Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan and with me I have a special guest today that
is Matt Morris. How's it going, Matt?
It's. Going good Ryan, thanks for
having me on. It's a I'm expecting to talk
Mouse Raider. Yeah, it has been too long.
When is like was the Lilliputian AP the last time you were on
the? Show I think it was yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah. We ran that we ran that little
adventure and y'all decided to firebomb a bat cave That's
right. Yep.
Sounds. About right sounds, I guess.
Yeah. And and yeah, as as anyone that
knows you knows, you're kind of the mouth sort of guy.
And I know you already mentioned it, Mouse Rider Month is kicking
off, I think you said tomorrow, right?
Yeah, tomorrow, 10 AM Eastern, 7:00 PM Pacific Standard.
But yeah, Mouse Rider Month 16 projects from amazing creators
across the globe. And yeah, we're all going to try
and fund our projects and we've got all sorts of cool
crossovers, so should be good. Yeah, I'm, I'm really excited
for it. For those that you kind of said
it's a, it's a bunch of people doing stuff for those that
aren't aware. I know backer kit has been
getting a lot more, you know, viable I want to say over the
past bunch of years versus Kickstarter.
And one of the things they've been doing is he's like themed
weeks or months or whatever. And last year that I think the
biggest one they've done so far was Mothership Month, which just
ended for the second year. But now you guys are doing mouse
Router month, which I can only assume is probably going to be
like the second or third biggest one that backer kids going to do
Because mouse router is potentially, in my opinion,
maybe not my favorite, although it is one of my favorites, the
best DGRBG ever written. You know, that is up for a
debate, but I think it's in the conversation at very least.
So it's going to be a pretty big deal.
Like you said, there's 16 projects.
Are they all kicking off tomorrow?
Yeah, so that's one of the cool things with the with on backer
kits back end. When they do these collaborative
months or events, they kind of control the switch.
And so we were all able to put our own like launch times in.
But then their team was like, OK, it really actually doesn't
matter because we're going to flip the switch when the
official games, omnivorous exalted funeral, losing games,
when they go live, everyone goes live with them.
So we have a a unified launch, which will be fun.
It's going to be really hard to try and be the number one backer
for all of them because they all go live simultaneously.
So I made a joke that I was going to try and have like 15
different screens, but we'll see.
Well, hey, you know you can dock screens.
You can put 4 windows per per screen.
So as long as you have 4 monitors, you can have 16
windows open at a time. That's.
That's too technologically advanced for me, yeah.
So, so we'll, we'll talk a little bit more about some of
the other stuff going on in Mouse Writer Month kind of as a
whole. But you, you have a project in
Mouse Writer Month and that's kind of what we're talking about
today. So.
So what is that? Yeah, So my, myself and Hugh
Lashbrook of 10 Acre Games from Australia, he and I about two
years ago, he's the one who who did all the back end work to
build the Mouse Rider library, which is our living curated
catalog of almost 1200 third party Mouse Rider things.
He and I have been working on that.
We became really good friends in that process and we decided we
were going to launch a Patreon together.
And so two years ago we launched A Patreon where each month we
were putting out just like a Mouse Rider adventure or a
supplement where it was like either MPCS, magic items, all
that kind of thing. And we were slowly building a
setting. Because both the way he and I
write and the way that we run games is like, we don't want a
story. We don't want you to tell us
what the adventure is. We just want a location.
And I think that's in in in line with the way you guys think over
here at the weekly Scroll and. Emergent narrative, yes, just
give me, just give me NPCS with motivations and give me
locations and stories. What the players do you know?
Yeah, exactly. And so we we put together, we
had nine different like locations within a wider
setting. And the setting that we've been
building is called Rolling Coast and it is a amusement park and
water park kind of the the Six Flags combo where you got the
water slides on one side of the roller coasters on the other.
And one of the things that I did differently just in the way I've
been writing this, all the mouse reader content I've written is
kind of like in a post human world.
And I had my own head cannon on as to how that happened.
But we wanted to shift and make it more, more just like our
world and humans are an element that that you have to avoid or,
or or run into. And so this is a fully
functional amusement park by day and a post apocalyptic scavenged
wasteland by night. And so if you're going to go try
and avoid getting stepped on by a toddler, you should go out at
night. But with with night time comes
all sorts of other super interesting encounters to be
had. So we have like on the overall
setting, there's a daytime encounters and a nighttime
encounters table. So you can do that kind of play.
But yeah, so, so, so he and I had been working on that,
putting that out for the last two years.
And then Andre Naboa from Games Omnivorous reached out to us and
was like, hey, we're going to be doing this Mouse Runner month on
backer kit and we would love to have you guys be a part.
And so we presented all of our stuff and said hey, what if we
put it together as a hardcover book?
And so we got greenlit for that. And so we've just been working
on re reformatting and doing the layout for that.
But it's a full 9 different adventure locations.
There's like, I don't know, 30 some odd new creatures to add to
mouse Rider campaigns. We've got all sorts of MPCS, all
sorts of magic items. But yeah, pretty excited about
it. Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's a
lot going on. And you know, my one thing you
said about mouse writer, I I really like mouse writer
projects that do different stuff.
Like you said, a lot of your stuff is written like a post
human world or whatever. One of the things I love about
mouse writer the most though is that it is in like the human
world and you're using human stuff and like you're battling
cats and all the rest of the stuff.
