Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll podcast.
My Name Is Ryan. And I'm Hunter.
And I'm Kirby. Oh, I'm Jared.
I think I woke up the late. I woke up the latest of
everybody else from the power nap.
That was perfect. So that was amazing.
Could have been better. This is, as I said, that we can
throw podcast and today we have the return of Jarrett Crater,
better known as Dirt, from Space Penguin Inc, which recently
launched. And that's just kind of what
we're talking about. But not only that, I do also
think that this is the first time that the now named 3
cohosts of the weekly scroll podcast are actually on the same
episode. So you get all of our wonderful
faces. Plus, you know Jarrett Crater,
you can't really ask for a better guest than that.
So this is this is special for you guys out there.
Got a got a little got meat meat castle in the chat.
There we go. So I wanted to show off some
stickers I got from a recent thing from him.
So hey. Love meat?
Who doesn't? Who doesn't?
I mean, I'm vegan, but you know, meat's great.
Anyway, Jared Space Penguin Inc launched about two weeks ago.
How did that go? How are things?
It was interesting the other day, my partner Debbie said.
I thought that after the the launch that your anxiety level
would go down and I was like anyone who knows me knows that
that was not the case. But yeah, no thanks to everyone
watching and ever watching in the future and in the past in an
alternate timelines and time zones and stuff.
For hanging out and making us feel welcome as, you know,
publishers, retailers, wholesalers, whatnot on the
scene, things have been going good.
We had gangbusters first week, it was really great and then
things dropped off and it was first weekend and then
everything dropped off Monday, Tuesday, because it's Monday,
Tuesday. And my, my.
And the orders kind of, like, stopped.
And I was just like, oh, then they picked back up.
So I'm learning. I'm learning marketing curves,
which I worked in restaurants for 30 years.
So I know marketing curves that my brain just is now catching up
to. Oh, it applies to this other
line of business. I was, you know, messaging with
Kirby last night. And, you know, I told them I was
like, Oh yeah, July and August are always the worst.
And they're always just the worst for every because
everyone's on vacation, everyone's traveling, at least
in our particular time zone, and schools are out and stuff like
that. People's attention has wandered,
you know, So things have leveled out.
They're a bit slower. We've been doing a bunch of
wholesale orders and getting stuff into some other shops.
And working up a bunch of meet and greets, stuff like that.
Well, E meet and greets with brick and mortar stores.
We got a big big, big, big big list of like it's like 50 plus
between the folks on the Space Penguin work server and a bunch
of people on plus one server added stuff.
Everyone's just putting their friendly local game store and if
they have the contact person who takes care of buying and you
know some sort of contact information and then you know
it's, it's available. If you jump on over on Plus 1EXP
server or if you just message me and you're like, I have books
that I'd like to sell. Can I see the big list of, you
know, friendly game stores will be like, yeah, absolutely.
You know, all we ask is that when you contact folks, you just
say, you know, just be polite. And are like, hey, I have this,
would you be interested in carrying just all about sharing
information to get more stuff in brick and mortar stores and then
kind of going and then kind of going from there.
So I'm rambling. Tell me to shut up.
No, this is a you episode, buddy.
Ramble on, You know exactly. This is all about Jared Critter
and Space Penguin Inc. I know last time you hear you
talked about some of the adventures were coming out and
of course I bought them within, I think, I don't know, 10
minutes of the store opening. So I actually have all of the
adventures here and they are wonderful.
I'm very excited, especially I got two.
Well, I have three of these because you did happen to send
me a special one, which is fantastic.
But I'm, you know, I'm not, I've never been the father of cats
like some people. But the little the little Kitty
cat logo here on the side of the books?
That's adorable. Yeah, Christian Christian
Kessler, who wrote and created Longshot City, which actually
just wrapped its crowdfunding last weekend.
It's a Troika superheroes or this past weekend made the
little spine logo and yeah. Loving it.
Loving it.
And I saw you had a drift there. I just, I can't say enough good
things about the graphic designer.
I'm not a fan of the writer. Kind of a douche night long.
It kind of sucks. Kerby's one of my favorite
people in the world. We talk literally multiple times
a day, every day. That's just because I constantly
send you message. Hey, I message you too, but
yeah, no adrift is. It's been it's been and
obviously you don't buy the ship stuff it it moves it's in the
zeitgeist them adrift in distress signals have been
trucking right along cord is taking a little bit longer to
catch on and beyond the silver screen is a is a reissue so
again that's we're good to go there but yeah I know I'm I'm
excited for aren't you turning in the first draft of the.
Second volume in a sector series.
I think my deadline that I gave myself was like tomorrow, so I
should probably get working on that.
You know what would be great for getting Mother Shift stuff?
Pushing is for Mother Shift to deliver on the project, which
I'm very excited to actually get one time so.
Someday. Actually big.
I can, I can neatly say big news on that.
All of that stuff is has now. Past yours truly editing desk, I
am the editorinchief over there on the mothership line.
I don't know if you knew that. You knew that?
I don't think I did know that. Did you know that?
You didn't. You didn't.
I was just waiting for Ryan to have a moment of realization.
Because. Oh yeah, yeah.
No, that's fine. So long and your fucking book.
And it's just terrible. I met.
I met Sean McCoy at Jincon. What did it been?
2017, Yeah. 2017 because he's good buds with Don Stroud and
Don was part of the DCC community from you know all the
way back and I used to guests on Drinks been Run Don and Adam's
the RPG, the RPG Talk Show Podcast, Don's I can't do a good
Don Stroud but Don's voice is it was amazing.
And yeah, I I had the Pocket mod.
Of mothership in my back pocket and we were at Lock Miller's
Ian, which is like our hideout Place bar where we go and eat
and chill off site at Gencon. And Don's like, I have somebody
I want you to meet. And I was like and he was like,
oh, Sean McCoy. And I was like, oh, you're that
Sean McCoy. And I pulled out the pocket mod
like a nerd. And because, I mean, I've been
running just off the pocket mod from the blog probably for like
3 months. I think it had been, He posted
it out there and I was like, like, I did like I do with most
people whose work I like. I'm just like, if you make a
larger version of this, I want to edit it.
And then like about a month later.
He messages me this is still a G+ era and he was like, does
that offer slope? And I was like, yeah.
And so I bashed out edits on the first version of the Player
Survival Guide. And then in tandem with Don and
Fiona and Sean writing and working out Dead Planet, I also
edited that in about 6 weeks. And then flash forward a year
and we won some innies and stuff with it.
And then? Flash forward several years, but
yeah, I will just say this, another bug hunt, which is the
module that goes with that is so good in that we've achieved the
exact modularity that we wanted. So each section is like usable
on its own, but also usable as a whole.
I'm going to be interested to see if people like do a memento
and mix and match them and go backwards.
With them. So yeah.
But all of that stuff is literally about 24 and 48 hours
away from leaving my desk. Proofreading team is turning
over the rest of the ship Breakers.
Kit Warden's operation manuals in PSG's in the reworks of the
three modules are all in. It's getting getting really,
really, really close. So, and everyone can thank Luke
Gearing for that because I am actually going overseas to
Luke's wedding in a week and a half.
And the deadline for all this getting through my desk and off
my desk was my departure day. So that was good.
So we are we are really close. And now Ryan doesn't feel bad at
all. Let's see.
No, I wasn't gonna feel bad anyway.
I don't have a filter, so it doesn't matter.
I wasn't sure I was gonna ask tonight.
One of the things I was gonna ask though, realistically
because I didn't know that at all, was like half the stuff you
guys are putting on his mothership, like is there like A
and now it all makes sense because you're you're, you're
the guy, you're one of the guys. So.
Funny, it's Ryan, usually on this show you know way more than
me, but actually last week my table built characters in
Mothership 1E because I have the.
I'm a backer obviously. So I have it and it says edited
bye. See, I I have avoided.
I have downloaded the as it's dripped out the bits and pieces
but it has been tucked away until it's all out so I can like
consume it all at one time. So I have completely missed that
but well then yeah, you actually knew more than that.
