Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan. And I think billionaires are the
real demons. And today, we're joined by a
very special guest. This is Zachary, also known as
Jelly Muppet all over the Internet.
How you doing today, Zach? Hey, Ryan.
Hey Hunter. How are you guys both doing?
Yeah, having a good, a good nice warm evening here in the UK.
Stokes to have you back on. Welcome back, You know, good to
see you. Yeah, I gotta say, this is like
my 5th weekly scroll or something now.
It must be, but we've done a lot of these talking about books.
Yeah, I think probably after Jer, who is like a regular guest
at this point, I think you've probably been on the show more
than literally anybody else. Well then I'll do what I can to
upstage as always, like one of my.
One of my. Mission missions in life.
I also think we probably reviewed, yeah, I think we
probably reviewed more Soul Muppet Games than than any other
any other publisher. I'm pretty positive we are.
Long standing soul Muppet fans. Yeah.
We did put in a lot of games. Well, you've put a lot of good
games is yeah, put a lot of good games.
We don't review bad games. So I think that that says
something. And we were talking before
stream that you guys have been pretty busy because a lot of
stuff is hitting people's hands right now.
Like I said, I have Gardens of yen and Anesthesia Library, just
got all my Orbital Blues Afterburn stuff.
So a lot of stuff is hitting hands from Soul Muppet early
this year. The main thing I'm sad about is
that the people who are listening to this is a podcast
rather than watching it on Live of us on Twitch or YouTube at
the moment cannot see what those Orbital Blues books look like.
Specifically the VHS Adventure Collection box set full of
pamphlets, which is was. While it was a logistical
nightmare to make and find, I'm now very happy that it exists
and people will be able to run sad space cowboy campaigns with
it. So like, that's a big win for
us, but yeah. Extraordinarily cool.
I have my roommate collects like media and he has collect VHS and
he's like oh what's that? I'm like Nah, not for you
brother the. Same for you brother.
This does this does something different?
Yeah, yeah. I think, I think one of the last
times you were on probably to talk about Afterburn, you were
talking about how hard it was to to source the VHSS.
And they did. They came out so beautifully.
If you're in podcast land, definitely, you know, Hunter,
show that up one more time. And I'm sure at some point
we'll, we'll, we'll throw it up on screen and talk about it too.
And it'll be on the sole Muppet shelf behind me.
But yeah, they're gorgeous. Yeah.
But on top of that, the reason you're here, the logo above my
head today, you're here to talk about Mad as Hell.
So I guess just to kick what what is what's, what's the
pitch, what is what is mad as hell.
Though Mad as Hell is some of its newest role-playing game, is
a collaboration between myself and even Moriarty and a bunch of
incredible artists. It is an anti capitalist demon
hunting game where basically capitalism creates violence
against marginalized people and the vulnerable in society and
that violence creates demons. Those demons then prey on the
communities and are always like specific and local and mirrored
to a harm dealt against a community or a group in your
local area, which you are a part of or related to in some way.
And then that is something that has to be fought because it's
hurting people and it is a, an, an enemy to, to, to people to
the vulnerable. So it's a game about like sort
of creating, like protecting your communities and acting
inappropriate ways to sort of fight the effects of capitalism
upon marginalized people and do that in a way that is like
interesting and fantastical and exciting to play.
The games kind of split into a couple of steps.
But like, like I said earlier, the demons are not just like a
generic monster that is like goblin.
It is a demon of religious bigotry or a demon of property
gentrification, or a demon of food deserts or a demon of a
lack of insulation in homes or whatever.
Like all kinds of stuff that is, you know, a product of
capitalism that then created some kind of horrid monster.
Now, you don't just fight those demons by punching them in the
face. You have to work out what they
are a demon of what violence they create to and how they act
and then relate that back to a way of fighting them.
That specifically for those demons I was talking about
earlier, the quick start, what is a great example?
It's called the pipe Leech and it's part of the choir of
leeches, which are all to do with the negligence of landlords
and how those affect working people who are living in in
housing. So the land the the pipe bleach
is about lead piping. So the way you fight the pipe
bleach is by, you know, hitting it with pipes that are do not
contain leads. You put it through a water
filter, you throw tablets at it. You sort of like have to do this
kind of really intricate dance of like theory, like leftist
theory about like what this thing relates to and how we
would actually solve this if it was a real problem.
And then once you do that, you're going to go out and to
meet, you're going to kill the demon, but the demon's just
going to crawl back it through a portal from hell a few days
later if you don't actually solve the problem that created
it. So at that point in kind of act
three of the game, once you've worked out what the demon is and
how to kill it, you have to make sure it doesn't come back by
implementing direct action in your community to create the
harm that prevent the harm that created the demon in the 1st
place. So for our pipe bleach, that's
going to be, you know, finding safe housing for all of those
people, fixing all the pipes yourselves, getting the landlord
to do it for you by whatever means are necessary.