You know, like one of the ways that I describe mouse writer a
lot to people, and one of the things that kind of got my head
wrapped around it feeling really good was in fantasy saying like,
Hey, go fight a dragon. Doesn't really feel you're just
like, OK, we'll go fight a dragon, right?
It's been done so much. It's been, you know, such a
trope that that people think that you could actually go kill
a dragon, whatever, right. But then when you say, OK, like
you're a mouse and you're going to have to like pick up a, you
know, a sewing needle and a button shield and go fight a
cat, people go Oh, shit, like because that's and and that's my
favorite is that it's the same kind of trope.
But the danger feels super real is putting yourself in into the
body of a mouse or into the the thought space of something so
like small and, you know, maybe less powerful than obviously we
are feel make makes it all feel. I don't know real to me.
Yeah, I think I think Clayton Oatstein wrote a article about
his house rules for Mouse Ritter and, and put it out earlier this
year. And it was more of like, I love
the fantasy. I love magic.
I love this these great quests of noble mice.
But like when I run mouse reader at my table, it's super grounded
low magic and it's just imagine the mouse trying to scavenge
your garage. And I was like, that's so
brilliant. And it kind of like reframed
even the way I thought about it. And so a lot of even that is
inputted into this just hey, what happens when the toddler
grabs you by your tail? And that's like, I mean, that's,
that's a entire, I mean, there's no way a mouse is gonna take on
a toddler. So you just die or you have to
like try and talk with them. So it just it adds these levels
of play that are often missed in the more just like mythical
fantasy Red Wall style mouse writer campaign.
Yeah, because I mean, even in base mouse writer like in the
back that talks about like building up an army to be able
to actually fight a cat and stuff because they're like, if
you fight a cat, you'll die. Like that's bottom line is
you're just going to fucking die.
So like here's a way to like build an army or whatever, but
both rolling coast. I know you sent me a bunch of
stuff. What, what did you want to did
you want to go over some of that for for the listeners, for the
viewers, give people a preview of of what to expect to back
tomorrow. Yeah, for sure, for sure.
Well, let me just tell you First off what what folks are going to
receive. Because you have the PDF of the
book and the book is roughly 112 pages.
We've got some stretch goals to push it even further.
It's going to be a hardcover book A5, so it'll fit right
along with all your Mouse Ritter content.
It's going to be produced alongside all the official stuff
we've partnered up with, with Games Omnivorous and Exalted
Funeral to have our stuff. Just kind of in production in
the same location. So it's going to be same
quality, which is really cool. But you don't only get the book.
We've got a 68 page Zine, which I'm pretty sure when Chris
McDowell reviewed Lilliputian, which was one of my things, I
called it a Zine, but it was 70 pages and he made fun of me.
And so I don't know if it can be considered a Zine anymore, but
it's expanding the park. It's it's the hexes around the
outside of of the hex crawl that's included in the in the
book. We've just got like 6 more
adventures to be had outside the park, so that's included.
We've got all sorts of item sheets.
We've got a big A3 map of the hex crawl, which we hired
Fernando Salvatera, who's done some amazing maps in all sorts
of great CTRP GS. He's he's redoing the map that I
drew for the interior of the book, but then he's taking his
black and white, adding all sorts of color to it.
So it'll be a beautiful fold out full A3 size color map.
We've got a fun like mini game in there where it's like a ever
changing dungeon. So you have these dungeon tiles.
So you actually like build out the dungeon on your table and it
can change each time you dive into it.
So that's fun because you use the the dungeon tiles as like a
a deck and you're just like drawing the like random next
room, which is fun. We've got paper standees for
anyone who likes to do more, less theater of mine, more
actual stuff at the table, which could be used for like paper
standing skirmish games as well. And then we've got character
sheets. And I can't tell you who the
name of the person is, but we have hired an artist as a
stretch goal to do custom character sheets.
But if you have seen Tomb of 1000 Doors, that's all I can
say. There may be some partnerships
that have been done in the past. And then all of that comes in a
premium box that's going to be produced right alongside the
folks who made the official mouse reader box set, the estate
box set and the upcoming Junk City official mouse reader
campaign. So all of that is there together
in in the box set. So I mean, I'm doing a lot of a
lot of talking, but we've got the the hex crawl.
So we've got a full, full hex crawl, 19 hexes, all are
identified with like, hey, this is what's in the hex.
Here's a potential adventure that could be ran in the hex,
but it's not telling you. Like this is how you have to
think about the hex. It's just many of us have been
to an amusement park. So let your own creativity fly.
And so, and it's really make the park your own.
So some people will lean heavy into one faction because we've
got, I think we've got 5 different factions within the
book itself. And then we have, like I said, 9
adventures. So we've got the bubbling Tower
of the Fountain Mage, which is a large fountain in the middle of
the park. So it's like this vertical
dungeon where that involves swimming because you're a mouse
and you have to try and figure out how to get to the top
because it's hollow and there's an ancient wizard who lived
within there. But then there's also a koi fish
that's magical and he wants to kill you.
There's a, an adventure on the inside of like the medic
station. And so it's a, it's a, an
ambulance and you got to try and go in and there's a alchemist
mouse who, who lives within the walls of the, the ambulance.
There's a, a brawl at a waste dump.
