Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan and with us we have a couple of returning
guests. We have Emily and Lucas.
How are you both doing today? Hello I'm great I'm a zip file
full of PDFs or whatever. Whatever.
Whatever, Hunter would have said.
I'm I'm that. Oh, gotcha.
You're doing. That's a good one too, Hunter.
Hunter's gonna end up stealing that one, but good you guys are.
You've been here before, which is great, and you're back for
those that don't know or haven't seen the previous episode.
And Hunter's not here to go look that number up for me, so I'm
not gonna do that. But who?
Who? Who are you guys and what might
people know you for here in the Teach RBG space?
Yeah, we're we're collectively graph bound press.
We are. If we're known for anything, I
guess it would be Precious Things, which was a tiny dragon
Zing quest game. Yeah, Precious things that would
have been Zen Quest 2024, which was kind of technically before
we officially formed grandfathered in like our first
partnership there together. But then since then, we've done
bonds between in partnership with Breitbart Games, which just
got fulfilled recently. I love seeing who got which
notebooks. Like the sketchbooks.
Yeah. Oh, you.
Got the. Box of screws.
It's a well, it's a screw and a thimble and A and a paper clip
and and a Bobby pen. That one's got real goblin
energy. My favorite part, and I want
everyone to know this, is that all of the backers that got a
notebook from the Bonds Between Kickstarter, all of that art is
from the same collage that was used to lay out the game.
So like that butterfly is in the book.
It's on the solo rules page, I believe, which is page 30 four.
No, it's a right page. So it's it's odd.
So it's 35. Let's say it's 35.
Getting there though, I think. No, wait, this was so.
Oh, no, it's got to be. It's got to be in the. 50s.
No, it's got to be in the 50s because it's a 60 page book and
I'm thinking of Gladys and Layout, so it's got to be like
57. 57. Really close to the end.
You're close. It's 54.
Is it before you play by post? Oh, and it's on the left?
Yeah. Or it's on the Yeah, it's a.
Solo mode though, it is exactly where you said it was.
Good job. Boom, Look at that for those in
podcast land. I'm holding up the Journal slash
sketchbookie situation from Bonds Between with the page,
which is phase 54 from Bonds Between.
But yeah, I will say I know you guys from precious things.
I remember seeing the sticker pack on Itch and that's when I
first this is all episode 188, by the way.
I did go oh. Great.
Which is only like 6 months ago because we did jump from 200 to
like 268 in in episode to episode 1 fell swoop.
But but yeah, check out 188 for the the before of bonds between
Yeah, but but now we're. In the midst of making that game
work. Yeah, Yeah.
Well, we're in the after. It's in my hands, which is nice
and it looks great. I love a square book.
I mean, anything that's a different format that's not like
an A5Z and is going to stick out on the shelf.
So this definitely will. But how is this?
How was it's really fun. We've only got to do this a
couple of times, I think. I would say.
I would say maybe like one hand or less where we talk about a
game and then either get to review it later or even less
common, get to talk to the people who made it later.
So, you know, since episode 188, how did this go?
How was fulfilling? How was running the Kickstarter
first and then fulfilling bonds between?
Oh boy. Good.
Like overall good, but it is a Kickstarter so.
I, I say, oh boy, because that was like, you know, that was,
that was two months of work and it's all new and all strange and
No2 Kickstarters are alike, I think.
But we had, we had some really great partners on that and it,
it turned out great. I, I had a great experience.
It was really cool seeing how people reacted to this.
Like very different kind of mechanic.
We like bonds between is an original system based entirely
on collage out of playing cards. So I guess if I would introduce
myself as anything, I'd be a deck of playing cards covered in
stickers. I'm I'm comfortable with that.
And yeah, like, it's like we thought it would work.
And then we gave it to people and they're like, this was
amazing. And we're like, oh, it did work.
Yeah, I I don't know how how often that Zine quest projects
like have time to play tennis. It's like depending on when you
kind of came up with that idea, but the the concept was based
around something we were pretty sure made sense.
But the amount of time, you know, between the four creators
that we had to like test out the mechanics and stuff and it was
kind of vibed by be in a good way.
So it's good to see that people like are getting out of it.
This is sort of authorial intent, but getting out of it,
what we put into it. Obviously they're going to get
other stuff too, but I think it was stuff from TTRPG kids who is
who is saying that they they like the brakes of like stop and
make art and that the collaging was really easy to get into, but
it still felt like creating something.
And I think that's that was one of my my intents was like, I
want people to be able to be like, oh, I am making like I'm
already doing it. I'm like I've been tricked into
doing art by a game and I like it so.
And I think collage is good at that.
That like lowering the bar of people's like stress of want to
create something, but it has to be like of a certain caliber and
collage is messy and it's supposed to be so it helps with
that. Well, yeah, a lot of people are
like, I don't do art, I can't draw.
And it's like, hey, anyone can draw.
