Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan and joining me today is Brian of Arcane Sword
Press. How you doing this morning,
Brian? Good.
How are you doing? Not too bad.
We're here. We're we're, we're, we're
getting there. We're almost on time and, and,
and we're going. So here we go.
Almost on time. Yeah, Yeah.
So Brian, for those who might not know, Brian, Arcane sword
press. Like who?
Who the heck is Brian Larkin? What is Arcane?
Arcane sword press? It is.
So I release like old school revival solo, like, like, you
know, old school D&D stuff I put out and I write for and I play.
But I'm also branching off into other games.
Notably, I'm really in a traveler right now, but I'm also
writing some stuff too. It's just like, you know, it's
my new hobby. Oh my God, we'll get you.
Did you get those at Adapticon? I think you mailed me most of
these like. Oh shit.
Well, there you go. Thank you which one came out?
I feel like I had this one from something and when you posted
these I messaged you and was like hey I need one please send
me one. I don't remember which one it
was. Yeah, heavy metal came first,
and I asked if you put out Space Truckers for Under the Dice vest
last year. And this bad boy too.
Oh yeah, listen, nothing wrong with mothership, I just like
Traveler more. Hey.
All this stuff for all this stuff for mothership's awesome.
It's all there. Might be a few things wrong with
mothership, but that's a that's a conversation for another day.
Listen, and I'm here for that conversation whenever you want
to have it, you know? We we have a whole episode about
it. I don't, I don't stop
complaining, trust me. But yeah, you do.
You do. Like there is no real in
between. You're like old school medieval
and far future, you know, third input, third imperium and stuff.
There's not like a middle ground for that, which is great.
But but yeah. And you do the convention, which
I'm sure we'll we'll talk about soon because that's coming up
and I will, we will get to it. But so, so I guess I'm sorry
from the beginning. What got you into gaming?
Like what, what, what? What was your first game?
My first game ever, ever, ever ever ever was probably when I
was in middle school when 3 when third edition came out, some
friends brother was looking for people to play a game, so I went
to play it and my only experience before that was like
PC games, you know? So I had like an idea what
fantasy was. I was playing Magic at the time,
but I always wanted to do D&D, but I just felt too stupid to
learn. D and DI didn't have the
patience to read these books, nor could I afford them.
Whatever. So I played D and D1 time, but
it was mostly like scary teenagers and then me in a room
so that I didn't play for a long time.
But I always wanted to. And I just never really had
friends that would show me how to play.
And that's like a huge learning curve.
Just like I need someone like show me how to play because it's
intimidating. Granted, like books back then
didn't tell you how to play the game.
There's like a weird sense of grandfather knowledge on how to
play DND. It's like I had zero idea.
All I know is how to play a Diablo or whatever, you know
what I mean? But then when I moved out to
this part of Western Mass, I met my friend Eon, who does you Can
Breathe Now games and we like work together and do stuff
together all the time. And I started playing at a
Pathfinder game with him. And then from there, just like I
just went off and through that I met Steve from Hive Scum, you
know, and like all this other stuff and it's just, you know,
slippery slope. You just kind of keep going, you
know, And I was always fascinated and like, I've always
been into like history and like the history of like, like art
history or music history. So it's like, what's the history
of D&D? So then I started going back and
checking out older versions of D&D.
And then I discovered the OSR scene, which is like reviving
the old school sensibility of play and the stuffed inspired by
that. So that's where I'm sitting at
right now. I love it over here.
Yeah, I mean the OSR so. So we're in the post OSRF if I'm
going to be a pedantic piece of shit and argue with people about
it, but the OSR scene is mini waves.
Do you find yourself because you know on your blog you basically
say Basic is the game like experts cool, Advance is cool.
Basic is game, which I could not agree with more.
I think basic is the best addition to DND.
So when you think of the OSR, do you specifically think of it as
kind of like the first wave, like revival, like retro clone
style O Sr. and just like straight to basic?
Primarily, yeah. Labyrinth Lord OSRIC.
I played Basic Fantasy specifically, which was on the
first ones, yeah, stuff like that.
And then, yeah, then you get the next wave of stuff that's
inspired by it, right? Or adjacent work.
And then you have things that like, don't fit in cleanly.
They're like 3rd edition inspired, kind of like Dungeon
Crawl Classics and stuff like that.
But like, you know, like I'm cool with Into the Odd.
I think Karen's great. I think all that shit's cool
too. It's inspired by the dialogue
that emerged from the initial retro clone wave on like the
Google Plus chats and stuff, which I was in before they shut
it down. So I was able to see some of the
Google Plus days. I'm old enough for that.
But yeah, so I'm right there with you because there's still
like OSC is BX basically, although I have some, I have
some math issues because I'll I'll, I'll get into edition,
edition wars. But OS CS great.
