> 00:01:21,840 By the time we got to Gangs of Titan City, I was like, man, 22 00:01:22,200 --> 00:01:25,520 this is a good game. It looks good, it feels good. 23 00:01:25,920 --> 00:01:29,800 And you know, and then you know, obviously we work with we, we, 24 00:01:29,840 --> 00:01:31,880 we are, we are close friend to this jerk at this point. 25 00:01:32,160 --> 00:01:35,240 And you are very, you are part of Space Penguin, which, which, 26 00:01:35,280 --> 00:01:38,640 which we'll get to eventually. We have a list of things to to 27 00:01:39,440 --> 00:01:41,760 talk about, especially on your website, which for those 28 00:01:41,760 --> 00:01:45,480 watching is in the opposite corner that I just pointed to. 29 00:01:46,200 --> 00:01:49,960 But but I guess let's like this is the beginning is probably a 30 00:01:49,960 --> 00:01:54,320 good place to start. So what, what, what was GMDK? 31 00:01:54,800 --> 00:01:57,800 Let's start there. Oh OK. 32 00:01:57,800 --> 00:02:01,200 So I mean GMDK is not actually the start. 33 00:02:01,720 --> 00:02:06,800 The start was me working with scruples back in 2017, back when 34 00:02:07,200 --> 00:02:13,680 I was like completely a nobody taught myself like how to use. 35 00:02:13,680 --> 00:02:16,920 I was using Latex at the time, which is like a markdown program 36 00:02:16,920 --> 00:02:22,120 to do designs. But, and I did that for like the 37 00:02:22,320 --> 00:02:25,280 first 3 or 4 books. But GM Decay was a publishing 38 00:02:25,280 --> 00:02:28,320 company. I did me and a few friends 39 00:02:28,400 --> 00:02:34,080 decided like, well, we wanted to get our books out there and we 40 00:02:34,080 --> 00:02:36,240 were having a hard time finding other publishers for it. 41 00:02:36,680 --> 00:02:38,960 And so I'm like, yeah, you know what? 42 00:02:38,960 --> 00:02:43,120 I got a pretty reasonable, reasonably secure day job. 43 00:02:43,440 --> 00:02:47,200 I can take some financial risks. So I'll be the one to head this. 44 00:02:48,120 --> 00:02:51,800 We released three books, The Demon Collective Volume 1, which 45 00:02:51,800 --> 00:02:55,400 was pretty much like, I would say like the mission statement, 46 00:02:55,400 --> 00:02:59,840 you know, it was an anthology of horror adventures designed, 47 00:02:59,840 --> 00:03:04,440 written, illustrated, edited by an entirely trans cast of 48 00:03:04,440 --> 00:03:08,160 creators. And then that was reasonably 49 00:03:08,160 --> 00:03:11,120 successful. We'd made like 7000 out of a 50 00:03:11,120 --> 00:03:14,040 1000 budget, which was phenomenal for us at the time. 51 00:03:14,680 --> 00:03:19,760 And then for the next book, we decided to publish an English 52 00:03:19,760 --> 00:03:26,480 translation of the French game Librette by Phoebe Fay, which is 53 00:03:26,480 --> 00:03:29,000 to this day one of my favorite games ever made. 54 00:03:29,040 --> 00:03:33,320 Like, I truly believe that just one of the most beautiful art 55 00:03:33,320 --> 00:03:36,080 works of art in the RPG space, that's the one. 56 00:03:37,200 --> 00:03:40,360 Yeah, yeah. So I, I definitely had this book 57 00:03:40,360 --> 00:03:44,240 long before I knew like was aware of like who you are or 58 00:03:44,240 --> 00:03:46,760 like even now, like what GMDK was and stuff like that. 59 00:03:47,080 --> 00:03:51,600 This is a book that I've I've maybe seen like one other person 60 00:03:51,600 --> 00:03:58,680 talk about and it's insane. Like it's insane. 61 00:03:58,680 --> 00:04:01,560 Like it's incredible. I'm just there's a whole like 62 00:04:02,240 --> 00:04:07,120 segments of the teach RPG niche that I can't believe that they 63 00:04:07,120 --> 00:04:08,640 don't ever shut the fuck up about this. 64 00:04:08,640 --> 00:04:11,600 But like I never hear them talk about it because this is a very 65 00:04:12,560 --> 00:04:17,680 like story forward, dark as hell and just incredible, incredible 66 00:04:17,680 --> 00:04:20,720 game. I actually and. 67 00:04:21,079 --> 00:04:25,360 I actually just wrote, sorry. No, Go for it, please. 68 00:04:25,520 --> 00:04:30,720 Yeah, no. So Liberte is the basis like 69 00:04:30,720 --> 00:04:33,760 that, the mechanical basis for a game I'm designing right now 70 00:04:33,760 --> 00:04:37,960 called Half Light. And I just spent today writing a 71 00:04:37,960 --> 00:04:42,360 like 1700 word blog post about why I think Liberte has the 72 00:04:42,360 --> 00:04:46,600 single most sublimely beautiful mechanics of any game 73 00:04:46,600 --> 00:04:50,400 whatsoever. Like the sort of Powered by the 74 00:04:50,400 --> 00:04:54,400 Apocalypse system, but you invest points and you're trying 75 00:04:54,400 --> 00:04:58,560 not to get like the highest number, but the, you know, 8 to 76 00:04:58,600 --> 00:05:00,880 A10 as opposed to like a 12 plus. 77 00:05:01,400 --> 00:05:05,480 I think it's fantastic. Yeah, yeah, I very much like the 78 00:05:07,120 --> 00:05:12,160 PBTA adjacent. You know, 2D6 mix success is my 79 00:05:12,160 --> 00:05:16,000 favorite, but moves make me want to RIP my eyes out. 80 00:05:16,160 --> 00:05:22,120 So anything that you know, leans into those kind of nothing never 81 00:05:22,120 --> 00:05:25,320 happens mechanics, You know, like one of the worst things 82 00:05:25,320 --> 00:05:27,920 that you can do in the game like 5E is miss because then it's 83 00:05:27,920 --> 00:05:30,880 just like, OK, well, you miss that sucks. 84 00:05:30,880 --> 00:05:33,320 Like that's the end. I guess someone else gets to go 85 00:05:34,200 --> 00:05:36,200 but. You're turning 15 minutes. 86 00:05:36,920 --> 00:05:38,400 Right. Like please don't play on your 87 00:05:38,400 --> 00:05:40,440 phone and invest in the game, whatever. 88 00:05:41,960 --> 00:05:44,880 But yeah, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a beautiful game. 89 00:05:44,880 --> 00:05:47,440 The mechanics are fantastic, but the setting itself and, and 90 00:05:47,440 --> 00:05:51,480 everything that you do with like the little kids and the bullies 91 00:05:51,480 --> 00:05:53,480 and the little one and everything, it's just, it's, 92 00:05:53,480 --> 00:05:56,320 it's, it's so good. It's very, it's very 93 00:05:56,320 --> 00:05:59,080 interesting. So, so, so why? 94 00:05:59,240 --> 00:06:04,120 Why like what? And even how like with GMDK and 95 00:06:04,120 --> 00:06:07,360 putting this out as one of the three books they all put out, 96 00:06:08,440 --> 00:06:10,400 why this one? And how did he, how did you even 97 00:06:10,400 --> 00:06:13,960 get like reach out to the French creator to make an English 98 00:06:13,960 --> 00:06:17,200 translation of this? Well, we were actually friends 99 00:06:17,200 --> 00:06:23,920 beforehand. So GMDK grew out of a, a discord 100 00:06:23,920 --> 00:06:25,480 server called the Demon Collective. 101 00:06:26,120 --> 00:06:27,920 That was me and a bunch of friends. 102 00:06:28,240 --> 00:06:31,200 And in fact, Jean Decay stood for Good morning Demon kind, 103 00:06:31,400 --> 00:06:35,520 which was our, our customary greeting every time we will wake 104 00:06:35,520 --> 00:06:40,040 up. And we just, yeah, we the first, 105 00:06:41,360 --> 00:06:44,080 the Demon Collective in particular was based off of like 106 00:06:44,240 --> 00:06:47,080 every, all the members of that server coming together and be 107 00:06:47,080 --> 00:06:49,720 like, oh, wow, I'll write this, I'll write that. 108 00:06:49,960 --> 00:06:52,400 And then Vivian came in and Vivi came in later. 109 00:06:52,560 --> 00:06:56,360 And yeah, it was just one of the things where it's like they had 110 00:06:56,360 --> 00:07:01,880 a game that was very successful in France, you know, successful 111 00:07:01,880 --> 00:07:06,680 in in so far as India RPGs are. And yeah, she was looking for a 112 00:07:06,920 --> 00:07:09,000 translator to try to get an English version out. 113 00:07:09,480 --> 00:07:10,840 Like, oh, yeah, totally. I can try. 114 00:07:11,360 --> 00:07:14,080 We'll see what we can do. I had never done a translation 115 00:07:14,080 --> 00:07:17,440 before. We had the same team working on 116 00:07:17,440 --> 00:07:20,320 it, on the same editing team. What would eventually become the 117 00:07:20,320 --> 00:07:24,720 Moonrat conspiracy. And Phoebe herself did the 118 00:07:24,720 --> 00:07:26,640 translation from French to English. 119 00:07:27,080 --> 00:07:29,480 And yeah, so that's how we ended up doing that. 120 00:07:31,400 --> 00:07:36,200 Nice, nice. I mean, of all of of to only do 121 00:07:36,200 --> 00:07:41,120 three books in GMDK and one of them gets to be this one is an 122 00:07:41,120 --> 00:07:44,200 incredible success for for a, for a publisher, I think. 123 00:07:46,000 --> 00:07:47,880 And then and then there. Was things to do more. 124 00:07:48,920 --> 00:07:51,600 I mean, hey, listen, the future is bright. 125 00:07:51,800 --> 00:07:56,640 It exists for all of us. GMDK 2 on the horizon? 126 00:07:57,960 --> 00:07:59,320 I really would have wanted to do more. 127 00:07:59,320 --> 00:08:03,520 I just at the time, I was like, you know, I feel like as a 128 00:08:03,520 --> 00:08:06,320 publisher, I'm not doing as much designing of books and I'm doing 129 00:08:06,320 --> 00:08:09,440 a whole lot of other stuff. And I felt like I absolutely 130 00:08:09,440 --> 00:08:13,240 just had to focus on my design chops and develop my skills in 131 00:08:13,240 --> 00:08:17,080 that regard and stop doing so much talking to distributors and 132 00:08:17,920 --> 00:08:24,280 making spreadsheets. Again, the future is bright. 133 00:08:25,880 --> 00:08:29,520 So so three books you put out Demon Collective volume 1 134 00:08:30,880 --> 00:08:36,799 Liberte and 3rd 1 is. Float them all the you Liberte 135 00:08:36,799 --> 00:08:39,919 supplement. The supplement, Yeah, perhaps 136 00:08:39,919 --> 00:08:43,120 cheating considering it was part of the same Kickstarter, but I 137 00:08:43,120 --> 00:08:47,120 consider it three books. Hey, listen, the book, there are 138 00:08:47,120 --> 00:08:51,640 it's two separate pieces here. So I, I will completely agree 139 00:08:51,680 --> 00:08:53,960 with you. And, and it's beautiful. 140 00:08:53,960 --> 00:08:58,000 I mean, even just honestly, even just like cover when you're 141 00:08:58,000 --> 00:08:59,720 flipping through things and you see this. 142 00:08:59,720 --> 00:09:01,120 And I especially, I love the back. 143 00:09:01,120 --> 00:09:03,480 I love when it like is completely full like this. 144 00:09:04,200 --> 00:09:06,680 And you really, like, in the throes of war, only three 145 00:09:06,680 --> 00:09:09,720 children survived, the belligerent, the beauty and the 146 00:09:09,720 --> 00:09:12,040 beast. I mean, I don't, I don't know 147 00:09:12,040 --> 00:09:14,680 how anyone pass that up. Again, I'm shocked that this 148 00:09:14,680 --> 00:09:17,760 game is not talked about more. But I feel like we're going to 149 00:09:17,760 --> 00:09:19,880 say that once or twice more throughout the rest of this 150 00:09:19,880 --> 00:09:24,960 interview. I'm I'm a creator of sleeper 151 00:09:24,960 --> 00:09:26,440 hits. There you go. 152 00:09:26,520 --> 00:09:29,600 I I couldn't possibly agree more. 153 00:09:31,200 --> 00:09:33,760 And, and, and again, I need to make a little note for myself to 154 00:09:33,760 --> 00:09:35,680 remember to bring that up again later. 155 00:09:36,960 --> 00:09:39,800 But after Jim decay because because this came out according 156 00:09:39,800 --> 00:09:41,560 to the front of the book in 2020. 157 00:09:42,400 --> 00:09:45,200 Interesting year, quite, quite the time for us. 158 00:09:45,880 --> 00:09:50,320 What what happened after Jim decay and and and kind of like 159 00:09:50,600 --> 00:09:54,920 how did Jim decay like, I don't want to say end go on extended 160 00:09:54,920 --> 00:09:59,720 hiatus to to move away from that since you only put out the the 161 00:09:59,720 --> 00:10:04,520 three books. So Liberte had a bit of a 162 00:10:04,520 --> 00:10:10,840 troubled lifespan due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 163 00:10:11,720 --> 00:10:15,680 At the time, I was working in a major hospital in Florida or 164 00:10:15,680 --> 00:10:19,560 the. At the time, I was working in 165 00:10:19,560 --> 00:10:22,000 the emergency room, but not as a nurse or a doctor. 166 00:10:22,800 --> 00:10:25,360 I was sort of working in the pharmacy adjacent to the 167 00:10:25,400 --> 00:10:32,240 emergency room pharmacist and I was working so, so, so much. 168 00:10:32,680 --> 00:10:37,720 I had we were Florida handled the pandemic particularly badly 169 00:10:38,240 --> 00:10:43,360 thanks to our governor and the I was just getting so burnt out. 170 00:10:43,400 --> 00:10:46,360 You know, I was working 12-16 hour days and then coming back 171 00:10:46,360 --> 00:10:47,920 and trying to fulfill a Kickstarter. 