Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll podcast.
My Name Is Ryan. And I'm the fell handed.
Oh, I'm Sam Slim. I do Space Cowboys.
My name is Zach. I'm also here doing Space
Cowboys. I didn't think that was the
whole introduction. Yeah, that's it.
We don't do shit. But this we don't have here a
list of accolades to go after our names, so no worries.
It happens every single time, 100% of the time.
So. So yes, This Is Us.
We are them. And this is a weekly show
podcast and these are the people from Soul Muppet Publishing
talking about sad Space Cowboys, Orbital Blues and the new if you
look Beside me, Kickstarter going on right now.
This is after burn. So I guess.
I guess kicking it off. Yeah, right right above Sam
there. So what is What is Orbital
Blues? Although Blues is a game about
sad space Cowboys, it is lo fi space western role-playing where
players take on the role of interstellar outlaws and form
crews and they try and make a living and survive in a Galaxy
that doesn't care if they live or die.
It is ruled by solwas corporations and it's only the
gig economy that is keeping you going.
So just like real. Life way too close to home, Yes.
Yes, yeah, absolutely. It's a game about self-employed
people with depression living on the capitalism so.
Yes. That's what we're aiming for,
right? So amazing.
Listen, we just need spaceships and we're there.
So that is what Orbital Blues is.
But like, how did Orbital Blues actually come to be?
This is the second Kickstarter. This is the first expansion, the
first big wave expansion. Cuz there's a lot going on with
this project right now that we're gonna be talking about.
But I know the original Orbital Blues has been out for a little
while. I have like all of it right
there. But what was the?
Actual is. I think that's it.
I feel like it's been much. Yeah, maybe.
So the yeah, the original Kickstarter was like April 2021,
and then the book would have been like released in people's
hands in physical form was like April 22.
So it's actually only been like 18 months since the first wave
of. His hands Which?
You, you've, you've, you've got, it feels like it's longer
because of, you know, the what's happening in the world and how
time has increased less meaning is it?
Yeah, it was. It was written throughout
Lockdown, I feel like. So it started, as many British
ideas do, it started in a pub. Which one was it?
Zack, The one at the bottom. In Nottingham if I remember.
Correctly, yeah. Wherein me and Zack were having
pizza and beers and I was like, I want to do a game that does
Cowboy Bebop. In space, well, it would kind of
be up in space anyway, but I want to do a sci-fi game.
I'm not a big sci-fi guy. I'm more of a fantasy person
myself. Not that you would like be able
to tell looking for my back catalogue but Zach was like
yeah, absolutely. And like Zach did best left
buried, which is it has like the same sort of bones in that your
freelancers suffering under. A gig economy of sorts, like.
So if you just. Want to play best left buried
because that that is like. The pitch for Best Left Buried
is that you're playing professional adventurers who are
employed by a bank to go into ruins and get money.
And obviously it explores the, to me, the logical conclusion of
the dungeoneering thing as a horror simulation.
And then let your characters becoming certainly more
bedraggled over time is they have to deal with these really
terrible worker conditions. So like on the back of a post it
note, I think Orbital Blues and Best F Player are like quite
similar games in that one of them is about being
self-employed and one of them is about having a job at a big
company and both know about how that can suck under capitalism.
Obviously one's in space and one's in a.
In in Underground. But it's still the same idea.
So I was looking for like a second RPG to put out through
Soul Muppet that kind of used the same engine.
Me and Sam were good friends. Some have written an amazing
best that great adventure for me called Beneath the Missing Sea.
The pitch of which is like you're playing adventurers who
are an an ocean has disappeared from this like quite arid part
of the world. And it creates an adventuring
gold rush as all of these people are trying to get closer to the
bottom of the dungeon. I imagine if you could just walk
to the bottom of the ocean and suddenly you're like, you start
5 levels lower in the dungeon, right?
So that was a really fantastic adventure.
And Sam pitched me like this game with Josh as the artist we
wanted to work with and this sort of sad space.
Cowboy Best Left Buried game appeared that sort of started
off as a bit of a hack and then kind of developed and bloomed
off into its own game which is kind of you know as popular if
not more popular now certainly than best Left Buried.
So it's it was the genesis was there and that was in like
December 2020. So we spent. 18 was that pre
pandemic? That was pre pandemic, yeah,
because we did, we, we did have a meeting about that.
Like in person before it all went to ship.
And. You couldn't go outside anymore,
but it was kind of really amusing because Sam and I were
stuck in houses like half a mile from each other, unable to talk
to each other, both thinking about the same game at the same
time. So a lot of Zoom meetings we
could have done by shouting at each other loudly.
Yeah, it was weird. It was a game that was like,
written. It was like planned and pitched,
pre, locked down, written throughout it, and then it very
much like launched into the real world, into a post pandemic
world. So it really went through the
ringer. And and it and it got sadder as
we got sadder throughout that year as well you know.
Yeah, yeah and to And this is that is how like SAD for XP came
about where? I was like, I don't want to do a
game where you're just going around and getting bounties and
killing bad guys and robbing banks and stuff, and that's
what's getting you XP. But I don't know how to do that,
do an alternative to that in a Ludo narrative manner.
And so Zach came up with this. Notion that was sad for XP is
what it was. If you put it like on a on a,
post it note Zack explain Sad for XP.
So Orbital Blues have This is how we've been rocking at MCM
this weekend. We were at Comic Con.
Sam would do the first half of the pitch and be like now talk
about the mechanics because like, that's the split of us as
creatives. Sam's the vibes guy and I'm the
person that writes all the rules.
So. Yeah, it's a good division of
labour, you know. Sorry.
Yeah, I can't. I can't do maths.
I spent all my time in in.
I spent all my start points in in English.
So. So Zack does.
Does mechanics make sure that it's actually a functional game
and not just like an evocative book?