It doesn't. It did the best job at getting
it into the hands of everybody and I love that so much.
But I like basic fantasy because it's a community game.
It's been around the longest and it's literally built by a
community of people, not just by one person, and then published
out and it's always been free and it will always be free and I
love that so much. It has a really cool DIY vibe to
it. Yeah, no, I it's interesting
when you look at like the history of the OSR stuff,
especially when, like I said, in my opinion, it died in 2019, but
that it ended with, OK, yeah, we get a whole thing.
I'm curious to know why, but keep going.
Why? Yeah, why?
That year. Why 2019?
OK, so in my opinion, the way the OSR works, and I could be
completely wrong, we you already said there's like 3 waves OSR.
There was what I consider the OSR revival, which is the retro
clones of the first wave. Then you got like the second
wave, which is the ones inspired by that.
And then you got the third wave, which are those inspired by
that, inspired by that, right. And then then you bookended the
end of like the actual OSR as an art movement with another retro
clone that basically said, all right, all other retro clones.
We have OSC now and it is the most producible, accessible,
like people can get their hands on it.
We have a ton of content for it stuff.
So it's booking it by these retro clones with all of the
kind of like artistic waves of different weird stuff like into
the odd and stuff like that. It mixed into that.
And then 2019. Why?
Why did the OSR die in 2019 as a movement?
I will say the end of Google Plus.
I will say everything that happened with Lamentations, the
Flame Princess, which was like one of the premiere, kind of
like retro, like O Sr. games at the time with Zach Guest and
then Raggy doing everything he did to basically bury his own
grave with that game. And then OSC coming out late
2018, early 2019, which I said like put the stamp on kind of
like this is now what is going to be considered like the
forefront of the O Sr. And then the end of 2019 going
into COVID which in other movements kind of like put a
pause on, but when a movement kind of ended ish right before
having like a year or two of like nothing in my opinion, kind
of like set the final grave marker.
And then everything post COVID for me is post OSR.
It's things that are made in response to the movement, no
longer part of the movement. So now that it matters it's all
just pedantic bullshit anyway. But I consider everything after
2019 to be post OSR, NSR, whatever whatever branch broke
out of the OSR. All just one umbrella of the
post OSR. So those are that's that's my
opinion on why the OSR died in 2019, that everything now is
just response to the movement that's no longer part of the
actual movement. It's kind.
Of gotcha gotcha. Postmodernism after modernism.
It's interesting they say Lamentations because Limitations
was a derivative of basic fantasy and I wonder what
happened there. I don't know if Chris, the
creator of basic fantasy didn't let Raggy use basic fantasy for
his own shit, but the early basic, the early limitation
stuff was influenced and based on basic fantasy.
Basic fantasy also influenced some like other games like
sketchier ones, but it has nothing to do with the basic
fantasy community. Because that's the one I got
into. And I remember like reading
limitations because I guess like at the element of what you're
saying is like the the artsier stuff and the more edgy stuff,
the stuff that kind of pushed the boundary from being generic
fantasy into like weirdo fantasy.
Yeah, I can definitely see that cut off or that that line being
like, oh, what's push the boundaries of what you can do
with the retro clone? But then it's also like I've
always liked basic fantasy because it wasn't like trying to
be anything cooler than it was. You know, it wasn't like it
wasn't it was so generic that you could do whatever you want
with it. And then like you got the the
fucking edge shit they would see popping up.
I guess around that was inspired by limitations and even like
going back and looking at limitations now with the history
of everything and being like, man, this raggy guys, what a
fucking dork he is. And just like I'm sure he's
nice. Actually, I know he's people
that I know of that man said he kind of sucks.
But even though like when I look at his rules for stuff, it seems
like he made choices just to be different as opposed to like it
being motivated by anything else.
Which I think is kind of like a shallow way to construct
something. However, I remember people being
like dude fucking the summon spell.
First of all spell and limitations.
Great spell. I read it's like 3 pages long on
how to like summon a monster. I'm like, this is too Hardy,
There's too much here. And I guess like the early
stuff, like you're saying Google plus stage.
If you go back and you look at the Oh my God, the fight on
that, she's a fight on. And like the stuff that Matt
Finch was putting out then, which was cool.
It's also very wordy or the stuff that Dragon's foot put out
for AD and D. It's super wordy, like fucking
blocks of texts and some with reading comprehension skills and
EDD that is like, I'm not going to read any of this shit.
Give me the bullet point summary of stuff I look at Karen.
I'm like, great, this is great. I'm a dumb, dumb idiot.
I can read this in one second usable at the table and there's
stuff inspired by into that. Great.
This is great. All the NSR shit.