172 00:10:48,800 --> 00:10:55,400 And I think that that it didn't really remove my love for the 173 00:10:55,400 --> 00:10:58,840 project or my love for the work, but it did make me think, OK, I 174 00:10:58,840 --> 00:11:00,960 can't be, I have to choose one of the other. 175 00:11:01,080 --> 00:11:09,280 You know, publishing was not the financial windfall that I was 176 00:11:09,600 --> 00:11:11,760 perhaps hoping for. You know, they say that if you 177 00:11:11,760 --> 00:11:13,680 want to make a big fortune and or you want to make a small 178 00:11:13,680 --> 00:11:15,400 fortune of publishing, you got to start with a big one. 179 00:11:16,120 --> 00:11:19,080 But I was like, you know, OK, if I'm going to do this, I have to 180 00:11:19,080 --> 00:11:20,920 do this in a way that's sustainable. 181 00:11:20,960 --> 00:11:24,080 And for me, that was design. I decided to focus on being a 182 00:11:24,080 --> 00:11:28,480 graphic designer and I took every chance I could get to just 183 00:11:28,480 --> 00:11:30,200 try to do as many books as possible. 184 00:11:32,800 --> 00:11:37,080 And in that, that leads us to, for those watching in podcast 185 00:11:37,080 --> 00:11:39,800 land, you should check out dye sugars.com so you can see this 186 00:11:40,120 --> 00:11:43,560 beautiful page, very informative, this huge list of 187 00:11:43,560 --> 00:11:46,200 covers that I'm scrolling through right now that has hits 188 00:11:46,200 --> 00:11:50,840 we've talked about on the show and or we'll be talking about 189 00:11:50,840 --> 00:11:53,480 especially when we look at things like inevitable and 190 00:11:53,680 --> 00:11:57,040 Moonlight at Roseville Beach. I'm surprised you haven't done 191 00:11:57,040 --> 00:11:58,240 Roseville yet. Roseville's awesome. 192 00:11:58,880 --> 00:12:00,720 Listen, I had to wait for the hardcover to come in. 193 00:12:01,080 --> 00:12:04,840 It came in, I got my T-shirt, I got all the zenes and it's on 194 00:12:04,840 --> 00:12:05,880 our list. Trust me. 195 00:12:07,320 --> 00:12:09,680 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, that's the problem with 196 00:12:09,680 --> 00:12:12,520 some of the projects that we we want to do is I'll be like, hey, 197 00:12:12,520 --> 00:12:14,440 we should do this one. And then they just announced a 198 00:12:14,440 --> 00:12:15,560 Kickstarter for like a new version. 199 00:12:15,560 --> 00:12:17,160 I'm like, well, we got to wait a year now. 200 00:12:18,080 --> 00:12:20,240 It's one of the reasons we only have we haven't done Karen 201 00:12:20,320 --> 00:12:23,400 either is when your two E was creeping up so. 202 00:12:24,480 --> 00:12:27,480 Wanted to. Yeah, well, I mean, I keep 203 00:12:27,480 --> 00:12:30,720 getting the I got, I think I got an e-mail today from from a 204 00:12:30,720 --> 00:12:34,440 mutual friend. So I'll see you there. 205 00:12:34,560 --> 00:12:37,920 So, so you kicked over from gym decay into focusing on graphic 206 00:12:37,920 --> 00:12:40,480 design and layout and stuff like that, which is primarily what 207 00:12:40,480 --> 00:12:45,400 you do now post, well, the pandemic still going on, but 208 00:12:45,680 --> 00:12:48,760 after gym decay and when you decided to move into that, like 209 00:12:48,760 --> 00:12:53,160 what, what, what were the next steps that along along the path? 210 00:12:55,160 --> 00:13:02,040 Well, so we'll say 20 late 2021, early 2022 is why I decided to I 211 00:13:02,040 --> 00:13:04,520 shuddered. GMDKI decided to devote myself 212 00:13:04,520 --> 00:13:09,200 fully to design the big one around that time. 213 00:13:11,080 --> 00:13:13,160 Gracious. And I'm trying to remember even 214 00:13:13,160 --> 00:13:17,560 what I was doing like because I did magical industrial 215 00:13:17,560 --> 00:13:19,760 revolution was actually before Liberte. 216 00:13:20,360 --> 00:13:25,800 That was late 2020, 2021-2022, 2020. 217 00:13:26,200 --> 00:13:28,640 OK, let's just skip a year, you know, because I even, I don't 218 00:13:28,640 --> 00:13:32,000 remember what I was doing at the time, but 2022 was really when I 219 00:13:32,000 --> 00:13:35,000 hit my stride. I think, you know, that's when I 220 00:13:35,000 --> 00:13:38,520 did Gangs of Titan City. I did the monster overhaul. 221 00:13:39,400 --> 00:13:43,560 I, I started branching into the PDF remediation for other 222 00:13:43,560 --> 00:13:48,680 people. I did the Avatar RPG for Magpie. 223 00:13:49,200 --> 00:13:54,040 I did the Alien RPG for Free League and I think even later 224 00:13:54,040 --> 00:13:58,040 that year, maybe early 2023, I did Mark Borg's core book. 225 00:14:00,000 --> 00:14:02,480 What So what I I was, I was going to ask for the show and I 226 00:14:02,480 --> 00:14:05,680 made myself not ask this. What is PDF remediation? 227 00:14:06,520 --> 00:14:11,960 OK, so this is actually something that I, I, it's a bit 228 00:14:11,960 --> 00:14:15,960 of a passion project for me. So PDF remediation is the method 229 00:14:15,960 --> 00:14:18,760 by which you take APDF and you make it accessible for screen 230 00:14:18,760 --> 00:14:22,120 readers or other assistive assistive software. 231 00:14:23,000 --> 00:14:27,760 So like if you, and this is something I did for all the GMDK 232 00:14:27,760 --> 00:14:32,000 books as well, like if you take a regular PDF and you try to run 233 00:14:32,000 --> 00:14:34,600 it through a screen reader, particularly something that has 234 00:14:34,600 --> 00:14:37,680 a lot of graphic design elements, you know, 2 column 235 00:14:37,680 --> 00:14:41,960 layout, big interplay between text and art, it's going to come 236 00:14:41,960 --> 00:14:44,360 out really garbled. You know, the screen reader is 237 00:14:44,360 --> 00:14:48,200 going to attempt to read left to right, top to bottom. 238 00:14:48,200 --> 00:14:50,080 And sometimes that's just not the way the information is 239 00:14:50,080 --> 00:14:54,720 supposed to be presented. So PDF remediation is taking an 240 00:14:54,720 --> 00:14:58,440 existing PDF for now. I work from layout files and 241 00:14:58,440 --> 00:15:01,120 going through and setting all the metadata saying, no, this is 242 00:15:01,120 --> 00:15:03,800 a header, this is an image, this is a page number. 243 00:15:03,800 --> 00:15:05,760 Don't read that. This is a map. 244 00:15:05,760 --> 00:15:09,720 Here's a description of the map and making it so that like even 245 00:15:09,720 --> 00:15:12,880 the people who are entirely blind or heavily visually 246 00:15:12,880 --> 00:15:16,720 impaired, they can still read the book in a in a sense or have 247 00:15:16,720 --> 00:15:22,320 it read to them. So, so here on the show, we kind 248 00:15:22,320 --> 00:15:25,680 of have an obsession with PDFs and hyperlinking and 249 00:15:25,680 --> 00:15:27,880 accessibility and usability of PDFs. 250 00:15:28,480 --> 00:15:31,600 And now I'm going to be obsessed with PDF remediation and knowing 251 00:15:31,600 --> 00:15:37,800 whether APDF is, you know, remediated for a screen reader. 252 00:15:37,800 --> 00:15:39,360 How? How would I go about even 253 00:15:39,360 --> 00:15:41,600 knowing that besides running it through a screen reader? 254 00:15:43,120 --> 00:15:47,080 So is there pretty much the best way to do it would be to open it 255 00:15:47,080 --> 00:15:50,200 in Acrobat and check the tags pane? 256 00:15:51,200 --> 00:15:55,520 That's tags are basically the way you tell a screen reader how 257 00:15:55,520 --> 00:15:57,360 to read something. Like I was saying, this is a 258 00:15:57,360 --> 00:15:59,000 header, this is an image, etcetera. 259 00:15:59,000 --> 00:16:03,360 If APDF has no tags whatsoever, you're basically flying by 260 00:16:03,360 --> 00:16:05,440 whatever the program thinks it's supposed to read. 261 00:16:06,800 --> 00:16:09,040 It probably won't have any way to navigate it. 262 00:16:09,160 --> 00:16:12,000 So like most screen readers allow you to hit tab to 263 00:16:12,000 --> 00:16:13,640 instantly navigate between headers. 264 00:16:13,720 --> 00:16:16,400 That's extremely important because otherwise there's almost 265 00:16:16,400 --> 00:16:18,520 no way to say I want to go to page 60. 266 00:16:20,320 --> 00:16:23,760 So yeah, if you don't have any tags in APDF, then it's not 267 00:16:23,760 --> 00:16:27,520 remediated, it's not accessible, and I would say that's the 268 00:16:27,520 --> 00:16:31,640 easiest way to check. All right, well, so I do have 269 00:16:31,640 --> 00:16:34,720 Acrobat. So every future review blame die 270 00:16:34,720 --> 00:16:38,280 when you get a point off a usability for not having the 271 00:16:38,280 --> 00:16:42,280 accessible accessibility to screen readers with your PDF. 272 00:16:42,280 --> 00:16:44,840 So you already beat up enough people about their PDFs. 273 00:16:44,840 --> 00:16:46,240 Like how do you how do you not have bookmarks? 274 00:16:46,240 --> 00:16:50,800 You know, but but but now this is right, right. 275 00:16:50,800 --> 00:16:52,800 Come on. If your if your table of 276 00:16:52,800 --> 00:16:58,080 contents isn't hyperlinked. I wrote this way like way back, 277 00:16:58,080 --> 00:17:00,800 and I think it's probably gone by now, but I wrote an article 278 00:17:00,800 --> 00:17:04,280 called Utilize the Medium back in the GMDK days where I was 279 00:17:04,280 --> 00:17:09,480 like, I was basically like, OK, PDFs are they? 280 00:17:09,560 --> 00:17:11,520 They're a unique medium. They can be. 281 00:17:11,520 --> 00:17:14,359 They have advantages that you can't get in a regular book. 282 00:17:14,359 --> 00:17:19,040 And one of them is the ability to instantly go to a particular 283 00:17:19,040 --> 00:17:20,520 topic with the click of a button. 284 00:17:21,400 --> 00:17:24,400 Another one is layers, like you can layer APDF so that the art 285 00:17:24,400 --> 00:17:27,000 can be entirely hidden with a single click. 286 00:17:27,160 --> 00:17:28,760 That makes it fantastic for printing. 287 00:17:29,360 --> 00:17:31,400 And so many people just don't bother with that. 288 00:17:31,400 --> 00:17:33,960 And I feel like it's really it's a waste of the thing that they 289 00:17:33,960 --> 00:17:36,520 treat PDFs as just digital books. 290 00:17:36,720 --> 00:17:40,280 And they are, but they can also be used in different ways. 291 00:17:41,880 --> 00:17:49,480 I could not agree more. I I'm obsessed with the way that 292 00:17:49,800 --> 00:17:53,840 PDFs are. They function, especially in 293 00:17:53,840 --> 00:17:56,760 this space, especially in an indie space where like printing 294 00:17:56,760 --> 00:18:00,040 cost money and some people have great ideas and they don't have 295 00:18:00,040 --> 00:18:02,760 money. So access to the digital medium 296 00:18:02,760 --> 00:18:05,520 is such a great way to get those ideas out to people. 297 00:18:06,760 --> 00:18:09,200 And if you can do it in a way where you can reach more people, 298 00:18:09,200 --> 00:18:11,920 which means accessibility, which means being able to give it to 299 00:18:11,920 --> 00:18:16,120 people that might be blind or or can't see or, or any other 300 00:18:16,440 --> 00:18:18,480 varieties, a way you can do that make it easier to print. 301 00:18:18,480 --> 00:18:22,000 You can do anything. There's no reason not to do it. 302 00:18:22,120 --> 00:18:25,160 You know, And like this is, this is a personal gripe that no one 303 00:18:25,160 --> 00:18:28,080 gives a shit about but me. But there's a difference between 304 00:18:28,080 --> 00:18:30,800 the PDF you send to the printer and the PDF you should send to 305 00:18:30,800 --> 00:18:33,160 people as the PDF. And like the one thing that I 306 00:18:33,160 --> 00:18:38,320 would just beg people to do is if you, I know people send it in 307 00:18:38,320 --> 00:18:40,280 spreads and pages a lot of times. 308 00:18:40,280 --> 00:18:42,880 Thank you, I appreciate that. But when you send out the pages 309 00:18:42,880 --> 00:18:47,280 1 and some people will look at pages in A2 page spread. 310 00:18:47,800 --> 00:18:51,200 And if you don't put one extra page in after your cover or 311 00:18:51,200 --> 00:18:54,400 title page, your spreads will be split across two different 312 00:18:54,400 --> 00:18:56,440 windows. So put in one extra page in the 313 00:18:56,440 --> 00:18:58,920 beginning in your pages versus your spread so that they can 314 00:18:58,920 --> 00:19:02,760 still view it in spreads if they want to, no? 315 00:19:03,000 --> 00:19:05,560 One cares for any designers in our audience. 316 00:19:05,560 --> 00:19:08,080 Here's a little tip I learned from from Jez Gordon. 317 00:19:08,840 --> 00:19:13,200 For APDF, take your back cover and set it as the second page of 318 00:19:13,200 --> 00:19:15,880 your document. Completely ignores that issue. 319 00:19:16,040 --> 00:19:18,080 You you don't have to put any weird blank space. 320 00:19:18,080 --> 00:19:20,520 You know it's APDF. You don't need to back cover in 321 00:19:20,520 --> 00:19:23,400 the back anyways, Throw it up front, more art. 322 00:19:23,960 --> 00:19:26,160 And there you go, you've just completely fixed any issues 323 00:19:26,160 --> 00:19:29,680 you've had with spreads. All right, listen, that's Word. 324 00:19:29,760 --> 00:19:32,480 All the criteria for usability is redone. 