So one of the the thing you pick in orbital booze, which is like
the closest equivalent to a class we actually have is this
thing called a trouble, which is.
The reason that you are sad in space and in a normal
role-playing game, you get experience points, fight Sam
saying like killing monsters or doing quests or getting treasure
or something in all the Blues you get it for being sad.
So your trouble gives you a set of five character back story
prompts and three like gameplay prompts, and you answer a couple
of those back story prompts during.
Play like during character creation, and as you answer more
in play, you get additional points to this thing called
Blues, which is obviously what we name the game after.
And then you also get them for like role-playing in line with
this trouble as well. There's all kinds of troubles.
There's eighteen different ones, which means you're never going
to have two or the same one on a spaceship.
But you might be bloodthirsty and want to solve all your
problems with violence, Or have a devil in the bottle and be an
alcoholic, or be in too deep with some gang or lovesick.
My favorite one is Party Animal, which is just like you really
love hanging out and being cool and having a party and using
that to cover up how you actually feel.
And essentially like what these do is they give you mechanical
incentives to play a brooding, bluesy disaster bastard who just
gets things wrong all the time. And like, even if you're winning
in a in a combat, you can make it exciting by like, you know.
And expressing how sad it is that doing this thing makes you.
And obviously when you're using up all of these Blues points,
you kind of gain them as you're playing.
There's this level up ritual where you what is called your
troubles of brewing. And at that point, you've
reached enough Blues that you're ready for kind of like the
climax of your emotional arc, which is like a.
A gunfight or a meltdown or an argument or just a really sad
moment for your character. Something emotionally charged
doesn't really matter what it is precisely.
And then you get a bunch of bonuses for the duration of that
scene. And then you level up and
become, you know, you get a new ability or something or a new
trouble. You change what you trouble as
your stats increase. So literally, your characters
become more powerful by role-playing.
How sad they are. It is.
It's really interesting. It's definitely one of my like
more enjoyed ways to like grow your character versus like you
know, we we cover a bunch of stuff that's like very
mechanical dungeon diving stuff. And then there are games like
this where it's like very narrative driven and you're like
you're living out your character's arc and you're
creating new problems for your character overcoming your
problems. There's a sad saxophone in the
background the entire time. It's really, it's a really
enjoyable system. Yeah, right.
And the plan was for us to like, give your characters, give
players GMs, easy tools with which to immediately hook
themselves into genre, right? Because that's the thing we're
trying to nail here. We're trying to there's types of
media we're trying to replicate, right?
We're trying to hit your. Cowboy beatbox, your fireflies,
your Mandalorians, even bits of stuff like Guardians of the
Galaxy, these like scrappy crews of robes trying to get things
done in space. And obviously like there's more
examples of you to take that away from the spaceship genre,
like stuff that exists in that. Cool.
Down family space and this was the quickest way I could come up
with of like really precisely nailing a genre you were aiming
for and. And essentially all.
And it's a really powerful technology as well, because it
doesn't just do XP, it also generates like behavioural
prompts. So kind of gives you quick
characterisation because like if you ever are confused about what
your character should do, you should do the saddest thing
possible, which is look at one of your three trouble prompts
and do that. It generates contacts and
locations and rivals because some of the questions are like.
In Party Animal, tell me a place you used to throw down or tell
me somebody used to party with, right?
That's generating people. And sometimes they do factions
and generate like pieces of equipment you have or like fun
things about the character in terms of like what brand of
alcohol is your favorite thing? Like, you know, little world
building things, little things to attach onto, and like kernels
of information for GMs to pull adventure and immediate drama
out of because it's centres. Your experience mechanics around
looking at the saddest thing that ever happened to you,
right? I'm the most emotionally charged
thing about it. So yeah, it's a real potent
piece of game design technology that I'm slightly worried I may
never top as a designer. But you know, whatever, I've got
time left. I'll be doing this for a while I
hope you know, listen we we we hope that you'll be doing it for
a while as well. I it's it's a great mechanic and
it's one of the funnest part of the game, but there's so much
more like in the game that's also fantastic as well.
It's just a piece that like how between the mechanics, I know
you said there's this division of Labor, you did the mechanics
and Sam did did most of the writing and and the manuscript
and everything. Putting all of that together,
was that difficult to try to keep those mechanics going?
Or did you really just build off as a bear, like you said and
then try to like fix it into the system?
Or were there a lot of other things, like the sad for XP
thing? No, not not really.
It was quite seamless, I would say, because I had worked with
Best Left Buried previously, so I was familiar with like Zach's
style of writing and the sort of mechanical language used.
So I could emulate that and rap, rap the narrative and the the
vibes around that, and similarly.
Zach could write in a similar sort of style to to the way I
was writing. So like it, it was very seamless
to just go from me writing an introduction of how this
universe is filled with people who are not doing great and are
struggling with with their own well-being and then for.
Zach to bullet point the key parts of each trouble and then
write a little bit of flavour text or a short description
under each one and then in the next chapter go into OK, the
Galaxy is full of a myriad of ships from all different
corporations and manufacturers, all operating for different
purposes. And then was going into some
like combined mechanical writing of.
Ship tables and like roll for where the ship's chassis
originates kind of thing. So I would say it was pretty
seamless. Zack may disagree, but it was
definitely. Iterative, right.
Because yeah, we when we wrote the first version of manuscript,
it skewed really closely to best left buried.
It was basically like very similar.
And the main thing that was different was the sort of the
mechanical skeleton was the same and then Sam had done a bunch of
like. Work on the tops of the vibes
and layering and stuff. And as we kind of worked more on
it, it kind of found its own steam and developed like further
away, like in the first two or three drafts.
Troubles weren't there, right? And weapons and space combat was
something that we iterated on a lot because it was really
important to us. It was exciting for all the
parts to be there so. Like.