You know, So effectively what we're trying to create in the
game is a a safe, lightly fictionalized environment for
people to learn about what changes they can make in their
local community. Because obviously these demons
are a metaphor, right? And an idea, but the things that
create the demons still happen in real life and they need
changing. So the idea for ours is it's
about showing people in this safe space that can be, you
know, at least a little bit habit, learning and educational,
what tools of direct action look like, you know, and inspire
people to work out what they can actually do to improve the state
of the world going forward. Yeah, that's that's incredibly
powerful messaging in your tabletop RPG.
Yeah. I mean, some of it's always made
games about politics, right? But you know, best Left Buried
is about workers rights and mental health in the workplace.
Orbital Blues that same stuff, but self-employment Inevitable
is about the environment. Gangs of Titan City is about
crime in a difficult situation in a crushing urban environment.
Painting the town red is about like, my personal relationship
with depression and substances and queerness, right?
Whereas this game removes all subtext entirely and just says
the thing it's about, you know? This is about fighting
capitalism in a way that is more approachable to a normal person,
a person who has be strong left wing feelings or, you know,
sympathies and knows people who are vulnerable and being
affected in these ways but feel powerless to help.
They are mad as hell. They don't know what to do.
And we want to show those people what productive action looks
like through the medium of this game, which is also fun and is
also a beautiful piece of art and writing, because that's what
some Muppet games are fundamentally.
So we've made a thing that is very obliquely about the thing
it is claiming to be about and are hoping to, you know, show
that to as many people as possible and create a positive
change. That's really cool and and by
left wing feelings you mean the ability to experience empathy
and recognize? Yeah, of.
Course. Yeah, sure.
Leftist, not liberal, you know, which is just being nice under
capitalism for for the liberals out there.
So I guess first and foremost like where obviously you said
that Solomapet has always been political and we clearly are not
an apolitical podcast. We're not like like some
according to our comments, we're definitely not.
But where? Where did the idea for this kind
of like, what was impetus to actually make this specific
game? Like where did it come from?
You know, so Mad as Hell was something that me and Evie, who
like wrote the majority of the manuscript.
I'm kind of mostly involved as a in doing production, a bit of
art direction alongside Evie and kind of all the project
management stuff. But we came up with a pitch
together and essentially like, we started to understand that,
like, we wanted to make this game about how we were feeling
this sort of something that was set in a very modern place,
right? Something a place that felt
incredibly current because we were having all these feelings
and we weren't really sure what to do with them.
And we're both games designers. So when we have really strong
feelings, what we do is make a game.
You know, I find personally writing RPG is much easier than
writing poetry. Evie's a much better poet than
me, so they're going to easier time with that.
But honestly, there's kind of like the cynical part of like
where the product development came from is that I kind of
identified that we have a couple of fantasy games, we have a
couple of sci-fi games. But like this and Paint the Town
Red are both like very firmly set on Earth, right?
Paint the Town Red being more historical matters, hell being
shockingly current right. You are encouraged to play right
now like or tomorrow preferably. One of the things that became
very clear to us while designing is that there's this concept
known as bleed in RPG playing and writing, which is like the
idea that characters sometimes portray the characteristics and
emotions of the people playing them and vice versa, right?
You know, you go through those things and it's generally like
understood by the safety community that like, bleed is a
really dangerous thing that can happen without.
You're putting a lot of your emotions into this character.
This character starts having an impact on you.
And a lot of the advice you get in games is about like
minimizing bleed in terms of safety, right?
That's what safety tools came after before.
Obviously we've got loads of those in the game.
We've worked with sensitivity readers because of the list of
stuff this game is about. But one of the things that Evie
was always pushing for during the game, and I sort of agreed
on wholeheartedly once we spoke about it, is that this is a game
that's trying to maximize bleed, right?
This is a game where we want you to feel the same rage that your
characters do and the same sense of power when that change can
actually be productively made. That's why, like the setting is
today, you are meant to play in the city, in the city that the
characters around the table live in, or at least a shared space
that you understand, right? And you want to have people you
know appear in the setting, organizations and locations you
understand. Because like that way, The thing
is going to feel the most, I think the most, the most potent
and act as that like educational, emotional space
that we wanted it to occupy. So like we very much want to
came up with the initial idea together, sort of worked on a
prototype, realized what we wanted to do.
I say prototype like an initial pitch.