325 00:19:32,960 --> 00:19:35,480 Sorry everyone, going forward, you're all fucked. 326 00:19:37,040 --> 00:19:39,440 I can't wait till we find that one PDF that does all of that 327 00:19:39,440 --> 00:19:40,680 though, you know? And I'll be like. 328 00:19:40,680 --> 00:19:44,360 Oh yeah, you. Guys, you know, yeah, only only 329 00:19:44,360 --> 00:19:48,000 one, only one, only one book has ever got a 10 in like our 330 00:19:48,000 --> 00:19:49,920 usability like layout design thing. 331 00:19:49,920 --> 00:19:53,640 So we'll, maybe we'll get a second one in the future. 332 00:19:55,560 --> 00:19:59,680 So gosh, I look at this list and we didn't even talk on some of 333 00:19:59,680 --> 00:20:00,640 these. Like you said, you did the 334 00:20:00,640 --> 00:20:03,160 remediation for, for all these projects. 335 00:20:03,160 --> 00:20:05,760 I can see again, if you go to dye sugars.com, you can see this 336 00:20:05,760 --> 00:20:09,280 huge list. Incredible website by the way. 337 00:20:09,280 --> 00:20:14,960 Like I've never seen as much information about projects like. 338 00:20:15,560 --> 00:20:18,280 There's more information from you about projects than from the 339 00:20:18,280 --> 00:20:21,720 creators of some of the projects that are listed on here just by 340 00:20:22,160 --> 00:20:25,080 clicking on it, going in, seeing flip throughs of the books, 341 00:20:25,440 --> 00:20:27,200 breakdown of the Kickstarter pages. 342 00:20:27,200 --> 00:20:30,840 It's incredible good. I mean, good job, you know. 343 00:20:31,280 --> 00:20:31,880 Thanks. Thanks. 344 00:20:32,400 --> 00:20:36,920 Yeah, I, I did a thing a while back on Twitter where I was 345 00:20:36,920 --> 00:20:41,120 like, would you be interested in reading like sort of a, like 346 00:20:41,480 --> 00:20:45,240 the, the equivalent of a of a dev log for games or programs 347 00:20:45,240 --> 00:20:47,560 where it's like, I just do a breakdown of what went into my 348 00:20:47,560 --> 00:20:49,160 thinking when I was designing something. 349 00:20:49,720 --> 00:20:52,160 And I'm like, would you find that useful or cringingly 350 00:20:52,160 --> 00:20:54,240 masturbatory? And most people thought it would 351 00:20:54,240 --> 00:20:56,800 be useful. So I was like, OK, I'm going to 352 00:20:56,800 --> 00:21:00,120 sit down one week. You know, I would go through all 353 00:21:00,120 --> 00:21:02,800 of the projects on my website and I will type it up. 354 00:21:02,840 --> 00:21:06,600 You know, I will go back into my my archive projects list. 355 00:21:06,600 --> 00:21:09,640 I will pull up the research I did, I will all the the mood 356 00:21:09,640 --> 00:21:12,840 boards I made and finally get it out, you know, as a public 357 00:21:12,840 --> 00:21:17,960 service. I mean that this is an 358 00:21:17,960 --> 00:21:21,320 incredible public service. I wish more people would again 359 00:21:21,320 --> 00:21:23,280 do all of this stuff. And hey listen, if you anyone 360 00:21:23,280 --> 00:21:26,320 out there needs APDF or mediator, I feel like we found 361 00:21:26,320 --> 00:21:28,960 the person for you. Hey, that's what I'm here for. 362 00:21:29,840 --> 00:21:32,320 It really is something I'm quite passionate about, you know? 363 00:21:32,320 --> 00:21:38,880 Like, I mean, this is usually the pitch I use when I cold call 364 00:21:38,880 --> 00:21:41,160 publishers about it. But it's like, I feel like 365 00:21:41,160 --> 00:21:46,360 RPGRPGS are a uniquely or a medium uniquely suited to being 366 00:21:46,360 --> 00:21:49,040 played by the blind as they are mostly like a collaborative 367 00:21:49,040 --> 00:21:52,800 storytelling medium. You know, you've got dice that 368 00:21:52,800 --> 00:21:58,120 have bumps on them and you you have APDF that's properly 369 00:21:58,120 --> 00:22:00,440 remediated. You can run an entire game 370 00:22:00,480 --> 00:22:02,640 without ever needing to look at anything. 371 00:22:03,920 --> 00:22:06,360 And with the advent of virtual table tops and everything like 372 00:22:07,600 --> 00:22:12,480 it, it is a lot easier to play with a properly remediated game 373 00:22:12,480 --> 00:22:15,520 than to play almost any video game in the world. 374 00:22:18,440 --> 00:22:22,000 Yeah, I mean, you know, it it it is definitely different medium 375 00:22:22,080 --> 00:22:24,520 just because you have the freedom to not be constrained 376 00:22:24,520 --> 00:22:29,520 by, you know, the the games mechanics and and it's space and 377 00:22:29,520 --> 00:22:31,240 whatnot. So yeah, you have that access to 378 00:22:31,240 --> 00:22:34,960 it in another way. So I again again, you're you. 379 00:22:35,160 --> 00:22:40,160 If you have one fan for PDF remediation, know that it is me 380 00:22:40,800 --> 00:22:45,680 and I will now Rep it constantly so that more people would do it. 381 00:22:46,440 --> 00:22:49,400 I got a few fans. I'm a mod with the Knights of 382 00:22:49,400 --> 00:22:52,800 the Braille discord, which is a community of blind and visually 383 00:22:52,800 --> 00:22:55,920 impaired gamers, and I get messages from time to time being 384 00:22:55,920 --> 00:22:58,440 like, yo, I'm so glad I can read Mothership now. 385 00:22:58,480 --> 00:23:00,560 You know, like what? I recently did the entire 386 00:23:00,560 --> 00:23:04,640 Mothership 1 E box set and that was like, like Sean's a 387 00:23:04,640 --> 00:23:07,040 fantastic dude and we've been talking about that for years. 388 00:23:07,040 --> 00:23:12,000 But I'm really glad that, like, someone of that higher caliber, 389 00:23:12,000 --> 00:23:15,680 like arguably one of the biggest names in indie publishing, is 390 00:23:16,400 --> 00:23:17,720 going all in on this sort of thing. 391 00:23:19,360 --> 00:23:22,560 Again, we will be singing it from the rooftop so that maybe 392 00:23:22,560 --> 00:23:25,960 we'll bully enough people. I, I, I have a list and I, I do 393 00:23:25,960 --> 00:23:27,640 have a list. I did keep a list of all the 394 00:23:27,640 --> 00:23:30,800 people that are like, hey, I heard you were reviewing the 395 00:23:30,800 --> 00:23:32,600 game. Didn't want to get yelled at. 396 00:23:32,600 --> 00:23:35,640 So we hyperlinked to the PDF and I'm like, yes, all right. 397 00:23:35,640 --> 00:23:38,520 That is our legacy is bullying people in the hyperlink in their 398 00:23:38,520 --> 00:23:41,880 PDFs PDF remediation is next. There we go. 399 00:23:43,360 --> 00:23:45,960 So, so after that, I mean, we have a timeline on your 400 00:23:45,960 --> 00:23:48,960 beautiful website, so might as well go through that APDF 401 00:23:48,960 --> 00:23:51,440 remediation. We got OSC listed on here, we 402 00:23:51,440 --> 00:23:56,000 got Ether Wright listed on here, Moonlight and Roseville Beach 403 00:23:56,000 --> 00:23:58,440 layout and design. We we just talked about that a 404 00:23:58,440 --> 00:24:00,280 little bit. That's a, that's a project that 405 00:24:00,280 --> 00:24:03,400 we are, it's on our list maybe sooner than later. 406 00:24:04,800 --> 00:24:08,520 And it originally came out in paperback recently had a 407 00:24:08,520 --> 00:24:16,280 hardback addition come out using this as an example of kind of 408 00:24:16,280 --> 00:24:21,560 like the way that you get projects like did, did they 409 00:24:21,560 --> 00:24:23,320 reach out to you? Did you reach out to them? 410 00:24:23,320 --> 00:24:27,560 Like how, how does one go about being like, Hey, I want you to, 411 00:24:27,600 --> 00:24:30,320 to make this great game with me and do all the layout and stuff 412 00:24:30,320 --> 00:24:31,520 like that. How does that process go? 413 00:24:31,520 --> 00:24:33,720 Because we've talked to editors and stuff before, but not really 414 00:24:34,040 --> 00:24:37,640 a layout and like design person to be to, to kind of go through 415 00:24:37,640 --> 00:24:39,760 their process. So so as an example, you know 416 00:24:39,760 --> 00:24:43,760 how how does that? I'm probably actually like the 417 00:24:43,760 --> 00:24:47,000 worst person to talk to about this because I am outside of my 418 00:24:47,000 --> 00:24:49,120 website. I am terrible at advertising my 419 00:24:49,120 --> 00:24:55,880 work. Most of my projects are pitched 420 00:24:55,880 --> 00:24:58,360 to me. I've got like a stable. 421 00:24:58,480 --> 00:25:00,880 If you'll notice if you go through my work, I I work for 422 00:25:00,880 --> 00:25:05,160 the same people multiple times. You know, I've worked for a row 423 00:25:05,160 --> 00:25:10,200 of what is it done our publishing, Richard Rain several 424 00:25:10,200 --> 00:25:12,320 times. I've done like 4 books for Soul 425 00:25:12,320 --> 00:25:15,080 Muppet. I've worked with scurples for 426 00:25:15,080 --> 00:25:16,760 like the better part of eight years now. 427 00:25:17,280 --> 00:25:22,080 So yeah, that it's like, it's not great advice for up and 428 00:25:22,080 --> 00:25:24,960 coming designers, but most times when I get a project, it's 429 00:25:24,960 --> 00:25:27,880 because I woke up and I checked my inbox and someone's like, 430 00:25:27,880 --> 00:25:29,280 hey, I've got a book I want you to do. 431 00:25:32,000 --> 00:25:33,600 I'm very. Very lucky in that regard. 432 00:25:34,680 --> 00:25:37,040 Here's the thing though is if you do something want then they 433 00:25:37,040 --> 00:25:39,320 want you back. That says something, right? 434 00:25:40,000 --> 00:25:43,440 I, I like to think so. You know, like with Soul Muppet, 435 00:25:43,440 --> 00:25:47,200 like I did four books in a row, like four of their major 436 00:25:47,280 --> 00:25:49,400 productions, back-to-back to back-to-back. 437 00:25:50,960 --> 00:25:52,600 Oh gosh, what what all did we do? 438 00:25:52,600 --> 00:25:54,040 We got so we we definitely have gangs. 439 00:25:54,040 --> 00:25:57,680 Titan City, we got Throne of Avarice, we got inevitable. 440 00:25:57,720 --> 00:26:01,080 What was the 4th 1:00? Orbital Blues, Afterburn, just 441 00:26:01,080 --> 00:26:04,160 Afterburn just went to my shop. In fact, I was going to do 442 00:26:04,160 --> 00:26:06,480 Gardens of yen, but I was too busy with Afterburn. 443 00:26:08,640 --> 00:26:11,440 Very excited I some up. It's doing such great stuff and 444 00:26:11,440 --> 00:26:16,800 and again, I would say again, we we talked about squishy before, 445 00:26:17,320 --> 00:26:19,560 which is project you did, but I feel like it was gangs of Titan 446 00:26:19,560 --> 00:26:23,040 City or and I I feel like I said this already on the podcast, and 447 00:26:23,040 --> 00:26:24,800 I know he said it before the stream where I was just like, 448 00:26:24,800 --> 00:26:28,320 damn, this game is underrated and it looks fantastic. 449 00:26:28,480 --> 00:26:32,000 I need to make sure whoever made this game look like this is a 450 00:26:32,000 --> 00:26:34,480 name that we remember. So now I then I would just like 451 00:26:34,480 --> 00:26:37,000 go to my Dropbox and search die sugars and I was like, Oh, this 452 00:26:37,000 --> 00:26:40,240 is a log list of games that this person has done, but that might 453 00:26:40,240 --> 00:26:42,520 have been the one. So if you if you if you want to 454 00:26:42,520 --> 00:26:44,840 see a game, first of all, that's fantastic from Soul Muppet, but 455 00:26:44,840 --> 00:26:51,120 that just looks great and in my opinion, really sings for the 456 00:26:51,120 --> 00:26:52,960 way that you do layout stuff like that. 457 00:26:52,960 --> 00:26:55,120 Definitely for those listening to check out gangs of Titan 458 00:26:55,120 --> 00:26:59,880 city. And as far as I mean, we're 459 00:26:59,920 --> 00:27:02,400 we're we're we're getting to the point now where we're up to date 460 00:27:02,400 --> 00:27:05,960 in 2024. So as far as your layout style 461 00:27:05,960 --> 00:27:08,600 and design everything. Did you go to school for layout 462 00:27:08,600 --> 00:27:10,680 and graphics or did you is this something you learned? 463 00:27:10,680 --> 00:27:13,400 I know you said after GMDK you were like, I'm going to focus on 464 00:27:13,640 --> 00:27:15,040 on layout and that's what I'm going to do. 465 00:27:15,040 --> 00:27:19,440 Like kind of how how did that kind of happened where now 466 00:27:19,440 --> 00:27:22,840 that's what you do full time? I did not go to school. 467 00:27:23,720 --> 00:27:28,480 I considered it, you know, I, I tried to, but yeah, I, I don't 468 00:27:28,480 --> 00:27:33,200 really have much in the way of a formal education, but entirely 469 00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:37,440 self-taught the way that I went about like learning design 470 00:27:37,440 --> 00:27:39,760 principles, like after I had the basics, you know, which was 471 00:27:39,760 --> 00:27:42,640 mostly just me futzing around in a program. 