There's some bits of it that like stayed the whole way
through, but it's like always as it was just making a game.
The first draft that you go to play test with is like.
Often quite different from the final version, I think for me
personally I felt originally a lot of like loyalty to the fans
of Best F Bray to try and make something that felt the same
way. But then I realised.
We realised over time that. It wanted to be its own
different thing, and I'm happy that we made those decisions to
distance it in some way. Because like, yeah, there are
some rules are exactly the same, like the core mechanic and how
attacks work and stuff, But we've added and changed lots of
bits that work in different ways because it's trying to hit a
different purpose. Am I right in thinking that the
general difficulty in orb or Blues is 1 lower than it is in
best Left Buried? Yeah, that was a big.
That was a big example, right? It used to be 9 and it was until
very late in play testing and we shifted it.
One down, Because we think that the world in orbital Blues is,
like, physically more forgiving than the one in Best of Buried
Is and Then you Want. To feel cooler, You don't want
to be desperate in a dungeon. You you want to be in orbital
Blues, you know, not by much, and definitely not because you
the dentistry. Yeah, I mean, I think genre that
makes a lot of sense, right? I mean, if you watch Firefly or
Cowboy Bebop or something like that, it's like.
The player deaths are deaths are if they happen, they're like
incredibly dramatic and like story driven and I think you
like do a really good job of emulating that in this game with
the swan song and everything. Oh yeah, Sam Wax lyrical about
the song, Swan song. That's like my favorite thing.
Yeah, I I that was I I think that was one of the like.
Like maybe the mechanical contribution I made and I was
like, you get to play a song and you break the mechanics and you
rules don't matter because you're going to die, just play
them out kind of thing. Is that because my my
contributions to mechanics tend to make Zach like?
Brain melt because they usually put.
It like that, but I enjoy it. But like when you say to me
like, oh, you know what happens in this mechanic is that we play
music and then all the rules are ignored.
I'm like, yeah, yes, go off king.
Do it. Make it so like that's it's it's
a good country. Ultimately like the game is
quite quite quite bleak, like a bit bit miserable the the player
characters are. Not having a great time and if
you do something cool, we want it to feel, want it to feel good
and we don't want it to feel like you're constantly in like.
An uphill battle to find some enjoyment there, and if you
manage to track down the people that you hate so much, or the
people that you've been searching for for a for a life
changing bounty or pull off a heist.
We want your moment of glory and you want your your time to shine
essentially as a as a player character.
Yeah, really incredibly cool. Yeah, good game feel is what is
what we strove for and I think that we, I think we've managed
that definitely. And it was really cool for me
because I I haven't been very online for the last couple of
years and to go to London MCM this weekend and speak to people
who've been playing it and running it and them saying like
oh this is this is like a really amazing game to play.
This is this feels great. This looks great I.
It was. It was like praise all round for
for the whole team and that was that.
Was really nice to to see and hear.
Speaking of the whole team, the fucking art as well, right?
And the graphic design is insane.
Ridiculous. Yeah.
Like, yeah, the the style that. So Joshua Clark, Tiny Woodsman,
is the artist that we've worked on a kind of like I alluded to
earlier, like how I described is it, Josh was high before I was.
I was originally just going to be a person, like paying for
things, and it was like, Sam wants to write this, Josh can do
the art and it's like, it's the way it started off.
At least it's kind of evolved a bit now was that Josh would like
take photo composites of different pieces of public
domain photography and kind of smash them together, take photos
of them and paint over them and stuff.
Yeah, yeah, it's just like Kit, Kit.
So the the way that he works, I'm I'm sure that he'll correct
me if he's watching this, but it's like using composite
imagery and sometimes it can be like really the way that he puts
them together is mosaic and quite far fetched.
There's a ship in the book that's made entirely of
lampshades and ladders and if someone can get back to me and
tell me which one is, yeah, Gold Star or it's using like shapes
to to build this like framework and then being painted over with
a lot of like composite photography also being painted
over. Because I I personally wanted
something that looked not photorealistic because I'm a
little weird with games that have actual photos in them.
Looking at UI and Swan and I, I wanted something that felt
realistic but not too realistic. And I didn't want something that
was too stylized either, because I wanted the book to to feel
like a very grounded piece. I wanted adverts and then that
was something that I wanted from the get go.
I was like, I want to turn a page and I want to feel like I'm
reading a catalogue that this thing is sponsored by company
and that's how it's in your hands.
And so I think we one of the early pieces that we got was the
Calder one, which was the easy where nobody does it like Calder
and it's a it's a guy in a space suit in a sort of like fashion
magazine sort of style. And that was that was like
really good. That was like Chef's case.
We're there, that's what that's what we're doing.
We want this book to feel like. It's full of ads, yeah, in world
advertising materials, band posters.
Election campaigns Here's places you go on your holiday.
Please buy this spaceship. Here's an advert for like
they're hiring Brav engineers for the new space station.
It's just it's it's just all fucking gorgeous like and Josh
has continued knocking it out of the park when it's come to the
afterburn stuff and all the adventures that have come since
and kind of. Books.
We've gone for a kind of all the the sense of like, verse
similitude, like this could be an object in a world it feels
lived in. Every page is weathered and
stained and beaten and dog eared.
Even though the book looks Immaculate from a like, it's
just it's vibe vibes all the way down.
Vibes in the right. Yeah, vibes in the I remember.
When we reviewed it, we definitely said that.
However great the game is mechanically and like that, the
vibes and the way the mechanics dig into those vibes, this might
be the vibiest, coolest game that's on my shelf.
I don't know if there's a game where I felt cooler.
I don't know, especially like cooler than sad.
I will say that one of the things we were just talking
about was with Joshua Clark. The Wayward Stars book is
absolutely amazing. Yeah.