And you know what the NSR term is like kind of funny because
like even Yohai will say that's like I just said to like
differentiate it a little bit, but still in the same spirit of
like we're still reading the same like we're still inspired
by the same stuff. You know, it's just I guess it's
the post Google plus, like inspiration of like what are the
dialogue between fun gameplay agency and all this other stuff
to you that comes about in between the dice rolls?
How do you facilitate that and play and how do you write a game
that's inspired by that gameplay theory and ideas?
You know, so I'm I'm not entirely against with what
you're saying for sure, but I want to give personally, I want
to give limitations and fucking Zack ass like as much credit as.
So not. Saying that Lamentations was the
oh, I'm just saying that like the out the fallout of that kind
of becoming like a thing in the gaming space.
Oh, OK. It made a lot of people turn the
OSR into more of like the boogeyman that a lot of people
claim it to be, like a bunch of Nazis and shit, you know what I
mean? So it's not necessarily the
Lamentations was like on a pedestal and it's and it's, you
know, it falling was like a nail in the coffin.
It was more the fallout of because Zach was not just in for
those. No no, Zach has a piece of shit.
He can go fuck himself, but absolute.
Monster of a man. Yeah, so but the fallout of that
and the repercussions of that, like in the kind of like the
reputation ish of the OSR was a thing that that that did
affected I think even more than like the game itself kind of
going out of out of style. So that's what I meant more that
that's an important bit just because now, even now there's
people that are like, oh, oh, sorry, it's full of Nazis.
And I'm like, I can tell you right now, Nazis are everywhere,
but I've had way more problems with people that claim to be
liberals and leftists in the space and I've ever with right
wing people because all the spaces that I existed in the OSR
don't allow that bullshit. So we.
We've cleaned house a bit, which you know, you got to do.
You got to, you got to, you know, I hate to say it, but you
got to gatekeep the scene. You know, you're not going to
like, if I allow some chud into my fucking, which I would never,
I'm never going to let a chat in my fucking convention.
But if I did, and if they start saying shit, if I don't do
anything about it, what does that say about me?
You know what I mean? But like, yeah, for sure.
And I guess like, it's so funny because it's always been a small
minority, but then you get like these old fucking grognard heads
that will also like, say psycho shit on like Facebook and
they're like, oh, I only play old stuff because the new shit's
woke or whatever. And that's like a whole other
kind of fucking mutant. You know, they're not even a
part of the scene. They're they're just like inside
guys that like, and that are have Arrested Development since
they were teenagers in the 80s, you know what I mean?
Yeah, I'm right there with you. I guess.
Like I just think about now, because I've been following this
stuff since like probably 20/15/2016 was when I really was
looking at it. And I remember like not even
seeing it all that much back then at all.
But only like the occasional, like super occasional.
And it just kind of comes about a forum culture that's like, oh,
so and so said some bad shit, you know?
And I guess my issue is some people, I guess you'll still
have some communities within the community, so sub communities
that will still tolerate certain creators that have said some bad
shit that never really like gone back on it.
You know, they'll just move forward without acknowledging
it. And you know, granted, some of
these people aren't even in the United States.
I'm never going to see them. But it, it does kind of bum me
out knowing that people still promote their stuff and maybe
it's 'cause they don't know any better.
And that's totally true. Because if you're a new guy
getting into this stuff and you're like Oh my God, I just
discovered the fucking maze of the blue Medusa.
It's just like oh dude, like I don't know if you know about
this guy, but you know someones Yum.
Because they didn't know any better, but they found
inspiration from it, you know what I mean?
The number of times that I have shot a casual message to someone
who I think the last time they were like someone that wasn't
from America and they were like being like, I found this cool
game, dad it out. I shot a message like, Hey,
here's a couple blog posts and and maybe some articles that you
should read before you keep posting about this game.
Do what you want. I'm not telling what to do, but
here's some context. And they're like, oh, fuck, fuck
me. Okay.
But you know, I will say, I will say that you know, anybody that
happens to be out there that might have a big YouTube channel
that loves to flip through books that happens to be very much of
an apologist to these people are just as bad as them, in my
opinion. So you know it's each their own
and do what you want to do, but you know it is it is what it is.
It is a bummer because it's like in this day and age of the
Internet, all you have to do is a quick search.
You know what I mean? It's all you gotta do.
Yeah, it's just and you care whether that search matters or
not. You know, if you're like, you
know, I mean, you know, there's something for your political
it's. One search away and even like
when you get into arguments with people online, it's just like,
hey, maybe you shouldn't promote this guy because he says like,
like homophobic or transphobic shit.
They're like, Oh yeah, well, where's he said that?
It's like, I don't know, fucking use Google.
You want me to search for you, you stupid idiot?
That's just what I. Saw they do they do they?
Want me to do And then they don't respond.
You know what I mean? And they have to sit on it, but.
People need to go outside and get punched in the mouth a
couple more times where we we've gone too far from from
consequences of people's words and actions.