Like very few people just are born with the innate ability to
like make masterpieces. It's it's a lot of it is the the
time you put into it. Yeah.
But like collage is complete everything.
It's like, I think this picture is cool.
I will cut this picture out. It doesn't matter if I like in
and out of the lines or whatever.
And then I just slap it on something and boom, I made a
thing. So that's great.
And yeah, as Inquest is very interesting, kind of like mix of
stuff because the number of projects that I'm like I've been
working on this forever versus probably a much bigger version
of I had this idea a week ago. And I launched it.
For scene Quest is is probably a bigger group of people.
So yeah, yeah, definitely. What did you mean by what do you
mean by Arthurial? You're saying Arthurial In my
head, I'm like Arthurian. That's what we're getting into
later. Yeah.
Yeah, authorial intent is like
the idea that I think it's more of like a novel, like a fiction
kind of writing thing. But where like, like the, okay,
imagine you're an English class teacher is like, what did the
author mean by this? Like, is this a metaphor?
Is this like a, you know, and you're like interpreting it?
And I think the authorial intent is like, did the author really
mean that, or does it matter what the author meant?
Is it only matter what the reader gets out of something?
It's like an argument that I have scratched the surface.
Like a like a death of the author, kind of.
Yeah, I think that I was gonna say, I think Sam's, Sam's book
Death of the Author is kind of about that.
Yeah. Well, I mean, it literally is
called the thing that is. Yeah, I'm always curious with
with that that because I'm not AI don't subscribe to depth of
the author in regards to TRP GS because I think games are made
with intent versus literature and and depth of the author was
a a supposition or something like it was for literature.
It's supposed to like that's where it derives.
And I'm, I'm always curious like where the when did it jump into
TGR produced for some reason where like you make a game in
order to do a thing and then these people were like then
death of the author comes in and.
Says you can't control. What you wanted it to do and
it's just like, well, I mean the the, the, the, the manual in my
car tells me very much what my car does.
I don't just get to say that it doesn't do the thing you.
Know what I? Mean.
So I'm always curious, like where people kind of land on
that line. Yeah, I see, I see some of that
with like homebrew, like people are going to take a system and
they're going to patch it to, to, to fit their individual
situations. So like in that sense, like can
you tell them what to do? Like, no, because they you're
not at the table. So they're, they're always free
enough that they can homebrew or add or, you know, make in moment
decisions and stuff like that. But I think with RPGs, like
especially I'll say like with the indie ones where it feels
like they're calling for specific stories, they're
helping you build kind of a specific experience.
It's really helpful to have the real intent there like in the
text so that you know, you're not on your own of like trying
to, you know, bring your party through this experience that
you've all set out to have together.
So I could see that it being more useful in in that case.
Yeah, well I I think 2 points to that one is like again back to
the car manual thing. Just because I put new rims on
my car and a new paint job and like.
Spoiler. It's still, it's still a car and
the car works the same way it does.
But also though, like, you know, you kind of need to know a rule
so you know how to break it, right?
So just because you add something in doesn't mean
knowing the author's intent allows you to alter it in a way
that makes sense for your table. So the intent is still present
versus the absolute absence of it.
You know what I mean? That's.
Right. Like does it void your warranty
if you start changing things like you can?
Make it anything you want while still acknowledging what like
they meant by you can just be like, I totally understand what
you're trying to do here. I get it.
I'm just going to do something different.
It's very different than being like whatever you wanted to do
doesn't matter at all. You know what I mean?
Like I just feel like that's a that's and but I also feel like
that line waivers is thicker and thinner across different
spectrums of THRBGS like OSR out to story games.
I think that line will widen and narrow variously through the
very, you know, the different types.
So it's it's it's it's interesting.
I think in in like especially in the what lyric games and stuff.
I think people care much less about arthral intent and and and
death of the author and whatnot. But the first big tangent to the
show. Yeah, yeah.
So bonds between the Kickstarter was a Kickstarter.
I can imagine it was stressful. It went all right.
It's that, it's that week. It's like, like if you're a
theater kid, you know, the tech week is always rough and then
opening night is pretty rough. And then after that you're,
you're pretty much golden. So yeah, it it went fantastic.
Yeah, if I remember correctly it funded later like it wasn't a
quick. Yeah, we, we were, we were
concerned there like we didn't make that 48 hour window that's
like, you know, gold standard starters.
It's like a couple, it was a couple weeks in when we finally
cracked our funding goal and we're like, OK, this is this is
going to happen. I think people are going to run
into that a lot more though. I mean Kickstarter definitely
peaked post COVID. Like I think since like I'd say
probably early 2022, a lot of like funding numbers and have
been going down and funding links have been going up.
So I think a lot of the stuff that people really post COVID
were like got to do 24 hours, got to do 48 hours, got to do
this whole thing. I think that's changing
considerably across the board. And I think a lot of good
projects are going to take a little bit longer to fund now
just because, I mean, also, I mean in this economy like it's
hard to ask some money from anybody, so.