And so Hugh developed actual like, it's pretty much like 1V1.
And you can also do like like PvP.
So like player characters can battle each other in a
one-on-one skirmish, which is really cool.
There's a adventure where you got to go through the walls of a
rundown, a snack shack to a location, all those known as Old
Pantry Ville, and it's covered in poison and all sorts of
stuff. They're just outside the the
park is the forest and there's a coven of crows that are evil and
there's a magpie wizard and all sorts of cool thing.
There's an abandoned zoo next to the park that has a porcupine
who escaped and kind of runs a 1920s nineteen 30s style mafia
gangs kind of thing going. And so yeah, all sorts of fun
stuff there. Oh, and there's Mex.
There's. 00 and Max too. Yeah, exactly.
There's a a group of mice, one of the factions live under the
roller coaster and they pick up just stuff that's dropped from
those who are riding the roller coaster.
They also will take apart bits of the roller coaster during the
day and pull pieces from it. And they're called the the gear
heads and they build Max. And we actually have this like,
fun system that he put together where there's a separate
character sheet and you take pieces and you add them and they
boost stats. And so that you can even do you
can use the brawl mechanics to do mech battles.
But then there was also mechanics to take your mech and
just play as a mech wandering the park.
So if you're going to fight that cat, you don't need your needle
anymore. Now you've got a mech where
you're like a mouse sitting on the inside of like a old soda
can and you've got a a baseball on the end of a chain for an arm
and all sorts of fun stuff. So yeah, it it's packed 112
page. That's a lot, yeah.
It's not just an amusement park. Like that's crazy.
You got a, you got a lot going on.
Especially still, even just for 112 pages, that's a, that's a
that's quite a bit there. I know that's not the only mech
project. I mean, we'll, we'll talk a
little bit more about some of the other projects here in a
little bit. But I know Mech Ritter from
Kayla Dyson and Laurie O'Connell is a is another mech thing
that's got cooking. One thing I saw before we get
into this a little bit more, did you have a post or an e-mail or
something about like backing or maybe it was Exalted funeral
backing a bunch of the projects and like the shipping is way
cheaper and stuff. Is it, are they, is everything
getting distributed through Exalted?
Like how is that? How's that?
How's all that working? So super cool.
One of the things that that I think the data came out from
Backer Kit and the folks over at Tuesday to Tuesday night games
for last year's Mothership month, One of the things that
came out was like the number one thing that caused people not to
back multiple projects was shipping costs.
And because if you're going to back 17 different things,
there's shipping costs for all of them and that just becomes a
barrier. So one of the things that
Exalted Funeral did was they put together Matt and Kristen over
at his ultimate funeral. They, they put together this
this super awesome bundle package for any of the creators
who wanted to be a part of it. They could join the bundle
package. So everything will be shipped at
once together for one shipping cost.
And so I mean, if you're in the United States and you back all
of them, so, so there's there's 16 total projects, 13 of them
are a part of the exalted funeral bundle.
If you back all thirteen of those, you're going to save
almost $150 on shipping just that.
And so that's, I mean, that and of itself is worth it.
So that's super cool. One of the things it did mean
was the amount of like pledge tears and different physical
items. We we weren't able to do that.
And so it was just like you can do 11 physical item that way.
It just, it makes the bringing everything together way, way
easier for the folks at Exalted Funeral.
But yeah, so so that's been super cool.
And what it's also done is, is some of the projects they've
partnered up for the cross collab, you can do cross collabs
on backer kit where like if you back this one.
Of the coolest things about these months is across collabs
and stuff. Yeah.
And so those can cross collab to add even potentially like a
physical thing because they're going to be together which is
which is really cool. So yeah.
And that's not the only incentive from the folks at
Exalted Funeral. If you back, if you back at
least seven projects, you get a pack of 16 beautifully painted
wooden meeples with a mouse that represents each of the 16
projects. So that's, that's something
super cool. And that's an incentive.
And that's, that's not just for folks who back the physical.
You can back one physical and then six digital and you're
still a backer of seven. So you'll still get that
included, which is super cool. Yeah, there's a whole here.
Let me kick over this real quick.
I had brought up a browser page for a second.
Yeah, the whole Masterymon pages.
I mean, it all kicks off tomorrow, but the page is open
right now and it's got the those meatballs are pretty nice.
Those are nice little meatballs there.
If you go to the backer kit, just Google back or get Bowser a
month and you'll find what I'm looking for.
That's that's a really cool thing to have.
I know that games omnivorous is kind of adjusted what they do as
far as moving forward and they're going to be working a
lot more with exalted funeral and exalted fuel has been
carrying the the mash order boxes for a while now and their
big project being junk city. But this is what you're talking
about here is the discounted group shipping is kind of crazy.
It's kind of, I mean, if you're, you can save up to what $275 if
you're in the rest of the world, like that's really cool for, for
them to do that and have all those incentives and what not.
But you know, I think that's one of the cool things that backer
kit does and allows for. In these kind of like month
things, is these cross collabs this much more collaborative
effort than say like Zemo or Zine month or whatever, which is
kind of just like people doing their own thing just kind of all
around the same time. So it's been really cool.
But yeah, why don't we talk a little bit more about rolling
Coast and then maybe we'll go over some of the maybe some of
the projects that you're you're, I mean, you're going to back all
of them obviously. I am, yeah.