Art book that explains like how the art was done, like from Josh
and everything is if you anyone out there that actually that has
orbital Blues. Having that book too only adds
like a whole nother layer to it when you actually know how the
art was created, where it came from and all this stuff, it's
just, it's fantastic And that's in.
You can get that with the new Kickstarter as well, right?
A reprint of the waiver stars, yeah.
We've printed many, many art books, and people, you know,
people don't buy them as often as I thought they would because
it's a. Is this Immaculate, like through
composed thing that Josh made entirely himself over the course
of like two or three weeks? Just like explaining how he he
came to us quite late on in the the process and said I keep
screenshots. I take screenshots of all my
work in progresses in case I need to restore anything or wind
things back. And I would be really interested
in doing a write up of a making of do you think anyone would be
interested in that to which me and Zach will like?
Yeah like absolutely. Like even if we don't take that
to a general market I'd be interested in seeing that as
part of the creative process. And so he he went away and made
it and said like I want to do this just on on my own.
I'll get back to you once I've once.
I've got a a manuscript and he came back to us with pretty much
a finished book, all done with layout that he did himself.
I budgeted in the crowdfunding spreadsheet to hire like an
editor. Didn't need it.
Layout artists and stuff. Didn't need it mate.
I ran through it in an afternoon making sure that all like the
grammar was correct and the full stops were in the right place
and there wasn't any typos. Talking about an hour and then
it was done. It was just like it was handed
to us on a plate, which was amazing.
Shout out Josh, get way with stars if you have the
opportunity. Definitely get way with stars.
That is is such a great coffee table piece.
Or if you have any kind of interest in how like how the
sausage is made for RPGs, then that is a real eye opener.
It is a really great piece. It's.
Gorgeous and it is a coffee table book.
It's not small by any special imagination.
It's like a nice. He was very adamant that he
wanted it in a non standard dimension 4 horizontal.
Yeah, I was. Going to say to a four, yeah.
A4 Horizontal Yeah, which was. I think I have two a four books.
I think that was the first time you made a book of those
dimensions, Zack. And you're like, I don't know if
we can we. Definitely could like it's just
the printers, you know. I had to explain to the printers
very carefully. Oh, it's not this one, it's that
one. And they would all the bindings.
It's fine. It worked out.
So. Afterburn is what we're what
we're looking at right now and that is if the the Kickstarter
that's happening. This is, like I said before, the
first big wave of expansion stuff for for Orbital Blues.
Because it's not just a book, there is a lot of stuff that
comes with it. So talk to me about Afterburn,
like how long have you guys been working on that?
Like what? What can we expect from this
first big expansion to Orbital Blues?
So we've been like, OK, I was like.
Yeah, we've been talking about what we wanted to do for a while
and Josh has been. We've been very busy working on
all the stretch goal adventures we agreed to make as part of the
expansion. There's now like 5 completed
soft cover adventures from a series of amazing artists around
the world with all kinds of different adventures like
tightly plotted act based linear stuff, sandbox adventures,
dungeon crawls, hub worlds like. Dungeon areas like space
stations with all the stuff on them like cities, and we sort of
looked at what's the next step. Now we've done all this stuff.
We greeted from the kick start to what do we want to do?
And there was a whole bunch of things we eventually settled on.
But the two things I really want to make were was, well, the one
thing I want to make, which is the reason that I bullied
everyone into it, was I wanted to make a box set.
Because my favorite thing in RPG has been for a while is one of
these babies, the Estate Box set from Mouse Rear.
I'm such a mouse Ritter, Enjoyer.
Mine is Mine is the black Hack Box Boy.
It's the same sort of vibe. Yeah, And so we said, like I
said, I want to make a VHSI want to make a sorry, I've scored the
punchline, We want to make a box.
And I think it was Sam that said we need to put it in a VHS case.
No, it was Will it fit in a VHS case?
Because I couldn't remember what a VHS how big a VHS case was,
which then LED us down a side quest of sourcing a VHS case to
check the measurements it. Yeah, it's what.
Was it it was the tape whole thing?
What was the tape that you found?
I I eventually it was AI. Can't remember?
But we found it. We worked how many things you
could stuff in it. But the main thing that's in
that is not a thing that exists to satisfy my childish fantasies
is this big spaceship book of kind of the that basically fills
in all the gaps of stuff. We wanted to fit in the original
orbital Blues, but kind of couldn't fit in because of page
count. We wanted to keep it like a
tight 200 pages because I like. We both like books of that scale
that feel really usable like. The thing with the character,
the characters in Orbital Blues, is that we'd we'd left this
really strong vibe of like what a really potent player character
looks like. You know, you pick your ideas,
you pick your troubles, you gambits, you grab some weapons,
you grab from that big orange spread at the beginning.
It's like I'm the Hick, I'm the lonely heart, I'm the chain
smoker, I'm the cowboy, which is like such strong
characterisation, but kind of we wanted to do more with the
spaceships. And when you look at like all
the pieces of media that we were talking about specifically like
Firefly and Cowboy Bebop, which are two of the big influences,
the spaceship is the character, like one of the main characters.
But we wanted to add more to kind of allow for that.
So there's three big things in the in the book.
The 1st is Josh has made like a big pile of spaceships with art
and law and advertising materials and like.
Job insurance for those to exist.
You kind of flip through and pick which one you want to use
for your party. The second thing is the thing
I've been writing, which is like a expanded set of GMs, advice
bits, character creation tables, and well, building bits to kind
of make space travel something which is easier to GM.
So that the spaceship is like a place where adventure happens
rather or a vehicle rather than just like.
Here's how I get from point A to point B.
And then the third thing we've been working on is Sam's made
this huge, amazing orbital Blues adventure called Redshift
Riders. And do you want to talk about
Sam? It's too big.
