Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan. And I'm Frank Castle.
And I'm Pao Kizman. Hi.
Hey, how's it going? Oh, it's, it's going well.
Not too bad. Welcome back to the show, you
know. Yeah, Oh, it's, it's a pleasure
to be here again. And for those who might not
Remember Me from the last time, I'm the creator of Corborg and
Killer and Necromancer and a bunch of other stuff.
Yeah, going by helting storytelling.
And now. Yeah, with, with, with my cat,
my cat Mia. Say hello, Mia.
And yeah. And I'm currently running a
crowdfunding for health power and I guess that will be one of
our subjects. And yeah, I'm super, super
stoked to be here and stuck to stuck with you guys again.
Yeah, we're excited to have you. I think the last time you were
on it was during the campaign for the Heretics Guide to the
Dying Lands. Yes.
Which I thought was super awesome.
How is that? How's wrapping that project been
going? It's going well, but we do work
a bit slow because Wall Crawler is taking his time with with the
art because he said, yeah, I just want just, I would just
want to do it right. So he's taking his time with it,
just really kind of thinking through every layout, every art.
So we're taking our time just to make sure that, you know, every
page is as good as it can be. It'll obviously go through
proofing and then we might change something.
But yeah, but it's, it's, it's going to like basically I write
like every week a, a portion so he can work on this.
I can have a little break and when he finishes, I'm ready
with, with new stuff that kind of, you know, like kind of
exchange notes in the in the meantime.
So that's a decent process. So we can focus on other stuff
as well in the meantime. But yeah, I think we should be
ready by the end of, I don't want to say end of end of
summer, but but potentially we'll see.
But it's, it's going, it's going well.
I'm super, super happy with how it's how it's how it looks both
kind of writing wise and then art wise.
So yeah, I think people will love it and will use it a lot.
I'm really excited to get through it.
Yeah, that one. So and then also I think the the
crowd, the crowdfunding for Corp org had finished when you came
on, but it has delivered since then.
So I see it on your shelf behind you.
I see it in my hands right now and it's a great, it's a great
book. I also got the the whole stack
of character sheets to go with it, which I'm so glad that like
Mark Borg did this. And then all the people that
make Mark Borg stuff started doing this too because the
character sheet pads are just great because a lot of times
you'll get like two or three nice character sheets and I'm
like, well, I'm never going to use those.
Why would I like Mark on the three that I get?
But when you get a whole pad of them, I'm like, all right, I
could actually use some of this and still keep some because I'm
a freak like that. But but how was I got, I was
going to ask like, how was this? I mean, you made it, it's great.
But like as a as a kind of a decent size crowdfunding project
with distribution and printing and art and like everything that
came with it, like how, how was that process?
It was painful at times because this is my first project.
Well, it wasn't my first crowdfunding and it wasn't my
first physical product that I had to make and deliver, but it
was my first TTRPG, first project on on kind of this scale
and took me longer than I thought.
And now I know I've learned a lot of different lessons
throughout it and it was a times painful, but it was also super
fun. And I'm, I'm really, I'm rarely
happy with what I do, but I'm really happy with how it kind of
turned out. Because like myself, I'm, I'm
seeing like I'm looking at a book on this.
Yeah, OK. But then I hear people saying,
Whoa, I I love how kind of realistic it is because it's
like it's, you know, it's kind of dark fantasy horror kind of
stuff, but I see myself in it and it's like, OK, so that's,
that's cool. That's, you know, that's
probably, maybe you need some help, but that's cool that you
say this. And I think that's kind of that
shows me that I I did something right, that kind of a list,
some, some kind of emotions, which is great.
And but yeah, the whole process was was very lengthy and it's
still not over because there's still some backers that are
awaits their book. But it's almost, it's we're
almost there. It's just now my kind of
distributor was struck by hurricane.
So here's another delay. So it's always something.
But I guess that kind of happens when you're just a solo, the
creator just doing everything by yourself.
And obviously I've mentioned distributor.
So that's kind of that. But that comes at kind of at the
end. So there's only so much I can do
when I kind of pass the books over.
But to that point, you know, I'm just alone doing everything
myself and it it takes time, but also I kind of learned a lot in
terms of the process. So for example, I know that
health power will will be dealt with much better in terms of
production and other projects that I have to finish are always
also I have kind of a better process for them in place just
to make sure that people will be hay with with the quality, but
also they won't have to wait like a year to get their stuff.
I mean, a year is really not that long when compared to set
all their projects. I do.
I do appreciate that you are like learning these lessons and
then actively applying them immediately to like the next
project to kind of clean up the process.
I think that makes a big difference.
And I mean, I think we definitely don't have any
complaints about anything that you've released thus far.
I mean. That's fine.