I mean, and then Evie went away and wrote it and then we worked
on giving. I worked, the rest of us all
worked on giving feedback and implementation there together.
So it's something that kind of, yeah, formed out of that.
Want to make something about how we were feeling about the decade
long at this point slide into chaos politically that I feel
like the West is going under generally.
I think the West is no dramatic, just the entire world, honestly.
And make something about that because we were angry as well.
And that's where kind of we settled on the name.
Midway through. We were looking at lots of other
titles and eventually went mad as hell is really good.
Like that was something we wanted to do.
We want to fit hell in there because it's about demons
looking at different things. Yeah.
This is a game about leftist rage, you know, about people
feeling helpless in their situation and us giving them the
tools hopefully to help them find out what they can do in
that situation. You know, one of the things that
we made as part of the project is the Radicals Handbook, which
is alongside the free quick start for this game.
You can grab now on this website.
All of our games have free quick Starts is like Azine that is
about actually, it's an in world setting scene about like demons
and how they work and it's illustrated and commented on by
various sort of characters linked together.
It's got this sort of handwritten homemade vibe.
It's been illustrated by Scrap Princess and it's like
essentially as close to a political manifesto as we're
going to make, while also being something that is a really
helpful onboarding tool for your players that like your
characters or you might find at the start of a campaign.
You know, it gives a load of advice in there.
So it's hopefully like a powerful tool for us to like
tell people about using this game.
Yeah, it's I mean it's incredible and you guys do do
such a good job with that kind of you know that that in world
scene is great. The stuff that all of the in
world stuff you do with with orbital Blues.
But also the quick starts too. I mean just starting it out
there, even this quick start is it is hyperlinked.
So it is really nice to see that I'm throwing it up on the screen
right now for those watching. Definitely want to go snag it
and go through it and layout dye sugars.
If I if I pick it out correctly, is that who's who's working on
this one? Absolutely, yeah, Yeah, we're
working with Dai on this one, returning, having done a lot of
work on All the Police, Afterburn and Inevitable.
I think this is DAI's strongest work yet for so much, but it's
really, really good stuff and I'm super happy with how it's
gone. We've worked with like an
incredible collection of artists on this game.
I've been lucky enough to work with, like I mentioned Scrap
Princess who's done the art for this.
The cover design for the game has been done by a guy called
Alex Eckman Lorne who is a three-dimensional collage
artist. When I initially the me and Evie
kind of Evie spotted him early on I think and we were like oh,
I want to work with this guy, there's something here.
And I was like, oh, we can make a book with holes in it.
So it is 3 dimensional collage and kind of went into this call
with Alex and was like, hey, we want to do this.
You've got these plans for a book going to get you as many
layers as we can. Would you be interested?
And he was like, you don't have to do that.
I'll just make you a normal book color.
And I'm like, no, let me be a sicko, let me do this.
And like that's a space we're always trying to operate in like
summer, but it's always trying to one up itself in terms of
physical production from the previous project, you know, And
that's our step towards it this time.
This unusual modular book that is also going to have different
dye, different dust jackets you can swap out on this multi hold
different layered book, all of which are going to be beautiful
in their own right, but kind of be combined together.
The alternate covers or the main cover will also go on the GM
screen, which is also going to have a hole in it.
You know, like there's going to be there's going to be nonsense.
And then our other artist for the interior of the book is an
incredible artist called Janker Sky from Germany has done like
these two incredible opposing styles of art.
The different halves of the book, it's hard to tell this
from the quick start, but we've kind of split the layout into
like the player section, which is where the characters exist,
where the players are going to read.
It's about the radicals, right? And it's full of these like
repeated friendly characters, these really bright colors,
these sharp shapes. It's kind of comic book esque
style, along with a series of like repeated player characters
who we can see throughout the art who are in these series of
connected communities in a city, somewhere in the world.
And then that's contrasted with the second-half of the book,
which is like explicitly enemy territory.
This kind of clean, smooth, dehumanized, faceless, brutalist
layout that is like acting in that space.
And one of the things that we're always trying to push when we do
on these books is that I want the layout to feel like the
genre it's trying to represent. You know?
Thus our books are objects that come with a sense of place.
Whether this is like matching the way that we do our
commissioning and layout with a particular style of artist and
the feelings we want this section to evoke, or a random
bit in the middle of the book on a different paper stop, which is
presented as an in world Z with all these sketches on it to, you
know, how it's done for all Blues where like a lot of the
art is in world and you feel like you're flipping through an
artifact that exists with a sense of time and place specific
to the genre we're aiming for. So like that's the sort of
aesthetic that we're always aiming to aim for, always hoping
to aim kind of pushing always forwards in that direction in
terms of physical production and digital design.