But again I mean I can't wait for it to come out.
I'm really excited and I know there's a new adventure You guys
just dropped as well on the SPI store beyond the initial
releases. That's awesome.
Mothership adventure. Did you want to talk about that?
Yeah, I don't have a coffee handy.
I put, I put everything back on the shelf up.
But we picked. So my friend Jake Miller is part
of Slime of Many Hats with his creative partner Ben Jones.
They are UK based. They ran a Kickstarter for a
Mortuary. Best book, Third party.
Bestiere called Bestiere a couple years back.
And I really, really, really, really, really liked that book a
lot. And when I was at Exalted
Funeral, part of my, you know, well, my job was working up
print runs and stuff like that was really cool.
Neat. Stuff, you know, first party,
third party for whatever. And I looked out and got to work
with them to do a partnership there for Besty area.
And then when they came to do the Vulture on Kickstarter, I
got talking to Jake and I was just like my my, my weird like.
Jared wants to learn how to do something slash bravado and the
inability just to talk and just be like, oh, I can do this and
then figure out, you know, fuck it, we'll do it in the mix that
you know, or fuck it, we'll do it live, whatever that kind of
is. I kind of do that with with some
stuff. Like I take a thing on as a
challenge because I like to learn how to do, to do new
stuff. I have done many zines and
shine, been making zines since I was a kid.
Like in fifth grade was the first time we made the Cantwell
newsroom of my elementary school.
So I've always like, made stuff and distributed it in some way,
shape or form. And in the RPG sphere, I've done
House of Dogs, Dissident Whispers, Posteres from Cable,
St., The Violence Jam, Fakwar Book the.
The breadbox gave full of spider stuff with David and Caitlin.
I'll just always put out weird scenes and little stuff like
that. You know, hand make them, give
them out at shows, doesn't matter.
But I had never really done a full on fulfillment job and I
knew that The slime of many hats, you know they're they're
UK based and I know one of the biggest things that we run into.
With different fan bases is folks hate to pay out the ass
for shipping. And I mean I I do too.
I there's the there's a really great parody magazine called
Wookierotica and it's like mint. It's like Star Wars but it's in
the vein of like you know like a 70s sleaze magazine and it's and
it's created and printed in Australia.
I paid. 18 US for the magazine I paid 60US for shipping from Oz
for that and I I it is what it is.
I I got it. But one of the things like you
know when when we were building out Space Penguin we were
partnered with iglootry in the UK and I print and ship stuff
directly to there and they sell it to their store that way.
Space Penguin stuff is available there.
Same thing is. We, we work with all the
problems in this world in Berlin to handle the EU and kind of the
rest of the world and we're working on a situation for
Australia right now like hopefully probably mid next year
we'll be able to push that out too and possibly somewhere in
Canada and maybe eventually somewhere in Brazil.
So we're trying to do that. You know, little partnerships
like we make a little bit of less money on it, but that's not
the point of the point is making the books available out there.
And in return a thing that we're trying to do or that we're doing
is making folks in other countries who are who need US
fulfillment to make it a little bit less expensive on their
backers. Handling that here and we're
handling just a couple of things just in the eye miniatures.
The Vulture fulfillment, it's because it's it's fun for me to
to research packaging and materials and stuff and shipping
and learn how to do all that. And then actually do that.
So anyway, Vulture fulfillment, they shipped us a bunch of them.
We sent those all out and Josh Wilkins, if you're watching Josh
Wilkins reply so we can get your package reshipped to you.
I got it returned the other day. I don't know who Josh Wilkins
is, but if they're in case Josh, if you're listening, right?
Yeah, there's. I just really wanted to get it
to gone before we depart for our.
Our travels, So it's fine. We'll figure it out.
So they so when they were printing them, I was like, yes,
you want to print this many for your fulfillment and then you
know, a good 10 to 15% overrun just in case.
They also sent some copies to Tuesday Night Games.
For the Mothership web store. And we ended up after the
fulfillment and all that stuff with like 70 copies I think.
And I was like, hey, what would you be okay with doing, you
know, a 5050 split on sales here, you know, straight up
wholesale order, it's they're already here and they were like,
yeah, that'd be great. And so put it up in the store,
put it up on a Saturday to see how it goes.
We got a few orders right away. We'll do a little bit more of a
push this week. And then we got Red Solstice
coming next week, which I do edit as well and still is a good
friend of mine and Kirby as well.
So yeah, just a little bit of stuff here.
I talked to my good friend Jared Spearwich and Garred's advice
was don't go more than like 3 weeks without.
Having something up, you know something new up for sale in the
newsletter, which I was used to. Always there being a lot of
stuff really quickly as all the funeral because.
We were established longer and you know there was not only was
I pushing out new releases through the printing partnership
program, but people have been you know for a year plus before
I came on had been regularly you know selling stuff to Matt like
that's how Matt started building the company from the get go.
So I was kind of used to that and.
Seeing the logistics side of like, Oh yeah, no, it really
does. It really tells right away.
Like, you know, we put up a new Mothership Zine in there and
then shipping it on the Mothership server.
I mentioned a couple places we put up Discord server and
suddenly we're getting repeat orders because someone is buying
the new Zine, but then also buying another copy of a direct
and another copy of distress signals.
I reached out to that person. I was like, was that a mistake?
They're like, no, no, no. I like those models.
I'm going to give those extra copies to my friend.
I was like, oh, OK, even better. So, yeah, so yeah.
They like to drift, really. Yeah, No.
No, he misspoke. He meant just distress, like.
So yeah, like he said, it's it's an uphill battle.
It's a learning curve. But I'm really super thankful to
Jake and Ben for letting us, you know, take the chance of putting
those copies in the store and then dye Sugars, who is handling
all the marketing for space Penguin did a great job fixing
my crappy photos. I have a light box and I take
photos of all of the products and then I.
Send them to die and then Die does wizardry with them because
die is a packing wizard and then wrote up a great blurb and just
in general made things make sense as he usually does.
So yeah, so yay for vulture. And then, like I said, next week
will be Red Solstice. And then as we will be visiting
our UK&EU partners in a couple of weeks as part of our business
trip it's kind of nice we get to go to the the we get to go to a
friend's wedding and then then do business business business.
And I I don't. I don't know if Debbie's
watching right now. But thank you dear, for letting
for. Let it Yeah, we're gonna, we're
gonna get to meet a bunch of people that I've been working
with for a long time and that we as company are going to continue
to work with going forward. And it's super exciting.
So very cool. Yeah, very excited and excited
from our red soul says too. I mean, I do have #2 in my hands
here. I have #1 in the back there.
There's something in here. What is?
What is this one here? It's the Drake Brood of
Telemex's lair. Yeah, so yeah, by some some
person. So is.
So the Vulture came out, great looking adventure, just even
from the couple of pages and spreads that are on the website.
I really love the the stalker page, the second one that's on
there because I just noticed even after looking at it like 10
times the image of like the ship in the bottom actually lighting
up the the, the, I don't know, larger ship.
It's just really neat. It's a great looking module.
Excited to get that in hand. I think I got the e-mail this
morning that I did ship, so thank you.
But you said Red Solstice, you're going to try to drop
something every three weeks. Is that the plan, Like three to
four weeks? Yeah.
Like that's that's. That's pretty much what we want
to do. So yeah, next week will be red
Soul Sis and then while we're gone we're not going to put
anything at new with our good friend Lucia is going to come
over and handle all the packaging and shipping of the
orders while we're gone. So there's no beats missing that
was. It was part of the shift from
when we talked last time I I changed fulfillment plans and
we're actually handling all our order fulfillment here.
I also learned a lot with that. It's great, but that's pretty
fun. But we didn't want to like open
the store for like a month and then have to shut it down and
not ship anything while we were gone.
So but she works with Debbie in their in their the two of them's
day job and she came over earlier today and we kind of was
like. Here's all this.
And she was like, this is so easy and I'm like, I know it's
great, isn't it? You can come over and you can go
to the Debbie side and play with the cats and then you can come
over here and package few orders every couple of days.