No, no. And, and Coburg's great, you
know, like I, I love Mark Borg, Mark Borg's fantastic.
But after Mark Borg, there was so much Mark Borg stuff that we
took a break from Mark Borg for a while.
I was really glad I grabbed this because I backed this I think
before we'd ever talked about you coming on the show.
So I was really happy. And then when I actually started
reading it, like horror is great, you know, and like Mark
Borg, like Dark World is great. But when you hit like corporate
horror, like it hits so close to home that it adds this like kind
of extra layer to like a layer of like, you know, you can
imagine like ash monsters and stuff and Merkborg.
But when you know about like punching out and like actually
going to work and like the, the, the extra added bit that it
gives you for that, like closer touch to reality is great.
Like I remember when we first read merger for Michael Elliot,
it was the same thing. We're like, we love this, but
like it hits a little too close to home like this.
This hurts us a little bit. So really fantastic game.
We're you know, we're not going to talk about this a ton today
because we want to talk about hell power.
But for anybody that has not checked out Korborg from from
bobble here, it is absolutely fantastic.
It's a really, really fantastic hack on on mark Borg that I
highly, highly suggest. Everyone goes grabs and we'll
make sure that all of the the links to this are are down in
the description below, but you know it it's you know the the
production is great like actually get it in hands and
like a reasonable time is great and the game itself is
fantastic. So it's.
A great game. Good.
Good job so far and we'll see. I think like the three other
projects you have in the works right now, if they reach this
quality, I think a lot of people would be very happy.
Thank you. Yeah.
But today, today we are talking about Hell power, which is a
very interesting take on Mark Pork as well as like a bunch of
other stuff. So First off, for those that
can't see the banner above me, what's what's Hell Power?
So it's it's a good question because there are several
different answers and I guess each answer will probably make
more sense to different people. But in the simplest form, it's
kind of a superhero Mork pork. But it's also not, it's about
people like normal people then, well, maybe they're not super
normal, but kind of normal ish who are faced against super
villains. So you can think like The Boys
or Injustice or other kind of different comic book, video
game, TV series, media that kind of features evil superheroes
doing real stuff and normal people trying to kind of survive
in that world. But it's just just so much more
in terms of how how bad it is in this world.
So it's like turn up to 11, maybe to 12 even.
And people who are at the comic book The Boys, which is a bit
more, I think even more unhinged than the TV series.
So I'm doing get even more unhinged.
It's going to feature truly kind of evil characters.
So like one superhero, for example.
I think that's probably the best example, like once, well, not
superhero, but super villain or as I call them, the powered
individual. He's got a whole country that
kind of owns and the whole country is basically a
concentration camp for for human and he can just do whatever he
wants with them like you can can only imagine.
I'm going to describe it in in details, but that's kind of how
how vile they are, how evil they are and they do unspeakable
things. And here players will face
against them. The only problem is that in in a
lot of games, I think Call of Catullo is, is probably the best
example for most of the game. If you do any kind of fighting,
you usually fight with someone that you can take down and like,
for example, because you also have enemies that you cannot
even touch because they're too powerful.
But there are certain ways that you can kind of mitigate the
risk or just gain some advantage.
And it will be the same principle in here, but those
will be the kind of main focus of the gameplay.
So you're just kind of normal bunch of normal dudes and
dudettes trying to trying to take down the superplyptic
powered individuals. But they will kind of
mechanically be so powerful that there's no way you can just
stand against them in a, in a normal D20 year old kind of
fight because they will have like 666 HP and they will deal
like D100 damage or whatever. So the whole game is constructed
around finding a way to hurt them or to kind of kill,
incapacitate or otherwise kind of deal with them in some way.
So the kind of the whole game play loop is about finding the
clues, finding kind of that what's the weakness and then
trying to exploit that weakness in different ways.
It can be kind of political, it can be personal kind of
psychological, it can be physical in terms of like you
need to get kind of a kryptonite kind of thing to weak them to
weaken them. So there will be a lot of
different options. And because it's a kind of more
work based game, either everything will will play out
pretty smoothly and then simple and it will leave a lot of room
for people to adjust the game to their needs and their vision of
what it means to do it. And they can scale themselves up
as well. So if they want more of a power
fantasy in which they can acquire a power armor like and
like, like Batman hat and just go and, and, you know, brawl
their way out, they'll be able to do it.
If they prefer kind of more role play and, and some kind of
detective kind of style of, of, of gameplay, they can do that as
well. Which means that I had to adjust
more rules to to give people and players more options to really
mechanically support what they want to do, but still keeping it
very simple so they can have a lot of room to breathe and
entrepreneurs, whatever they like and rules that will fit on
one page still. So so it's still going to be
simple, but there will be options that will help to to run
the game in a way that will support the whole gameplay loop
idea. Yeah, that sounds too you first.