It's, it's crazy how you guys do that successfully, like every
time, you know, because obviously, you know, again,
we've been talking about fans for a long time, but I feel like
every project you guys put out is this next step in production
and stuff. When you look at the Blues and
when you look at Afterburn, it's crazy what you guys did with the
VHS and with even like the new editions of, of, of Orbital
Blues. But again, the, the numerous
dust jackets and not one, but like 2 cutouts in the cover of
the book is crazy. That's going to look so
fantastic. I'm really excited to see that
my printer. Hates me, I'm sure.
Yeah. She's charging me for it.
So, you know, if we can make it work, it's going to work.
And hopefully that's going to be a nice, it's going to look
fantastic for physical distribution as well.
Yeah. And you know, we talked about
the the kind of like a little bit of the played loop earlier
in in when you were talking about the game where it's not
just about you're not just like going out to punch demons and
punch capitalism and things like that.
You know, you have to identify the core root of a demon and not
just defeat it with what you would use to defeat those
problems. But then prevent its return.
But there. But you you are at some point
you're going to punch a demon. And the the core rules of the
game are kind of like the soul Muppet system, right?
It's like the roll 2 dice have you know, you know, over 8
etcetera, etcetera. Yeah, so.
We put a lot of work into this. EV did some like really
intelligent design, which kind of sits of in the space at the
solemn engine, but exists in an entirely different place.
A lot of the combat in games like best of Buried or orbital
Blues or pins are red. It's, like, meant to be
incredibly zoomed out and cinematic.
Whereas, like, the power level in inverted commas of these
radicals is, like, way lower than a specific orbital Blues
character. You know, these aren't always
adventurers or people committed to violence.
They're people that, like, we know, right, Leftists who exist
in spaces, some of which will be familiar with some of the tools
of doing that. But like, an average character
does not start with a gun, right?
Or a sword. You know, you're just a person.
Possible in some parts of the world, depending on where you
live. But like, yeah, and the
escalation mechanics in combat there become really interesting
because you kind of enter into this situation, which is just,
which is called violence, right? And one of the really important
hallmarks of the Saw Muppet engine so far is that you're
always doing these stat checks. They're always like 2D6 looking
for an 8 or a nine with advantage, disadvantage,
depending on the game that you're playing, the situation
you're in. You've always got these stats
which are usually like related to your your your
characteristics like how character looks right and what
how they behave right. Stats are really different in
this game. We'll talk about stats in a
minute, but in this game in in in matters hell, you can always
keep re rolling dice by accepting more distress right So
you can keep going. You can keep rolling, keep
pushing your luck and sometimes you need to because while these
things that you are fighting, they are like incredibly
dangerous demons. You know there are they are
monstrous creatures from another dimension that hate you and want
you to die, right? Because they are the
manifestation of capitalism in this like physical specific
horrid form. As a result as well, the
characters kind of have a really different feel.
A lot of the progression in this game is tied to like the
accumulation of the strength of your community over time because
like, each character is a member of two communities.
They're like a really important part categoration.
The hair characters know each other.
It's kind of the source of all of the need for this stuff to
occur. You're related to people who
care, you have empathy for people around you and you're
sort of like working with these communities to draw on them for
like resources, contacts, information, equipment, right?
And you gain that. And once you you draw a
community's cohesion to get these resources, which you're
going to need to do, that resource stays for the rest of
the campaign and like you can call back to it in the future.
You now have that resource. So like character progression
isn't based on how sad you are or how many mental breakdowns
you've had recently. You know, it's or how much money
you've got. It's specifically tied to like
what you have done in your community and how you've been
able to help them and how they've been able to help you.
So it creates this like real meshing consistent of
solidarity. You also get these magical items
called totems by killing demons. Each character starts with one
of them. They're tied to a specific stat.
We'll talk about stats in a minute.
And they sort of allow you to do a small magical thing.
They're sort of imbued with the power of a given community
that's managed to defeat or kill a demon.
But. Yeah.
And the stats, instead of being like brown wit and well and best
left buried or savagery, allure, duplicity.
What you have is this like the verbs by which these characters
interact with the communities around them and with capitalism.
You start with solidarity, which is your ability to like, talk to
people, interact with communities and draw strength
from those around you. You then step to conspiracy,
which is seeing in secret lies, sneaking around, breaking lots,
doing all that stuff. And then there is militancy,
which is fucking throwing a petrol bomb at someone you know.
And that is the the steps upon which these characters are
going. And like, obviously militancy in
particular is more nuanced than just armed revolution.