Yeah, we're keeping an eye on it for.
Sure bonds and between in this in this house I.
Mean I can do bonds, but the between is when it might be over
the edge for me. Just a bank breaker.
And then so then it funded and I mean you guys were on talking
about it, it funded and it's in my hand.
And it's according to YouTube, that was six months ago when the
episode came out. So that's for Kickstarter.
That's a really quick turn around to actually have in hand.
So how did how did actually like fulfilling and everything go?
Yeah, we did hit one writing stretch goal, which I, I think
we could have like we might have planned to write that additional
bit of writing in the in the front of the Kickstarter, but it
didn't, it didn't happen, you know, whatever.
But then so we made it a stretch goal because it was like
outlined and stuff. And then we hit that.
So then that writing did add a little bit of time.
And I mean, the four of us, John and Bri and and Lucas and I, I
think agreed that we would prefer to have like a much more
finished product before funding. Because if I mean, six months is
great and and but it was still like there was like a time of
what happened was I we wanted to get it out by Gen.
Con slash August. That's right.
And so we finished the writing and then the layout and the art
and stuff. And there was like, I'm trying
to remember what it was, but I think there was just a couple
pieces of art because Brie was really swamped and she was, she
was doing some like landscapes. There's some images in the book
of like seasonal landscapes, but she was finishing up
illustrations and she they Breitbart was also trying to
finish up their last Kickstarter by 4 bonds between also before
Gen. Con So and I was on that team
too for layout. So we were we were kind of
fulfilling 2 Kickstarters. Most of our team was doing that.
And then I told everybody that I was taking the month in July
off, which had been planned for a while.
But July, as you may know, is right before August.
And so finishing things by Gen. Con and printing obviously is
part of that. But having things to the printer
and back by Gen. Con suddenly became having
things layout and print ready by the beginning of July.
So it was a little hectic actually, mostly because of
that. So it was less like the
Kickstarter pressure, I don't think was there.
It was. It was our own timelines of
like, because if we hadn't made it to Gen.
Con, we would have made it shortly after, you know, it
would have been. Yeah.
Still mid August, I think that we we were getting that stuff
back from the printer. So yeah, me and my my vacation,
month long vacation, which I highly recommend if you can
obviously financially take a month.
Off. At least like, I don't know, I
feel like that's a call it a sabbatical.
Do it once every like 5 years, but in this account.
So that that put a little in this account.
Yeah, I know. Well, I'm speaking from a place
of privilege and freelancing, but yeah, that definitely put
put like a weird, I don't know, like I don't expect that to
happen, but I expect something like that I guess to happen with
every with every Kickstarter. But I I felt proud of like the
timeline of of it still and and getting it all out.
But it was good. It became a little bit longer.
I don't know if that is a mixture of writing or of like
the layout and the square format, but I think we had we
were estimating like 44 pages and it was 60.
So oops, 60 is a solid. It's bigger though.
I mean, it's a great. I mean, if you're going to be
divisible by 460, is a nice round Number.
So, yeah, and, and I'm really extraordinarily proud of it.
I think that Breeze art is really well done.
I think that John and Lucas wrote in a way that it you can't
like distinguish who wrote what bits like they did a good job
collaborating on that and Lucas, you tell them why I did a good.
Show I mean. Where in the world are you going
to find another TTRBG who's both whose primary game mechanic and
whose layout conceit is collage? Like, people don't do that
because it's hard and it requires a very different way of
thinking. It's this like maximalist sort
of joie de vive. And, you know, it looks like it
looks like nothing else on the shelf.
It feels like nothing else on the shelf.
It plays like nothing else on the shelf.
This is what like there's this weird thing that happens when
you make stuff where you're like this one, this is what I'm just
going to do and I'm OK with that.
And then it turns out to be one of the best things you've ever
done. It's like, Dang it, we did it
again. I wanted, I didn't think, I
didn't try to make this 1A banger.
And then I think it was. Yeah.
Yeah, definitely. That's me talking, but.
Right. I mean, we're still in August.
So this is really this hasn't been out.
For a very long it is September, unfortunately.
Just barely. So, so sorry, sorry, September.
So it's just. Barely the beginning of
September. Yeah yeah.
So there's not many people say answer very long, but you know,
it is it's it's neat. It's very interesting.
I and like you said the layout is fantastic and Lucas didn't do
a very good job of of talking about Emily and how wonderful it
is, but you did a really, really fantastic job.
It looks great and it's it's a lot like for a little square
book to not feel like crowded, but to also feel collaged and to
have this much stuff in it. You did a really, really good
job laying it out. So good job.
Thank you. Yeah, thanks to my grandmother.
And and and. Everything.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hadn't yet. I didn't.