Oh, I wanted to say the quickest side is that the only time I
ever thought Superman was interesting at all was an
injustice. So I'm really glad that we get
to see him in here. But I just want to clarify just
in case. And I I love this so much.
Like the players in this game are just normal human beings and
like the Super powered crazy stuff are like the things you
fight against. So you just get to be like the
same kind of weak, you know, close to death merkboard
characters fighting superhumans. Exactly, there are like there
are two ways to gain some powers. 10 Ryan.
OK, we'll wait. We'll wait for Ryan.
No. OK, so the 1st way is to to get
mutated. There's like fifty chance.
We'll see, Maybe we'll adjust it, but there's a fifty chance
to get some kind of random mutation that will give you some
power, but it's going to be very useless.
It's going to like you have invisibility of 1% of your body.
So like you have invisible hand or whatever, very useless.
And the other thing, the other option is to hunt for Imps
because like just to get a little bit more kind of lore
around it. So it's called Hell power
because those individuals got their powers from hell.
Gotcha. Kind of how literally opened and
burst kind of this kind of energy that rippled through the
earth and all those bad people gain, gain some kind of of
powers. But also it kind of unleashed
those little Imps that are physically like physical
manifestation of hell. The only one, the only
manifestation. Well maybe not the only one but
I just want to spoil too much. And by hunting them and eating
them or drinking your blood, whatever, like normal and stuff,
you can also gain powers that that will have some downsides, a
lot of downsides, but can temporarily or or or good give
you some, some abilities that will maybe don't make you as
powerful as the most powerful powered individuals, but they
will give you some options to you realize that kind of fantasy
of, of, of having a superpower, although it's still remember
it's, it's, it's a really fucked up world.
So it's not going to be pretty. It's not going to be fun.
Well, it's going to be fun, but it will have a lot of cons Died
to it. So could you give us an example
of one of these like endowed powers that you could possibly
get? Sure.
So there will be a bit of normal stuff like super strain for
flight or kind of invisibility or stuff like that.
But it's just, it will be pretty kind of straightforward and it
will be pretty well, I don't want to say boring, but pretty
normal. But it's about downsides.
Yeah, normal. But it will be more about kind
of what's the price to pay to use them to a certain extent.
And it will be more, it will be both mechanical disadvantage and
also role-playing disadvantage. There will be some things in
fiction that will kind of push you into different situations
because of you having that imp power.
So it's not always the best deal.
You can, you can, you can have. It's not always worth drinking
in blood, but it's an option. There will be other options to
to get you that advantage that might be not as powerful but may
not cost you as much. Cool.
I love the I really do love like I'm saying that the idea that
it's you and you're very insignificant and you're
fighting this like overwhelmingly powerful, like
evil demigod almost. I think that's very has a lot of
potential for some very interesting story arcs and
character deaths, you know? Yeah, and I, I think I just, I
wonder if people will have to adjust to it, if some people
will be like, yeah, just let's, let's fight them.
Like let's find their weakness and and then just let's go and
just just do it. And they will get decimated in
seconds. Like, OK, maybe we need a
different approach, but I think it's OK.
But I will try to support and kind of different ways of
playing mechanically. So people will have different
options to maybe adjust the game to how they want to play it.
If they don't want to spend like 16 hours finding a kind of toxin
that will work on certain powered and, and they want kind
of simpler way or faster way or something that will give them
more fun in terms of, yeah, we can just brawl it out, then it's
OK. There will be different options,
which I think it's, it's kind of how I, how I like to, to do my
games. So it's simple.
It's it's not a lot of words, but there's a lot of breathing
room, a lot of options for both GMs and players to figure it out
and just wing it when they want, like whenever they want or
improvise or just kind of adjust the whole thing to how they want
to play. Yeah, you know it's funny,
especially when you look at a lot of the the things obviously
jump out to me right away are Injustice and the boys, because
it's both are kind of like that to to a point right with this
far as like normal people battling super powered people.
Obviously Injustice there were some super powered people too,
but like Batman for example. It's funny to me that in.
What you're saying about the different styles kind of happens
in both types of that media too, right?
Where they, like, they spend whole arcs trying to figure out
the best way, like let's get magic so we can take that in
Superman. But then they always inevitably
come to like, take this pill and you get superpowers for an hour
and then you can brawl it out with Superman for an hour or
whatever. But I I really like the idea.
I mean, I I hope that people, you know, one thing that I
really enjoy about or one thing I think you did really well with
the backer kit page and even with like the cover, which is up
in the screen and out, which is absolutely fantastic.
Kill the powered rebellions tell is great.
Is you're communicating really well that like you aren't the
Super powered people. So I think the people that will
buy this game and and lean into it are the people that kind of
lean a little bit more towards Mark Borg that like having one
HP and trying to go kill stuff and having it be a little bit
harder and a little bit more difficult.