It's great. So we won't miss a beat there,
but we're not going to put out any new releases while we're
gone. We have a couple of small things
that are going to be arriving. While we're away, there will be
right when we get back. We are getting our very large
order of Dreadnites regular cover.
The hard cover is actually the red cover that we blasted for a
very, very long time and we're we're going to do some
aggressive packaging with that because we found a great deal on
the printing. And that one has moved along
quite well, but I can definitely say that, fingers crossed, right
at the end of August, Mark Ball will be coming out too.
So which is the forbidden zone? I don't know if it.
We had a lot of folks that knew about it, but we didn't do a
print run, so it's Blood Bowl Sevens.
But in Forbidden Psalm, so more balls, so wild and wacky like
the you can have like decapitated heads as the balls
and stuff like that. So definitely Kickstarter.
I'm back to Kickstarter for that.
I'm really excited that it's going to print.
That's such a fun little, such a fun little game.
Like anything, anything from Will is is going to be fantastic
and obviously I've rearranged in this entire section here from
here all the way to here is just all forbidden.
So I'm really excited to actually see that in print.
That's neat little as a neat little subway.
We're we're looking to expand that section of your of your
shelf in the next year. There's I talked talked with
Will the other day. I'm not shooting you and I say
we have the next 3 1/2, maybe four years of stuff.
Loosely planned out. There's the that that guy will
get an idea in his head and then it it'll just go like he's
currently working on. It's essentially you make an
elder God and that's what your crew, your war band, they are
the cultists of that God. And then?
A fight against the other person's cult.
So we wanted to take all of the Lovecraft out of Cosmic Core and
still keep the cosmic core. And it's one of those things
like when when Will gets an idea, he just chomps on that
fucking thing. I got a dog just tears at it So
that one it it'll be early early next year.
But forbidden some We I I hate to E We're calling it the End
Times Edition. It's essentially they're going
to be for Benzom and in the footsteps of the mad wizard
combined into one book. It's being he's he's almost done
with the layout that one will be on the editing desk when that
when I get back so that there's that more ball will be I'll be
sending more ball to print while we are gone.
I think I should have done a proof already.
Fine. I'm not worried about it.
I actually heard it did So that would that would will be going
to print while while we're gone so that it hopefully arrives
right right when we get back so we can do the big push on that.
And yeah, that we did the the Kickstarter digitally with that
because we wasn't quite sure what we wanted to do with that.
But print, hold it for later and what not.
And I'm just like, let's do it. What else There's like three or
four other things if you hang out on the for Benzon Discord
server like he'll he'll just every every month he'll just pop
up a new channel and that's like the the go to.
Also, somebody over there mentioned shirts the other day
and for the past week we've been doing a bunch of research on.
Print on demand. Stuff like that.
So the goal is to, before I depart for my travels, to have
the ability to order print on demand shirts from the place
that ships out of the UK as well as a place that ships out of the
US. And is that real quick?
Because I mean we're getting some some space Penguin shirts
too, because I I already have like 8 shelves of black shirts
and like two of them are just like tabletop role-playing game
shirts and I would like them more.
So SPI shirts are coming. Yep, Yep, we're going to do
that. So our friend Andrew over at
Fallen Arrows, he's actually part of epic levels.
He's Tiger Wizard. He was.
He's the the the gang that did that shirt that you're wearing
right now for, yeah, all of the shirts for Exalt, the funeral
for the past. Several years fallen arrows is
no mas, but I have discovered some other places that do that
that the exact sort of situation.
So yes, we're going to have a couple of options.
We're going to have of course the basic black with the pink.
I do have one that he did for me that's got itty bitty like in
the pink that's behind you Hunter.
We'll have that one and then we're and we're going to go with
a lighter. Colored one.
I'm trying to figure out exactly which one will be the best for
that will work, will worked up. What'd you say?
Mango colored. Mango all, I think.
Ryan would love that so. Right, orange.
Listen, I'm obviously getting the black and pink one.
Anyone that actually has seen the vods of our show knows that.
I don't know, we're a bit of a fan of of black and pink here on
the show, but I got to say, I love the teal logo that you guys
also have. I think.
I think it's your Twitter profile picture there.
That's a great looking shirt too, so I don't know.
Mango's nice, but I would rock a teal one for sure.
Yeah, that's that actually is the blue-green color that Doug
actually drew that in his. In his notebook.
So I don't know if y'all follow Doug Kovacs daily.
I think it's Doug Kovacs Daily Cats on Instagram.
I don't follow that one. Doug Doug posts up a new picture
of a cat every single day. A new painting, drawing,
watercolor, acrylic. You know, whatever it is.
And yeah, that drawing of Itty Bitty actually came through.
But when he came and stayed at our house a few years back with
Pre COVID, he was on a cross country road trip and he was
visiting all of us. Instead of all of us going and
meeting him at conventions and shows and stuff like that, he
took a you know, massive literally like 3 1/2 months road
trip and when he stayed the house he drew itty Bitty and
that. Picture just kind of stayed
around and all of the notebooks are just and I think it ended up
in one of the issues of his sketchbook.
And then a few years back, when Itty Bitty was first ill and
being diagnosed with diabetes, I was like, hey, can I use that
picture to make a thing for HIV? Well, it turns out Itty Bitty
was diabetic and she got diagnosed and she was good and
she had you know three more years with us so well, four more
technically. So there was that.
But yeah, he was super nice and gifted, gifted us that and
that's kind of been our I mean it's it's named after the cat
and. That's yeah, it's great.
But that original green, I've had the hardest time actually
recreating that. So because it was done in
traditional media, so it's like you can't exactly match the
CMYK, but I will do my best to make sure that color that the
teal green blue is on a shirt for you, right?
We'll make it. It's a nice one.
I'm definitely rocking. Absolutely.
If if the number of disaster tours I'm sure to have is any
indication, I'll probably give one of all of them.
So we'll see from there. I also love the new the the logo
on your website too that has just the space Penguin ink, but
the ink is shorter so there's two eyes next to it.
I saw that recently. That's really gorgeous.
Good one. And also scrolling through the
website is the the normal like kind of orange red color for
dread nights already out? Because I see it on the page and
I see a buy it now button. This It shouldn't be live
though, right? Well, you should.
You shouldn't be. It lets me go to 100 and. 70
sales today on that lets me go to PayPal, So I don't know
really, you know? Yeah.
Should I not just snag that real quick?
It should say it should say sold out.
It should say Dreadnight. Says they sold out, so and.
Hardcover. Not large hardcover, but
hardcover. Yeah, the ring of her.
So if you if you click that that by it now it takes you to I just
did it. Ryan's.
I'm more excited. I apologize.
So on top of, on top of the other stuff that's coming out, I
know at one point you mentioned that there's a second, a second
adrift coming at some point. Is this a yes?
Is it? I don't know if there's someone
else here on the show that might be able to talk a little bit
about a drift, maybe, maybe a little bit more about Adrift and
what the future plans are with that about if there was anybody
else here that could possibly do that.
Am I allowed there? Is that OK?
Absolutely. Yeah.
Like a drift is out and it's proof of concept.
I mean, we knew it was going to do pretty well.
But yeah, Talk talk is about. Sure.
OK, so there. So there's that.
That Adrift is the first adventure in this series that
I'm working on. And I shouldn't say working on
because I'm working on a lot of things right now.
So that's that's been one that's been in the in the back of my
head more more than anything. But essentially every every one
of the encounters in Adrift is going to be its own full length
adventure and or not. I shouldn't say everyone, but
I'm planning on everyone. We'll see how many I get.
I kind of have a little bit of a road map in my head.
But the the next one I'm going to do is the quiet room and it
is going to be a saw style like escape trap house kind of thing.
So I've been watching a ton of like.
Torture horror and stuff lately, so you know the extreme stuff.
So I've I've got lots of ideas brewing.
And are we talking like martyrs? Are we talking like Serbian?
Like how? How?
I would never. I've actually never seen A
Serbian film, and to be honest, I don't know that I would ever
watch it unless unless I had like.