And I'm, I'm planning to update this, but it's not bookmarked
and I'm really sorry about that. But there's hyperlinks and page
cross references are all in. There you go.
And yeah, special shout out to my grandma who keeps giving me
her Better Homes and Gardens magazines.
So feeding my collage I mean. I, I will say that like the
thing that the thing that makes a, a layout feel like Emily's
work is that it has margin and space in a way that's hard to
come by. Like, and, and maybe OSR is like
this, or maybe if you're coming from Morkborg where it's like
maximalist death metal all over the page as much as possible.
Emily has this like very clean sense of how to make a layout
regular and balanced and breathing like it has room to be
itself. It's not cramped.
That's how I can tell when Emily did a spread.
I do agree margins are great. Don't forget margins.
People out there, they teach every GS if I can't if I if I
can't open the book without covering something with my
thumb. Your margins aren't big enough.
That's literally the reason they exist.
That is a really good point. Yeah.
But yeah, so that's bonds between which is what we were
talking about last time and this time you guys have another
project coming from the initial what I so this is let me write a
note, OK? And then I'll come back to this.
I am very curious to see how it hit you without sort of our
intervention on the subject. We're talking about so So what
is this new? What is the new Kickstarter that
you guys are going to be running soon?
Ish. Ish.
Yeah. Yes, September 16th, we're
launching very. Close two weeks out and it's
this one. Those of you in podcast land, I
have it here. This is we put together an
ashcan version of it for Gen. Con.
So this has this like very sort of scrappy, kind of rough
textured paper feel to it, which I love very much.
And this was version 0.5 of the game called Gladysint.
This is a two player asymmetrical TTRPG of purpose,
pursuit, and guidance that relies on the Arthurian legend
of the Questing Beast to ask big questions about what the object
of your desire owes you in return.
What does it mean to have and chase a dream?
And what if it's for anyone who has ever loved something more
than they felt they were loved in return?
It's absolutely chock full of Arthur.
Real intent just filled the brim with it, really.
Sounds like it. And Arthurian intent, you know
what I mean? Yeah, Arthurian and Arthur, real
intent, yeah. There you go and yeah, I'll just
say straight up, like hold that ash can up again.
This is peak teach RPG to me. Like like thick scratchy paper
.05 versions of games. I have multiples of those on my
shelves and they're my favorite ones.
Anytime you can get something like that that that is great.
More people like print or home print your ashcans and give them
to people like they. My God, Much appreciate it.
Yeah. So much fun.
And because we made that like I think on, on the itch, we have
the print it yourself, like files.
So like it's all, you know, the pages are all imposed and
collated the right way so that you can just like print them out
and fold it, fold up your own scene.
Because like that's the, I mean, obviously thoughts of people use
PDF's and they're hyper usable. But like if you want a physical
thing, like I'm just printing it in my printer, like if you want
to go to the library and print it like you can have this
scrappy ash can in your hands. So the.
First time because I I made this in a word doc before I gave it
to Emily and like good layout happened.
I listen, it's a wizard's job to be able to do layout in in a
word, I'll never. I don't really understand how
people do it. It's right, like, let's do it.
And I don't. I'm like, I'm like, I'm amazed.
I'm just amazed. But I see.
Print that off I'll. Probably make it even more of a
pain in the ass because I write in docs in Page lists so I don't
even care what's on the page and then have to be like oh that's
cut off into different areas. Sucks for layout.
Not my problem. Literally someone else's
problem, Yeah. Literally what you pay people
like Emily to do is to take this word doc that is pageless and
this fucking wide on the screen but only uses this much of the
screen because you write it as like a like a oh God why is my
brain breaking when you have like 1 and then it's like tabbed
into ABCD. Oh yeah, a bunch of and.
Then just write it as a like a list.
Yeah, like everything is just that.
I will say I I printed this off and like I remember the day that
I did it because I printed it off and I got the cover done and
I staple. I figured out how to staple bind
a book. I was like punching holes with a
needle and putting a staple in and I pulled it up and then I
suddenly, like I suddenly had a book in my hand and I just
walked around my house going. You can also for.
About 30 bucks on. Amazon you can buy a stapler
that is really long. What are the really long ones?
Oh, I should have done so hot. Tip Hot tip, if you don't want
to get the long arm stapler, if you don't want to pay for a long
arm stapler, you can get what's called a swing arm stapler where
it's swings sideways so that it's open air so you can fit any
any length thing in it and they just turn the little bottom bit.
Anyway, they're cool. Go look it up.
They're cheaper than long arm safely's.
I was, I don't know which one of those two things I was talking
about then because what I was talking about was like, I think
what you're talking about swing arm.
I literally just put swing arm in and I found like motorcycle
stuff. Yeah, I think, I mean, yeah,
long term safely's are like big, big.
They have like, long arms, you know, They're like.
Choked. Wait a minute, wait a second.
The long arm stapler has long arms?