So I really enjoyed writing the Solar System which was it's like
a sandbox adventure that's in the back of the core book, My
First Dungeon are working their way around it right now over on
that stream of all Bill Blues. He was like quite well praised
by people when it came out as feeling like very alive and a
good place to set adventures. And so I said hey I'll I'll do
more of that because there was a lot of things that I I had to
cut from that due to the space. It was just like proper back
back filling the the back end of the book.
And so I said let's do so let's do an advent, A sandbox that
supports all the things from like the other parts that that
you guys are doing. So the adventure introduces the
concept of Vankya gates which are which answers the the the
eternal question of how does faster than light travel work
over long distances in all or Blues To which we all had
different thoughts on as create as like the three like members
of the team mine being I don't care Josh is being I like old
fashioned space travel and Zach's being I like hard sci-fi
space travel and I want to know how it works and seen as we had
that that that trifecta of opinions it it was like well if
we have those different opinions then all the various GMs and
storytellers out there are definitely going to want
different ways to do it so have at it and Zach has taken a real
swing at all the different ways to break down space travel So
like Zach if you want to go into your greebly's and your your
techno bubble. Essentially like the the thing
for me is that like. I've run a lot of of boosts.
The game came out and I've played a lot of it and I've
developed my own Canon as to how figures exist in certain ways.
Which is not something that we dress at all in the core book,
right? It's entirely vibes.
And the figures is that my version of Orbit the Blues has a
completely different meta narrative to what Sam's does and
as a different ones to what Josh has because it's very much a
game owned by three people over different times, right?
That we've smushed together and. It didn't feel right for us to
like tell people how to use space travel and a certain
thing. Especially because like, this is
a genre emulation game and different genres of sub genres
of space, Western, sub opera. Wait, you know what I mean?
Space Western space operas exist, right?
So essentially what we've done in the book is presented a
couple of different ways that a few different things could work,
and explained what the impact on your campaign would be if FTL
travel doesn't exist Or you can go from anywhere in the universe
to anywhere else, like Snap Star Wars style or if we're playing
Mass Effect or Bebop and. There are these ways that space
travel happens on space highways, right?
And basically like explaining the impact that would have on
your game. And also the the hot, the all of
the Blues I run is really hard sci-fi because it's the kind of
thing that my players enjoy. And there's been this sort of
fun experience to me where like, Sam and I are both the kind of
people that have played a lot of dungeon crawling games.
So, like, even though my body would fail me immediately, I'm
pretty sure that if you put me in a dungeon in a perfect human
being, I'd be pretty good at it. Because I know how all the
things and all the levers work, You know, I know you're going to
apply pickaxe pick doors, do this, shove things down pit
traps. Like I've learned how to do it
because I've spent a lot of time doing it.
Because the things that happen in a dungeon closely relate to,
like what it's like in a real world.
Because a dungeon. If you pledge more to the Orbo
Blues Kickstarter, we will engineer a real life dungeon for
Zach to try and navigate. And if he dies, they die.
He says one of those like the the camera structures, yes, So
we can like watch him the whole time or live stream.
Or live stream the dungeon you're.
Ready here folks, $1,000,000 A. Kickstarter, right?
I'm not an astronaut. I could be a dungeon more to the
Blues. King style will put Zack through
astronauts scores. The.
Thing is, is that I have gone through astronauts school, Sam
by playing so much orbital Blues and in all these games
definitely I've learned to understand.
I've built an internally consistent model of how I think
a spaceship works that will not held up to any type of rigorous
scrutiny. But you start to let you learn
to start thinking portals and then like at that point
possibility appears and plans start to make sense once you.
And so there's like A and other people want to read about those
plans because they'll come to us and be like how does this thing
work? And I'm like, wow, no space
magic. Comes out of it.
It's an engine, but there's all kinds of like advice for running
games and how we come up content, how things are
generated, like just filling out the advice in the core book.
And it's going to be a really good tool that's going to be
like that. If you get one other book
alongside all the foods, this is the one we want you to get.
And alongside that, obviously we're doing.
Cassettes and VHS, Adventure Box sets, script capable of all
these things. And then, you know, reprinting
the GM screens and the art books and you'll be able to get every
single other conceivable thing under the sun.
Because it's a Kickstarter and people love the things.
They do love the things. I don't know if you've ever
talked to Ryan before. But people and I like a thing or
two might have. One or two of the things I I I
get so many things that I often end up with double S and then I
just send them to him. So I'm not going to lie, the alt
cover of the original book definitely was a thing that I
had to have. So it's definitely in in in my
in my pledge. Yeah, Oval Blues cassette as
demonstrated here re re up available on the current
Kickstarter. Get yourself a cassette.
That's right, grabbing. Hold on all your cassette
playing needs. We've all got to grab our
cassettes. Go up this.
Is our cassettes. So I never get to me the start,
yeah. In the little bag they came in.
Have they been rolled? Who knows?
They have not been rolled like. I have so many bags of dice on
this shelf. Another single one of them has
been rolled. Because I've intended a real
time thing in three years, because that is being done in
like a plastic case with a. Slightly different one.
It's going to be like AJ fold thing just.
Because. Turns out the rave boxes are
really expensive and this thing called inflation has happened.
So we've shifted. That's that's.
Just a myth. But if we.
Yeah. No, no, no.
If we I've. Got to announce something I'm
definitely not allowed to announce because we haven't
spoke Josh Bay yet. So you know what?
Let's do that. Don't do that.
Yeah, perfect. Hey, well maybe we'll get to the
end and you'll just announce it anyway.
Aside from this cassette I know you we you just hit.
Was it the stretch goal to get is it behold to do another
cassette Because they did the music for the My First Dungeon
podcast said just recently. We're still in the process of
doing or dropping out the Orbital Blues AP that they're
doing right. Yeah, yeah.