Unless I was good, like planning to like write some kind of blog
about like where where extreme meets like unnecessary, you
know, like I but like, you know, I do plan to watch Salo 120 Days
of Sodom because I've heard that that movie is actually really
good despite being extremely disturbing and movies like that.
Yeah, Martyrs is a great example.
Martyrs 2008 is one of my favorite movies I think I've
ever seen. I think it's fucking beautiful.
Despite it being horrific and filled with torture.
Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, for the genre, I martyrs
high tension inside. Like a lot of just.
I mean fantastic that are great. The guy who directed Martyrs
also did a movie called I Keep I Always Forget Incident in
Ghostland, which is another one of those which is just full of
like things that you can't imagine.
But in, like, extremely beautiful ways.
Like, like it's got this weird, like, binary thing that just,
like hurts when you're watching it, you know, Which is one of
the reasons why. Anyway, I'm getting super
distracted. I fucking love her.
I should go back to the the the, the thing that got me here.
Yeah. Drift.
So anyway, the next one's going to be like a torture room, kind
of like sauce escape trap room kind of thing.
And then? We'll move on from there.
I basically my idea is to kind of link little things here and
there throughout all the adventures back to a drift and
vice versa there. There are like little things
here and there in a drift in the adventure.
In a couple of the the encounters that you can find
that are like tied to the ship and I kind of want to do that
throughout all of them. It's like link them all together
in different ways. So you can kind of play them in
any order and or run them in any order and you would still have
like kind of a cohesive story no matter what order you run it in
the. Kirby verse, the Kirby.
Well then that already exists. So, But anyway, yeah, that's,
yeah. So I should get working on that
next one, Derek. You demand it's better than.
Zero draft. That's and you've been thinking
about. For two months, Yeah.
And. And the really cool thing about
that is when when you. Sent me that that first bit and
then you you sent me you know the the list of all of all of
the rooms and stuff and we've spent some time going back.
You know we both suffer from a DHD and we both have a tendency
to like do more stuff and do more stuff and it's been a great
exercise and and both of us kind of reining it in and tempering
each other's expectations and expectations together and.
We have done the good thing and we haven't been like, OK,
there's going to be two of them and there's going to be this
amount of pages and there's this.
We've we've, yes, we've discussed how big each one is
going to be. Loosely, We've discussed that
they're going to be different form factors for each one.
And I mean, I'm, I'm not, I'm going to lose big surprise
eventually. Our goal is to collect them all
into some sort of box set when they're all out, but it's when
they're all out, we're not. Putting things on the timeline
and being like, yeah, it's going to be every six months, blah,
blah, blah. Because when you start throwing
up things like that is when you start to coming to the pressure
and you start phoning stuff in. You start getting, you know,
overworked and and bent out of shape like it's.
Again, it's part of the reason that I personally am not doing.
Kickstarters and crowd funds for this first year of of space
Penguin Like believe me, I I know where the money is at with
it and the marketing and all that, so you know and what it
does. But I do not want that added
level of pressure of having to satisfy backers.
The things that we make need to be.
Ready to go when they go, yes, eventually some sort of crowd
fund, it said. You know, for whatever it takes
for some future project or something.
But specifically with the drift like it and and puck sector like
it doesn't need to be like oh, six months from now we're going
to have another one. If we go a full year without it,
it's okay. We're both have other things
that we're working on that we'll be doing other stuff on and the
things when they get out. Are going to be that much
different, that much better. I kind of really, it's funny
like it just occurred to me that that this collaboration between
you and me and Kristen with that is very similar to what Jeff
Lemire and Andreas Sorrentino are doing with you.
Like if you like horror with the Bone Orchard mythos, which is
their new series of comic books and related graphic novels and
stuff. The first issue was the first
bit of the Bone Orchard mythos was a free RPG day last year
last summer 2022. And then they did a three issue
or no sorry A5 issue miniseries of no no.
There was a hardcover graphic novel called The Passageway and
then there was a 5 issue miniseries of comic books called
10,000 Black Feathers. And then and then the next one.
Is tenement and the 10 issues. And I just reason.
I'm saying this because I'm looking over here at the shelf
of the comic books, and I was like, I got comic books on
Friday that I just put over there that I didn't even yeah.
You know, I literally just was about to buy 10,000 Black
Feathers the other day. I had the whole stack from my
comic shop because I was looking for some new stuff to pick up,
and then I had to pick between that and there's another series
I just got. It's the new.
The What the fuck is it? Someone is killing, Someone's
killing the children. The the sequel series to that.
There's a new. Series that house the slaughter.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what it is.
I still got the first three issues of that and then I filled
out my plush, my plush series because I had a couple.
Of dupes that ended hilariously, by the way.
Yeah, yeah. Fucking good, dude.
But yeah, I got it now I got to go get that 10. 1000.
Because it looked really good, I just.
Had to pick but. Well, and the great thing with
that is and I think why it, why it works and it's a good, it's a
good comparison with what we're doing here is that each of those
series segments, books, whatever that comes out under the The
Bone Orchard mythos is selfcontained.
You don't have, you don't. I guess you get more if you read
the passageway and then read 10,000 Black Feathers and then
you, you know, as you release it, as they're releasing them in
order. Sure, who doesn't?
But they they literally don't have.
The passageway is phenomenal, by the way, very much worth the 20
bucks or whatever. For the hardcover graphic novel
like I it's it's really creepy good.
But if that's the only one you ever read, you would be fine,
you know, and you could do 10,000 Black Feathers.
I'm excited to die and I'm going to stay up all night.
That Power network we're talking about comic books.
And now I'm going to read. I I have a whole stack that I'm
trying to catch up on so I'm probably going to do the same
thing but and that's what that's the thing with with puck sector
is adrift has it's it's it's complete in and of itself
because of the the things that happen aboard the ship.
But you don't have to have played a drift to to play each
of the other books that are coming out and you don't have
to. Yeah, like we we will get a lot
of folks who'd be like, oh I you know when they'll come on on the
second one or the third one and they want to go back and buy the
other two. And that's that's awesome and
great and stuff. But it's not required.
Like it's not it's not like you have to see these and it's if
you don't have to play through these in a specific order,
you'll get like you said you're going to, you're going to pepper
an item here or a name here or a key card here and stuff like
that that that does work for other spots.
But I mean, if we're sticking with our, with our ethos of of
making situations and and encounters and modules, content
and making them great for people to interact with, they just
exist. They don't.
They. It's not required.
You don't. You're not playing against the
Giants where you know you go 123 through it, right?
You can do that. I mean I think a bad example
because against the Giants you can play them all separately and
and with this the slave vote, whatever.
It's like a it's like a big movie.
Like, you know when you get to the end of the movie and it's
like just a lead in for the sequel or whatever.
It's like it's not that they're all stand alone.
Exactly. Yeah.
One of my favorite novels are like that too.
It's like you could just read the first one.
Hyperion's a great example. Or like Miss Born by Brands
Anderson, you can just read the first one and you're like this
is a great self-contained thing, but the moment you expand into
that and you walk into the next one, like you get more out.
That's really cool. I think it's a really great way
to do things and I think like. You know what?
Having that pressure. Red Wall is a great example of
that. Red Wall The Red Wall series.
Example of. That because that I don't know
if anyone else here is red Red Wall besides I guess Hunter.
But that's actually a really good example, because Brian
Jakes really fucked a fucked. Ton of this.
And they're all in the same universe, and they all reference
each other in various ways, but there's not really any
chronological order to read them.
You can read them in any order you want.
Because he wrote them in the most wild order possible.
Like, you know, I think the 13th book is the first one in the
chronological series. Like it's just so weird anyway.
Yeah, great pool. Also I love Red Wall and shout
out because every time we talk about Red Wall, I'm like I'm the
only person in the room is Red Red Wall.
But now I'm going to go fucking play Mouse Redder.
Like I've read the very first volume, the very first one, and
I think it was when I read it, I was a little bit older.
You know, I was still probably a mid teenager because that what
came out and that came out when I was a kid, kid like 84.
Probably, maybe 89, but I think I I was.