472 00:27:43,880 --> 00:27:50,120 I went on, went to the library and I found every single book on 473 00:27:50,120 --> 00:27:54,320 graphic design this high. And I read through every single 474 00:27:54,320 --> 00:27:56,640 one of them. I'm, I'm somebody who can very 475 00:27:56,640 --> 00:27:59,200 easily grasp information if I read it. 476 00:27:59,920 --> 00:28:03,240 And like, even to this day, I've got probably 30 or 40 books that 477 00:28:03,240 --> 00:28:05,200 I haven't read that I still flip through from time to time 478 00:28:05,200 --> 00:28:09,320 because I'm just like, I'm insatiable for trying to get 479 00:28:09,320 --> 00:28:15,160 better at this particular thing. So yeah, I, I it's mostly just 480 00:28:15,840 --> 00:28:19,600 drive. Yeah, just self-taught and you 481 00:28:19,600 --> 00:28:20,920 did it and now you're still doing it. 482 00:28:20,920 --> 00:28:26,120 And as far as like your your process for actually getting 483 00:28:26,120 --> 00:28:28,400 into doing layout and design, first of all, how do you feel 484 00:28:28,400 --> 00:28:31,600 about writers writing directly to layout and then and then 485 00:28:31,680 --> 00:28:33,440 calling you? Is that a thing that happens? 486 00:28:34,720 --> 00:28:38,440 Yeah, and I'm actually not as opposed to it as some, you know, 487 00:28:38,440 --> 00:28:44,240 I, again, I think in fact the most of the opposition comes 488 00:28:44,240 --> 00:28:46,920 from writers and editors because I feel like they think that it 489 00:28:46,920 --> 00:28:50,080 constrains them, you know, if you're working within a page. 490 00:28:50,080 --> 00:28:55,400 But there's a monster overhaul in particular was written 491 00:28:55,400 --> 00:28:58,400 entirely in layout. You know, I had set up the the 492 00:28:58,400 --> 00:29:02,080 template, it was similar to the one we used for magical 493 00:29:02,080 --> 00:29:05,080 industrial revolution. But aside from that, it was, it 494 00:29:05,080 --> 00:29:08,600 was the only way we could possibly get that book to fit 495 00:29:09,600 --> 00:29:11,040 all the information onto each page. 496 00:29:11,320 --> 00:29:13,720 And that was the goal. You know, we have one page is 497 00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:15,880 for Barbarians, the next page is for minotaurs. 498 00:29:16,040 --> 00:29:18,680 We are going to fill the barbarian and Minotaur page 499 00:29:18,800 --> 00:29:22,120 margin to margin, you know, and that's really only possible if 500 00:29:22,120 --> 00:29:26,240 you're working within layout. Well, because, I mean, otherwise 501 00:29:26,240 --> 00:29:28,480 you're just going to go and go and go and be like, damn, like, 502 00:29:29,000 --> 00:29:31,160 this stuff's important, but somehow I have to cut all of it, 503 00:29:31,200 --> 00:29:32,920 you know? Absolutely. 504 00:29:34,080 --> 00:29:37,400 So so. Another there's a writer. 505 00:29:37,400 --> 00:29:48,040 Let me let me find that person because I showed this on 506 00:29:48,040 --> 00:29:51,440 Twitter. Natsuhiko Kiyogoku, he's a 507 00:29:52,840 --> 00:29:56,640 mystery writer, a Japanese mystery writer who also writes 508 00:29:56,920 --> 00:30:01,320 that he sets all his own books. And his idea is that, like, a 509 00:30:01,320 --> 00:30:06,000 sentence should never cross over a page break because he wants 510 00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:08,440 his readers to be able to stop reading whenever they want to. 511 00:30:08,600 --> 00:30:11,520 Whereas if the sentence goes over a page, people who are 512 00:30:11,520 --> 00:30:14,200 really weary of reading, they must turn over the page to 513 00:30:14,200 --> 00:30:17,640 finish it. And I'm like, I thought that was 514 00:30:17,640 --> 00:30:22,200 always a fascinating idea, how it's like, you know, if you 515 00:30:22,200 --> 00:30:26,280 don't want to force your reader to go beyond where they want to 516 00:30:26,280 --> 00:30:28,600 stop, just out of the sense of like, I have to finish the 517 00:30:28,600 --> 00:30:33,200 sentence. I mean, that's, that's a great 518 00:30:33,320 --> 00:30:35,640 thought because that happens all the time. 519 00:30:35,640 --> 00:30:37,760 So I read, I read a lot, I read quite a bit. 520 00:30:37,760 --> 00:30:39,120 I've been reading a lot of Warhammer lately. 521 00:30:39,120 --> 00:30:43,960 And one thing that they do in a lot of their books is a lot of 522 00:30:43,960 --> 00:30:46,440 perspective changes and stuff. But like in between them, there 523 00:30:46,440 --> 00:30:49,400 will be like not the end of a chapter or even like another 524 00:30:49,400 --> 00:30:50,720 thing. They'll just be like a couple in 525 00:30:50,760 --> 00:30:52,640 like blank spaces. And I'm like, thank you. 526 00:30:52,640 --> 00:30:54,680 I don't have to read to the end of the chapter. 527 00:30:54,680 --> 00:30:57,160 I know I can just read to this little section here and, and 528 00:30:57,160 --> 00:30:58,640 that's enough. So it's nice to kind of have 529 00:30:58,640 --> 00:31:01,920 that like, never explained, but kind of like innate permission 530 00:31:01,920 --> 00:31:03,440 to be like, this is a good spot to pause. 531 00:31:03,440 --> 00:31:05,640 And you don't need to read like the 30 more pages in the 532 00:31:05,640 --> 00:31:09,360 chapter. So that's information, yeah. 533 00:31:09,840 --> 00:31:11,560 And which is fantastic. You know. 534 00:31:12,840 --> 00:31:13,840 And that is one thing that's great. 535 00:31:13,840 --> 00:31:18,720 I mean to, to there is no, well, there's, I was going to say 536 00:31:18,720 --> 00:31:20,560 there's no wrong way to do TTRPGS. 537 00:31:20,880 --> 00:31:25,680 There's no, there are there are ways that are more right, and I 538 00:31:25,680 --> 00:31:30,680 do I do it is nice, like you said, with the monster overhaul, 539 00:31:30,680 --> 00:31:32,320 like, you know, sometimes it's great. 540 00:31:32,320 --> 00:31:34,120 Sometimes you know, some you need to do a little different. 541 00:31:34,120 --> 00:31:36,080 But to be like this is a barbarian page and this is the 542 00:31:36,080 --> 00:31:39,360 only page I need for Barbarians is a really nice way to do that. 543 00:31:39,360 --> 00:31:41,480 Or even like constrain it to a spread or something. 544 00:31:41,800 --> 00:31:44,960 You know, whenever it's feasible to keep something within like a 545 00:31:44,960 --> 00:31:48,600 set things is it feel like you're breaking it apart or it 546 00:31:48,600 --> 00:31:50,960 has a nice in between sections and stuff like that. 547 00:31:51,240 --> 00:31:53,160 It's really nice. Like, I love when I love when 548 00:31:54,920 --> 00:31:56,880 like books are color-coded and stuff. 549 00:31:56,880 --> 00:32:00,400 We recently went over Heroes of Cerulea and like all the rules 550 00:32:00,400 --> 00:32:02,640 are like red and all the adventures like green and stuff 551 00:32:02,640 --> 00:32:04,200 like that. And then, you know, it's really 552 00:32:04,200 --> 00:32:06,320 nice to have those kind of breaks and those kind of like 553 00:32:06,320 --> 00:32:09,680 anything's built into into those kind of things. 554 00:32:09,680 --> 00:32:11,640 I don't know what I was even talking about before I just 555 00:32:11,640 --> 00:32:13,480 started railing about all of that, but no. 556 00:32:13,680 --> 00:32:15,800 No, it makes it makes perfect sense, honestly. 557 00:32:16,040 --> 00:32:22,680 Yeah, the I'm a big proponent of the object. 558 00:32:22,680 --> 00:32:26,200 The object you're designing needs to be designed for its 559 00:32:26,240 --> 00:32:30,760 particular use. You know, I'm reminded of a 560 00:32:31,720 --> 00:32:36,880 story by Bruno Minelli, who was a Italian mid century designer, 561 00:32:37,000 --> 00:32:38,760 and he talks about wooden spoons. 562 00:32:38,760 --> 00:32:42,560 And he's like, if you look at an old wooden spoon, you'll see the 563 00:32:42,560 --> 00:32:46,000 one side is worn down and that one side is because it's been 564 00:32:46,000 --> 00:32:48,840 stirred in the pot and you've eaten that part of the wooden 565 00:32:48,840 --> 00:32:51,960 spoon in 1000 different soups and stews. 566 00:32:53,320 --> 00:32:56,760 But that wooden spoon, that shape is how it should have been 567 00:32:56,760 --> 00:33:00,520 sold. Like the, the act of using the 568 00:33:00,520 --> 00:33:04,040 spoon has, has shaped it into its intended design. 569 00:33:04,920 --> 00:33:05,800 And I've always thought about that. 570 00:33:05,800 --> 00:33:09,480 I was like, oh, well, the way that a book is used should 571 00:33:09,480 --> 00:33:12,280 influence its design. You should put your mind, put 572 00:33:12,280 --> 00:33:14,960 yourself in the the shoes of someone who is using the book 573 00:33:15,480 --> 00:33:24,880 and then design around that. Yeah, I mean that it's profound 574 00:33:24,880 --> 00:33:27,320 in in the simplicity, but what you're saying is exactly what it 575 00:33:27,320 --> 00:33:28,760 is. Like a thing should be what The 576 00:33:28,760 --> 00:33:33,200 thing is for. I've I've been playing around 577 00:33:33,200 --> 00:33:35,160 doing a little bit of layout stuff and some private stuff 578 00:33:35,160 --> 00:33:36,360 that probably no one will ever see. 579 00:33:36,360 --> 00:33:39,440 But so I've been reading a bunch of of things and then you look 580 00:33:39,440 --> 00:33:42,240 at examples and I'm like, man, like newspapers and magazines 581 00:33:42,240 --> 00:33:44,960 make fucking sense. You know, when you explain, 582 00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:47,040 like, why they do. And then I'm like, every time I 583 00:33:47,040 --> 00:33:49,600 flip to a page where I'm like, this layout would be a great 584 00:33:49,600 --> 00:33:52,520 teacher RPG layout. Why aren't more teacher RPGs 585 00:33:52,520 --> 00:33:57,760 designed to evoke things? You know, because newspapers, 586 00:33:57,760 --> 00:34:01,880 magazines, especially magazines with spreads and articles and 587 00:34:01,880 --> 00:34:04,720 stuff like that, they are literally designed specifically 588 00:34:04,720 --> 00:34:07,560 like knowing that, like this is how the human eye crosses across 589 00:34:07,560 --> 00:34:09,199 a paper. Like this is these are the 590 00:34:09,199 --> 00:34:11,080 colors that work. This is the boxes that really 591 00:34:11,080 --> 00:34:13,480 draw. This is, this is how you make 592 00:34:13,480 --> 00:34:16,000 sure that the the most important information is most important 593 00:34:16,000 --> 00:34:18,560 information on the page. And it's like, man, this is like 594 00:34:18,560 --> 00:34:22,080 an intro book. Like it's so, so I could think 595 00:34:22,080 --> 00:34:24,520 of like 5T RPG that if they would have just like flipped 596 00:34:24,520 --> 00:34:26,880 through these 3 pages, like they would have looked better and 597 00:34:26,880 --> 00:34:32,120 been easier to read. So it's, I mean, that's why you 598 00:34:32,120 --> 00:34:34,920 people like you though. That's why we have layout people 599 00:34:34,920 --> 00:34:38,320 and stuff like that. And I think my question a little 600 00:34:38,320 --> 00:34:40,600 bit ago, if I remember my tangent before the tangent 601 00:34:40,600 --> 00:34:43,480 before the tangent was, so what's your process like when 602 00:34:43,480 --> 00:34:47,320 you get someone says like, hey, I, I have this stuff and I would 603 00:34:47,320 --> 00:34:51,239 like it to look like a game and they hand it to you. 604 00:34:51,360 --> 00:34:55,960 How does that work for you? Well, First things first. 605 00:34:56,400 --> 00:35:01,160 I read the book cover to cover. I generally refuse to take on 606 00:35:01,160 --> 00:35:04,440 projects that are not finished. I mean, if you're still waiting 607 00:35:04,440 --> 00:35:07,080 on a piece of art or two and you know the dimensions of it, 608 00:35:07,080 --> 00:35:08,320 that's fine. I can work around that. 609 00:35:08,320 --> 00:35:13,080 But like the in my early career, I took a few books where I would 610 00:35:13,080 --> 00:35:16,480 have ended up having to redesign the whole thing because entire 611 00:35:16,480 --> 00:35:19,520 chapters were added and it really threw off my spreads. 612 00:35:20,040 --> 00:35:23,400 So I don't do that anymore. So yeah, First things first, 613 00:35:23,400 --> 00:35:26,160 I'll read the book. You know, if it's an adventure 614 00:35:26,160 --> 00:35:29,160 for a system I'm not familiar with, I'll read the system. 615 00:35:29,600 --> 00:35:31,640 Going back to the idea of like, I have to know how this is 616 00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:36,120 supposed to be used. You know, if it's ADCC module, 617 00:35:36,120 --> 00:35:38,400 you know, I need to figure out how people play DCC. 618 00:35:38,400 --> 00:35:40,280 You know, how people read DCC books. 