And if you know, the one of the thing, one critique we always
had on Mark Borg is like, there's not a whole lot of
reason to do stuff except to do stuff, you know?
And then in this game, it gives you like a very strong like goal
to get to. So spending 16 hours trying to
find a poison to take down one guy is exactly the kind of game
I want to play in something like this.
So I think you're communicating really well the intent behind
that. So obviously, you know, it'd be
cool to be able to take a power bill to fight the dude for an
hour or whatever, but I think you're doing a really fantastic
job of, of communicating what the game is to people.
Yeah. But honestly, if you think like
why would you like, like why would you do it like?
Why would you try to take down that powered?
And so there are two different things that I wanted to
implement to give you that reason.
So one is, well, basically the reason you have that's in your
past or just happened recently, something that kind of pushes
you to do it. There is a whole random table
you can come up with your own, but there is a random table for
that. But having that is very crucial.
Having that motivation is crucial because you'll be able
to use that motivation to to gain a mechanical advantage in
the game. So kind of the reason you fight
will give you some, some options when the time is, is, yeah, when
the time comes and when it's it's going bad and when you're
all you know about to die. We'll see how it'll be called.
I, I think I had two different ideas.
One is second Wind and the other is plot armour.
We'll see which one if it's better.
But basically using that motivation, doing like even
role-playing it like doing a flashback or just describing,
just giving a little bit more from the players to add to the
fiction, it will give them mechanical advantage as well.
So that kind of motivation is really important both in terms
of of like, why the hell would you try to take down that that
that guy that can reap you all reap you apart in, in, in half
of a second, but also to have the motivation actually
influence the the the the gameplay.
I think that that will be pretty cool.
Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things that you want in games, I
think period is just a reason to do things.
You can create this insanely awesome world, but like at the
end of the day, if I feel like I would just sit around and
chilling in it, then I'm not really going to go adventure in
it. So it's cool that that you
obviously have thought about that already and and have that
built in on top of just the let's free ourselves from these
terrible people that are abusing us with their health hours.
So that's that's really cool to see.
I also one thing that I've noticed kind of in the Mark pork
space too, which is really cool, is that more people are doing
less Mark Borg stuff and more like hacks of Mark Borg, which
is something I've been wanting for years.
So what was your kind of inspiration to cuz I know Kirk
Borg is exactly that, but also like, you know, guy to the dying
lands is, is, is Mark Borg stuff.
But what's been your motivation kind of to not do stuff
specifically set in, you know, the Mark Borg world, but to
actually take the Mark Borg rules and do corporate Mark Borg
or do superpower Mark Borg or stuff like that?
Like what? What is what is what's kind of
driving you to to make these? So for Corp work, the reason was
that it was well, a couple of reasons actually.
First, first of all, I wanted to start with, it was not kind of
first big projects. I want to start with something
that will be a bit easier on me that I can take an engine or I
can take even a kind of a setting or a mood and adjust it
so I can learn by doing that. If I would just go lately, I
will just create my own system that would be a a bit risky and
maybe a bit stupid to do as a first project.
So that gave me that confidence that I know I love more pork and
I see how it can translate into that corporate setting.
And so, so that was kind of natural choice, but also a
little bit of of kind of marketing wise, you know,
there's a, a huge community around those games.
So I thought it, it would be a good start also because I will
have an audience already people who might be I, I don't know if
they will. Well, now I know that they were,
but at the time I didn't might be interested in, in looking at
this project and supporting it maybe.
And with health power, there's also a little bit of that, a
little bit of, yeah, I know the system and I have that kind of
quarrel that I can use and I have an audience that might be
interested. But the main reason was because
it was, it was supposed to be completely different system.
It was, it was supposed to be something else.
I had a few different ideas, but then I kind of came back to Morg
Borg and I looked at the structure of the game and what I
want to do with hell power. It was like, OK, so it is
apocalyptic. It is a world in which normal
people, like weak people are faced against impossible odds.
OK, so that's also, you know, kind of the same thing.
There will be kind of calendar of events that will bring
apocalypse closer and closer and OK, so next match.
And also I wanted to be mechanically simple but
adjustable. So then again, OK, if I can fit
rules in one page, I can, you know, add another page and, and
voila. And, and it, it works because
it's simple enough, intuitive enough, but also it kind of
enables to, to add things on top of it if should I want to add
them? And then I thought, yes, so that
that's kind of that's the best choice probably because it fits
the kind of the philosophy I want to follow, it fits the the
setting I want to create. It all fits the kind of the
rules I want to use to a degree. Although, yeah, as I mentioned,
I will adjust those rules pretty significantly at times.