I read the first one and I enjoyed it, but I've never read
any of the other ones. But I also don't feel like I'm
missing anything by I'm not reading the rest of it.
Yeah, yeah. But you are missing so much
sure. Listen, we got yeah, we gotta
do, we gotta do Mouse Ritter, get some Red Wall action.
I mean, there's so many critter games that we could play Mouse
Ritter, Mouse Guard, Scurry. There's a bunch out there.
But one of the things you said that was next is Red Solstice.
And we've talked about it a bunch of times on the show.
When you were here last time we went through each of the the
zines and what they were for those that don't know because
this is Red Solstice #3 coming out.
Now, what exactly is Red Solstice Joe?
Red Solstice is our friend still like Andres 2 * a year.
Zine semiannual happens release on the Solstice and there is
kind of a menagerie you know conglomeration of really cool
neat stuff for all kinds of different RPG systems I think
what an issue 3. Kirby there's a Guild thing for
your game. I didn't I didn't do any writing
for three I I I edited on 3 but Stella has some ghosts encounter
tables or no I'm sorry I ruined that has some random encounter
tables for like if they can't finally the people you walk up
to the last table of them is ghost which is so good.
There is some troika stuff in there There's another small in
installment of here is weird just weird chemical induced
natured I think that one that's for troika.
There's some BX it's just kind of a just a it's it's it's a
yeah just like a nice little collection of neat weird stuff
that you can drop in and drop out of your games for specific
stuff or sorry for for nonspecific you know I'm just
like ooh this is weird. I can run this.
It's kind of similar to OOH. I can pitch it back to Kirby.
It's kind of similar to what's going on over with.
I almost said Dark horse Shit it.
Is something that's a problem. But no, it's fine to dead horse.
Look at that. Like that, like that.
There it is, a little. Sneak peek of something really
cool. But yeah no at least it's we're
we're seeing folks start start to do that and folks have been
doing it for a bit you know like their stuff like knock what barn
was kind of and and released in in issues and stuff like that.
Like folks have been doing it for a bit and I'm I'm really
happy that we're starting to see stuff that is a bit more of it
can be used for all kinds of stuff.
You know it's it like I said more like more of them in Ash
St. more of just oh I don't know yeah maybe I'll I'll spend 15
I'll spend 20 bucks on you know getting grabbing an issue.
I don't. I don't know what's in it but I
think people will be pleasantly surprised with the quality and
Red Solstice because it's it's it's good and it's interesting
and it's intriguing like and it runs the gambit of comical.
Farcical like Scumbos problems, which is about a goblin that you
run into in the woods and he's got a broken down motorcycle and
he's got all kinds of weird random issues that Christian
Kessler wrote And then like I said you got more serious like
random encounter tables. It's just yeah, it's just it's
neat. There's just all kinds of
really, really cool stuff about it.
I worked out a deal once Stella. We've got some extra copies of
issue one and issue 2. So for those who don't have
issue one and issue 2, we're going to offer a three pack of
1-2 and three with a little bit of a introductory discount.
And then we're also we have copies to offer of #3 by itself
and that's been this has been like a super fun project.
It's always great fun working with Stella.
Going to get her on the show here with y'all one time she's
going to she's going to be on spell burn with me next week
because we're we're going to do spell burn on Friday.
We're going to have 15 minutes. I'll just say this, we're
working on our costumes already. There we go.
But yeah. You know, stupid.
Let her know that 100% anytime she wants to come on or
absolutely don't have her on where did the was the first
issue. Is that from LFOSR?
Like who actually printed that? Like why?
What was the what was the printing?
Or who actually puts that out? I can't remember what shop I
bought that on. Maybe I bought it all in LFOSR
shop is like the like the curated stuff.
But yeah, where did that issue one and two come from?
Yeah, no, Stella has handled all of.
The only thing that anyone I'll beside Stella has done is
obviously the, the contributors have, you know, written and
stuff like that and I. It took me, took care of
editorial. That's me.
Yeah. I I, I help her out and handle
editorial on it. But no, she she handles all of
the the design and layout and the curation and you know,
contracting with the cover artists.
She gets new cover artists from Tumblr every time.
She's fucking just crazy taste and she just finds these people
and they just kill it. Like we saw the teaser cover for
#4 over all the works that are that today.
I know, I know. But you know, she did printed
all those through mix in and then it handles that.
But yeah, you probably got it through LFOSR on the curated
content, yeah. I know I have #1 floating
around, but I'm I'm actually reorganizing this and since it
took me 6 months to do it the first time, you're just going to
see giant gaps and. It's got a book on the wall.
Behind me? Well, I mean, it's going to get
to a point. What's going to happen is I'm
going to get annoyed one day that I'm stepping over 30 piles
of books in and out of my room every fucking day, and then all
one day just be like, you know what?
I'm going to hyper focus my ADHD on this and get half of it done
and then wait another six months.
But I know I have #1 floating around.
I grabbed #2 out when I was digging through stuff.
But really? I had to have #3 coming out.
When is that? When is that actually coming to
the store? Like that I can just hopefully
middle of this week I sent Di the photographs because we
actually take those are actual real photographs of our
products. It's it's it's fun.
Like when we were building doing build out, DI was like Oh no,
no, no, no. Actual photos are better than
then mockups and stuff. I was just like OKII, you know
like we'll do it. So I sent photos to him tonight
time zone. So he's going to have that right
and early in his morning and probably work on Tuesday.
The goal is to put them up Wednesday so that they'll be
available there. We're still trying to figure out
which day of the week is going to be our our better day for
releasing newsletters and stuff. You know EE F usually does
theirs on Wednesdays and Sphere which does theirs on Tuesdays
and sometimes on Thursdays. Most a lot of that is like when
new stuff comes in there and I think that's kind of where we're
at too. We're not quite sure like we did
the new one. We did our first one on Thursday
because we launched on the Thursday and then I did the the
one week recap and the thank you, you know last Thursday and
then this week we tried out Saturday we do, we got some
sessions you know because you can see all the analytics like
it's it's it's it's a it's a learning curve.
There's not going to be any one perfect day especially during
the summer. But the goal, because travels
are coming up soon, is to get it out.
I think Wednesday because I know next Friday EF is having their
summer sale or yes, next Friday night.
So I'll be hanging out over on Necropolis server like I usually
do for those and watching everybody buy all kinds of crazy
random stuff. And I will say this that I have
received my cocreators copies of the of the summer Spectacular
totally not thinly veiled TV Pastor Shrimp off.
I don't know if viewers of the weekly Scroll are familiar with
that concept. So three years ago, well, when I
was working with Exalted Funeral, Matt wanted a special
Zine for summer and I worked with with Jared and Anxiety
Wizard and we did Troika Feld which was Troika backgrounds for
Seinfeld characters. Literally not it's it's it's a
freebie that results The Funeral gives out with the 1st 100
purchases you know during their summer sale and we followed that
up for the next sale with Frasing Galion, So Fraser and
Evan Galion. Oh, it's in my.
Living room. Yeah, that one's funny.
Like, I actually don't have a copy of that.
I need to ask Jared or Matt or somebody who has a copy of that
because I still have a truck about.
But we like we literally printed 120 of those and you know 100
for the for the store and then you know 20 for the if you you
know a few copies here for the creators and Matt and Kristen
keep copies, you know for the archives and stuff like that.
I know the first time we did one, people were very upset
because they were, they didn't get theirs and we didn't do a
PDF release of it because we're just like why?
It's whatever, you know, like. But if people paid attention
last year in the, I think it was in the bundle that we put out
last year for the free RPG sale, the digital bundle.
I think we slid Troika Field in there, I'm pretty sure So Eagle
those, those eagle eyes will be able to find the other issues at
some point here and there. So thus far there's been Troy
Cafell, there's been Frasingalian.
Last year we did TV House, which is a bunch of maps and floor
plans for houses, but in the style of the Judges Guild
modules, The old, you know, blue and magenta modules from the
late 70s, early 80s. But you know, using The Golden
Girls House, right? So I'm not going to spoil what
this year's is, but if people subscribe to the EF newsletter,
they will have seen a slight slight teaser preview in last
week's, which I thought was when I got down to the end of it, I
was like, shit, where you go Matt.