I'm going to I don't know if I am, but I'm going to.
We'll we'll see. There's a good chance, but
we'll, we'll see. But I know you sent me the, the
PDF here. Let me actually pull that up.
So, so so to tell me, tell me stuff what what already got
going on here? Yeah, so, so in the PDF, if you
Scroll down to the park map, we've got that.
I, I mentioned earlier that we had 19 hexes with, with daytime
encounters and nighttime encounters.
So one of the things that Mouse reader does really well,
especially in like the core rules, is they provide you with
like an example hex and like a potential starting location.
And so the thing with rolling coast, you can either be a mouse
that it was like raised within the amusement park and now
you're ready to go adventure on your own.
You've heard tales of the mice who did before you, or you could
scurry in from the forest that's off to the east.
Either way, most mouses are going to start in the pavilion
at a place called Snacksburg, which Snacksburg is this
settlement with Inside the walls of the snack shack in the.
It was like the first thing that we even produced like 2 years
ago for this setting and it has just imagined.
I did some remodeling at a property that our our church
owns and we pulled a bunch of sheetrock off and we found
within the walls there was like hundreds upon hundreds upon
hundreds of candy bars and candy bar wrappers.
And we're like, how did this happen?
Well, mice had been stealing from like the harvest carnival
thing and just building their community out of candy bars.
And so I was like, that's cool. And so like I actually think I
said, if you, if you scroll one or two more pages down in the
PDF, we drew this isometric map of like all these random like
food items within the walls and how, how they get all of that in
there, I have no clue. But it is a hustling and
bustling town full of MPCS that you can meet.
There's a, there's the traditional Tavern that's called
the Oily Olive, and it exists within a metal canister of olive
oil that has all sorts of fun denizens in there.
They can give you adventure hooks to, to, to go out.
But yeah, so there's, there's the hamlet of Snacksburg, but
then there's all sorts of adventures.
And what was cool was one of the adventures that we wrote, I was
running a Dungeons and Dragons club at the local high school.
So I invited all of the high school kids that were a part of
it, these freshmen and sophomores to help me kind of
just build it. And so they even get credit in
the book, which is cool. So it was like super practical.
It's it's what makes Mouse Ritter, I think one of the
greatest games. It's so accessible for anyone,
whether they have a background in tabletop role-playing or they
don't, but everyone has, I mean, everyone lives in the real
world. So you can add elements to the
mice. And so that adventure is super
fun. It's it's high stakes, but it
also has a really cool magic item that you can have.
They can then be used to augment even more of the adventures
throughout. So yeah, the book, the book is
is sprawling with, with all sorts of information.
And then I mentioned on on that hex map, just to the outside,
there's a, a neighborhood and a strip mall.
The strip mall is actually a link to an adventure collection
I wrote with my two brother in And then the, the housing
complex, which is really cool is it's a, it's a old neighborhood
that's about to be destroyed so that they can build a new
complex of apartments or whatever.
But there's legend of some campaign level Mcguffin in one
of the houses. And so there's like a, a random
table where you'll roll the dice to even determine what it is.
That's the way I like running my games.
I as the GM want to be just as surprised as the players.
But then it's, it's kind of like, oh, I, I forget who, who
wrote it. That's terrible.
But the the gardens of yen, where it's like you keep going
deeper and things are ever changing.
Amy Allen. Yeah, Amy Allen and and so this
is like a gardens of yen kind of delve into a forgotten
neighborhood trying to find this Mac Guffin.
But as you go, we kind of poured it in some of the stuff from
Mark Borg with the the Doomsday Clock.
And so you roll a doomsday die, like each new house that you go
into and like slowly you'll see the steam rollers and the, the,
the tractor start showing up and you can feel the ground
vibrating. And like, there's, there's this
reality. If you stay in the housing
complex too long, you're going to get squashed by the by the
human construction crew. So grab what you can and get
back to the park. So yeah, all sorts of stuff.
I could talk. I could talk for way too long.
About Give Me Fern Gully vibes with with some of that stuff.
Exactly. For sure, sure.
I don't know if you said this already, maybe I I didn't hear
it. What was the impetus all the way
back at the start for an amusement park to begin with?
Yeah, so man, Hugh and I were thrown around the idea of what?
What are places that are super populated but have the potential
for endless adventure if you're a mouse.
So we were originally going to do like a shopping mall, which
was a fun idea, but it just, it felt like, how many different
department stores can you go to before?
It just feels like, oh, another department store.
We like the idea of like the, the, the food hall and so
amusement parks have that. Another idea that we floated
around was like a, a college or a high school.
So, so there was those ideas, but the idea of an amusement
park, I think he was the one who who had the idea initially, he
had this idea of like there was a Ferris wheel that had once
worked at an amusement park, but was it was retired and it just
became like the icon of the park.
But there was a group of mice that had a prophecy that one day
the the Ferris wheel would start to turn again.
And when that happens, things would change.
And so that actually just like was a spark that then led to one
thing after another. And we have a whole settlement
that's up on the top of this derelict Ferris wheel.
But there's a doomsday prophecy that one of these days it will
start going again, which will destroy the settlement that's at
the top of it, but it'll do all sorts of other things.
So yeah, that was it. It, it kind of just birthed out
of one of those harebrained ideas.