And I think the biggest difference will be addition of
skills or kind of, well, skills, abilities, but in terms of
apologies, but skills that you have, you will assign points to.
So like, I don't know, whatever kind of repair or hacking, there
will be skills that you will be able to use, kind of kind of
blocks of skills that you will be able to and also put together
to create your own character with still 6 archetypes.
But you will be able to create completely unique character by
building it from those with those kind of blocks of skills.
It won't be super complicated. It won't be like you have.
I know it won't work like spells or abilities and and other
games. It'll be much simpler.
But it'll give you that kind of direction in which your
character can go and what what what what you can do may be
better than like normal people. Because also it's about having
that kind of an advantage in at that kind of human level.
Because, for example, you will have to, I don't know, go into a
secret lab and steal something. So then obviously if you're just
a bunch of normal people without any particular skills, it'll
look pretty difficult to do that.
But if you have someone who is a ex military, if you have someone
who's who's kind of mastermind and can come up with different
plans or someone who's excellent at hacking or breaking in,
etcetera, that kind of gives you that direction and also gives
you some options to to using the role play.
So we'll see how it how it turns out.
We'll see. I'll try to play test the shit
out of this game to make it as balanced as possible.
But that's kind of that's I think that's the biggest change.
And there will be some, some minor, minor additions or
subtractions here and there, But I think if someone will just go
to help our from more world like, OK, I, I kind of
understand, I kind of get it. I kind of I can follow the, the
whole structure. I think.
So that's that's the idea. I like it.
I, I think you, you have this very consistent, like you're,
you're good at setting expectations and like your
ability to use Merck board and adapt it also in and of itself
kind of sets an expectation for how a game is like to work and
go. And I think starting with a
hack's a really great idea because it allows you'd like,
like what you're doing is to modularly add on the things that
you need on top of a framework that works very well.
Do you ever have? Are you ever going to consider
making your own your own system? Yeah, I think so.
Whispers of the woods that I, I do struggle to find time to
finish it, but I'm writing, I'm kind of every week again, every
week I'm putting words on a, on a piece of virtual paper.
So it's, it's very close to finish.
I have all the artwork done. I have basically everything I
need. I just need to kind of spend
some time, just sit down and kind of finish it.
But it's, it's going to be its own system, very simplistic,
very simplistic. And and then there is going to
be another game. We'll see maybe this year, if
not this year, beginning of, of next year, which I haven't
decided yet because I have a setting, I have an artist, I
have a wonderful idea. I'm like super excited, but I
just can, I, I have other things on my mind and other things I
have to finish first, But I would so much, I would, I would
love to kind of sit down and just do it right now, but I
can't. And, and it's going to be
probably its own system very close to kind of OSR games.
So maybe it'll be very similar to Morpur, but it's not going to
be more pork. It's going it's going to be
basically another rendition of your kind of second edition VND
or BX. So in in in that vein.
So kind of dark like, well, we'll see if dark, but it's kind
of your normal old school fantasy, kind of think supported
by rules that we'll see how it goes.
I, I, I do think it will be its own thing, its own system.
But because of how different ISRS are structured, it's really
difficult to say that it's kind of completely new system.
It will be very similar to your name for Karen or, or more poor
or other stuff. So but yeah, but what we'll see,
I think it will be its own its own thing.
And then, yeah. And then I do have some other
kind of work board or cyber related projects that will be
supplements. So, so that's that and yeah.
And then we'll see. We'll see how it goes.
Very cool. Yeah.
You know, Speaking of system, I do you know, clearly you you
enjoy the boards, you know, but I do think it's interesting.
You said you were going to do not Mark Borg and then came back
to it for this because it I like it fits like if you if you gave
me this idea and told me it's like superhumans, but they got
their power from hell. A little hellums come out like I
would think Mark Borg would be a great system to run that in,
especially because human beings are so weak and things like
that. So I think it's a great idea to
use that as a base. And as I said, like it always
surprised me how long it took before people really started
making like using the system of Merck Borg and making new stuff
or just making stuff for Merck board because of how good and
clean and light the Merck Borg kind of bases.
It does allow you to add so much to it without, you know, ever
needing to worry about breaking the system or anything like
that. It's it's really
straightforward. It's pretty brutal.
It's just a, it's, it's a really great idea or, or a great base
to hack from in the same way that we have a million nave
hacks, 1,000,000 Karen hacks and things like that.
So it's it's awesome to see other stuff.
And it's also, you know, really interesting to see something
that's set in like the, you know, pseudo right now.
You did send us some graphics that have been kind of showing
up on the board a little bit, but I wanted to talk about them
a little bit. So first of all, how about that
cover, which is absolutely fantastic.
So I think this is all Strega, right?
Yeah. So it's, it's, they're ours.