But like, those are the verbs by which we give your characters to
interact with the world, which is way more interesting to me
than, like, strength, friendship and sneaky, right?
You know, Right. We've specifically labeled them
to concepts and behaviors within leftist movements.
Yeah. And.
And Coheed. And like the community aspect of
it is such a obviously the core aspect of the game.
You talked about getting totems with community and things like
that, but cohesion is a really interesting part of the quick
start that I was like digging into.
So what exactly is like cohesion with the communities and how is
that kind of going to affect the the gameplay as well?
Yeah. So the cohesion is like a
measure of the strength of your community in a given situation.
It starts off kind of related to the number of player characters,
the rim of each community, each character kind of makes one
themselves. And then you go around the table
and be like, oh, I want to join that community.
Oh, I want to join that community, I want to join that
community. So you get this like legitas of
explanations why all these characters know each other,
because they're always going to have a community shared of at
least one other person in the party.
You're kind of drawing on the cohesion of the community to
create and manifest these resources.
Or, you know, it might be, oh, I'm trying to solve this problem
to do with science. Maybe this agricultural
allotment in town is going to help me solve this problem to do
with a plant sample or something related to a demon of a certain
type. Or you could be like, oh, this
hat space that one of my characters is a member of is
going to have a laser cutter and a load of aerosol spray cameras
which are going to help us make these protest signs, right?
You know, and you can keep like drawing on communities in those
ways to create those resources and those people which then like
stick around or something for the entire campaign.
And there are aspects you can always call back to.
You can reuse those laser cutters and aerosol scans at a
future point if you at some point need to make something
different or use those spray paints to make improvised, you
know, flame torches or whatever. Like all kinds of stuff you can
use and utilize that equipment for.
But cohesion is like at risk from the activity of demons and
also people as you are playing, if like someone in your
community is killed or there is some sort of violence or a
threat made against them by demons or indeed like mortal
agents of capitalism, which do exist within this game very
explicitly. And then the main issue
obviously, and in real life, you're going to lose cohesion
there. You're going to gain cohesion by
like fighting these demons, closing rooms in the world,
killing demons and like removing some of these more complicated,
you know, relationships that these, they're like making
removing the glare of these agents of capitalism from the
communities that you're in. So you can effectively like
you're trying to always like gain cohesion over time as you
deal with like an increasingly more severe and complicated
selection of demons. Because as your characters are
levelling up, we've kind of got lots of options in the full
book, which you're not going to see in the quick start, which
are going to be like different demons working together or like
choirs of demons. I mentioned like the choir of
leeches earlier, which is like a collection of landlord demons.
We've made suggestions of like some of the other leeches
available. There's Dukes, which are really
powerful demons, which have other demons pay fealty to them.
And there's lots of sort of like other options in there for like
campaign progression as you play.
That kind of can make things more complicated and kind of
create an art for a longer campaign in a given city.
This is so great. You really, you really grabbed
me and Ryan when you got to landlord demons.
I think you know it's. One of my favorite things about
this entire thing is like the complete and total like lack of
subtlety that but still has a like nuance and and like it.
It still looks good. It still plays well, but like
the the demon of like landlord leeches is like the least subtle
thing possible, even though like it's really great and fits into
the game because like everyone is going to know exactly what
you're talking about all the time as soon as you like.
So many of these problems are things that every everybody face
on a regular basis. So to just be like, oh, it's
this thing, but it's a demon. People are going to be like,
yes, I 1000% understand exactly what you're talking about and
that's great, I think. One of the most interesting
things about talking to people is that like when you kind of
like explain what matters, how idea of a demon is and like how
it might impact and sort of the way the gameplay loop of the
work is. Like every single person I've
spoken to about this game like decides they are a games
designer and start riffing on different type of demons that
could exist, right? Because it's such an appropriate
concept. And like these things which are
these violence is created by capitalism are literally legion.
There is an infinite number of horrid things that kind of occur
as a result of, you know, the violences of the state and the
oligarchs that exist within this, this current economic,
socio political economic system that we dwell in.
And Evie is like the mastermind behind a lot of this stuff.
I'm kind of just standing next to them and smiling while they
come up with increasingly interesting and maniacal ways of
like expanding this metaphor we've made until what we're
coming out with is like a really beautiful piece of art that is
also going to like hopefully have a meaningful social impact
upon spaces that we're in in the world around us.
So I'm very proud and very happy to see how that is is
developing. And, you know, I think it's one
of the things as a yeah, as an, as a, as a publisher and a
person who like works with lots of creatives, it's such a
pleasure to just surround myself with all of these incredible and
talented people and be able to give them just so much money,
you know, in exchange for like making this thing happen that
isn't going to generate excitement.