And then in pretty short order, probably probably two or three
months after we had started working on it, Emmanuel Meno,
who does the, the Cyberpunk game, he put out a image that
they were working on a back on, on, on a mouse rider setting in
an abandoned and derelict carnival or amusement park.
But then he put that out and then nothing happened for like 2
years. And I'm really excited.
I reached out to him was like, hey, mouse for the month doing
this thing. You should be a part like
resurrected. And he's like, we actually are.
We got some stuff coming. So there's a game jam though
that we can talk about later if you want to as well.
And so I know they're going to be releasing some stuff for that
as well. But like it just gave reading
the description of this is a derelict amusement park that
mice are going to be scavenging, it kind of we retrofitted that
back end wise to be like, what if it's not derelict?
What if it's not abandoned and it's functioning?
So there's even the potential for crossover between both of
our products down the road, which would be cool.
That's awesome. Yeah.
What's I know we talked pre stream about maybe chat in a bit
about one of these adventures. Did you want me to jump to any
of that? Sure.
Yeah, yeah, there's there's one that that I mentioned the high
schoolers help make. It's called the the Bubbling
Tower of the Fountain Mage. I think it's on page 48.
I don't know that it would actually be in the double
spread. We got a hyperlink.
This PDF in the future, don't
we? I.
Listen to. One of the first things I did is
pull up and and and scroll over the numbers and they're not
hyperlinked so you know better. Yeah, so this this adventure is
it's pretty fine. There's koi fish that mouse rid
of the way they do their their spells is it's these Obsidian
tablets that have these rooms etched into them that like
summon the spirit to do the spell.
Well, I just was thinking to myself, what if this koi fish
just had those rooms like etched into all of its scales?
And so he's just like the wizard who knows all the spells.
But so there's that wizard and it's a vertical dungeon with
which is one thing that I think is really cool that you can do
with mouse Ritter that it just makes more sense than like I
think there was the OSE adventure book that came out
with, with with the old school essentials box set where it was
the the vertical dungeon that went down.
It was like a tower that went, it was like an inverse tower,
which which I thought was super cool.
And I liked having more than just like one or two levels with
five rooms on each was like, what if we could just keep going
down or up? And so this one has a secret
room in it, spoiler alert, that has a pretty cool magic item.
In essence, it's it's a wish spell and it's it's so on theme
because what, what would you find in a koi pond or a
fountain? But like wishing coins.
And so like it's a wishing spell coin.
That's the fun thing with mouse order.
You can be like really on the nose and get away with it.
But that can affect like things down the down the way.
But we we created like swimming rules for mice.
And there's like the impellers because it's a fountain.
And so like there there's ways to avoid getting sucked into an
impeller and getting chomped up. But we have some fun preachers
in this. One of them is called a snack
Gollum. And in essence it's just a bunch
of like rappers and like all the things from the the food court
come together to form this Gollum and you got to try and
fight that. And so yeah, just all sorts of
goofy stuff in here. But this is super fun adventure
to run because the beauty with Mouseford in these settings is
each of the adventures. They're not telling a pre
written story. They can all be one shots.
And so I I've run this this adventure specifically just
reskins. I run it for Isle of X, I've run
it for Karen, I've run it for into the odd electric bastion
land. And I tried to run it in
bastards, but my characters just avoided the location all
together. And so I was like, whatever.
But but that's the beauty with with all the adventures in this
book is they're so especially for games that are in the into
the odd family. You just reskin it and you can
run it. So this book not only provides
you Mouse Rider content, but it provides you content for all
your favorite NSR games. That's awesome.
Yeah. I mean, I recently got two more
1000 doors, so we know you can do we know you can do Mouse
Rider and this one, this one will be, I think maybe just a a
little bit. I mean, 113 pages is still a
decent book. I don't know how you're going to
pack everything that you're talking about into 113 pages,
but what we're going to find out, right?
What were you, what were you mentioning right before we
talked about this something we said, oh, the jam, the jam.
What did you want to? What's going on with the jam?
Yeah, so one of the things that that I've had the pleasure of
doing over the last five years because because I'm like a
completionist in in all things and I'm like I like to just see
what people create. Like Mouse Rider for me became
the gateway for me to be able to start creating because the
barrier to entry is so low. So I've hosted like 7 or 8
different Mouse Rider game jams on itch and so talked to Isaac
and Andre because they had mentioned that there was going
to be a game jam for folks who submitted to Mouse Reader month
but didn't get chosen just because of volume and there was
going to be a game jam. So I reached out to them and
said, hey, would you like any help with that?
And they both were like, you've run all these game jams before,
would you just run it? And I said absolutely.
And so we got it set up and it's going to run.
It's going to start on November 11th.
So it'll start a week after the actual backer kit campaign go
live, and then we'll run a week longer.
And so it'll be for creators to throw anything up to just as an
opportunity for even more Mouse Rider during Mouse Rider month.
So it's just this giant collaborative game jam.
So that'll be super exciting. Nice.
Yeah, I was going to bring the jam up, but it looks like itches
down so. I know I just want to pull it up
to it's like. Yeah, but the story here like
you said November 11th, so so it's starting what like a a week
after the they kicked off. Yeah, we wanted to give it a
week to breathe just just that way folks who wanted to back
back her kit campaigns could do that.