That's crazy. Yeah, I know.
It's a shock, Yeah. Let me let me explain it to you.
So there's the. Swing arm stapler, it does swing
out, so that's great. No, I was talking about a long
arm, but the swing arm feels like neat.
So. So that's stapler talk for the
day. Right.
We're doing that. But punching the needle, you
know, it's also great. You can just like hand bind it
yourself. That's what I was doing.
Sewing machine works great too. You can literally just buzz
right down the middle. That's but I like, I like
punching a needle in and just like, did you hammer the staples
into it then? Yeah, I got like a pair of
pliers that I was. I set this set the staples
exactly the length of the plier from the bottom of the page.
Yeah. And see that's even more that's
you're going. Real.
That's love and that's love and that's.
Really, like this game is a passion project start to finish.
Yeah. So, you know, it got like, I did
things for this game I would never have done if this were my
job. And it is now my job, which is
weird. But this was like before then,
so here we are. So Speaking of from start to
finish, why Why? Like why A2 player Arthurian
duet TTRPG with the questing beast and and whatnot?
Yeah, so this whole story I want to give you in the context of a
phenomenon that I call the snap, which is that thing that happens
in your brain when you know that the mechanics in the story and
the meaning fit in a really important way.
So I wrote this on the way home from PAX Unplugged 2023, which I
think might have been like right after we met it.
Was a year before. Oh was it OK, Pack packs very
much blurs together. But in 2021 I started writing
this book which is a fully 300 page monster manual of Earth's
extinct species rendered for Dungeons and Dragons 5th
edition. So I came into the industry with
Dungeons and Dragons with like a massive hefty project and it
took two years to write this and in the and that ended and we
funded it in March of 2023. And I didn't know at the time,
but that was the beginning of another two year process to make
it a real thing that I can hold in my hand.
And it took this book was really hard to write in a way that
monster manuals don't tend to be because we were grappling with
climate change and the extinction crisis and the what
we owe to the world and our relationship to nature and how
to steward it well. And like all of the stuff that
politics and religion and faith and love and depression are made
of. And it, it wasn't going to be
real for another two years yet. Like I've heard people say that
if you have a call to do something, the call will be
tested. And that was sort of the dark
night of the soul. So I'm on the plane back from
PAX. You listening to the Hades Town
soundtrack, Absolutely trying, like trying to figure out how
I'm going to take another two years to make this book happen.
And I had just read, I think I had just read Dragon Douser.
This is a hassling games game that uses the same system as as
Gladys and would end up doing. But in this, you're sort of
moving over land like you're on a tableau of playing cards and
you're looking for one, you're looking for an ace.
So you're trying to be in a place that's a solo journaling
game. And I wanted to, I wanted like,
I was just sort of obsessed with this question, turning it over
in my mind. What does it mean to love
something more than it loves you in return?
And it had Origins that previous year, I had met an author who
said that if you are, if you have answers, you're a novelist.
If you have questions, you're a game designer.
So I wrote a game about this question and I just sort of kept
sitting with it for the next for the next two years while we
finally made my first book into a real book.
And that's that's what Gladysint is.
So for a lot of reasons, it had to be what it was.
I've been talking for a while, but the the snap.
So there's a couple of snaps that happened.
One was that the one of the oldest and one of the most
perfect metaphors for that relationship of like an object
of your desire that you have no idea how to reach and you don't
know how it feels about you in return.
One of the oldest and best, I think, metaphors for that in
literature is the questing beast.
It's almost like the Holy Grail if it had feet and could move.
So you know, this this like impossible to describe chimeric
beast that just is out there sort of running around yelling
at everyone, being a general nuisance.
And the knight has to go and quest after this thing and sort
of define the nature of his vows by or their vows by going and
finding this beast that was like that was a space to play in.
Like that was a statement of Arthurial intent, which I could
have a conversation with in the context of the game.
The other snap was the Carta system.
So this game I think came out in 2021 and it runs a lot of solo
journaling games that are based on exploration.
So you lay out and we're back to playing cards because I think
these are truly beautiful, mathematically impossible thing.
So you lay out a spread of these 20 to 25 of them, and you assign
a story beat to each one of them in the book by suit and rank.
So the ace of spades is always something and the 10 of clubs is
always something. And when you turn it over, when
you move your token on to that, that's sort of the narrative
that you interact with. So that was a good fit because
of this following The Questing Beast is about exploring a world
or sort of tracking something through space and in my case
time and to. But I had never seen a two
player card a game. So what that meant I could do
was add a second player to the system.
So instead of looking for an ace that you don't know where it is
you're and that would be your Holy Grail, you're looking for a
questing beast and you don't know exactly how they're going
to move and they can move more easily than you and they know
stuff you don't. And all of that is really easily
rendered by adding another player to that engine.