People that play the games because like I'm just, I'm so
looking forward to like when this game in its majesty lands
upon the table in its full form. I already, I think this is like
probably our most played quick start as far as I can tell.
Like people seem really excited about it.
There's a couple of actual plays going on at the moment, some of
which we've sponsored, but some of which have kind of just
sprung up really naturally. So I'm really excited to see how
that's going to go. But yeah, once we start getting
more material into these, into people's hands, like, I think
there's some real wonder in this, in this game.
Yeah. I mean, like I said.
It's so approachable to everybody because like there's
people that are like, I don't really like space or I don't
really like dungeon crawling, but like everyone goes, yeah, I
paid too much fucking rent. And like there's this thing
that's like broken that no one's fixing or like, you know, every
single person has difficulties that they're going to face.
So I think this is going to hit, you know, there's there's nobody
there's nobody that can read this book and not relate to to
some aspect of the the issues that your face on a regular
basis and and how they can feel like demons And in this game,
you can actually fight them just like you should try to fight
them in real life. But you said the quick start is
a obviously it's a quick start. There's things that are missing
from the game. One question I had is the
characterization of the quick start is like you choose
characters from a list. Is that going to be the same in
the book or is there going to be more of like a make your own so?
The game contains like a full series of catch creation.
You'll be choosing stats, you'll be making your own communities,
you'll be like going around. There's a bunch of random tables
for those. One of my favorite things in the
catch creation is this thing which we call the vibes table,
which is just like AD 100 table of like one line descriptions of
weird leftists that you like will be on that list and you'll
be able to pick out people you know in that list as well.
It's been written with like sort of real piercing interest and
like understanding of like the, you know, leftist marginalized
queer communities and kind of looking at how those people can
behave and kind of looking at that space as well.
But yes, there's full calibration in there.
There's a much bigger selection of totems as well, stuff on
making your own communities. And then the back half of the
book contains 12 demons and there's another 12 coming in the
first the expansion scene we're doing that's called the Field
Guide to Hell on Earth. And that is kind of just like
another selection of demons from a bunch of guest writers.
And we've tried to hire writers. We can have different
perspectives that are going to try to write different types of
demons. Those have been like really
exciting to approve the pitches for.
I'm hoping to like be able to show off some of those soon as
we start like getting further into the writing phase.
The other thing that's in the book is a load of GM's advice
about how to run these longer campaigns and sort of a way of
expanding and networking these best series together to make
longer sessions. And also this thing that Evie
has written called the Struggle Framework, which we're really
happy with. Essentially, we kind of hit this
challenge when we started writing adventure content for
this game that like, because we want every session to be set and
every campaign to be set in like the time, the city you live in
right now, right? So I'd be playing in Nottingham,
UK, but you'd be doing it in whatever city it is.
We can't write an adventure that fits every city in the world.
So what we've kind of written is this kind of set of like
archetypal characters that are going to exist in sort of any
given city that you can met. And then like locations that you
can mesh together with those characters and put them against
different communities. And then sort of walk you
through like different steps in the three act structure of a
traditional adventure. Like how that might look to help
people weave it together. Essentially, like it's a toolbox
or a framework for running sessions and by extension
campaigns with like this cast of repeating characters and sort of
working out that kind of got a list of allies and adversaries,
you know, mostly mortal ones obviously, and then looking at
kind of how to weave that campaign together.
So that's like a big percentage of the book because it's kind of
a bit of a, that was a bit of an unsolved challenge for us.
Like I think that was the one of the most difficult parts of the
game's design because the bulk of the game and the theory came
together pretty quickly. But working out how to actually
write an adventure that's easy for someone to run, that could
be set in any time in any place with any group of people was
like much more challenging. But I feel like we've landed
down hopefully something that will be really easy for people
to use once the game is out and full.
Do you like the? Framework of that within the
initial quick start, yeah, do. You like foresee ever doing any
like game jams for Mad as Hell I.
Think that would be a fantastic opportunity to do some game jams
like because I think adventures for Paint the Town Red, for
example, like a standard Paint the Town Red adventures like
5000 words long, which is like something really serious to
commit to and like. But I think that a matter's held
even is like 500 words. So there will unquestionably be
a game jam that will be running for when this comes out and like
hopefully be able to put a load of those creatures together.
I'd be really excited to do something like that.
I think this is a really game jammable game.
I very much. Agree, it'll be really
interesting local. Spaces.
Yeah, it'll be really. Interesting to see like as
people make their own kind of take on these adventures, like
kind of like locally to where they are, what the issues are
that they see and that they choose to tackle.