And then if, if people still had resource leftover for folks who
were creating the jam, they, they, they could do that or see
it all at once and spread it out however they want to.
But that's the beauty with Itch, most of the stuff is, is super
accessible and Itch has that pay what you want capability.
And so I think that helps people in the community copies is, is
another super cool thing that Itch does because we think
creators and writers should be paid.
And if there's a lot of content, we don't want folks feeling like
they're they're missing out. So so the community copies
option is is is there as well. Yeah, I mean, and I I mentioned
that already, but you, you have run jams before, one of which
turned into a book, which turned into a project or turned into a
box which turned into everything.
So mine is is up all on the top there.
I'm not going to get up and go grab it, but but so we know you
know how to run a Mouse Rider jam.
Are you going to turn this into a book or what's the plan?
Well, so with this one, so so in the past we've had themes for
the jams, but when I talked with Isaac and Andre, we all kind of
just agreed like, let's have no theme, no, no rules, just like
anything and everything. Mouse rider as more of a
celebration. So it even says like on the itch
page, like you can, if you do like stuffed animals, like make
mouse Rider theme stuffed animals and put a link to your
Etsy store in there. Like we, we just want anything
and everything Mouse Rider. So like dungeon synth albums, we
want virtual tabletop assets. Like it can be anything to just
further the the joy of Mouse Rider.
Yeah, it's man, I love my it's such a good game.
Like I'm so excited that this is going to be a month.
Did you want to, I don't know, I I meant to talk about this
before it started. Did you want to take a peek at
like the list of projects maybe maybe you know, if you have any
like behind the scenes on some of them.
I don't want to do too much about some other, you know,
other people don't want to step on their toes, but I know that
you're kind of. No rising tides lifts all ships.
So let's yeah, no, no, I'm totally down before you do that,
just talking about rising tides and and boats.
So one of the cool things that backer kid we mentioned earlier,
you're able to do the cross collab thing.
And I actually got a cross collab invitation to something
outside of Mouse Ritter that's going to be running
simultaneous. And so the fine folks over at
Copy and Paste who who did eco mofos.
Eco mofos, yeah. Air launching Eco Mofos, Islands
of Weird Hope, which is this like water world idea.
And so David and I, we talked back and forth and we're doing a
cross collab for folks who back both of our projects.
We're going to include a pamphlet that's a crossover
because they're both into the odd base games, Mouse reader and
Eco Mofos. And so we've got we've got some
cool things that we're working on to to bring our two systems
together. And one of the folks who's who's
done some stuff both for mouse runner third party and eco Mofos
third party Dodo Cahedron games will pervs any award winner is
writing all the content for it. And so if you back both of
those, which they both go live the same day, you'll get some
free content there as well, which is pretty cool.
There you go. Wasn't there another?
Was it? Was it exalted funeral?
Was it the Prospero and and junk city has like a mother shit
mouse writer collab? As well yeah yeah, so.
So I don't, I don't have all the details, but Isaac said that
they and Sean from Tuesday Night Games have been cooking
something up. And so I have fingers crossed
that we're going to get like Lab Rats escaping from a science lab
on a space station and like Mouse Rider in Epsilon 4 or
whatever that be. It would be awesome.
Be sick. Let me sick.
One thing I love that Bagger Kid does too, and this is a small
thing, is, is the icons. You know when Mothership Months
does it, every program gets a little icon, and I like that
they're all the meeples for this one.
Yeah, that was one of the things that Andre, Andre was like, it
took a lot of work to make that happen.
And so we we had so many back and forths because we wanted
everyone's icon. Because Exalted Funeral doesn't
control that, Backer Kit doesn't control that.
We all have to upload them and make them like the exact same
size. And we had to go through all
sorts of hoops to make it work. But it looks visually stunning.
Yeah, and it's cool that the the if you back seven or more, the
meeples you get are the meeple logos for all the projects,
which is which is really dope. Like that's a this is again,
this is one thing that backer kit is doing that.
I mean, a million things you're doing that are better than
Kickstarter. But but I the the months and the
weeks and all that kind of stuff that they do are are really,
really cool. So project wise man, I mean junk
city. You know, they don't, I mean,
they got like 4000 followers. They don't, they don't need,
they don't need all the kind of stuff.
But is there any obviously we're we're we're probably all backing
all of them. But is there any that kind of
stuck out to you or that that you know what I mean?
Like again, not saying anything not or about anybody's project,
but anything you're like, this is one that like I can't wait to
get to the table. Yeah, So Rin by Owen Magali Ren
has been a project that Owen has been working on for about four
years. He he had sent me he he posted
something in the mouse word of Discord like in 2021 of like,
hey, I'm working on this posted some pictures had started
getting the art. And Owen and I have actually
built a just just a friendship on Discord and on socials, just
going back and forth because it always was taking like a, a
backseat put on the shelf. And like every three months or
so, I was like, Owen, when's it coming?
When's it coming? And two years ago he sent me
like a working PDF that was like 16 pages.
He's like, I really want to do it.
I just, I have so many other projects, so many other things
that are going. So he, he had hired Fernando
Salvatera to do some maps. He's shipment like, like sent me
the maps. I was like, this is amazing.
But then it just like was put on indefinite pause.
And I was like, the world needs this.
I've been wanting it for so long.