619 00:35:40,360 --> 00:35:43,840 What's the, the, what do? What do official DCC modules 620 00:35:43,840 --> 00:35:45,360 look like? What can I take from that? 621 00:35:45,400 --> 00:35:50,840 You know, once I'm done that I will usually take the text and 622 00:35:50,840 --> 00:35:54,760 I'll go through blocking, you know, which is just throwing the 623 00:35:54,760 --> 00:35:58,080 text on the page, setting my margins, my grid and everything, 624 00:35:58,760 --> 00:36:03,000 getting a general idea of where each bit of text is going to go. 625 00:36:03,520 --> 00:36:06,960 And then after that, that's around this time, I'll also 626 00:36:06,960 --> 00:36:09,680 start making my mood board with figuring out what I want the 627 00:36:09,680 --> 00:36:12,760 book to look like. And then finally, I'll put the 628 00:36:12,760 --> 00:36:15,880 art and then I'll go through and design every page and make it 629 00:36:15,880 --> 00:36:18,480 all pretty. And then afterwards I'll do my 630 00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:22,400 like finishing touches, manually, break line so they 631 00:36:22,400 --> 00:36:26,320 look all pretty, go through and check I've got all the right 632 00:36:26,320 --> 00:36:30,120 apostrophes and hyphens or M dashes when they need to be, and 633 00:36:30,120 --> 00:36:32,680 so on and so forth. Love a good M. 634 00:36:33,480 --> 00:36:38,320 Dash Yeah, me too. Love them so good it makes me 635 00:36:38,320 --> 00:36:41,160 sad I don't have alt keys on this keyboard so anytime I need 636 00:36:41,160 --> 00:36:45,040 to do that I got AI got a just copy paste an M dash nerves 637 00:36:45,040 --> 00:36:47,400 myself. There was a. 638 00:36:47,920 --> 00:36:52,600 There was a, I forget who makes it, but there's someone that 639 00:36:52,600 --> 00:36:54,360 makes like a a single command button. 640 00:36:54,400 --> 00:36:58,680 It's like a gigantic big red emergency eject button that you 641 00:36:58,680 --> 00:37:01,360 can program as a hot key. And I've always wanted to get 642 00:37:01,360 --> 00:37:02,760 one and set it as like an M dash. 643 00:37:03,120 --> 00:37:05,040 Just one M dash. That would be awesome. 644 00:37:06,600 --> 00:37:07,840 I wonder if I can program the Eno. 645 00:37:07,840 --> 00:37:13,120 I'm not even going to worry about that right now, but but 646 00:37:13,120 --> 00:37:16,560 yeah, I mean, and then you have again, a vast list of games that 647 00:37:16,560 --> 00:37:18,840 you've done. One thing that pops out here 648 00:37:18,840 --> 00:37:21,480 though, cuz a number of these comes up is this, this little 649 00:37:21,480 --> 00:37:24,040 Kitty right here, Space Penguin, Inc. 650 00:37:24,560 --> 00:37:27,680 For those who watch the show, we talked about Space Penguin a 651 00:37:27,680 --> 00:37:31,600 little bit like in our monthly scheduled conversations with a 652 00:37:31,600 --> 00:37:35,880 good friend and human being, Jarrett Crater, which I know 653 00:37:35,880 --> 00:37:38,280 that you had worked with the Moonrack Conspiracy and Jarrett 654 00:37:38,280 --> 00:37:45,480 all the way back in MGNKMGMGMDK. But I guess A, first and 655 00:37:46,280 --> 00:37:50,920 foremost, like, how did you meet Jarrett to to get into that? 656 00:37:50,920 --> 00:37:58,400 And then B, how did working with Space Penguin come about years 657 00:37:58,400 --> 00:38:03,560 later? So to be entirely honest, I 658 00:38:03,560 --> 00:38:05,280 don't really know when I first met Jert. 659 00:38:07,120 --> 00:38:12,320 I I know I met Jert through Fiona Geist, who long term long 660 00:38:12,320 --> 00:38:15,360 time friend, founding member of GMDK. 661 00:38:16,840 --> 00:38:20,800 And at the time she was working with Jert as what would become 662 00:38:20,800 --> 00:38:25,240 the Moonrite Conspiracy. So that was before Jert worked 663 00:38:25,240 --> 00:38:28,680 with Exalted Funeral and way before Space Penguin. 664 00:38:28,680 --> 00:38:32,400 But yeah, ever since the very first book we did together, him 665 00:38:32,400 --> 00:38:35,440 and I have been friends. And when it finally came time 666 00:38:35,440 --> 00:38:38,400 that he was like, OK, yeah, I'm doing my own thing. 667 00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:42,040 I want to become a publisher. I'm like, hey, that sounds 668 00:38:42,040 --> 00:38:45,680 awesome. And we got to talking and we 669 00:38:45,680 --> 00:38:47,440 were just like, he's just like, you know, the one thing I'm a 670 00:38:47,440 --> 00:38:50,680 little concerned about is like, I don't know how to do any sort 671 00:38:50,680 --> 00:38:53,000 of marketing. You know, I've never really, I 672 00:38:53,000 --> 00:38:54,440 don't have a. He doesn't have a personal 673 00:38:54,440 --> 00:38:56,080 Twitter. He doesn't really have any 674 00:38:56,080 --> 00:38:58,400 social media. He has a Discord that he used to 675 00:38:58,400 --> 00:39:01,960 occasionally post in, but like for the most part, he's like, I 676 00:39:01,960 --> 00:39:03,160 don't really know how to do any of that. 677 00:39:03,160 --> 00:39:04,960 And I'm like, yeah, well, you know, man, I can help you with 678 00:39:04,960 --> 00:39:09,520 that. And so now for the most part, 679 00:39:09,520 --> 00:39:14,440 like I handle all of the aesthetics of the company, you 680 00:39:14,440 --> 00:39:18,320 know, the, the posts on social media, the product photos, the, 681 00:39:19,040 --> 00:39:22,440 well, he takes the photos, but I edit them and everything I 682 00:39:22,440 --> 00:39:28,240 write, the press kits, I do all the interfacing with media, 683 00:39:28,560 --> 00:39:30,160 journalism reporters, all this stuff. 684 00:39:30,160 --> 00:39:34,360 I make the Kickstarter pages, the backer kit marketing that we 685 00:39:34,360 --> 00:39:37,160 did for Karen. I did all those images and yeah, 686 00:39:37,160 --> 00:39:40,240 basically everything that is not he, he does all the back end 687 00:39:40,240 --> 00:39:43,240 stuff, you know, actually managing the projects and 688 00:39:43,640 --> 00:39:46,200 finding distributors and all the other, all the stuff I hated 689 00:39:46,200 --> 00:39:49,800 when I was a publisher. He's fantastic at and yeah, I 690 00:39:49,800 --> 00:39:52,280 get to continue to being an artistic person. 691 00:39:53,520 --> 00:39:57,000 You go and then so, so I mean, it's listening to our upside. 692 00:39:57,000 --> 00:39:59,040 There's like social media manager or something like that. 693 00:39:59,040 --> 00:40:01,040 Is that what it is like marketing social media? 694 00:40:01,280 --> 00:40:03,520 It's funny you do marketing and then you're like, I'm so bad at 695 00:40:03,520 --> 00:40:05,920 marketing for myself, but I'll do it for this entire company. 696 00:40:07,640 --> 00:40:10,480 But do you? Do you also do you know, cuz 697 00:40:10,840 --> 00:40:12,840 obviously Jerk and Space Penguin, they usually have 698 00:40:12,840 --> 00:40:14,400 monthly releases for things that are coming out. 699 00:40:14,720 --> 00:40:18,880 Have you, do you do any of the work within those as well? 700 00:40:18,880 --> 00:40:22,120 Are you primarily like when it comes up or is it, are you 701 00:40:22,120 --> 00:40:23,800 primarily just with the marketing, social media? 702 00:40:25,400 --> 00:40:29,240 Depends on the project, you know, with the So I was the 703 00:40:29,480 --> 00:40:33,240 designer for Resonant, which is a book that jerk publis Space 704 00:40:33,240 --> 00:40:37,480 Penguin published. That was a project between me 705 00:40:37,480 --> 00:40:42,720 and Tony Tran, Amanda Lee, Frank, and I believe maybe every 706 00:40:42,720 --> 00:40:44,800 Lockhart was also involved. I can't quite recall. 707 00:40:44,800 --> 00:40:47,280 I think she did a proofread. Cover that cover slapped so 708 00:40:47,280 --> 00:40:50,080 hard, I mean. Tony's fantastic, yeah. 709 00:40:50,320 --> 00:40:52,040 Never, never going to get over that. 710 00:40:52,040 --> 00:40:53,680 For those that haven't seen it, I mean, it's up on the screen 711 00:40:53,680 --> 00:40:55,440 right now and definitely go check it out over on the Space 712 00:40:55,440 --> 00:40:57,280 Kingdom site. But the second I saw that cover, 713 00:40:57,280 --> 00:40:58,760 I was like, I don't even care what this is. 714 00:40:58,760 --> 00:41:01,640 I'm getting this because it's beautiful, but so. 715 00:41:02,640 --> 00:41:06,120 Yeah. So yeah, I occasionally I do get 716 00:41:06,120 --> 00:41:09,600 some, some design work, but for the most part, yeah, like 717 00:41:10,640 --> 00:41:12,280 occasionally my job does crossover. 718 00:41:12,280 --> 00:41:15,800 When it came to Cairn, there was some conversation between me and 719 00:41:15,800 --> 00:41:19,520 jerk about like stretch goals and funding tears and 720 00:41:19,520 --> 00:41:22,960 everything. And I, I as the person who was 721 00:41:22,960 --> 00:41:26,960 designing the Kickstarter page, I had some input and hey, maybe 722 00:41:26,960 --> 00:41:29,600 this is how this should look. You know, this is a, a mock up 723 00:41:29,600 --> 00:41:31,200 of the box. Maybe we could do something like 724 00:41:31,200 --> 00:41:35,960 that. And yeah, so Jurt's a fantastic 725 00:41:35,960 --> 00:41:39,520 person to work with because he, I mean, you've, you've spoken 726 00:41:39,520 --> 00:41:41,560 with him, you know, he's an extremely humble and down to 727 00:41:41,560 --> 00:41:45,520 earth guy. And you know, despite his 728 00:41:45,520 --> 00:41:48,200 success in the field, he really hasn't let it go to his head. 729 00:41:50,880 --> 00:41:55,160 I mean that's extremely true, like the guy's name is in more 730 00:41:55,160 --> 00:41:58,480 teach RPG books than anyone on the entire planet. 731 00:41:58,480 --> 00:42:00,120 Like I don't think it's even close. 732 00:42:00,600 --> 00:42:03,200 Yeah, I think he's got like half a dozen ennies, give or take, or 733 00:42:03,200 --> 00:42:04,840 has been attached to like half a dozen. 734 00:42:04,840 --> 00:42:08,440 Any projects? Yeah, I mean the nominated for 735 00:42:08,480 --> 00:42:15,360 like 3 or 4 just this year alone the ennies, but. 736 00:42:16,560 --> 00:42:19,600 I don't have a single one. My shell is empty. 737 00:42:20,360 --> 00:42:23,800 Hey, for now. For now. 738 00:42:24,680 --> 00:42:26,000 I mean, we didn't. We. 739 00:42:26,080 --> 00:42:29,920 If I had if, if either me or Richard had thought to nominate 740 00:42:29,920 --> 00:42:33,000 Moonlight as that came out last year, if we had thought to 741 00:42:33,000 --> 00:42:35,200 nominate this year, maybe it would have gotten something, but 742 00:42:35,360 --> 00:42:38,880 who knows? How, how, how far from like 743 00:42:38,880 --> 00:42:41,680 release can things be nominated? Or is it just like forever? 744 00:42:42,680 --> 00:42:45,960 I think it's just anything. So the 2024 and an Ennies, if I 745 00:42:45,960 --> 00:42:49,160 recall, are for books that were published in 2023. 746 00:42:50,200 --> 00:42:55,080 So I don't think maybe we could sneak in with the Moonlight 747 00:42:55,080 --> 00:42:56,680 hardcover, but I'm not entirely certain. 748 00:42:57,920 --> 00:42:59,760 Listen, that's exactly where I was going with that. 749 00:42:59,760 --> 00:43:01,240 I was like, hey, we just got a hardcover. 750 00:43:01,600 --> 00:43:03,880 We just got a hardcover and it's a beautiful. 751 00:43:03,880 --> 00:43:08,320 Book Breck Breckneil Horror is coming out soon, or Dim All the 752 00:43:08,320 --> 00:43:12,640 Lights is coming out soon and that that is going to be some of 753 00:43:12,640 --> 00:43:14,240 my best work if I do say so myself. 754 00:43:16,080 --> 00:43:20,200 We will have to get it, find it, see it and and check that out as 755 00:43:20,200 --> 00:43:26,320 well. But I had a question more about 756 00:43:26,320 --> 00:43:28,520 space Penguin and I totally lost on on what it is. 757 00:43:28,800 --> 00:43:32,800 So for the foreseeable future with space Penguin, the goal is 758 00:43:33,160 --> 00:43:35,000 exactly what you what you just said. 759 00:43:35,000 --> 00:43:37,280 It's like as a company expands and grows, you're going to 760 00:43:37,280 --> 00:43:39,800 continue to do like basically all of the I don't even know 761 00:43:39,800 --> 00:43:42,480 what to call like keto's back in it's not front end, is it like 762 00:43:42,520 --> 00:43:45,080 all of the visual aspects, all the aesthetic aspects, every 763 00:43:45,080 --> 00:43:46,320 that. And then occasionally when 764 00:43:46,320 --> 00:43:49,520 projects come across that need work like that's, that's the 765 00:43:49,520 --> 00:43:52,840 future of of you in space Penguin, right, Is to to just be 766 00:43:52,840 --> 00:43:55,560 growing with the company and, and continuing to expand and, 767 00:43:56,640 --> 00:43:59,360 and work within that part. Yeah, that's the plan. 768 00:43:59,680 --> 00:44:03,480 We've got a few other crowdfunding endeavors lined up. 769 00:44:03,520 --> 00:44:06,560 We're I'm working on one right now that we're just about to 770 00:44:06,560 --> 00:44:11,080 announce for backer kit. And yeah, it's, I don't know, 771 00:44:11,240 --> 00:44:17,000 Jurt is really determined to try to keep things small scale and 772 00:44:17,000 --> 00:44:20,720 really focused on the game. Like we, if you look at our 773 00:44:20,720 --> 00:44:25,320 catalogue, it's almost entirely adventures because you know, not 774 00:44:25,320 --> 00:44:27,840 a lot of people publish adventures and, and people have 775 00:44:27,840 --> 00:44:30,400 said this before and more games need adventures for them. 776 00:44:31,080 --> 00:44:35,280 So we're, we're very much trying to stick to the third party or 777 00:44:35,320 --> 00:44:39,360 like third party creator space. We've got a few systems that are 778 00:44:39,360 --> 00:44:43,480 big sellers, like the Forbidden Psalms line is a, well, the 779 00:44:43,480 --> 00:44:49,760 print version is a Space Penguin exclusive, and that we release a 780 00:44:49,760 --> 00:44:52,400 new monthly edition of that every single month. 