So we've been doing a bunch of sponsored actual plays, working
with a couple of different outfits.
We're working with Trans planers, Stella Luna, Girls
Around These Worlds, Boys from the Baltic Star.
We've tried to do it. Each person has been given a
different adventure from this, but Brian from my first dungeon
got in touch and I'm a big fan of Brian's work from the big Die
Die RPG thing they did. I worked a lot on Die as part of
Roman Rick and Deckard and. He wanted to do a stream and
said hey, we'll do a stream, we want to do this, We'll we'll get
all these people in. And obviously because we're
sponsored, we're able to pay these people really well, which
really good. And then Brian said, Oh yeah,
also my music guy will be doing a bunch of music for it.
So I'll make sure I send that to you before you do that.
And like I'm such a, I'm such a glutton for punishment when it
comes to bad financial impulse control.
And I was like, they're going to be doing music.
Why don't we just print it and put it on a cassette and we'll
give them money if they're doing the music anyway, let's make it
happen. So there's now another AP from
the music from the My First Dungeon actual play, which you
should all go watch because it's fantastic and it goes through
Sam's very excellent Start the System adventure in a super
interesting way and like it. I don't normally listen to a lot
of APS, but this is like a really high production value one
with like good interesting characters and like I
increasingly think. Although I'm obviously very
biased, the Orbital Blues is an incredibly good game to play
actual playoff because the vibes are very strong, the characters
jump out of the page very quickly and troubles are like a
really easy way of generating lots of emotional moments, like
I was talking about earlier. So like, yeah, it's been really
good and we've got a set and I think there's probably going to
be a third one if we can, you know, hit that stretch goal in a
couple of days. So we'll see.
We've got Christmas at coming back and they're going to be
doing some jazz and I love watching jazz.
Love some sad jazz? Love some sad jazz?
I mean, there's still almost two weeks left in the campaign.
Plenty of time. I we just hit the halfway market
at 75. USBI.
Don't know what that is in it's just over 60,000 pounds.
£61,000, yeah, there we go. Try not to look at the number
too much during crowdfunding projects because it kind of,
it's very easy to have yourself worth be replaced by that little
number of dollars. And actually the thing that we
should be proud of is that we've made a really fantastic piece of
art and that loads of other people are going to get to enjoy
it, so. Yes.
I know it's. Like kick stars in the past,
I'll watch the number go up by like several thousand, and then
I'll see it go down by like. £80 and it's that like 80 pounds
that I'll fixate on and be like, why did that?
Per Why? Like not counting all the times
that I've ever backed out of a Kickstarter or a crowd from for
whatever reason, I'll just like, what did that person see or read
that made them drop their pledge?
Why would they do that? And I start obsessing over it.
So I've just made it so that I don't look at things like that.
And just want to have a question.
I'll answer it. But I'll I'll just like my nan
calls me up and she looks at it and she'll be like, oh it's it's
on like 50,000 now. It's doing so well.
And I'm like, thanks Nan, I am trying to avoid looking at the
amount of money that it's on. But thank you.
Yeah, it's easy to get called. Dad also asks me about it all
the time. He wants to see the advertising,
the kind of guy he is. He wants to see the backer kit,
advertising dashboard. And I'm like, no, I'm not
sending you that. Dad, go away.
I'll say I've backed over. Too many projects I've had, I've
only had two people actually message me and be like, hey, why
did you unback our project at both times?
I'll be like, that's a weird question.
You probably shouldn't message people and ask that.
So yeah, yeah. Don't ask, don't do that.
And I know not to ask and I never would.
But it's the it's the what if the the just that, that torment.
It keeps me. It plagues me.
Yeah, we are also people with our own troubles, you know?
Listen, guys. That there's a reason that the
Sad Space Cowboy game is is very much like real life, Aside from
the spaceships. That is where we're at right
now. So specifically this project
Afterburn, besides the book. I know we touched on some of the
stuff, but what exactly are people able to get with this
besides everything? Pretty much from the first one,
except maybe not the dice. I'm not sure about that, but
it's pretty much everything from the first one, plus a new alt
cover for the book. And then what exactly can
everyone expect? Like specifically.
Oh yeah, so it's the there's a this new core book which is the
kind of the compilation of all the things that we think you
should have if you bought Orbit the Blues but kind of wanted a
little bit more. That's called Afterburn and it's
like a 200 page ish hardcover, roughly the same size as you as
the original book. You can also grab Rogue Anthems,
which is our VHS Box Adventure Pamphlet collection.
And then you can also grab Tales from the Outlaw Galaxy, which is
a slip case compendium of all the soft cover adventures.
We've been releasing our stretch goals for the first game, so
across five different adventures with five different writers.
There are almost 300 pages of adventuring content available,
all illustrated lovingly by Josh.
There's a new old cover of the core book you can get if you're
a collectionist and you fancy grabbing.
What we're referring to affectionately is the rainbow
cover. Then there is the reprint of the
old cassette. There is a reprint.
There is a print of the new cassette, which is Behold 1, the
soundtrack for my first dungeon. Then there is also the GM screen
you can grab, and the wayward stars are, but we were talking
about from earlier, as well as obviously reprint of the core
book from the last game with the original cover that you all know
and love. And I think that's everything.
There's a lot of bits, but we've done a lot of the work already.
All the manuscripts are finalised, the art is all done.
Like it's the case of doing some layout and then finding someone
stupid enough to sell me 1000 VHS boxes, you know?
But I mean, sorry, I've already found them people.
It's just, you know, doing the final bit.