Nice one. But this year's was fun again.
I didn't get. I personally didn't contribute
much to TV House, but I did split.
I did half of the half of what we did writing wise for this
year's and funny story with that U PS:.
Actually ended up those ended up getting my copies.
Ended up getting delivered to the wrong address and luckily
enough the person who they got delivered to contacted me and I
got my copies. I was just like, oh he was like
what is it? And I was I opened it up and
gave him one. He was like, what the fuck is
this shit. I was like, I'm I I make weird
books with my friends. So yeah, I'm I'm excited for
this for this year's it's it's it's silly and it's a very
elongated and joke and I'm excited to do those.
Those are those are kind of fun things and like they're just
they just exist so. Frasing Gillian is such a fever
dream. Like, I've explained it to so
many people, especially when I got it.
I'm like, this is so good and they're like, what the fuck is
this? Yeah, I I would.
I would. I would love to play Frasing.
I was never a. Seinfeld watcher.
It just never hit the chord with me.
But for whatever reason I love this shit out of Frasier and I I
I can't wait to to at some point maybe play frasing Galion that
would be fantastic. Two things.
One, I never noticed that Schirkefeld was in that bundle.
I just went to my Dropbox and searched it and there it is.
I actually get to read it. And two I also did just look up
that newsletter and and to see the image at the bottom.
So I'm extremely excited for that as well.
So yeah, yeah. I guess I.
You probably look now too. Huh.
Oh, here, let me, let me shoot you a little Discord message
here. Boom.
There you go. Yeah, you know, I I didn't, I
was not aware of Troikafeld. I think the first time actually
saw Troikafeld was like way after the fact going for like a
lot of money somewhere else. So I definitely don't have one
of those. But when Frasingalian dropped, I
snatched that up in about 2 seconds.
I'm glad that they eventually put out some more.
I know Hunter you were able to grab one, but any of of those
kind of like weird offbeat, though.
That's that's what drives a lot of this.
The the shelf behind me is a lot of those just like weird,
offbeat little things that are like super hard to find and and
really interesting so. Yeah, I get that.
You gotta get the floor of the man.
Troika. Gating alligators.
Yeah. Oh yeah.
I mean I that I I Jeremy is a great friend and I I edited that
one of those. I know you said you're the one
who sent it to me. I haven't like.
Oh this is amazing. Yeah.
It's it's so good. It's it's all, it's all based
off of you know Florida Man headlines because down here we
have sunshine laws where you know information goes right up
in the newspapers and you know Florida Man headlines are pretty
classic. They're pretty good.
And so Jeremy Jeremy is a mostly lifelong resident.
I'm a transplant and yeah, he literally made backgrounds based
off of just random, random shit and.
Yeah, it is. It is a really stupendous piece
of of Zine satire and we soak it in the wheat, you know, we
literally are like, hey, this is satire, this is farce.
This is not meant to be taken seriously because it's just not
like and if you actually live down here, like this shit is
real. Like people just is worked out
down here. It floor.
I don't want to alienate our Florida listeners, but no, we.
No, we actually do want to hey, have fun with your fascist.
The accuracy down there so is that is that I thought you said
it was like Friday, but I said the website here shows it's
Wednesday and I already set an alarm on my phone for Wednesday.
Am I wrong on when that might be?
Oh, you you might be. You might be Ellen.
You might be on tap. I'm just used to being on being
on the Friday, so maybe I had to change my plans for Wednesday.
But yeah, I'm I'm right there with you with like the the the
the weird and wild. Like I I think there are a lot
of folks who are just like, oh, zines, they're all.
You know what what we consider zines or what are considered
zines or what are what are sold as zines are like they're all
these like glossy and highly produced and blah blah blah and
stuff and blah blah. And I was like, yeah, sure there
are people who do that. I mean some of the stuff that
that we do is is like it too. But also some of the shit that I
mean I personally do is like forget everything you thought
you knew about bread robots. You know like part of The Cave
capable of spiders thing. Like it's literally 8.
Cages And it's nonsense about bread robots.
And what the fuck is a bread robot?
I don't know. I don't know.
It was three friends who couldn't sleep and we stayed up
over like 3 successive nights maybe, and two I don't even
remember. You talk about a fever dream and
we and just pounded it out and like you know, can't let it.
And I like, you know, David and David like making all this art
random shit. We're just all adding all these
words in and we posted it up. You know what I'm saying?
That we did like 3 in that series like Beans RPG and then
the new Leisure dream catalog and it's just just random shit,
you know? Like did I?
That's fun. Did I know that Beans RPG was
from that? Did we talk about that last
time? I think we did.
We did, yeah. Because every time I look at it,
because I, if I remember correctly, there's like no names
on it. Like, it doesn't say anywhere,
like who the fuck did this? I did.
I just have it one day and I'm like, what is this thing?
It's the greatest thing I've ever read.
But also it's like nothing but but everything.
Like, it's just the one of the weirdest, like most interesting
things on my shelves. I ran into it again while I was
sorting the other day and pull it out and just said that it was
like what the fuck is this? Yeah, and and that just.
It's. It's that sort of just like, da
da random, you know, wacky bullshit like somebody the other
day asked me. They were like, do you have any
copies of Country Carl Classics? And I was like, no, well, I'm
trying to find one for my friend.
I was like. I can print one and make one for
you by hand. And he was like, that's good
because my friend's having, you know, a rough time of things.
And I was like, oh man, I'll totally do it for that, you know
what I'm saying? But CCC was like me and some
other folks, but the spirit of it is me.
Kind of like writing out my brain and my thoughts and
feelings about growing up. In poverty and a lot of other
shit and a lot of shit that I experienced is you know like and
it's very angry and it's very full of vitriol.
And I actually had a person be like do you know that's poor
shaming And I was like nobody. That's my life.
That's how I grew up. That person and I and we we we
figured it out, but but it like uses like.
DCC rules you know country crawl classics it's like it's a it's a
no to like rhinestone Cowboy and you know Merle Hire and all that
dumbass shit and you know 70s country like it's it's litter
it's what I was raised on and grew up on.
But it's that's that's a sort of thing.
It's like those were like I think we made maybe 200 total
over a couple of print runs and they were literally sold and
given out at conventions and that was it.
And people are like, when are you going to do another one?
We're going to do a reprint. And I was like someday when we
get it, can we get the digital? We're like, no, because we never
did a digital, you know? And then we found it on the
trove rip. When?
The trove was. Still around When the trove was
still around, someone actually took CCC and and actually
scanned it because you could see the scanned lines.
On the page because this was like Azine like that literally
like it was black and white and I would take it when we when I'd
go to a show I'd go to like Gary Con I'd fly in and Doug and I
would go to the FedEx Kinko's or whatever and we would print it.
We would just print it off with whatever cheap card stock they
had for sale in their like clearance bin.
And so, like, some colors are bright orange and some colors
are this like drab Gray, brown, slate shit.
And all the interiors are black, like and it's and it's it's,
it's just, it's just. It's dumb silliness, but they
exist. And I too have like, there's a
there's an entire section of of of alienism up there, which is
this. Yeah.
Anyway, Alienism, look it up. Maybe you'll find it.
I don't know. We don't talk about it.
But whatever. I've got, I've got all.
All of those, like, anyway, like, you know, just random
subversive literature that I found someone's mailing address
and they were like, do you want these?
And I was like, yes, I do. And you know, I literally wrote
a letter to a person and they sent me this box of random shit
and it's great. When people come over to the
house, I can pull it out and be like, look at this, what does
this mean? And it makes me happy to hear
you say that about Beans RPG. Like, I think I even tweeted
about it before where I literally was just like, this is
like the weirdest, greatest thing ever.
And I'm not sure whether it's like absolute genius or like
just absolute psychopathy, and I'm sure it's a mix of both, but
it's it's just absolutely so good.
Shopping as hell, yeah. So just I I love that one.