781 00:44:53,560 --> 00:44:56,800 But for the most part, yeah, we're just gracious. 782 00:44:58,320 --> 00:45:01,200 Not all of it, but it's it's it's the majority of my 783 00:45:01,200 --> 00:45:04,400 forbidden song collection. For those in podcast land, I 784 00:45:04,400 --> 00:45:06,880 just picked up one of the doom piles on my floor that just 785 00:45:06,880 --> 00:45:08,360 happens to be entirely forbidden song. 786 00:45:09,520 --> 00:45:12,560 What looks to be like 1718 bucks. 787 00:45:13,600 --> 00:45:16,080 Oh, it's everything that's ever been put out in hardcover and 788 00:45:16,080 --> 00:45:19,240 soft cover. Yeah, no. 789 00:45:19,240 --> 00:45:20,840 So yeah, we've got Forbidden Song. 790 00:45:20,840 --> 00:45:24,200 We're going to be supporting that until, until its creator 791 00:45:24,200 --> 00:45:26,880 stops writing books, which just not, does not seem to be anytime 792 00:45:26,880 --> 00:45:30,120 soon. And aside from that, like I, I 793 00:45:30,120 --> 00:45:33,720 mean, I've seen our release schedule for the next like 2 794 00:45:33,720 --> 00:45:36,800 years because again, Jared is fantastic at all the back end 795 00:45:36,800 --> 00:45:38,400 stuff. He's really got a full plan for 796 00:45:38,400 --> 00:45:40,200 this. And yeah, we got some really 797 00:45:40,200 --> 00:45:44,360 awesome stuff coming out. And none of it is the, you know, 798 00:45:44,520 --> 00:45:46,640 Bloodborne official tabletop role-playing game. 799 00:45:46,640 --> 00:45:49,920 But people don't play those games anyways. 800 00:45:52,240 --> 00:45:55,000 Wait, wait, wait till they do a real PC port and then maybe 801 00:45:55,000 --> 00:45:58,080 people will be will be clamoring for it. 802 00:45:58,080 --> 00:46:00,320 But just like all of them, you'll just have to convert it 803 00:46:00,320 --> 00:46:01,720 to 5 E right before you release it. 804 00:46:02,840 --> 00:46:07,000 But but yeah, for those that aren't aware, maybe in those in 805 00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:10,360 podcast line, we do have a monthly monthly episode with 806 00:46:10,480 --> 00:46:12,640 dirt. I think our our episode this 807 00:46:14,920 --> 00:46:16,320 this month got a little pushed back. 808 00:46:16,320 --> 00:46:18,320 One of us was not feeling super well. 809 00:46:18,320 --> 00:46:20,480 I don't know when we're going to reschedule that, but we have I 810 00:46:20,480 --> 00:46:22,920 literally have the releases right next to me. 811 00:46:22,920 --> 00:46:25,200 I don't want to show them all before before you have dirt on 812 00:46:25,200 --> 00:46:28,120 to do it, but definitely huge fans of Space Penguin here on 813 00:46:28,120 --> 00:46:31,240 the show. 1 reason that I wanted to reach out and talk to you. 814 00:46:31,760 --> 00:46:33,880 First of all, of being a fan. Second of all, knowing that you 815 00:46:33,880 --> 00:46:36,560 were doing all the work with Space Penguin, even sending me 816 00:46:36,560 --> 00:46:38,520 like graphics and stuff in time Dirt's like here, I got this 817 00:46:38,520 --> 00:46:40,360 thing from diet, throw it off. I'm like, all right, I got this. 818 00:46:40,360 --> 00:46:44,760 So we had to talk eventually and I think the last, not the last 819 00:46:44,760 --> 00:46:46,280 thing, I mean, we're getting towards the end of our time. 820 00:46:46,280 --> 00:46:49,840 But one of the reasons, the thing that kind of pushed me 821 00:46:49,840 --> 00:46:52,280 over to be like, I have, I have to send an e-mail to this person 822 00:46:52,520 --> 00:46:54,360 was the game that you were talking about. 823 00:46:54,360 --> 00:46:58,240 You had some beautiful graphics went up on on the inner webs. 824 00:46:58,720 --> 00:47:04,240 Did you want to talk at all about the the the the the game 825 00:47:04,240 --> 00:47:05,760 that you're working? On yeah yeah or. 826 00:47:05,760 --> 00:47:11,760 Not or not all. Right, so this is a game that 827 00:47:11,760 --> 00:47:16,520 I've been working on for a few years now and outside of a 828 00:47:16,520 --> 00:47:22,360 single adventure in the Demon Collective and a very angsty 4 829 00:47:22,360 --> 00:47:26,720 page game I designed for H dot IO some game jam years ago, this 830 00:47:26,720 --> 00:47:29,720 will be the very first writing credit I've got. 831 00:47:30,360 --> 00:47:34,200 And so the game is called Half Light Gothic Horror 832 00:47:34,200 --> 00:47:40,120 role-playing. It's a horror dungeon crawl game 833 00:47:40,160 --> 00:47:44,440 that is designed around like Libra tase dice mechanic system. 834 00:47:45,400 --> 00:47:49,520 It uses a, what I would think is it what I would consider like a 835 00:47:49,520 --> 00:47:52,200 fairly novel stress and sanity mechanic. 836 00:47:53,320 --> 00:47:56,440 Unlike most sanity mechanics, which I think are actually a 837 00:47:56,440 --> 00:48:00,680 little able to sometimes, this is not a game where you see a 838 00:48:00,680 --> 00:48:03,640 big scary monster and your character goes insane and you 839 00:48:03,640 --> 00:48:08,080 lose control of them entirely. Instead, it's more like a 840 00:48:08,880 --> 00:48:12,360 overwhelming amount of stress. You know, we, we call it frenzy. 841 00:48:12,800 --> 00:48:17,360 It's the momentary loss of composure, which can have fairly 842 00:48:17,360 --> 00:48:21,480 damaging effects on your survivability and the morale of 843 00:48:21,480 --> 00:48:26,560 your party and everything. And yeah, it's it's actually my 844 00:48:26,560 --> 00:48:30,600 only other podcast appearance. Back in like 2022, I talked 845 00:48:30,600 --> 00:48:32,480 about the game because I was writing it still then. 846 00:48:32,840 --> 00:48:36,240 It's it's ever since I saw Liberte, I was like, OK, this is 847 00:48:36,240 --> 00:48:40,200 the perfect system to adapt for like a Darkest Dungeon inspired 848 00:48:40,200 --> 00:48:42,720 dungeon crawler. And yeah, I've just been 849 00:48:42,720 --> 00:48:45,520 tinkering away with it and I've set a goal for myself to have it 850 00:48:45,520 --> 00:48:50,640 published this year. I so I know we've talked about 851 00:48:50,640 --> 00:48:56,480 this before. Liberte is incredible. 852 00:48:56,680 --> 00:49:02,080 It's it's a game that is extraordinarily underrated and 853 00:49:03,160 --> 00:49:06,440 have there ever been other hacks for it? 854 00:49:07,960 --> 00:49:11,400 To my knowledge there have been no third party hacks of Liberte. 855 00:49:12,800 --> 00:49:18,480 The it's creator Vivi has produced a Mecca supplement 856 00:49:18,480 --> 00:49:22,000 called Bio and Steel, but to my knowledge it has never been 857 00:49:22,000 --> 00:49:24,240 translated into English. It is a French exclusive. 858 00:49:26,200 --> 00:49:29,560 Sounds like we got to get GMDK. I've been running again so we 859 00:49:29,560 --> 00:49:33,960 can get. Another I That was the plan and 860 00:49:33,960 --> 00:49:37,360 then I shouted the company. So blame me for that. 861 00:49:37,560 --> 00:49:40,920 You can blame me entirely for there being no sad children in 862 00:49:40,920 --> 00:49:43,480 neck game. For now. 863 00:49:44,040 --> 00:49:44,840 For now. For now. 864 00:49:45,000 --> 00:49:48,880 For now. I mean, it's if only you knew a 865 00:49:48,880 --> 00:49:56,560 publisher that that made games, you know, Because I think 866 00:49:56,560 --> 00:49:58,960 there's a lot of people out there that not only would they 867 00:49:58,960 --> 00:50:02,600 like sad children, I guess is a weird way to say it. 868 00:50:03,600 --> 00:50:05,720 But like Mech, it's Neon Genesis I. 869 00:50:05,880 --> 00:50:08,160 Was going to say like sad children in mech is literally 870 00:50:08,160 --> 00:50:11,120 just neon genesis like why are we not playing this game? 871 00:50:13,320 --> 00:50:18,600 So I mean after after half light, I think we we have the 872 00:50:18,600 --> 00:50:23,360 plan for the future. I wanted to throw the the one of 873 00:50:23,360 --> 00:50:29,040 the graphics up but when I save it from your Twitter send it JFF 874 00:50:29,040 --> 00:50:34,720 file which I don't know what. That is, I can send it I mean. 875 00:50:34,960 --> 00:50:39,480 Oh no, I can just copy this, but Oh no, you're good. 876 00:50:39,520 --> 00:50:43,880 It's it's gorgeous. I love the graphics that you've 877 00:50:43,880 --> 00:50:46,520 been putting out for it. They're absolutely insane. 878 00:50:46,920 --> 00:50:49,680 And let me just hit save on this real quick. 879 00:50:50,520 --> 00:50:57,480 That'll be APNG and let me throw it up again for those in podcast 880 00:50:57,480 --> 00:50:58,400 land. Hey, come watch the show 881 00:50:58,400 --> 00:51:03,760 sometime. It's the vibes, the layout, 882 00:51:03,760 --> 00:51:07,240 everything. So and again, I don't know when 883 00:51:08,840 --> 00:51:10,400 I'm I'm sure I talked about on the show already. 884 00:51:10,480 --> 00:51:13,880 We were emailing back and forth and I was like, Hey, I would 885 00:51:13,880 --> 00:51:16,480 love to talk about half light. You're like, hey, it's kind of 886 00:51:16,480 --> 00:51:17,840 dark. It's based on Liberte. 887 00:51:18,480 --> 00:51:20,400 And I was like, oh, OK, yeah, never mind. 888 00:51:20,400 --> 00:51:22,920 That's really, really dark. I don't know if we're going to 889 00:51:22,920 --> 00:51:23,760 play that on the screen. Yeah. 890 00:51:24,880 --> 00:51:27,000 Yeah, you had asked if I wanted to run the game. 891 00:51:27,400 --> 00:51:29,440 Yeah. And yeah, I'm happy to talk 892 00:51:29,440 --> 00:51:30,560 about it. But yeah, I. 893 00:51:32,000 --> 00:51:35,040 The game traffic's in heavy scenes. 894 00:51:35,200 --> 00:51:39,960 The the system is entirely about giving, taking and managing 895 00:51:39,960 --> 00:51:44,840 trauma. And I've got a panoply of 896 00:51:46,000 --> 00:51:48,280 content warnings and safety tools in the book. 897 00:51:48,280 --> 00:51:51,760 And one of the big ones is I straight up say, I don't believe 898 00:51:51,760 --> 00:51:55,440 this is a good convention game. You should not play this game 899 00:51:55,600 --> 00:51:58,440 with people that you do not know personally and people that you 900 00:51:58,440 --> 00:52:03,280 do not trust. You know, like one of the key 901 00:52:03,280 --> 00:52:06,360 mechanics of the game that I revealed on Twitter a while ago 902 00:52:06,360 --> 00:52:10,800 is called Nightmares. And the idea is that if you make 903 00:52:10,800 --> 00:52:15,480 camp without the proper precautions, you know, it's 904 00:52:15,480 --> 00:52:19,360 entirely possible that one of your characters may find 905 00:52:19,360 --> 00:52:21,840 themselves in a nightmare and all the characters are pulled 906 00:52:21,840 --> 00:52:24,440 into it. But it is a manifestation of 907 00:52:24,440 --> 00:52:26,280 that one particular character's trauma. 908 00:52:26,880 --> 00:52:31,760 And in the, in the GM's guide that I'm writing, I give a few 909 00:52:31,760 --> 00:52:35,440 examples of this, and they can be difficult topics. 910 00:52:35,440 --> 00:52:40,160 You know, the, the, the scholar who is a disgraced academic has 911 00:52:40,160 --> 00:52:44,360 one where they are basically being run out of their, of their 912 00:52:44,360 --> 00:52:46,680 institution, you know, desperately trying to explain 913 00:52:46,680 --> 00:52:51,920 themselves and to a unfeeling crowd, the, the leader is 914 00:52:52,080 --> 00:52:56,400 reliving their worst mistake that got all of their, their, 915 00:52:56,760 --> 00:52:58,200 the people under their command Guild. 916 00:52:58,560 --> 00:53:02,800 And it is my ideal that this can actually lead to some very 917 00:53:02,800 --> 00:53:05,200 interesting conversations with the players and how they are 918 00:53:05,200 --> 00:53:07,560 reacting to how their characters may feel. 919 00:53:07,560 --> 00:53:12,120 But yeah, I would never expect, I would never want a player to 920 00:53:12,120 --> 00:53:14,040 suffer for the actions of a player character. 921 00:53:15,560 --> 00:53:17,200 Yeah, or the. Actions of GM I. 922 00:53:18,600 --> 00:53:20,200 Mean here's the thing though. Here's the thing. 