And then I, I put it together because the initial, initial
cover was supposed to be completely different, but the
artist struggled to finish the piece because he decided to
paint it by hand with acrylics. He took a lot of time and I
didn't really have so much time to wait.
So I just and, and then when he kind of finished the piece, it
was an amazing piece, which which is like, which fits
perfectly, but it wasn't suitable for for the cover.
So then I had to make a quick turn around and was like, OK,
what, what, what could work? And then I just went, OK, let's
see. Batman covers.
OK, now boring, boring, boring. And then we're like, maybe, huh,
Watchman covers. OK, OK, this one.
OK, this maybe we could do something with this one.
I went to Strega just first right off the bat and, and they
said, listen, I have that idea. How about we, we do this?
And they were like, yeah, yeah, that sounds, sounds cool.
And I thought their style will fit, fit those images perfectly
and was like about, you know, there's two of nine pieces.
We'll put it together and we'll see how it how it goes.
Then I, it took me a few days to to get it right and make
potentially the final cover might be a little bit different
here and there. But the whole thing I think came
came along and I I think maybe I I don't want to say I nailed it
because it's it's not really my kind of thing because all artist
Tregas and and the the logo is from Tommy, the creator of
obscure, for example, just one DNA for judge judges spotlight.
They're. Just spotlight Groton Yeah,
swab. They've.
Done a lot of great stuff. Yeah, so, so that that place,
well, that logo is fucking awesome.
It's just whenever I shout it to people, people like, Oh my God,
it's amazing. And I cannot agree more.
Like I could put the logo on itself on a blank page, like,
yeah, that's amazing cover. And yeah, and also inspiration
from from the cover of Watchmen. I think that that came came out
pretty well and also kind of conveys first, first of all,
it's an homage to a classic cover for a story that kind of I
think stands within all those different inspirations for the
game. But also it it tells a story of
like, yeah, here you have the title here you have different
super villains as well. So you can kind of see who who
they might be and kind of, you know, OK, it's interesting.
Maybe I'll open up the book and I'll see who they are.
And there's some place to to give the traditional text to
suggest what you are going to do in this game.
So I think, yeah, it came out pretty well, I think even better
than I initially hoped for. But that's all thanks to Strega
and Tommy and yeah, and the original cover for the Watchmen
trade. Well, it's not the kind of deep
first cover. It's I think it was like one of
the the kind of editions that came came later on, but still
pretty, pretty cool cover. And see what other so we have
this is listed as as Ben or Frau.
Love this piece so much. So who, who, who, who might this
one be? With the sword across the eyes
and the. So that's Frau Apata or Apate or
whatever you want to kind of pronounce it.
Basically she's a kind of a spoof of Wonder Woman.
And it was the first character. I just, well, maybe not the, I
think it's this. No, it was the first character
for this game I came up with, and she's basically a kind of
reversed, kind of reversed Wonder Woman because she's one
of her. Like she's got, you know, kind
of regular powers like strength, speech, endurance, like at
superhuman level. But her thing is the items she's
got her sword and her kind of choker and the choker kind of
gave this her disability to, to tell lies that people will
believe. And you need to do a very
difficult role, like the very difficult test to kind of try to
oppose it and pursue. It is also pretty interesting
because upon killing someone, it inflicts pain that feels like a
100 years of pain condensed in, in this one moment.
So you feel like excruciating pain that feels like it's 100
years like has passed and all kind of condensed in this one
moment of knowing that you're going to die in in the next
second. And she's also she's also kind
of will be a prominent character because she's her motivations
are might be a bit vague. She's a murderer.
She likes to kill young girls, not only kill, but do different
stuff with them as well. But her parents are politics
politicians, sorry. And so she's got a little bit of
kind of political agenda. And the whole thing that can be
exploited by the players. So, so hopefully an interesting
character. Actually terrifying.
Yep. Sounds genuinely terrifying.
We got this one that says over man next to it.
Yes, that's the kind of the main body and that's kind of evil
Superman or evil Homelander or whatever.
I guess I yeah, I guess it's, it's one of the very many
iterations of, of evil Superman. So all the powers that you can
think of that Superman had over the years, he will have.
And also he's pretty fucking terrifying because that's the
character that owns the whole country of, of human slaves just
to play with. And and he is pretty deranged.
He's super intelligent, but he's also like like he's got
seemingly no motivation. He's likes to, you know, kill
and do a different stuff for fun.
But he's being kept in check by one of the other character that
I, I won't spoil today because this character will have a very
significant meaning for the whole game.
So there's yeah, there's only one character that can kind of
reason with with Overman. And also, yeah, the Oromo will
be like this threadless apocalyptical threat that don't
know, you know, the 7/7 he comes and can just kind of destroys
the whole world. So he's kind of the the main
body in in that sense. And he is seemingly, he
seemingly has no weakness. So that'll be very interested.