I know that Neon Rot put out one that reminds me of it a little
bit. I'd have to find it to get the
exact name. But where it's just like every
time you turn the page you're just like, what is even going
on? Like, is this even a real game
or? I think that's.
I think that's the one that that Neon did.
Yeah, yeah, but but yeah man, super excited.
What's coming up? I mean, so I know that, you
know, EF does a lot of huge Kickstarters and stuff.
Now you said you're going to wait a year to do any
crowdfunding projects. I know you have like a five year
plan. Yeah, we're we're, we're waiting
and holding off now. I've been a lot of the second
wave, you know, next wave stuff like things are going to start
to trickle in and we're going to be putting stuff out here and
there. There are I had a meeting
yesterday with some with some folks and some really good stuff
and then had a meeting today with another large one there.
So there are like there are candidates for for that but
again it it's the the biggest thing our biggest desire is to
to not. To not feel the pressure of
backers over our shoulder. You know, like I have never run
my own Kickstarter, but I have worked at companies that have
and I have been on like, I think I've been inside 3738
Kickstarters. Like, I I can do without that
pressure. You know I can.
I I can. I know I I do understand the.
The marketplace I'm I'm learning a lot about the business and and
here and here's the the the thing with with the business
side of things is you can recognize that it is just
business and do part of it. You know like you can be the the
filthy capitalists. You can recognize the business
and you can choose to not play in certain parts of that, but
that doesn't mean that it's. Going to go away like those
those parts are still going to be there like yeah I I don't I
don't like the doing a crowd fund just not even pretty kick
started just a crowd fund on any spot when you do that you're
there will be certain folks certain Packers that are just
like they just go too far you know and then they you know
they. I get it.
Everyone has a different version of of the world we live in and
and being exposed to that does suck.
But for us, for for that first bit, while we're still figuring
all the little nooks and crannies out, minimizing that
level of distraction. Because I take things very, very
seriously when things don't go right.
Because I want everybody to be. Very, very, very happy with the
stuff that they get if they're spending their money.
Also because I as a consumer like to be very happy with the
stuff that I get. That being said, I do understand
like I have a I don't know if I talked last time I was on about
my board game that I'm working on to kill the wizard.
Can't wait. You kill him.
Kill the wizard. Kill the wizard that is actually
need to check in and see if that prototype of that boards
arriving this week and then try to take the board with me and on
travels and do some testing and stuff like that.
That one is rounding the corner. So that one might start getting
the the pre, the, the kicks, you know crowd fun Kickstarter.
Like who are we going to do it? Are we going to do it?
Yeah, that one. Well, for board games.
I definitely want to do that because crowdfunding in general
works. Here's the thing with ours
though, is ours are going to be way straight back.
We're going to be the Kickstarters that nobody likes,
Like, oh, you don't get any extra stuff, Well, that's okay.
You're getting a quality product.
You know, like our dream is to be able to print.
More than the minimum copies of this because we'd like other
folks, not just the backers, to be able to have them, and
worldwide logistics make the actual manufacturer of things
very difficult. And also when y'all see the
cover, you're going to be like, fuck yeah, so I need to.
I need to give me 3. I need to speak.
I need to just need to say a couple words here so that.
Christian Kessler knows that I am in fact, speaking on the
podcast. That's it.
We can continue now. Yes, they are.
President is not a video. Kirby is here with us.
But no just just just just twitch chat chat.
Well, no. Christian was just trolling me
in the in the work server. He's like, did Kirby already
have their turn to speak? Because I haven't heard this.
I don't know, Keep. It in play, you know, we only
have Kirby around, just as a wallflower, you know.
There. You go CK is also probably tired
of hearing me talk because he's had to hear me talk for like 11
years almost. Yeah, 10 years.
Sorry buddy. Sorry, I never.
Get tired of hearing you. Talk, but yeah, it's so.
So do you think the do you think the board game is going to be a
a crowd fun project or do you think that's going to be
something that just comes up in the?
Shop we're we're we're still 5050 with how that goes because
this is this talk, real talk when you are pricing out your
board game components. Books are a books are their own
bit to do. But it's.
It's less intensive in my experience to do things like
zines and perfect. You know, stable bound, you
know, saddle, stitched zines, perfect bound zines, books,
magazines, hardcovers, stuff like that.
It's I have more experience, but doing that, not that I don't
have experience, you know, doing stuff that's component heavy,
but with a board game. If when you're looking at the,
the number of units that you need to make versus the cost per
unit versus, are you going to have any left over to actually
put out there? I think we talked a little bit
about it, Fairox, the board game.
Yes. No, I think we did.
We talked about a bunch of stuff last episode you were on.
Yeah and and so they did the the the gang who did that the the
fair acts they they did a a small run and I think they you
know maybe like 204 hundred whatever and they and they put
it's it's an it's an ode to cannibal fair acts Cannibal
Holocaust anyway fun fun little fun little board game.
Great movie. Yeah.
Oh yeah, it's classic. But you but so they they did a
run of them and then there was a lot of demand.
So it they did a second run, but then they were just like that
that that's all we can do because it is financially
expensive it to, you know create board games and things that have
a lot of components. And so the real trick is, that's
my long way of saying. The real trick is with board
games. You want to hit a high number on
that first print run you want to hit.
Like 2000 copies, maybe 5000 copies.
Again it depends on the cost per unit and you know you're what
you're spending with marketing and and you know and promo and
all that stuff and the and how much you want to make back on
it. Like a lot of our stuff, well,
like most of the stuff with Space Penguin Inc, it's it's
it's partnership all the way down so.
Today, Speaking of an ink or sorry, kill, the Wizard
currently has six people and that and we're each getting a
percentage, we're getting an equal share.
It's a it's a fucking dungeon party, you know.
We're each getting an equal share of the profit for this.
You know, because you know Doug is doing the cover, and Doug's
cover will carry a lot of the weight of this.
I understand that. The other folks doing and
understand as well I'm doing. The writing, you know, Andrew
and David came here and we worked on the writing of the
game and they both had a lot to add into it.
Andrew's doing the math and cartography, Luke's making my
writing not suck and Eric is doing like the design and layout
and stuff like that. So there's there are people
involved and and so we want to make sure that we're getting
some money back. Off this too so the goal is you
know with that was specifically with the board game Kickstarter
is to is to hit the funds where you when you do that initial
purchase from your manufacturer you're hitting a really nice big
number and. I've done a little bit of
research here and there and that that 5000 mark is kind of like
the sweet spot where you you really need to hit minimally to
hit that. So it's relevant to some things
that Kirby and I are talking about too, you know, Right.
Yeah. So yeah, it's it's it.
I'm currently, currently, yes, it will go to some sort of
crowdfund whether then it's Kickstarter or game found or
crowdfunding going back or kid or Crowdfunder or whatever, you
know, we're not there yet. But yeah, because I think it it
just it's it's it's it's a larger marketplace.
You know, crowdfunding in general is a large marketplace
for board games like I go to Gencon.
Every year. Not not this year, but usually
every year. And I go to spend time in board
game land, because that's what I enjoy playing, because I'm in,
I'm in RPG land all day every day, right?
But I go and I leave the board game and I just and I wander
around and I and I look at people's boxes.
Hunter, you recommended Volcanic Bird in Me and The Voice
Concern. I found that and I am in love
with it. It is so much fucking nonsense.
Yeah, total nonsense. You have now entered.
Yeah, I love it. You have now entered the Duck
Cube phase like. And this is for those, for those
who don't know, the duck cube is an opaque white D6.
And that's it. And you just part of the rules
are you hold it out and you put it out there and you say, I am
now entering the duck cube phase and then you and that's it.
That's it, right? It's, it's a little ugly, man.
Makes games like. I make games like.
Yeah, he's definitely like a weirdo artist in the best way.
Possible. I fucking love it.
But that's that's the sort of thing like I I want every, I
want the I want it to be you know artifact you like that.
Like I, you know it's like like the the stuff that Justin does
with Severed. You know, like it's it's it's
artifacty. Like it's it has a reason to
exist other than just being another thing that you buy and
you and you put out. Like, by July, Miss Cube
checkers over here. Like.