I'm not going to And there's no all the rabid product sourcing
has already happened. Don't worry everyone, but it's
still a a challenge to get all those gubbins and get everything
to print. So for the most part, once this
ends, the hardest part of the part that's going to take the
longest pretty much is getting all of these moving parts
together and actually getting it in one spot to send to people,
right? Like that's what's going to be
holding up most of anything. There's a lot of layout left,
but obviously I have bits of editing, but it's mainly the the
production stuff is the difficult bit for this,
especially in your kind of, you know, but it's the kind of thing
that SOMOP has done on the last 12 projects it's involved in
before. And you know the dozen books
I've made for our ID over the last two years that we've got a
lot of experience and trust in. And we have trusted partners and
everything will happen in the right order at the time that
backers should be able to access it with hopefully as little
delay as possible. So this is the first big
expansion for Orbital Blues. I know that you're in the in the
deep part of it right now, but is there a little part of the
back of your brain that's got this second expansion already
brewing at all, or is it going to be a little break between now
and and more Orbital Blues? I I think you'll be a break.
I think. I think Zach has another project
after. And I am really like wringing my
brain out now because it was all well and good filling the solar
system, which was I think 3, three or four like major locales
with enough life to make it feel alive.
But right now I'm doing a system with four planets and a space
station, and filling that is. Is is taxing?
I don't know that many people and I certainly don't know that
many people to to base adventures and quests and
experiences on and I'm really like trying to get in touch
with. This this sounds so pretentious.
The human condition and what fills those spaces in ways that
are meaningful and make 4 good quests in the the traditional
RPG sense? Why would this person come to a
band of interstellar outlaws and be like hey?
I I need your help with this. There's and there's some that
are like real strong in the manuscripts at the minute, and
then others that I'm like, this needs to I need to up my game
and I'm having like major like anxiety over it.
Two of my favorite quests, My two favorite things I've written
so far are one where a famous film actor wants you to help him
fake his own death. And you will have to.
Like help with that. And then the second one is a
documentary filmmaker who wants to join your crew and ask your
crew a lot of like personal questions and ask why are you
doing this instead of a real job.
And they're they're two things that I think a lot of people
will approach differently and a lot of people will will like it
will change up their games and definitely have like an
impactful sort of. Thing to to like make crew crews
and outlaws question themselves and one another and how they go
about things. As for a whole other a whole
other new book, give us some time.
I can do mine. I've got two things I've wanted
to write, but I've been too busy to write around other things.
My brain wants to make solo orbital Blues by standing out
the amount of technology on a trouble so that you could use it
to generate more stuff than you would otherwise.
I think that's something that there's probably some legs on.
And I also want to write a like very jazzy old school noir
murder mystery adventure that uses orbital Blues and kind of
takes in a different direction. But those are like, this isn't
like and this will be coming out in 2024.
Like, these are like me thinking about things I'd like to write
in the system in the future. But you know it's going to be a
while. Like the way these things work
is it's going to take us, probably it's going to take us
six months to make everything anyway and then work.
The next steps will be we want to break after that, because I
won't want to think about any more space Cowboys for about a
year and then maybe 25 or something.
You'll see some more stuff from as it's gone up it about more
orbit, the Blues, I hope, but it's certainly there's demand
for IT. People seem really excited, so
I'm keen to make more things. It's just like crowdfunding,
Tampo is really difficult. And we're also like, we're also
really excited and eager to see what other people do with it.
Because ultimately this is something that what that had its
genesis very much in a bubble in like my bedroom, not this one.
I lived in knowing him at the time.
I live somewhere else now in an undisclosed location.
Like it was something that was, it was something that was made
in our bedrooms, in. Local pub.
It was something that was very, it felt very personal to to all
of us. And it was something that we we
very much didn't have a great deal of our external feedback on
when we were making it. And then it launched and people
really liked it. And people have since, you know,
all still really like it. And so it's always.
Crazy having people come up and be like, oh, this thing happened
in in our game, this thing happened in in my game or when
we run it. We did this.
And it's always really exciting to see what people do with it
and what people harness the book for in terms of what kind of
stories they want to tell and if they want to write their own
adventures. I love editing and reading the
adventures that we get because. I haven't yet come across one of
them where I've thought, oh, I could have thought of that like
they've all been completely different.
They've all been from a range of talented writers, from a diverse
array of backgrounds that have told stories that I couldn't
have written, Zach couldn't have written.
Every single one of them so far that we've that we've published
has been been really unique. And not things that I personally
thought I I didn't think of them when I was writing it well.
What are your thoughts on that, Zack?
Yeah, I mean ultimately like the the ultimate purpose of any RPG
product as much as we talk about like coffee table books or vibes
things or smart mechanics is for like things to see use of the
table like that's what it's for. It's.
All a front to make cassettes. Yeah, it's all the front to make
cassettes so I can switch into my career as a music producer.
But seriously, it is all about like how the thing finds life at
the table and what use people get out of it.
And obviously seeing people do these things about these
adventures and have these stories with the thing that we
came up with is always wonderful.
But, and the other thing is that Orbital Blues has in it a very
explicit, very big third party licence.
And we've seen stuff written by people for like Josh, who's
running for you guys tomorrow on the stream.
They've written Orbital Blues Adventure.
That was really good. I forgot the name of it because
I'm on the spot. But you know, it's exciting
seeing people also publish that stuff.
So what I'd really like is to see like more third party
published stuff appear. That'll be my personal dream as
a publisher, you know, having an.
Orbital Blues Itch GM Anytime soon.
Maybe we did want troubles last year, but I guess we'll have to
do another one soon. I'm just yeah, I'm so busy.
Like running an itch jab. Like, if anyone wants to run an
Orbital Blues Itch jam, e-mail me and then I'll I'll give you
whatever you'll delegate. That down.
I mean, you not only do you have orbital Blues going right now,
you still have inevitable going on.
I don't know how much you do with Rowan Rook and Decker, but
they have Etho Wright going on right now as well too.