But there, as I've mentioned, there is one very pivotal
character to the whole game that will have a say in this.
But yeah, the Doberman is is just a just very fucked up
person and is very much inspired by a character from Suicide
Squad, The Blaze by Sy Spurrier. There is a character in there
that's that's even more powerful than Superman, but it's just a
guy who's who's basically raping and killing people in different
orders. Sometimes it's just, you know,
it's like super, super fucked up and it's just, you know, doing
only this just killing and, and, and raping and, and that's the
like, that's the whole thing. But because he's more powerful
than Superman, it makes him so terrifying.
It's just, and the whole comic book is is amazing in terms of
kind of the art, how how terrifying the whole thing is,
not only on a conceptual level, but on the art level as well.
So, yeah, so that was one of the kind of main inspirations for
this one as well. Yeah, the the art is really
giving me a tack Titan from from Attack of Titans too, with the
with Aaron and everything. Love that.
And then the last one, the last one I'll bring up is the last
one you sent me actually, which is this fantastic comic art
style spread here. It's got everything everyone you
talked about so far, except maybe I don't think overman's in
this, but like frows in there. There's some people you
recognize from the cover. So, So what is?
What is this piece? So this is basically an
interpretation of of the cover done by Rafael Schwappa, who is
a friend of mine, a comic book artist.
And he's done and he's the the person before we started
recording, I've said that I wanted to ask every guest who's
on the stretch goal list to to give me some kind of artwork
that I can put in there and the campaign page to just showcase
who they are, what they do. And I've asked Raffle just, you
know, if you could send me something.
It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I will send something and maybe
I'll adjust it so it's more kind of super villainish and will fit
your your game more. And then two days after, he just
sent me this whole illustration with his interpretation of the
characters in the cover, and he didn't even know descriptions of
those characters. He just took them straight up
from the cover and done it his way and it's like, yeah, OK,
this is just made it which which is fantastic and also kind of it
showcases how the comic book will look like should we unlock
it. Even if we don't, I think Rafael
will still do a few illustrations that will be in
the book. But should we hit the final
stretch goal, there will be a 16 pages comic book that will be
kind of an introduction to the whole game, will be illustrated
by Rafael. So it's a little bit of a
showcase of what what he can do. So yeah.
So, yeah, so talking about the the campaign, I've been bringing
the page up every now and then, but you are, you are funded
right now, almost double funded, but we still got 23 days of the
campaign to plenty of time for people to go over to back your
kit and back it. But it is funded.
Why don't you tell us, you know, if people back it, when people
back it right now, what can they get?
And what stretch goals are we looking for in the future,
including the the comic? Sure.
So it's pretty simple. It's very straightforward
campaign. So you can get a digital book,
you can get a hardcover book or you can get a hardcover book
along hard character sheets. And a little bit of a bonus
surprise character sheet is ready.
It's all done by Lukash Kovalchuk, who's done the
character sheet for Corp Borg and this time around he's done a
character sheet in form of a comic book.
So basically it's a kind of kind of narratively driven comic book
that serves as a character sheet.
Not sure. Not sure if I send it over if
not that it will. It's it's just absolutely
fantastic. So the kind of that's the
package. There are no like super high
tiers that you can, I don't know, get a handshake or
whatever. So it's just that you can just
physical products or a digital one and then stretch goals or
starts from kind of your typical some kind of digital content, so
different kind of random tables and stuff like that or handouts
you can print. And then you can get some like
you can make the book bigger, additional 8 pages and whatnot.
And then there are guests, I don't remember the the order of
those guests. So I will bring up the campaign
so I don't mess it up as well, but but I really wanted to ask
people that I really admire and I just thought they art will
will be perfect for this campaign.
So we do have in strategicals. First of all, we have Phil
Jensen who's done Trapped Within.
He's an amazing designer and artist and I really love like
he's got a community built around his warrior and he's
always like doing random tables and then kind of make amazing
spreads out of them. It's really, really, really, you
know, he's really fantastic in terms of making different things
work and he's got a lot of different creative ideas.
So so I would absolutely love to see Phil doing a page for this.
We have Tommy Suzanoeuer, who is obviously we've mentioned Tommy.
He's done the logo for health power.
He's also done swamp and he's done obscure and rotten.
So again, it would be amazing to to have him.
Then we have Johan Noor. So I think we don't really have
to teach you this Johan. But to those of you who don't
know who Johann is, he's the artist behind original Morkborg
and Cyborg and bunch of other things.
It's absolutely, you know, an amazing artist as an amazing
human being. And it's it would be an honor to
have his illustration inside hell power.
And then last but not least, it's a comic book biograph of
Schwappa with my script. So those are stretch goals.