So yeah, that was that was how that came to be and that was how
it sort of snapped into place. Yeah, it's really interesting
the the, the way that you have the Knight and the Beast, like
you just said, doing 2 completely different things is I
don't describe it besides, it's neat.
It's a really neat idea. And what you have on the the
Kickstarter page that the knight is trying to get to the questing
beast but and the but doesn't know how and doesn't know how to
win. And the questing beast knows how
to win. But I guess the two only win if
the questing beast do does is doing its own thing and making
sure that the knight meets the winning conditions before the
knight gets to the questing Beast is such an interesting
play on mechanics. And just in general, like the
idea that one person kind of knows what's going on and one
person doesn't, but is like very purposely trying to figure it
out is is really, really cool. It's a great idea.
Thank you. Yeah.
Yeah, I think more of that. I just wanted to trace the
origin of that asymmetry back to when we were talking about what
the mechanics of the game should look like and how they should
rhyme with the concepts of the game and thinking about hidden
information in two player games. We had played a couple of two
player games. I don't remember one of them,
but one of them was fog of love. And it's like you, you're trying
in fog of love, you're trying to have a good relationship, but
you both have different hidden like incentives.
And so to put that on one person and and have them know the
tableau and the the the resource add addition, subtraction that
the mechanically that the knight has to kind of wind through to
to be the right be in the right place for the wind condition is
I think it's another good rhyme of those mechanics and concepts.
Yeah. Tableau great Word, by the way,
that keeps coming up. It's great word.
Still that one from board games. Yeah, I think Carta, Carta calls
it a spread. But you know, we're in, we're in
French and Middle English here, so.
Gotta get fancy with it. No, I mean we talk about this on
the show all the time, you know, and and we're we're unashamedly
like more, we lean way more rules.
Like if you give me a 300 page book, thanks, I'm going to stick
it on the show. But but but we do also say that
the shorter a book is kind of the more it has to work with
itself. That makes sense.
Like if you have a 300 page book, a lot of times it's it's
going to feel like it's a whole parts.
But you know, Zenes and one of the reasons I love Zenes so much
is because the more all aspects of it work together, the more
successful it ends up being. So like when the art really
works with the rules, really works with the intent, really
works with the design, like it, it, it sings, you know, louder
and louder, which is which is great.
So, you know, as you said, the snap, the focus, like having all
of the pieces all work together, even to the point where
mechanically you're like, well, if, if we're doing this in the
game, then the mechanic should reinforce this part of the game.
Yes, like all the time. Like that's great.
That's that's really what people should strive to have.
You know, like I've talked about this before with people just
like, why would you pick this system to do this thing where
like if you're building power, it would make sense to do like a
dice pool where you're adding to it because you're building up
like those kind of like simple kind of things to to add into
it. So yeah, I again, it's, it's,
I'm really excited to see the actual application of this
really, really neat idea. Cuz the asymmetry, not a lot of
games I think do asymmetry because it's hard.
It's fucking hard, especially if you have to.
Balance. It's like learning two different
games at once. Yeah, but that's great.
I mean, we're, we're, we're adults.
We can. We can do things at once.
Yeah. And it's, it's asymmetric goal,
but it's also cooperative in that if you you win or you lose
together. And so I think that helps
balance like your goals are ultimately this the the the same
or at least they end up uniting. In the end, to put a finer point
on it, you both know that. So you both have tokens and
you're both start on a joker on the outside of this tableau and
you're both sort of moving across it.
You both know that you must be on the same card at the same
time in order to win. But the Beast has this extra win
condition that they have to satisfy, and it could be some
position on the spread. It could be some combinations of
resources that the Knight has to gain or lose according to
different things that happen as they move across the spread.
It could be it could be how many cards they've turned over or
sort of the shape of their journey across that spread.
So this the night always has the singular objective like get to
the beast and the beast has to move away or closer or around a
certain place. And like only through their
behavior in the game and the resources they take and the
places they go can they communicate that information to
the night. So you are like, it is
asymmetrical in that you have different movement, you have
different roles, you have different jobs and different
resources to to use and track. But it is cooperative in that
you are both genuinely trying to make each other better.
Yeah, it's good. I'll I'm I'm a fan.
I'm very excited for this. It's, you know, like you said,
like that snap, like just sometimes like you hear
something, you're like, yeah, that makes fucking sense.
Like the question beast on the night.
And then doing like, again, this age metric system where, you
know, it's it's clever. It's really clever.
I'm excited for it. So I have the page up here for
the cover and the cover goes hard.
The logo goes hard. Like where?
Who, who? So you're doing the writing,
Emily, you're obviously doing the layout.
Who's doing all the art? Is that?
So the cover is all me the the finished interior will have
pieces by Fran Morton the include the night and the beast
are as seen on like the Kickstarter preview like header.
You could see that her art in in that example there and then some
some additional art beyond just those two within the book.