So I feel like you have lots of hands in a lots of different
pots right now and maybe just a couple of things to do, you
know, you you too many. Yeah.
And that's before I've even announced anything that's
happening next year that's currently being worked on
frenziedly. But yeah, more, more games will
be coming in the future from us, and also of all kinds, and
they're getting out this array of all the blue stuff that
people seem to be evidently so excited for because of the
Kickstarter is so brilliant, and I can't wait to see people play
more things and get excited about the South Space Cowboys.
Yeah, I yeah, very excited for this Kickstarter.
I was. I can't tell you how excited I
was to see when it dropped, see that Rainbow cover to go with
the night cover as well. And as you said, we're going to
be playing tomorrow with myself, with Hunter here, with Josh and
with Marco Serrano, with Spicy Tuna.
I'm very excited to see him in a different space.
He's a very mother shit person. It'll be interesting to see him
doing a little bit of orbital Blues as well and I know on your
on the Kickstarter page, which is fantastic, definitely go
check that out. If you were listening to us,
there is, as you said before, a whole list of other places to go
watch APS and stuff. My first Dungeon Girls Around
These World's Cello, Luna Boys and both Skin Transplanter.
A lot of really amazing stuff to go check out.
A lot of really great content and.
It's awesome that you guys are reprinting everything from the
original one for the most part, because if all those people that
might be fans now that didn't get those original books, you're
able to get those now. So definitely go check out the
Kickstarter that's right now. If you're listening to this or
watching this in YouTube in the next year or two, the links to
all of that will be in the description below.
But for both of you, where can people find any of your personal
stuff or other stuff besides this specific Kickstarter Sam?
As as I've said before, not super online, but at Sam Sleny
on Twitter, slash X, and I think it's the same on Instagram as
well. Zach is so busy at the minute
that if you want me to write for you, I can because, well,
there's just. Too many fingers and too many
pies as as they said. So yeah, I have ideas who up
publishing their games is, is what I would say.
And yeah, at Sam Sleny SLENEY, Yeah, my name is Zach.
I go by Jelly. I'm the Jelly Muppet on most
social medias. You can find us on Soul Muppet
Hyphen store.co.uk is the place to buy all of the amazing RPGs
that Soul Muppet makes. All of the Blues is just one of
them. We've also talked about Best of
Buried. I've also been on the podcast
before talking about Inevitable. You can find character Titan
City. You can find other stuff that
Sam has written as well like Beneath the Basic Sea and that
has links to all the places you can find us.
Because I have a marketing person now whose job it is to
run accounts on Tumblr and Instagram and Facebook and
there's a Discord server and a mailing list and right there's a
whole well oiled marketing machine.
That mall are conventions and operation.
Sorry conventions and marketing person is responsible for making
occur. I also work at Roanoke and
Deckard where you can find amazing games such as Die Heart
Spire and the new The right. I would encourage you to go over
there and check out my role there as a producer as well.
And but yeah, the main place to find us is the sole Muppet store
and if you search the name of any of these games in we do
pretty well in SEO. So go from there.
Yeah, look at look at that spiel.
I don't have a social media and marketing manager.
I just have my girlfriend being who, who is a content creator,
being like you need to be on the Internet more.
And I'm just like no. No.
Well, if I could make I I don't know.
It's it's been a you you got to do it.
The main reason I have that person is because I hate it
almost as much as you do. But it's just a case of needing
to run a publishing company. My job now somehow.
Well, Congrats on your success. Congrats on success of the
Kickstarter. We're obviously, I mean, we're
big fans and we're super stoked to get everything in hand and
this looks cool and. Sad and all the space cowboy VHS
throwback tech of the future that we have come to expect.
From over the Blues, it's not it's not too sad.
It is exciting as well. It's not a book that's going to
make you cry. It's you've not been to my
table. My table's sad enough, don't
worry. It's OK.
That's fine. Yeah, it's.
Also got all the really tight stuff in it, kind of.
All really interesting stuff in it.
It's not just all sad sometimes. I did feel when we were at Comic
Con, people would come over and be like.
Why are the why are the space Cowboys sad?
Like can we cheer them up? And we just like, it's it's just
a tagline. Don't worry about it.
They don't always have to be sad.
You can do exciting things with them too.
So yeah, it's got a lot of cool stuff in it to enrich your games
and your stories. Yeah, an afterblind will
certainly help the Cowboys being happy.
Yes. Seriously, can't, can't wait for
it to come. Thank you again, Zach.
Thank you so much for coming on the show again.
Sam, been a pleasure talking with you as well.
Always invited back, very excited for you guys and the
success that Afterburn is having right now and can't wait for
more. So we'll muppet stuff.
Really appreciate you guys coming on.
No worries. Thank you.
Thank you for having us. I always enjoyed doing this and
making Allowed to ramble for like half a great.
Yeah, you got We just let you guys go off.
I'm like, oh, this is very the best guy interview.
It's the. Easiest.
Interview. Ever.
Yeah. So.
Yeah, so we are the weekly squirrel podcast.
You can find all of our stuff at our link tree, which is just
slash. The weekly squirrel links to all
of this, like I said, will be in everywhere and that's it.
That's our show. We'll go back after burn on
Kickstarter right now, get all the old orbital Blues if you
don't have it, and definitely grab all that new stuff.
Everyone out there have a wonderful night and again, thank
you guys for being here. Play Orbital Blues.
So we can build a dungeon and put Zack in it and see if he
Zacks. Zacks is is as good as their
word and can escape a dungeon because they've played in a lot
of them. I've done it.
Yeah, escape rooms like that. Hard right?
Thanks guys. No, no.
I'm talking stones. I'm talking cages.
I'm talking chains. Goblins.
Bye, bye. Bye, everybody.
Have a good day. Goodbye.