So when Mouse Runner Month got announced, I reached out to Owen
and was like, Owen, you have to submit this and this is going to
be the impetus for you to to get it done.
And so we went back and forth and he was like, for sure.
And Isaac had already seen some of the prototype stuff too, from
from months early or years earlier.
So this one is super cool. It's a whole realm.
It's it's more medieval, but it's it's on the coast and
there's like a lighthouse and the lighthouse has like a church
that the mice of illumination or something like that.
But it's just so freaking cool. The artwork is some of the most
gorgeous artwork I've ever seen. Mouse is that mouse and for
sure. Yeah, yeah, he released a video,
like a one minute promo video I think yesterday on YouTube that
has even more artwork in it. And it's just, it's so cool.
It's got a whole like system in it where you can like Curry
favor or, or, or sorts of things.
So there's like a, you can work up within like the, the, the
court of the of the royal mouse family there, which is which is
super cool. And then by way of like the more
medieval and whimsical kind of things.
Tales for from Will by Josiah Moore is another one I'm super
excited about. It's kind of like the spiritual
successor to Tiny Fables, which is a super beautiful Zine that
he released for Zine Month a couple years back.
So this is going to be a couple adventure pamphlets in that same
awesome artwork style that Josiah does.
I know Josiah is doing a bunch of the artwork for Junk City as
well. And Josiah has been super cool
to to work with. He did stuff for one of the game
jams that we did years back, Mayfield.
He did some custom art for that. He's done some custom art for
for two of 1000 doors and his artworks just perfect.
Hell in a Hog Waller is another one that I'm like super excited
about because it's like Mouse Rider meets World War One and
it's like trench warfare. There's a whole mini game for
doing like mass scale combat, trench warfare kind of stuff.
And it's got these super like intuitive firearm mechanics to
make it really have that like World War One vibe where like
you can attach like a spellstone to a slingshot kind of thing.
Like it's it's super cool that one is multiple scenes is a
whole like setting campaign. They've got some really cool
stretch goals and they're doing a cross collab with the Baron's
grip by M Allen Hall. So there's some cool things to
actually bring those two together.
Shoot me. And there's so many good ones.
My friend Antonio, he is doing one called Mouse Olympics.
And it's it's super cool. It's it's all these mini games
where you can like have your mice compete against each other.
And it's so it's less adventure, more mini game at the table,
which would be a really fun break for a long campaign.
This one I'm super excited about.
My brain just had like a nostalgia moment bubble up.
What was the cartoon? When we're roughly the same age,
ish. I think within probably half a
decade, yeah, there was a, wasn't there like an animal
Olympics or something where there was like animals doing
Olympic sports? Because I remember the one where
there was like, I think there were two lions or something like
that running on like competing. But then they by the end they
like, fell in love with each other or whatever.
But it was like an animal like, am I making that up?
Is anyone in China? Oh, that sounds super familiar.
That sounds super. Familiar animal Olympics.
Was it that like a? It might have been like a short
on like it was. Definitely like some Oh yeah,
there's definitely some Saturday.
Ha ha, yes, I'm not crazy. This is this is what reminded me
of that is this boom animal Olympics and that's that's the
Oh yeah, it's the the goat and and the the lioness or
something. Yeah, definitely giving me
definitely giving me those vibes for for the mouse Olympics.
That's cool. Let's go.
Well, I mean, you already need to expand it for the good
Saturday morning cartoon kind of game.
Our friends who gave a splits with their critters.
I mean, there's a way to happen there too.
But yeah, there's also good stuff.
There's a there's a one that's a pop up dungeon where it's
literally like arts and crafts. You'll you'll get the whole
thing, cut it out, build your your book.
And then as you open it, it's the full dungeon for like the
tabletop, which is super cool. And then there's MEC Writer,
which you mentioned, which is like a, a peel and stick sticker
character sheet, one where you can build your Max out of
stickers. I don't know if they're reusable
stickers, which would be super cool.
I I don't know the production side of that, but yeah, this one
is. Super cool wax paper, parchment
paper. Oh, there you go.
Yeah, yeah, man, I, I, I, I could probably say something
about all of these. Flights of Fancy is the follow
up to Feather Tail Falls, which was nominated for in any of this
last year. I forget what any it was
nominated for. It was like setting, I think.
But yeah, that one, that one's going to be sweet.
It expands and gives more adventures and Flights of Fancy.
Super cool because they they've just released that they're going
to have three guest artists and and authors the depending on
stretch goals hit. So like one of them is an
adventure that's written and illustrated by ML Boven who did
Derf, which just funded up. Expanded.
Just funded, yeah. Yeah, and then Bode H, who's
done some super good stuff. He did the the Decagog for
mothership and he did one of the adventures in the in the Mouse
Reader estate. But yeah, so there's some,
there's some super, some super cool stuff that's coming.
Yeah, what I was looking at was the Tales from the Night market
that is from Get Haunted Industries.
We recently did a review. We're here the public access.
So Joy Ray Allen, Tiger Wizard are are doing that.
So I'm I'm excited to see what weird shit they come up with.
Oh yeah. But, but like you said, I mean,
we've touched on what maybe like 1/4 of the projects and they all
look amazing. So I'm very excited to, to get
going with these. Question I have with the
shipping thing and everything. If you're one of those 13, have
they been like, hey, keep your stretch goals reasonable because
we're shipping all at the same time?