But we, we worked with her, she's done a lot of like, I
mean, she's Scottish. So her, her Arthurian art was
one of the things that like helped us find her.
So she had already had examples of, of like specific vignettes
from the Arthurian myth and stuff.
The cover came about well. The cover came about after the
the tote, the title, logo, wordmark, I don't know what to
call it. I think it's a word mark and I
remember giving you like getting the getting the word mark back
from you. That was that was a day over
here. Well, and because, OK, I think
I, I was talking to someone the other day and I was like being
clever on command is really difficult, like branding and the
graphic design world of, of branding and logo design is
like, there's a reason that it's expensive and like, if you, if
you do it well, it looks really effortless and it kind of feels
like, oh, of course, like, you know, of course I was always
going to be the, the logo of, of this.
So I'm I am really proud of the Gladys and word mark because it
I think does a good job of combining the night and the
beast and still being like illegible and felt really felt
really clever at the time. It's still really clever.
I will say this is one of the better like, you know, kind of
like logo word marks all for a game that I've seen in quite a
while. For those not in in in, for
those in pockets land, obviously.
I mean, go, go click the save button and back this.
But it's, it's Gladyson. But the G is like it's got a
Knight's helmet in there, but it also has like a tail for the
loop. There's a like a hoof print over
the eye. But it also like the, the font,
like the typeface you chose definitely speaks very towards,
you know, that kind of like our theory and fantasy.
I mean, it, it's great. It's really, really, really
good. So yeah.
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I remember and I remember
sitting down and like sketching and looking at like those like
drop caps that we associate with like a little manuscripts and
stuff and kind of pulling shapes from those.
And. And then realizing that like,
oh, this the way this G is, is there's like space for there's
like a slit that reminds me of the slits in in night helmets.
And. And then from there I was like,
bro, what if? What if the G was like really
good? What?
If what if we? Just did.
Yeah, I think we did. I don't.
I don't remember if you. I don't remember if you showed
me the G before the rest of the word mark.
Yeah, but I did. I got the G and I was like, I'll
figure out the rest. It's gone.
From there I feel like all great and terrible ideas all start
with bro. What if no, what if you know?
Yeah, and it worked. So the Kickstarter is launching
September 16th. I had originally cuz I know at
some point this is maybe cuz you emailed me like a long time ago
and said September. And I was like, bro, don't even
in August because my brain works about a weekend and it was
something like September 2nd or whatever.
And I remember seeing that cuz I was flipping through our emails
recently and I was like. Yeah, notably, it is past.
It is September. Yeah, but it's coming up you.
Know you had an extra 2 weeks and like those two weeks were
like, sometimes when you're planning a Kickstarter, you're
like, I just need two more weeks.
And it turns out like you needed another month or another six
weeks and you just got to go. And like, I truly feel that this
time we needed another two weeks.
So we pushed it two weeks and we're exactly where we want to
be, which is crazy. Well, listen, the timeline isn't
what you make it, so like, it's not.
Like someone. 'S coming to get you if you have
to push it again you know yeah I mean I've seen people be like
I'll let go when it hits 200 followers you know what I mean
like and that works out great and you guys have over 200 on it
so there you go but but as far as the book itself goes 40 pages
quote UN quote based on. Give or take.
Bonds between no, no, no. It's actually 40 this time.
But you do have some early bird specials here, including like a
relief print. I mean, just keep hitting us
with the vibes, you know what I mean?
But I'm also obviously a sticker set, but the enamel pin set, I'm
a big enamel pin guy. I still gotta put all mine on my
board but I always have. I get I got my coffin board of
enamel pin but obviously nowhere to hang yet because everything
my fucking yeah. I'm also an enamel pin guy.
I think, I sort of, I think I, I think I leaned and wait like I
wanted that more than maybe I should.
But they aren't like they are charming because we, we, we
wanted them as a set and we wanted them to fit together.
So it was that it wasn't. Asia, Asia, they did a, they did
the design of the Asia Kazab or Kazab.
I've never said it out loud. Only seen it in print.
Yes, they're a Polish designer living in the UK and they did
the design of the enamel pins for us.
Great job, amazing. We're excited to to have them.
They kind of like if you want to double as tokens for the game,
they're not obviously pins, so they're pin backed, but you
know, if, if you wanted to, you could use them in that manner.
We of course, like I'm sure many designers had, you know, so many
ideas for what the what the Kickstarter could have, you
know, we could have designed tokens, we could have designed
playing cards. And we really did want to have
it like as ready to go as possible.
So all the art is done, all the writing is done, editing is
done. Like the pins are designed, the
sticker sheet has been designed, it's been test printed.
So there's just like a few, you know, color tweaks and stuff.
The layout is, I'm going to confidently call it 90% done,
which means we know the page count is 40 and it's not going
to change. And I stand by goal I.
Don't see a stretch goal for more stuff.