And I'd be really interested to see with other, because I live
in a city in Oregon that just cut a bunch of funding to a
bunch of social programs. And so I immediately already
know what maybe the first two or three adventures I would run
would be. But I'd be really interested to
see what somebody on the other side of the world who's also
dealing with the downfall of capitalism sees.
Is there like initial jumping off point?
One of the play tests that we ran was kind of bore a bunch of
the Soul Muppet staff, so I'd already read all the demons.
So Evie came up with a new demon based on something that was in
the news recently in Nottingham, where there was this proposed
plan that the council in the city we were living in were
going to do. Where when it was night time,
they were going to try to save money by only lighting areas
that were critical paths and making sure that all of these
side streets that didn't need to be lighter because they did the
data and no one was walking on them apparently.
And obviously like, how could that?
What type of areas do you think they'd pick for when they
decided which lights they were going to turn off healthy ones?
What exactly you know it's going to be there.
So and that then created a demon that was like about a demon of
it's kind of like this long limits spider thing that was
like stealing and blinding people that existed in the dark.
And it was sort of a tall lamppost wrapping predatory kind
of drop spider kind of thing. And like that was related to
like something very real and meaningful, which happened in a
local community that Evie was involved in.
And thankfully people got together and said, no, you can't
do that. That's insane.
And managed to lobby the council not to turn the lights off.
So managed to get that sorted. But that led to like, a really
interesting impact of like, oh, yeah, this is something that
happened in real life, is going to keep happening.
Because, you know, even though there wasn't a demon that would
eat people, it makes people scared to go outside their homes
at night. It creates risks of slipping in
the ice in the winter. You know, there's lots of like,
correlating issues. And that turns into a demon.
Again, the the approachability of this is insane.
Like every, everyone in the world has problems and, and
being able to make those demons and figuring out how to fight
them and as you said, like as a community, how to keep them away
is, is incredible. And, and I, everyone in the
chat, everyone, all of us here, like as soon as you started
saying stuff, I give up like 10 things in my town where I'm
like, that's exactly the first one that I'd fucking run.
So like, it's really great to hear that you put in a framework
to make it a lot easier for people to, to make the things
that they want to make that affect them the way that it
affects them. Because as you said, like the
issues that I'm dealing with in my town are going to be
completely different than ours, which is completely different
than what you guys are doing over the UK.
So it's, it's, it's really incredible to make that such a,
a core aspect of it is the, the approachability for anyone
across the world. So one of the things we've done
there as well to kind of help out, it's that obviously the
book has advice for making demons in it.
But we're working now with Elliott Davis on a stretch goal
for the game, which is this thing called Biscard, which is
very explicitly a like a solo game, which is what like point
is. But when we make solo games at
Soul Market, I always try to make sure that like this isn't
just a solo game you're going to play if you can't get a group
together right or you fancy playing a solo games.
It also has like trap elements that we can build into it.
So it's useful as part of the larger campaign.
For example, the paper town read solo game morning.
After that, we're hoping to release in the next week or two.
Is is like about building a city and kind of like helping you do
that with all of these like prompts and card drawing and
building those things together. Whereas what we're doing for the
start is that specifically it's about helping people make more
demons. So what will hopefully happen as
a part of that game jam is we won't just be like, I'll make a
demon writer here. It's going to come with like
maybe even like a solo game playthrough that you do
beforehand, which is going to help inform your writing.
And that's going to be based on like, look at the news and see
what's happening in your local area.
What are people angry about? You know, that's like a very
easy first step of that, you know so you're always wanting to
like push that approachability. Obviously, as with all things
salt Muppet makes this is going to be held under the same
license. So you are free to make demons
of your own and post them on each to IO and charge money for
them if you want. Because I want always other
people to be able to contribute to an overall artistic community
and there to be more material than I have the time or energy
to write or Evie does as well and kind of to supplement and
foster that kind of third party space.
Yeah, there'll be a game jam. It will be about demons in the
local space. So who knows what it'll be
about, but we'll be, we'll be supporting this game for as long
as we can in as many weird ways as we know how to.
It's crazy. That the company that is putting
a game out about like building community to fight demons also
wants like build a community within like the the artistic
space of the game. So no, that's crazy.
Absolutely so. The.
Kickstarter, what people can actually get for when they go
back this project because you guys still, I mean, it just kind
of recently dropped. There's still 17 days to go on
this, so there's plenty of time for people to go grab it.
But what can people grab when when they go back this project?
So the core pledge that we're pushing people towards is like
the core book with the dust jacket.
It's got everything in it. You're going to need to play PDF
and physicals available. There's also a couple of add on
bits we have because we've hit the stretch goal.