Like what happens if someone is is is caught slacking?
Yeah, so, so that's one of the things that I don't envy Andre
at all. I mean, Andre is Andre is an
amazing guy. And we've gone back and forth a
whole bunch because Hugh and I, we're both ambitious.
And so like we had all these ideas for all sorts of stretch
goals. It's like we do this, can we do
that? And Andre was like, I'm, I'm
sorry, but I don't know that that's going to be able to work.
You can opt out of the the the mass shipping thing.
We're like, no, we don't want to upset the Apple Car.
We want to be a part of this because like the community
building aspect of us all being together is more important than
us being like, look, we make cool stuff.
And so I think when it comes to everything shipping together,
the nice thing, one of the requirements was that like you
only have one physical item that's going out and now that
physical item could be like a, a collection of three zenes, but
everybody who backs physical gets the exact same thing.
I think it's the, it's the same kind of philosophy that Chris
McDowell used when he did Mythic Bastion Land.
It was just like digital. And so that that really helps
out. I think most of these creators,
a lot of their content is already done or at least in like
over the 50% completion kind of thing.
And so I don't know the exact timelines, but I'm pretty sure
we want to get everything to exalted funeral by late spring
because then it'll start shipping like summer of of 26.
Don't quote me on that. I, I think that's the, I think
that's the, the timeline we're looking for.
But yeah, I, I, I think if anyone's slacking, the beauty
about the community is we all rally together to help each
other out. And so that's that.
That's been something that's been really fun.
Yeah, yeah, I, I'm, I'm, I'm so excited for master month.
I mean, my wallet is pissed. I had I, I, you know, especially
following mothership month, I definitely took that a little
bit light this year. I mean, we're still waiting for
some of the mothership stuff from last year, so took that a
little bit light. But as soon as I heard about
Mothership month, I was like, man, who you gotta start picking
up some extra shifts during November.
Exactly. Exactly.
There's it's gonna be hard not to back all of these projects
That's about, I mean, that's about what we have to say about
this. Is there anything else you want
to say about master in a month to kind of wrap this up?
I mean, it's this episode. I'm going to try to get out
tomorrow morning by 7:00 AM when this launches.
I love it. I love it so so people might be
able to see this and then talk about the thing, but is there
anything else you wanted to say about it?
Yeah, I would just say I, I think I think by way of like
follow up, I know Andre and Isaac are going to be doing a
live stream as soon as it goes live tomorrow.
And some of the different content creators are going to
come on, do like a little 5 minute spiel like this is our
thing. And then I'm going to I'm going
to do a live stream on my YouTube once everything's live
and we can actually see the full page, I'm going to do like a 5
minute rundown of every project. And like, this is what I'm super
excited about. But yeah, I think it's super
cool and and. But real quick, real quick
timeout. Where can we find those streams?
Where? What?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think, I think the the one
that Andre and Isaac are doing is going to be live on Exalted
Funerals YouTube. And I think I think that goes
live tomorrow at 7:00 AM. One of the other cool things
that I didn't mention, but I'll throw it in here.
It's on it's on the the landing page for Mouse Runner Month.
If you back all 16 projects, you get to be in a game that's ran
by either Andre or Isaac as kind of less like an incentive of
saying thank you. So that's super cool.
So if you don't know who Andre and Isaac are and you want to to
see how cool they are, go just watch them on the live stream
tomorrow and then back all 16 projects so you can play with
them. I think that's cool.
And and we've had Andre on the show before and so you can go
back, you can go watch whatever episode that was.
Couldn't even be good to tell you that.
But I've never met or spoke with Isaac, but I love Mastrator.
But I, I've met Andre in person, talked to them numerous times
and just one of the nicest, coolest, just generally most
creative and genuine people I've ever met.
So really excited to, to, to see all of that.
I'll just try to like hit them up on the side though, and, and
see if they're running games. So I don't know if they're back
all 16, but we'll see. Yeah, but but yeah.
Yeah, and then my my stream tomorrow will be on my my
YouTube channel, which is just mana Don TTG and I'll post the
link to the video even on the backer kit page so folks could
could grab it there. So yeah, and we'll probably do
some, some actual plays of some of the adventures as as as the
month goes on. But yeah, just overall super
excited and super appreciative to you for having me on the
show. Like it's a it's always, it's
always a joy to hang out with the weekly squirrel.
Got to come on more. Are you?
Are you going to packs this year?
Packs you. I am not, sadly.
This was going to be the year where I was like, I'm going to
go to cons and I haven't, but we're going to we're going to
try to make it happen. If if you are at PAX EU, pop
over to the to to the plus one Exp table because 2 of 1000
doors, they're they're pushing it super strong and then they're
carrying a lot of my previous mouse rider stuff and and
that'll be physical there as well.
Got it. So, yeah, come on, mower, I know
you've had a 2025 has been rough year for for for everybody in
the world, but I know you've been pretty busy.
Definitely get back into to to tabletop.
You know, it's always good when you're putting out like it feels
like AZ in a day sometimes what you're doing come the show more.
It's been great to to talk with you and and good luck getting
number one on all 16 projects tomorrow.
Here's open. All right.
Again, thank you so much for being here.
Thank you everyone for being here as well and back on the
projects and we'll see you later.
Bye. Thanks y'all.