But I mean, hey, listen, as someone who has backed a lot of
Kickstarters and talked to a lot of people that have run
Kickstarters but never run one myself, the biggest tip that I
give to people is have it as much done as fucking possible
before you hit go. Because the most, the biggest
and most crash outs I've seen is people who had an idea and hit
go and then started writing after it funded.
And I have a lot of projects in my list that I will never
receive and that started that way.
So. And we looked at from bonds
between like we had it, I would say 8085% done as far as writing
and editing and or yeah. And just like a lot.
We had what we thought was a lot.
And then, you know, it still took us, you know, time a couple
of months to finish up like the layout, the art, the, the
editing and stuff. So it's.
It's a, it's a cascade. It's number one thing.
Like you can't just be like, oh, it's just writing because you
still have to layout the writing.
You still have to put art in the page like you know.
Yeah, we were text complete ages ago.
And of course we've still been, we've still been enabling it and
it has like the writing has gotten sharper throughout the
layout process. But yeah, especially since this
is our first solo project, it was really, really important to
us that as much as we as possible, we were going to make
it so that when the Kickstarter closes, we will order the print
run like as like so close like within days if at all possible.
The best way those are my favorite Kickstarters that
they're literally like we'll send you APDF e-mail the day
that it ends and like. Pretty much like once this
closes, it's it's out, it's ready to go.
So which is also one of the reasons why it's very, very
simple. There's very little going on
here which is. Great.
I mean, in this, in this economy with, with, with what's
happening with international shipping and stuff, I can
imagine you're probably glad you didn't start messing with tokens
and cards and all sorts of stuff and putting things together
because I feel like that would be much more expensive
currently. Someday I want my own deck of
playing cards, but that is like, you know, we could have done it
and I wanted to, but for the sake of our backers and our our
customer experience and, and our own sanity and Peace of Mind as
we try and make this thing happen.
Yeah. We kept it.
We kept it really simple. Somehow I think this won't be
the last game that you make with cards in it, so you probably got
a good chance in the future. Yeah.
You're incredible. It's wild.
You can be a creator for your whole life and you still fight
with wanting something that you love and care about to be the
best it can be, even if that means nobody ever sees it.
And like just fighting that urge to be like, it's really, if it's
kind of gift giving, it's like we want to give, but we want it
to be like so impactful because it feels so meaningful to us.
And it's, it's really just better to have it out and, and
let people have it. And then we can revisit it like
we're free to. We're free to revisit it later.
So perfect does the enemy have done?
But but I'm a perfectionist and that's why nothing I've ever
done has ever seen the light of day.
So I'm proud of you guys for making things and actually
putting them out into the world. You are better.
You are better than me. But yeah, so that is that.
Is that is like the way I'd say. Yeah, yeah.
Hey, I guess I, I have a podcast.
That's what I get. I'm just, I'm, I'm a rare
person, you know, a white dude with a podcast.
There's so few of us. But yeah, so that's Gladyson.
That just means like in six months you got to have it
printed and in our hands and come talk about it again.
Sure. Yeah, let's lock it in there.
You. Go Yeah, super.
Excited for this one. We'll make sure that the links
to the to the pages are below. You guys do have like a a
TinyURL or a short URL and everything.
We'll make sure that that's where the the liner notes are
for the rest of your stuff for all of graphbound for for you
guys individually. Where can people find find your
stuff? Where can people find box
between and and and pressure things?
So graphbound.com, that's our website and our our web stores
there and you can read about games and stuff there.
Graftbound dot H dot IO for RH/PDF of things slash things
that are print and play or free or those kinds of things.
And that those are the 2 main places to get everything bonds
between right now. The best play, the best way to
to get a physical edition of that is actually to go to
breitbartgames.com because they have the physical editions right
now. We're still we're going to get,
you know, an order of those from them, but they're the original
print run came to them and they distributed it.
So that's the best way to get a physical edition of that got.
You Yeah. Well, guys, thank you so much
for coming on once again to the show.
Last time you were here, there were supposed to be the whole
the whole four person crew. And it ended up being what's
funny is you 2 have been on the show but I actually met the
other two. I got to meet.
The Breitbart people at Gen. Con, but I've got to talk to you
both here on the show. So we'll see if at some point we
can, we can switch that you guys want to PAX.
Planning to We'll see. I'll.
Get back to you at that one. So.
I was, I was just reminded that it's the week before
Thanksgiving this year. So yeah, I have to think about
that. I guess every couple years it
moves for a weird reason, but it's also the same week as
Sevilla Marathon so if you don't have a hotel yet, good luck.
Yeah, better get one. Yeah, I did know that.
Was to crash on, yeah. But seriously, thank you guys so
much for coming on. It's been a pleasure talking
with. You thanks for having.
Us, yeah, we'll make sure the links are are where links are on
the Internet below and and that's best for today.
So thank you all so much and we'll see you later.
Bye. See.
You, everybody.