They're just so cool. Like, although you have a, did
you get a bunch of little ones? Yeah, no, He gave me the when I
was at the The Baltimore show with him.
Let me see if I can get it out of my.
Face Here. Oh, here we go.
I lost one, but he gave me the gelatinous cube checkers and I
got the green and red. Cubes and the.
Checkerboard like, I mean, I'm probably I'll play checkers
probably with this at some point but it's just like such a cool.
Thing to have you know yeah I got the the giant Gillette in
this cube but only I mean you can't really see it because it's
blurred and it's it's clear but it's sitting back there it
doesn't does some some great stuff.
I thought I missed out on the the first cave Evil board game
but but yeah so so yeah that this is 2 weeks after the launch
of space Penguin right. And we're moving in all the
right directions. I mean I can't wait for for all
the stuff that's coming out. I mean Vulture is already on the
way. Red Solstice is on the way.
Another version of dress. So I'll have 4 copies of
Dreadnite which would be fantastic like a proof copy.
Let's Outback copy the black cover like that burnt orange
cover. Can't get enough Dreadnite.
Everything that that is going on.
Forbidden Psalm so and we promise there.
Won't and we promise there won't be any other covers of that
because we did order a lot of copies of the red cover and then
the and more of the soft cover. So yeah like it's and that's
something like we kind of went back and forth with when and
Will was like I don't know I think a black cover would be
cool. Let's just do it.
You know what I'm saying? We we didn't do it in a way of
like. To create artificial scarcity
like it was going to be snapped up.
We still have. I looked at the numbers today.
We still have half of the the black covers.
Like they're still available. It's not like we're like coming
out and doing that like I because that's the thing that I
just said, yeah, there it is. Because that's the thing that
like I come gets me to, you know, collecting for, you know,
making stuff like that. I also do understand why people
do it, but like for us we're just like, Oh no, a black cover
with a white skull would be really fucking cool, you know,
That's that is the thing though with a a lot of the rest of the
stuff that we put out there won't be like limited time only
or or you know, smaller, smaller, really smaller
quantities like that. Like we want to do things in
large enough quantities so our stuff is out there because we
want people to have it and also if we can purchase those from
our manufacturers and large enough quantities it makes it
easier for us to do things like show specials.
Like one of one of the most fun things that I that I get to do
in part of life is go to conventions and go to shows.
And one of the most fun things about going to show is going to
the scratch and dent table and getting a book for like almost
zero. Like some of those white soft
covers for Dread Nights. They're pretty flimsy, like
they're white soft cover books. They get bent up and stuff, you
know, get little tweaky corners. I got like a box of like 15 or
20 of them that we're going to take to the first convention
that we're attending at the end of September, Questcon Orlando.
And we're going to make the we're going to put four of those
books together and we're going to be like players pack you know
whatever. And we're going to we're just
we're we're to blow them because they're scratching dents.
It's not stuff we would normally like regularly retail and we
just want it to be available for folks come up you know someone
someone comes up and say oh man, I'd like that but I don't have
30 bucks. Cool.
You got you got a tenor. Grab this.
You know what I'm saying? Like you'll love it.
You want 2 copies? Take it.
Like I I don't know, I I like, I like stuff.
I like giving stuff. I like giving stuff.
So super excited about that. One of the things I do love
about the hardback too is so this is the the regular softback
for those that that haven't seen it yet.
All white Black skull says Dreadnites on the front.
You know, has the animal skull on the back, all that.
I love that. Although this is an alternate
cover and it's got like I want to believe to believe in things
you cannot dread not sound the back.
The actual cover front and back are like the in pages in the
book which I think is absolutely gorgeous.
I love getting. Like all of the bars, even the
market bark, the entire, the entire book is just stuck until
like the hardback pitch is really.
I love that. I think it's absolutely
fantastic. It just like I said, it feels
like someone just like wrapped a hardcover around one of these
and it's really, really neat. So this.
Uploaded that 4 pages to the cover section of Mix them.
I mean, I don't know what you talk about.
Yes, that is a. That is exactly how Will did it
the first time that he did FP before he brought it to, brought
it over to you know and we've just kind of stuck with that
through all the other books there.
Now now with us like it's just it's one of those when when we
worked with our printers for the big for the red cover in the
larger order of the the soft covers, they were like, wait,
Are you sure? Because that's just not a normal
thing. You know, normally if there's a
hard cover then there's a it's a different cover in there.
You know page counts are and we're just like no, we're we
we're lazy. We want it to be as easy as
possible. We just want you to like exactly
like you said, put a hard cover over the outside of it, so.
I think it's great. I love it.
I love that you get both covers in one book.
Like if there was a book that had like 3 variant covers, I
would want to just be wrapped around and sent all three times
every cover. Yeah, so, but yeah.
Like, like I said, super excited for that.
I mean, Jared, it's always great to have you here on the show to
talk about everything going on with Space Penguin.
I mean, I'm super excited that two weeks has passed Space
Penguin is up and running the newsletter.
Are we talking is, are we settling on a day?
Is it going to be Thursdays? Like, what's going on?
I'm not, I'm not sure like this week we'll probably now now if
if if you have summer sales Wednesday, we got to do ours on
Tuesday. No, it's fine.
Also, I think we actually might do Saturdays.
And my reasoning there was it's actually a convenient day for me
because I wake up on Saturdays and I'm just less stressed about
stuff because I'm not like read up and doing stuff.
You know, like the world of work is Monday through Friday, and
there's a lot of, there's a lot of folks.
I can only get to Monday through Friday, whereas none of those
folks are going to be in their office on Saturday.
So I'm a little, you know, a little less wonky.
It's not a real day. So, you know, there's that and
it is kind of nice, like there are a few places that you know
that I subscribe to their newsletter.
Healy made puts out a lot of his custom toys and stuff like that,
but on his new releases are on Saturdays.
Enter Decay does stuff. Dano Brown does stuff.
You know, a lot of the people that I subscribe to put their
stuff out on Saturday. So yeah, I think for for the
next couple of weeks we're going to go on Saturday because that
also just makes me less stressed and like I could just do it
then, so. There we go.
Looking forward to Saturdays. Now I know I I usually have my
e-mail at 0, but like twice a year it's like 150.
So I got a lot of stuff that I need to download and get out.
So I might have been a little bit late on Vulture, but excited
for what's dropping next. Can't wait for Solstice 3, which
is dropping. Can't wait for a Drift 2 Kirby
and then we'll see what what comes next from the Space Bank.
Knows it just gets bigger and better as we continue to go
through stuff. So you're.
Thank you again so much for being here.
You're always literally anytime. You should be discarded.
It's like, hey, want to chat again?
It's like fuck, yeah. Then I send it to Hunter and
Hunters. Like fuck yeah, we're doing it.
So always, always super excited to have you on.
Yeah, absolutely. Any closing remarks?
Space Penguin? Kirby.
I know you've been a little bit chatty.
Good night. Anything that you wanted to to
say here? Yeah, I will say this 2 words.
Alter Shock. That's all.
That's all you got to know.
What?
You don't know anything about Alter Shock.
I got. I got no idea.
I'm excited to read it. I'm excited to read it during
travels. Like, super excited to read it
during travels. Finally, Kerbs has been like,
hey, hey, hey. I'm like, I know no time.
Yeah, I got to get you those pages, baby.
Hey, listen, sounds like you got to give a lot of pages, but do
it so we can get your stuff. Yeah, so that is your episode
for tonight. Again, Jared, you're great.
Also, the three of us is nice to have all three of us at the same
time to prove that Kirby and Hunter are not just Jekyll and
Hyde and are the same. Not.
The same exactly pressing that we are in fact actually just
Jekyll and Hyde and this. Is prerecorded.
Yeah, yeah, cool. So thank you everyone in chat
for being here, everyone just listening.
And make sure you go to Space Penguin dot, Inc and snatch up
all that stuff and get that newsletter in your e-mail every
Saturday going forward from now and you all have a wonderful
evening.