Everyone who bats or at all will receive APDF of the solar game
repaint. And then there is also going to
be a physical add on for that. There is AGM screen which is
going to be able to be adaptable with the various covers.
It's going to have a slot where the mouth of the base comes over
it. That's probably quite badly
worded. We've got this thing called the
Field Guide to Hell on Earth, which is a selection of 12 more
demons. Well that you can use to double
the amount of demons in the call book.
And we've also prepared, if people are interested, A this
which is the Zine edition of the Radicals Handbook.
So you can hand it to your players right now.
This is going to be presented inside the Matters Hell core
rulebook as like a dividing section on a different paper
stock. So where that's just something
the printer said they can do. And you know who's going to stop
being God? You know, she wouldn't bet.
So we're going to have a weird book in the middle of our book.
But if you want a second book, we can make that happen as well.
And there's more stretch calls coming.
We're hoping to do some more demons.
There's a couple of patches you can get as well, in case you
have a battle jacket that needs to say Mad as Hell on it.
And there's all kinds of future shenanigans as well.
We're always working on more stuff here.
As someone HQ. By that I mean my house that.
Was going to be my next question is there's obviously a lot going
on right now with this project, including all of the extras that
you just said. Is there already an eye on like
what's going to come next with Madison?
Because I know you said you wanted to support this game for
a long time. Is there a plan for like an
official release sometime in the future?
I know you always got a million ideas cooking.
Well, obviously all this stuff will come out in physical at
some point, hopefully before the end of the year.
But like, I think it's much too early to be considering like
what the awkward Blues afterburn of this game looks like.
You know, we still won't even finish the first ground funding
project yet. And I think like often with this
stuff, I let my own ambitions get away with me.
But that'll be out hopefully at some point towards the end of
the year. The PDF is going to be ready
soon. You know, we're hope.
I'm hopefully looking out before the end of the summer and we
send it off to print and hopefully get some books to back
us as soon as we can. But like, that's the priority
right now, like finishing off this wane of stuff, working out
what we can do in a way that it doesn't massively negatively
affect all of the timelines you've already set up, and then
move on to the next thing and the next steps.
Because obviously we've got books, we've got a crowdfunding
project every six months until I drop dead.
You know, we're a new, not necessarily covering project, an
exciting new product release every six months until I drop
dead. So yeah, there you go.
So. This we're going to get paint
the red soon. Paint the town red soon.
We're going to get this, you said.
Hopefully physically by the end of the year because.
You could by the end of the year is a hope.
Yeah, that's. That's great.
I will be very happy to get a book with like this many holes
in it by the end of the year, which would be fantastic.
And I know that if you go to the Kickstarter page, obviously
you're here on the weekly score right now, but there's a lot of
other stuff going on My first dungeon who are incredible.
I know you've chatted with a bunch of them, the One Shot
podcast, like there are a lot of things going on outside of just
our conversation with Zach for people to check out.
So if you want more information, most going on to see people
actually playing the game, make sure you go to the Kickstarter
page and check out the links to all of those at the bottom.
So you can see the game actually being played and and have, you
know, hear different conversations about about this
game, which is going to be up there as like one of my favorite
projects in the works right now from Soma, But which is saying a
lot because you know my edge Lord ass loves best left buried.
But this one seems incredible. So really excited to see what's
going on with that. So this is mad as hell again, 17
days left to go back. You should definitely go snag
that. All the links will be exactly
what you think all the links are going to be for all of that.
But Zach, is there anything else you want to say right here at
the end about Madisel or to encourage people to go snag it
I. Think we've hit all the big
notes? Help us make some kick ass off
about how much we hate capitalism and sorry for
charging money for it. I guess we live in a society.
I want to make sure all the artists get paid.
Here's a free version of the Radicals Handbook and of the
Quick Start that you can grab right now.
They will do you for more than a couple sessions at play.
Should be able to have a lot of fun with that.
And if making demons is as easy as it sounds like from this
conversation we've had, you might be able to spread it out
for even longer than we've given you credit for and say, yeah,
absolutely. Zach, always a pleasure.
Please come on for every six months, every time you guys put
out a project, we'd love to have you back on and and talk to you
some more. But this has been great.
And again, super excited for this project.
It sounds incredible. We'll be back in September,
October, hopefully. I've got, I've got Dark Souls
cooking. It's called Spiral.
My birthday's in. October, so we'll just call it a
birthday present for me. There you go.
Perfect, perfect. Seriously, thank you so much for
coming on. It's always, it's always a
pleasure. So I really appreciate it and
thank you everyone that was here in chatting for one.
Discussing. Yeah, absolutely.
And we will see. All of you later, bye.