923 00:53:20,200 --> 00:53:26,880 So I feel like the best games that are not the best, the best 924 00:53:26,880 --> 00:53:29,360 to me, the games that I really want to play are definitely ones 925 00:53:29,360 --> 00:53:31,360 that probably won't make it on the show. 926 00:53:32,120 --> 00:53:34,240 And this is exactly those kind of things. 927 00:53:34,240 --> 00:53:38,240 Like I love like Kingdoms from Sophia Tenney, for example, is a 928 00:53:38,240 --> 00:53:40,920 game that and we say almost the exact same thing when we 929 00:53:40,920 --> 00:53:43,200 recommend it to people. It's just like, you should play 930 00:53:43,200 --> 00:53:47,840 this with friends that like are OK with you stabbing in the back 931 00:53:47,840 --> 00:53:50,600 like super hard and like, you know, dealing with these like 932 00:53:50,600 --> 00:53:51,600 adult themes and stuff like that. 933 00:53:51,600 --> 00:53:53,920 And like half Light sounds like exactly that kind of game. 934 00:53:53,920 --> 00:53:57,280 And Liberte is definitely one of those games where I'm like, so 935 00:53:57,360 --> 00:54:02,840 let's just talk about also this, the giant stop sign in the front 936 00:54:02,840 --> 00:54:05,240 where you're like, hey, here's safety tools. 937 00:54:05,520 --> 00:54:08,040 But then like underneath it's like, no, no, no, no, no. 938 00:54:08,040 --> 00:54:10,720 It's like actually read the safety tools. 939 00:54:10,720 --> 00:54:13,640 I'm explaining why this is important and how this is heavy. 940 00:54:13,640 --> 00:54:17,880 So, I mean, and this is just about like water and kids not 941 00:54:17,880 --> 00:54:20,160 like, yeah. So this, this. 942 00:54:20,240 --> 00:54:23,240 Is my own design like the the stop sign and everything that 943 00:54:23,240 --> 00:54:24,760 was not in the original manuscript? 944 00:54:25,320 --> 00:54:26,920 I was like, this is reading the book. 945 00:54:26,920 --> 00:54:28,880 This is important. Yeah. 946 00:54:29,320 --> 00:54:32,640 Are we going to see a similar stop sign motif at the beginning 947 00:54:32,640 --> 00:54:34,960 of Half Light? I don't think so. 948 00:54:35,560 --> 00:54:39,000 The visual design, The visual design of Half Light is actually 949 00:54:39,000 --> 00:54:43,920 heavily inspired by William Morris, the, the works of 950 00:54:44,120 --> 00:54:49,960 printmaker, textile maker, writer, poet, artist, designer, 951 00:54:49,960 --> 00:54:52,920 William publisher William Morris, who I'm a huge fan of. 952 00:54:53,960 --> 00:54:59,000 And so I, in fact, the, the body text I'm using is called a 953 00:54:59,560 --> 00:55:02,240 golden type, which is one of the fonts that he designed. 954 00:55:03,240 --> 00:55:06,880 And so I'm, I'm really trying to go back to basics with this one. 955 00:55:08,320 --> 00:55:13,440 It's going to be a very, very standard, sort of like 18th 956 00:55:13,440 --> 00:55:17,560 century manuscript style book that I think is going to end up 957 00:55:17,560 --> 00:55:21,840 looking really, really good. But it also is, yeah, I'm not 958 00:55:21,840 --> 00:55:24,280 going to do anything really wild with the design. 959 00:55:24,280 --> 00:55:27,040 I feel it's going to. I'm hoping that the words and 960 00:55:27,040 --> 00:55:30,640 the art will stand on their own merits without needing a very in 961 00:55:30,640 --> 00:55:36,480 your face design. I that's a nice looking, it's a 962 00:55:36,480 --> 00:55:38,320 nice looking it's a nice looking font there. 963 00:55:38,320 --> 00:55:40,680 I'm excited for that. I will say this one thing about 964 00:55:40,680 --> 00:55:45,280 your design that I really, really enjoy and like gangs of 965 00:55:45,280 --> 00:55:49,920 Titan City again, is one that I show people all the time where 966 00:55:51,120 --> 00:55:55,880 with like I'm trying to even think of like specific pages 967 00:55:55,880 --> 00:55:59,680 where I know in character creation, there's this giant 968 00:55:59,680 --> 00:56:03,240 black bar across the top that and with the book is like white. 969 00:56:03,560 --> 00:56:06,760 It's it's black and white, but it says in white in that bar. 970 00:56:06,760 --> 00:56:11,880 It's like, hey, basically do it the way we say first, but then 971 00:56:11,880 --> 00:56:15,200 after you get that down, like come up with your own and do 972 00:56:15,200 --> 00:56:16,720 your own thing. And the thing I really like 973 00:56:16,720 --> 00:56:19,680 about even the way that that's laid out is like it's impossible 974 00:56:19,680 --> 00:56:23,240 to miss, you know, And there's a lot of ways that you do that in 975 00:56:23,240 --> 00:56:26,680 an extremely clean way. Or even where you do like it'll 976 00:56:26,680 --> 00:56:29,160 be a full page spread, but then like one of the pages is like 977 00:56:29,200 --> 00:56:31,720 1/3 or 1/2. So it's like 3/4 white across 978 00:56:31,720 --> 00:56:33,640 the whole spread and then black on the side with like important 979 00:56:33,640 --> 00:56:35,760 information there. And stuff like 2, there's really 980 00:56:35,760 --> 00:56:38,680 like simple, elegant ways where you make sure that important 981 00:56:38,680 --> 00:56:43,320 information is communicated in a way that's like interesting, it 982 00:56:43,320 --> 00:56:46,640 fits in with the themes. And you know, we've come across 983 00:56:46,640 --> 00:56:49,920 like a number of books where like even through reading it, 984 00:56:49,920 --> 00:56:51,800 even when I read it, when Hunter reads it, when we read it 985 00:56:51,800 --> 00:56:54,720 together, we'll miss something. And maybe we're just dumb as 986 00:56:54,720 --> 00:56:56,880 shit. But like, if something super 987 00:56:56,880 --> 00:57:00,400 important, you know, bolded words, keywords, or even just 988 00:57:00,400 --> 00:57:03,160 subtle, like, hey, put it in a slightly Gray box or a giant 989 00:57:03,160 --> 00:57:08,040 black bar across the bottom. Whenever I've read books where 990 00:57:08,040 --> 00:57:10,640 you've done the layout and for, I don't really. 991 00:57:11,320 --> 00:57:13,920 And now that I know to look for it, I noticed that you don't 992 00:57:13,920 --> 00:57:16,400 really miss those things. The important information is 993 00:57:16,400 --> 00:57:21,400 displayed in a in a way that makes it easy to not miss and to 994 00:57:21,400 --> 00:57:23,080 understand. So I I really appreciate that 995 00:57:23,080 --> 00:57:24,680 way about the way that you do your layout. 996 00:57:25,400 --> 00:57:28,360 Yeah, something that has always stuck with me. 997 00:57:28,440 --> 00:57:32,000 And I, I can't quite recall where I first read it, but back 998 00:57:32,000 --> 00:57:34,960 when I was teaching myself graphic design, I told you I 999 00:57:34,960 --> 00:57:37,760 read a bunch of books. And I, I in particular, I read a 1000 00:57:37,760 --> 00:57:44,320 bunch of manifestos, like a designer trying to put down in 1001 00:57:44,480 --> 00:57:47,800 one or two pages what they believe the purpose of design 1002 00:57:47,800 --> 00:57:50,600 is. And somewhere in one of those, I 1003 00:57:50,600 --> 00:57:53,000 read something that's always stuck with me, which is that 1004 00:57:54,000 --> 00:57:57,880 when the words are good, the design doesn't have to be or I'm 1005 00:57:57,880 --> 00:58:00,520 sorry, when the words are good, the design should be invisible 1006 00:58:00,920 --> 00:58:03,480 or something to that effect. And it's like, yeah, you. 1007 00:58:04,760 --> 00:58:09,760 I believe that in particular when designing a book, my job is 1008 00:58:09,760 --> 00:58:13,680 to get out of the way. I present the information, but I 1009 00:58:13,680 --> 00:58:17,920 don't occlude it and I don't try to cover it up and I don't try 1010 00:58:17,920 --> 00:58:22,040 to grandstand taking attention away from it, you know? 1011 00:58:22,640 --> 00:58:25,360 And in particular, with a book like Gangs of Titan City, going 1012 00:58:25,360 --> 00:58:28,760 back to the fact that I read all this stuff and I take notes as 1013 00:58:28,760 --> 00:58:34,680 to what I feel is important, it's very like, necessary in my 1014 00:58:34,680 --> 00:58:40,400 mind for the person designing a book to know what should be 1015 00:58:40,520 --> 00:58:42,040 highlighted and what shouldn't be. 1016 00:58:43,040 --> 00:58:46,480 And sometimes the the writer will make like, little comments 1017 00:58:46,480 --> 00:58:49,480 in the doc saying, oh, there should be a sidebar or they 1018 00:58:49,480 --> 00:58:51,760 should be bolded. But for the most part, yeah, 1019 00:58:51,760 --> 00:58:56,840 it's just knowing or making a judgment call as to what I think 1020 00:58:56,840 --> 00:59:00,120 is most important and what I think the person reading the 1021 00:59:00,120 --> 00:59:02,400 book needs the most. That's what I highlight. 1022 00:59:04,520 --> 00:59:09,240 Yeah, you know, it is, it is interesting, especially again 1023 00:59:09,240 --> 00:59:13,040 when you say that and then you think about some of the stuff 1024 00:59:13,040 --> 00:59:14,880 that you've done and it is, it is very true. 1025 00:59:14,880 --> 00:59:21,200 Like there's, you know, they're not like art, art, art, like the 1026 00:59:21,200 --> 00:59:23,600 art punk books, like Mark Borg or anything like that where it's 1027 00:59:23,600 --> 00:59:26,280 like that. But when you so us on the show, 1028 00:59:26,360 --> 00:59:31,600 you know, we we do review games we're supposed to and we do give 1029 00:59:31,600 --> 00:59:34,360 metrics at the end. We give numbers to our opinions 1030 00:59:35,360 --> 00:59:37,520 just to at least be able to quantify in some way. 1031 00:59:37,880 --> 00:59:40,960 And one of the things that we ended up kind of evolving, the 1032 00:59:40,960 --> 00:59:43,400 thing I think we evolved the most in the way that we did that 1033 00:59:43,400 --> 00:59:49,520 metric is, is the art and layout specifically where we ended up 1034 00:59:49,520 --> 00:59:53,920 splitting it into like art and layout as a number and usability 1035 00:59:53,920 --> 00:59:57,560 as a whole nother number. But layout comes into both of 1036 00:59:57,560 --> 00:59:59,840 those. So layout actually ends up being 1037 00:59:59,840 --> 01:00:02,200 in two metrics, not just one, because of kind of just how 1038 01:00:02,200 --> 01:00:05,120 important it is. So you can see a layout where 1039 01:00:05,120 --> 01:00:09,680 there's in art and layout, our first metric, it's just like 1040 01:00:09,680 --> 01:00:12,520 visually, how does it look? Is it pretty? 1041 01:00:12,800 --> 01:00:16,520 Does it look nice? But and then usability also goes 1042 01:00:16,520 --> 01:00:19,520 directly to layout 2 for things that we talked about before is 1043 01:00:19,520 --> 01:00:22,560 like hyperlinks and are things in the right order? 1044 01:00:22,560 --> 01:00:26,120 And is it, it might be pretty, but is it fucking readable? 1045 01:00:26,120 --> 01:00:30,600 Like, you know, all of the other aspects for kind of the behind 1046 01:00:30,600 --> 01:00:32,720 the scenes, quote UN quote of layout and exactly what you're 1047 01:00:32,720 --> 01:00:35,600 talking about, where aesthetically it looks really 1048 01:00:35,600 --> 01:00:37,880 nice. But like from the usability 1049 01:00:37,880 --> 01:00:40,240 standpoint, it should all just be there. 1050 01:00:40,280 --> 01:00:43,520 Like you should need to hunt and dig and look for things when you 1051 01:00:43,520 --> 01:00:46,680 have a really nice layout, again, like you have in Gangs of 1052 01:00:46,680 --> 01:00:49,720 Titan City, you you don't need to hunt for things. 1053 01:00:49,720 --> 01:00:50,640 You don't need to look for things. 1054 01:00:50,640 --> 01:00:53,440 Things are presented in such a way where you can just continue 1055 01:00:53,440 --> 01:00:56,240 with the flow of information. And not only does it look nice, 1056 01:00:56,240 --> 01:00:59,480 but it it's fed to you in a way where it's easy to digest. 1057 01:00:59,520 --> 01:01:01,480 So. Yep. 1058 01:01:01,520 --> 01:01:06,600 No, I agree entirely. You know, the the most useful 1059 01:01:06,600 --> 01:01:09,560 book, in my opinion, is the one that is easiest to read. 1060 01:01:10,720 --> 01:01:14,400 If it's the designer or the writer's intent of the book be 1061 01:01:14,400 --> 01:01:18,040 difficult to read or, or challenging in some regard, 1062 01:01:18,040 --> 01:01:20,440 that's fine and the design should reflect that. 1063 01:01:21,080 --> 01:01:25,000 With Librette, there were some pages where I tried to echo the 1064 01:01:25,000 --> 01:01:27,880 words that were on it with the design, particularly with the 1065 01:01:27,880 --> 01:01:31,960 monsters. There's A1 monster that is sort 1066 01:01:31,960 --> 01:01:37,680 of a the how do I put this? It's the personification of 1067 01:01:37,680 --> 01:01:40,280 intrusive thoughts and and loneliness. 