Hopefully we'll be able to to get all of them.
And even if not, I'll try to try to make it work so we can get as
much cool stuff inside the book and as much guests.
We we possibly can. There might be some other guest
appearances that are not with with within stretch goals, but
but we'll we'll get to there maybe in one of the following
updates. Awesome.
Yeah, you know, and again, the projects on Backer Kit and on
Kickstarter, so definitely spreading this around is going
to be super helpful. You know, we talked about this
before, Backer Kit doesn't quit and get quite the organic kind
of spread as Kickstarter does. But regardless of that, I mean
only weekend, you're already at almost €10,000 and almost 200
backers. So that in and of itself is
already, you know, successful. Obviously we want to get to that
almost almost 30 K to hit that comic book.
It's a 26 six, so we'll definitely anyone listening to
this, obviously you need to go back it and spread this around
to everyone else. It sounds fantastic.
Obviously the more poor community is going to be
supportive of this. But on top of that, I think
anyone, I mean the boys is really popular right now.
Anyone that's in teach RPGs that has been watching the boys.
I think this is going to be I mean, one of the closest
experiences I've seen to to capturing the feel of what that
feels like. So this looks like a really neat
project to to grab on to, to, to, I mean, in a fucked up
world, but you know, isn't everything.
But yeah, so on top of this, on top of core board coming out, on
top of of everything coming out right now, for those things that
are out digitally right now, where can people find your
stuff? And obviously we'll link to the
help our page, but for all the stuff we talked about already,
where can they find more of your content so they can see how good
it is so that they'll go back to this project?
OK, so I think for digital content, my H dot IO page, which
is Hilton Dash storytelling dot H dot IO is, is the place to go.
There is a website coming which will be a physical and digital
shop of my things that I will be able to physically send over.
That will include Korborg and Clear Necromancer and all the
other stuff I will have in time. And also it will have some free
content for different games, character sheets and different
stuff to download as well. It's coming soon.
I'm going to give you the your address because it's not ready
yet, but in terms of physical products, I do work with several
partners. So in the UK it's beyond
Cataclysm and the US it's world of game design.
And in Europe, I think the two best places would be either from
myself when I'm ready, or all the problems in the world, which
is a Berlin based store, which is fantastic.
And Yan, the owner of the store, super cool guy.
He's got such an excellent offer of different TTRPGS and comic
books as well. So please visit even digitally
virtually and get some stuff from him.
And the only problem is that as of today, only shop that would
get some, that would have some, probably some world of game
design. But the second because I've just
run out of everything. So I'm doing a second printing
that should be ready soon. And the other place that I
absolutely ask everyone to go and get as much stuff possible
as Cartelian Vault, which is an official store of Stockholm
Cartel. So the creators of Morp work and
will have both Corborg and Killer Necromancera.
But it's a great place to get official Morp work stuff and
also third party content from other amazing creators.
So definitely a place to to check out.
I'm not sure if Korburg is is there or will be there in the
time that you listen to IT people, but it will be there
soon. But if it's not there, there are
so many amazing other games out there and supplements, so just
go check it out. Yeah, not only the cotillion
vaults, but also Pit Trap shop, which is Johans personal store
that just went up as well. Has a lot of good mark work
stuff in there. You know, it's funny, I had not
now that I've seen the logo for world of game design, I I know
that I've seen it before, but I've never really went and
shopped there. But I do have to say, all the
problems in the world is such an absolutely fantastic shop.
It's it makes me so sad. I have to pay international
shipping, but I've bought so much stuff from them just
because they have such like rare cool stuff.
So absolutely, wherever you are in the world, all the problems
in the world isn't is such a is such a cool, a cool little shot,
but a world of game design, like you said.
Now, now that I've seen it, I'm gonna spend too much money here,
but that's cool for for being in the OS2.
But yeah, as you said, you know, this project, it looks
fantastic. I'm very excited to get it, very
excited to get everything that you put out.
It's really fantastic. You know, this is the second
time you've been on the show. I have a feeling it won't be the
last time you come on the show. So I just want to say thank you
so much for for coming on for for, you know, talking to us
about how power. I know you got a bunch of other
interviews going on this week. So appreciate you coming on here
to talk to us about it and excited for other people to
check out those other things. But again, just want to say
thank you for for being here. Well, thank you for having me.
It's always a pleasure and I'll be more than happy to talk with
you time and time again. Even I don't have anything I can
talk this shit and and it will be a pleasure to to you know,
spend some time with you guys. So thank you so much.
I feel like you're never gonna not have something going on,
though. I feel like that's where we're
at right now. But yeah, so that's been us.
This has been help Power will make sure all the links to all
Power stuff and to Help Power are in the description below.
Thank you so much, everyone. Have a good day.
Bye. Bye.