1068 01:01:40,280 --> 01:01:45,040 And for that page, the I tried to bring the margins in as tight 1069 01:01:45,040 --> 01:01:47,160 as I could. You know it, the entire page is 1070 01:01:47,160 --> 01:01:49,480 black. Even some of the space between 1071 01:01:49,600 --> 01:01:53,000 the lines is covered because like, I just wanted you to focus 1072 01:01:53,000 --> 01:01:58,080 entirely on the words and feel like even the page itself is 1073 01:01:58,080 --> 01:02:01,720 pressing in on you. That's what's up. 1074 01:02:02,600 --> 01:02:05,720 That's again like. This is why. 1075 01:02:05,720 --> 01:02:08,640 This is why we hire good layout designers to do the layout for 1076 01:02:08,640 --> 01:02:11,560 it. One thing, one note I wrote 1077 01:02:11,560 --> 01:02:13,960 here, so I'm gonna bounce back three tangents. 1078 01:02:13,960 --> 01:02:16,280 When you were talking about, you said it was William Morris who 1079 01:02:16,280 --> 01:02:19,480 you were kind of using as a reference for Half Life. 1080 01:02:19,520 --> 01:02:20,680 Yeah. So, yeah, so. 1081 01:02:20,800 --> 01:02:22,400 One thing you said about. Like impressed moment. 1082 01:02:23,640 --> 01:02:26,560 Well, so even within the design that you were talking about, cuz 1083 01:02:26,560 --> 01:02:31,120 clearly you said you're using him as a like holding him up as 1084 01:02:31,120 --> 01:02:32,920 part of it. The design that I have up on the 1085 01:02:32,920 --> 01:02:35,160 screen here, half light, the gothic role-playing game, even 1086 01:02:35,160 --> 01:02:38,000 the art on that looks kind of like woodcut or lentil cut. 1087 01:02:38,000 --> 01:02:41,080 Is that so you're going like deep with all the aesthetics 1088 01:02:41,080 --> 01:02:42,240 kind of head in that direction, huh? 1089 01:02:43,040 --> 01:02:47,000 No, all of those are actually woodcuts I have. 1090 01:02:48,080 --> 01:02:52,440 I have a gigantic folder of probably 50 or 60 woodcuts I 1091 01:02:52,440 --> 01:02:56,480 pulled from various like not only Wikimedia Commons, but I've 1092 01:02:56,480 --> 01:02:59,240 also pulled up like individual pieces for museums. 1093 01:02:59,960 --> 01:03:03,000 I've contacted several museums and tried to get scans of them. 1094 01:03:03,800 --> 01:03:05,960 So yeah, I've got all of this stuff is public domain. 1095 01:03:07,480 --> 01:03:09,360 So the graphic that's on the screen right now that I'm 1096 01:03:09,360 --> 01:03:11,160 looking at right now that I keep pointing in the right direction 1097 01:03:11,160 --> 01:03:13,360 to. So all of those are actually 1098 01:03:13,360 --> 01:03:18,960 wood cut art that has been adapted to use for half light. 1099 01:03:20,320 --> 01:03:22,920 I cannot see what is on your screen, but I'm assuming yes. 1100 01:03:23,600 --> 01:03:26,400 It's your most recent Twitter. It's the thing that's at the top 1101 01:03:26,400 --> 01:03:29,560 of your Twitter page with the three or like 5:00-ish figures 1102 01:03:29,560 --> 01:03:32,600 at the bottom. Yes, yes, that is. 1103 01:03:33,720 --> 01:03:37,480 Oh, who is that? Let me see the a particular 1104 01:03:37,480 --> 01:03:40,320 German artist. I could probably find out who it 1105 01:03:40,320 --> 01:03:50,880 was if I can recall correctly. Yes, a German expressionist, 1106 01:03:50,880 --> 01:03:56,720 Kertha Kolwitz is who I believe is the the artist for that. 1107 01:03:58,240 --> 01:04:01,240 Yeah. And so it's a it, it looks 1108 01:04:01,880 --> 01:04:07,000 significantly worse the way I found it as it is about 150 1109 01:04:07,000 --> 01:04:11,640 years old. But yeah, a little bit of a 1110 01:04:11,760 --> 01:04:16,360 Photoshop cleaning up and then deliberately dirtying again gets 1111 01:04:16,360 --> 01:04:21,640 you the the look I'm going for. A lot of the work that I've 1112 01:04:21,640 --> 01:04:28,600 pulled there is that one particular Norwegian artist who 1113 01:04:29,280 --> 01:04:34,520 basically made woodcuts about the ongoing plague in his in his 1114 01:04:34,520 --> 01:04:36,920 country. So that's where you get those 1115 01:04:36,920 --> 01:04:40,160 really cool images of like the skeleton man manning the 1116 01:04:40,160 --> 01:04:43,560 guillotine and everything. I'm like, Oh my God, this is so 1117 01:04:43,560 --> 01:04:46,920 dope. And yeah, I one of the cool 1118 01:04:46,920 --> 01:04:49,640 things about designing your own game and doing everything from 1119 01:04:49,640 --> 01:04:52,720 the writing to the art to the layout, as you can let each 1120 01:04:52,720 --> 01:04:55,400 piece sort of influence the others. 1121 01:04:55,840 --> 01:04:59,640 Like when I was writing the book, I had a certain aesthetic 1122 01:04:59,640 --> 01:05:01,600 in mind. And then when I found those 1123 01:05:01,600 --> 01:05:03,680 woodcuts, I'm like, OK, I can totally pivot to this. 1124 01:05:04,120 --> 01:05:08,000 And so I started referencing and reinforcing those ideas in the 1125 01:05:08,000 --> 01:05:11,840 writing and in the layout. Now that I had, I knew what sort 1126 01:05:11,840 --> 01:05:16,480 of art I was going for. Yeah, yeah, I mean, the second 1127 01:05:16,640 --> 01:05:20,120 that I saw the first graphic of you, but on Twitter posting half 1128 01:05:20,120 --> 01:05:22,800 light and then I read like one line about it, I'm like, OK, you 1129 01:05:22,800 --> 01:05:26,000 got me. Like I'm I am, if nothing, an 1130 01:05:26,000 --> 01:05:29,760 edge Lord piece of shit. And as soon as there's like dark 1131 01:05:29,760 --> 01:05:32,400 themes and stuff, you should only play with friends and 1132 01:05:32,400 --> 01:05:34,160 stuff. I'm like, you won me over. 1133 01:05:34,160 --> 01:05:36,680 And if we're talking about woodcuts of skeletons and 1134 01:05:36,680 --> 01:05:41,640 guillotines, you're at worst writing directly to an audience 1135 01:05:41,640 --> 01:05:45,360 of 1. So I'm very, very excited for 1136 01:05:45,440 --> 01:05:47,520 for for Half Light. Can't wait to see it. 1137 01:05:48,960 --> 01:05:52,320 It exists. It is coming out. 1138 01:05:53,600 --> 01:05:58,440 It is coming out. I, I have a, a, a hard limit of 1139 01:05:59,240 --> 01:06:01,800 2024. I've already created the 1140 01:06:01,880 --> 01:06:03,720 Kickstarter page. I'm just waiting for it to 1141 01:06:04,920 --> 01:06:08,760 waiting to feel like I've got it ready enough that I can hit go, 1142 01:06:09,120 --> 01:06:15,280 you know, So October, maybe late October, maybe November, it's. 1143 01:06:16,040 --> 01:06:18,520 Right around the corner, Halloween's a great day. 1144 01:06:18,800 --> 01:06:22,280 You know it exists, it's out there now. 1145 01:06:22,320 --> 01:06:23,680 Is this something just through you? 1146 01:06:23,680 --> 01:06:25,920 Are you, are you working with Jurt for like distro and stuff 1147 01:06:25,920 --> 01:06:29,080 like that? Like how are using the whole 1148 01:06:29,080 --> 01:06:31,400 field advantage or? I will be working with Jurt 1149 01:06:31,400 --> 01:06:35,000 through distro. I will be working with a print 1150 01:06:35,000 --> 01:06:38,760 shop out of Philadelphia. Assuming we fund and everything, 1151 01:06:39,680 --> 01:06:42,480 a pretty awesome local indie print shop. 1152 01:06:42,640 --> 01:06:46,040 I say local, but I haven't been in Philadelphia in years, but 1153 01:06:46,840 --> 01:06:49,920 really awesome indie print shop called Fireball is that I will 1154 01:06:50,160 --> 01:06:52,560 hopefully be printing the books through. 1155 01:06:52,960 --> 01:06:58,520 And yeah, I'm really hoping that this product, like I'm putting a 1156 01:06:58,520 --> 01:07:01,480 lot of effort into it and I really wanted to hold up as a 1157 01:07:01,880 --> 01:07:03,960 truly, truly, truly beautiful book. 1158 01:07:04,200 --> 01:07:07,520 You know, I want the same way. I feel like Liberte is a truly 1159 01:07:07,520 --> 01:07:11,520 beautiful book inside and out. I want this to be my magnum 1160 01:07:11,560 --> 01:07:15,440 opus. I'm, I'm very excited for it 1161 01:07:15,440 --> 01:07:16,920 now. I think we had previously talked 1162 01:07:16,920 --> 01:07:21,640 about the potential that coming out in October and either, I 1163 01:07:21,640 --> 01:07:26,000 mean, A, you're always welcome back anytime you want to come 1164 01:07:26,000 --> 01:07:28,360 here on the show and talk again. We're not really going to run 1165 01:07:28,360 --> 01:07:31,560 the game. But for those listening or 1166 01:07:31,560 --> 01:07:33,760 watching, this will not be the last time you hear about Half 1167 01:07:33,760 --> 01:07:35,160 Light. I'll probably not shut the fuck 1168 01:07:35,160 --> 01:07:38,280 up for the whole time. It's crowdfunding so that it 1169 01:07:38,280 --> 01:07:42,840 exists so that I can own it. So trust me when I say that you 1170 01:07:42,840 --> 01:07:48,960 will all hear about this again. Hi, it has been fantastic to 1171 01:07:48,960 --> 01:07:50,000 finally get a chance to talk to you. 1172 01:07:50,000 --> 01:07:54,800 I have been looking at your work for a long time and and this is 1173 01:07:54,800 --> 01:07:56,120 the thing that finally made me go fuck. 1174 01:07:56,120 --> 01:07:58,560 I like I said, I got to e-mail this person and I would you 1175 01:07:58,560 --> 01:07:59,920 know, talk to Jared about you all the time. 1176 01:08:00,280 --> 01:08:03,520 So it's wonderful to talk to you for people that are going to be 1177 01:08:03,920 --> 01:08:09,320 A looking for you to do layout PDF remediation or B looking for 1178 01:08:09,320 --> 01:08:11,880 information on half light as it starts to drop and what not. 1179 01:08:11,880 --> 01:08:15,360 Where can people find you and find your stuff? 1180 01:08:16,880 --> 01:08:18,680 Well, I mean, first of all, the pleasure was mine. 1181 01:08:18,880 --> 01:08:20,760 Thank you so much for having me here. 1182 01:08:21,520 --> 01:08:26,640 I'm on Twitter way more often than I should at Die Sugars. 1183 01:08:26,640 --> 01:08:31,520 That's DAISHUGARS. My website is the same Die 1184 01:08:31,520 --> 01:08:35,200 sugars.com. I have a blue sky, same name. 1185 01:08:35,200 --> 01:08:37,920 I don't use that one as much, but might switch to that. 1186 01:08:38,880 --> 01:08:41,720 Half Light can be found at any of those, and I also have a 1187 01:08:41,720 --> 01:08:44,560 dedicated site for it called Play Half light.com. 1188 01:08:44,640 --> 01:08:47,640 All one word and yeah, that's pretty much it. 1189 01:08:48,160 --> 01:08:51,640 Discord dye sugars. It's a pretty unique name so I 1190 01:08:51,640 --> 01:08:53,840 really had no issue getting handles for it. 1191 01:08:57,000 --> 01:08:57,760 Yeah. All right. 1192 01:08:57,760 --> 01:09:00,720 Well, just bookmark that half life and this is exactly what I 1193 01:09:00,720 --> 01:09:02,240 should have just brought up originally. 1194 01:09:03,399 --> 01:09:05,439 And there is the skeleton. Of the DTS. 1195 01:09:06,720 --> 01:09:08,160 It is. It will now. 1196 01:09:08,160 --> 01:09:10,840 Now I have to show it. Now I have to show it to to 1197 01:09:10,840 --> 01:09:14,960 stream. Let me let me re rearrange real 1198 01:09:14,960 --> 01:09:17,479 quick some of the stuff behind here. 1199 01:09:17,479 --> 01:09:21,680 Look at look at look at that look at that skelly boy right 1200 01:09:21,680 --> 01:09:26,040 there with with all of that that's going on. 1201 01:09:26,040 --> 01:09:32,319 Here's my my my capture. It's absolutely stunning page 1202 01:09:32,439 --> 01:09:37,240 and let me get it to where it's actually in the thing here. 1203 01:09:39,120 --> 01:09:46,279 My goodness, that skeleton on the side again. 1204 01:09:46,279 --> 01:09:49,160 If, if, if there was one thing that was going to make me back 1205 01:09:49,160 --> 01:09:54,720 this project, it's skeletons and and guillotines and heads. 1206 01:09:54,720 --> 01:09:57,880 There's the whole how do I play section already listed here. 1207 01:09:58,080 --> 01:10:00,160 I mean features knowledge to the game. 1208 01:10:00,520 --> 01:10:03,680 Like there's already so much information here about how the 1209 01:10:03,680 --> 01:10:05,120 game works. Like what is half light? 1210 01:10:05,120 --> 01:10:08,320 Who is the adversary? My goodness. 1211 01:10:08,480 --> 01:10:11,000 So again, I'm not going to shut up about this. 1212 01:10:11,280 --> 01:10:13,680 I'm very excited for this project, very excited that we 1213 01:10:13,680 --> 01:10:17,160 got a chance to talk and I'm sure I will continue to talk to 1214 01:10:17,160 --> 01:10:19,120 Jerk about all the wonderful things that you're doing there 1215 01:10:19,120 --> 01:10:21,640 as well. Again, can't thank you enough 1216 01:10:21,640 --> 01:10:24,200 for being here. And I will make sure that all of 1217 01:10:24,200 --> 01:10:26,960 the links for those, as we say every time are in the 1218 01:10:27,400 --> 01:10:29,920 descriptions of wherever you're listening below. 1219 01:10:29,920 --> 01:10:33,040 So you can click on that. And our links are the same as 1220 01:10:33,040 --> 01:10:39,480 they've been for 200 episodes. So that is us for today and and 1221 01:10:39,480 --> 01:10:39,800 we're out.