So. Yeah, and it's like the kind of
thing where you'll meet someone or you'll talk to someone online
and you're vibing with them. You're like, oh, cool, I like
what you're doing, this is fun. And then you find their Twitter
and you're go, you are absolutely not who I thought you
were. You're saying bad stuff, You're
promoting bad stuff. I can't be friends with you
anymore. And that's also disappointing in
the sense of maybe that shall me to like, cut that person out.
But I'm like, I don't really want this person that won't
acknowledge the value of my friends and family around me.
You know what I mean? Like, it's not even like me
being, you know, not agreeing with their politics.
I mean, when some people's existence is inherently
political and you're against that.
Like if you're have issues with trans people and I'm friends
with trans people, then I don't want to know you because you
don't think that they have a right to exist.
And that's fucked up. You know what I mean?
So get out of my fucking gaming hobby.
Get out of my scene. You're not wine.
Yeah, Harry Potter's nostalgia is not as important as the
people I know and care about so. 100% absolutely.
So, so Amy, but yeah, so that's OSR guys.
But yeah, it's actually really. Fun and inclusive.
It's just, you know, there will be vacational, but lunch that
shows up and you just got to be like, fuck that guy and then
move on. And then don't give them any
more attention because that's what they want.
That's why there's two reddits. There's OSR, then the OSR for
all the fucking dregs. I trust me, I stay far the fuck
away from Reddit. I can't and I won't and luckily
I was not ever pulled down that rabbit hole.
Especially with like the TTRVD separated that doesn't even let
you like talk about games you like and, and we'll just ban you
thinking that you're like shadow promoting and stuff.
But. Oh interesting, I've never
interacted with them. The OSR.
The regular OSR one's fine. The OSR one's the one where
people that got banned from that one go to.
Gotcha. Promoting the bad guys, you know
what I mean? So it's fine that there's like,
and it's like, not even that popular.
No one really goes to it because the good stuff's in the real 1
where that's inclusive and fun. There you go, Guy tells you
something. Maybe you shouldn't fucking be a
chud and maybe you'll have more friends.
I don't know what to tell. You.
Yeah. I mean, that's the bottom line
really is. I don't know, it's people.
I think just in general, especially with the advent of
the Internet becoming such a big part of people's, I'm so glad
that I grew up without the Internet.
It makes me so happy in my heart that I did not have social media
and smartphones didn't exist. Like I'm old enough that I wrote
my, that the Internet existed, but I still wrote my senior term
paper with books from library and that in retrospect, I'm so
happy. And I, I, I really feel bad for
kids that grow up like on social media with all the pressures
that that adds and things like that.
But it's just an interesting time where losing a lot of third
spaces, losing a lot of hobby spaces for people.
Not like a lot of people don't even know what they're missing
out on. Like I, me and my buddies
everyday after after school used to gather our pocket chains
together and drive to the mall and just hang out, you know, And
that doesn't, isn't really a thing anymore.
So a lot of people are being more online and then finding a
thing to be a part of and then making it their entire identity.
So then it becomes like not, no one will listen when you're
trying to explain or say or hey, this or that.
Because any negative thing that you say about maybe something
that they that they like becomes a negative thing about them.
So it's a lot harder to pull people out of those spaces
anymore, which is, which is rough, but so Basic D&D.
So you write a bunch of stuff for basic what?
What, what, what, what, what are some of the things that you have
put out for because I have, I have all of your traveler stuff
and then I have all of your OSR stuff in digital.
But what are some of the things that you that you made or what
was the first thing that you actually published for the OSR?
The very first thing, Oh my God, the very first thing I put out
was a scene called Fantastic Wizardry, which is just like my
own like house rules for like running a little domain and like
just some classes, you know, just like, it was just like a
fun little Zine, you know, I was kind of channelling like, you
know, because I'm from like the DIY like punk community too.
So I'm like, I'll just do this for games because that's like
what the OSR is, which is true and it still is true, which is a
huge appeal to me. It's like there's no barrier of
entry, you know, and I put that out and then it's still on drive
through, but it's like pay what you want.
But that was the catalyst for me to work on my main thing, which
is the means of domination, which is like my companion slash
master rules for BX inspired OSR games.
Because if you look at the Beck Me stuff, it kind of sucks.
I don't know if you've ever looked at companion and master
set rules, but they're not as cool as you want them to be, at
least for me. So I made my own, but I also
play tested them and worked on them for five years.
And then I also just made a general companion rule set for
all that, like higher level DND or just even like my own tables
for exploring a city or my own tables for making like a
signpost and like a town for like an adventure.
And just randomly generate like I'm really into procedural
stuff, even psionics. I put that back into BX because
BX doesn't really have it. So it's just like, it's
basically like 4 scenes compiled into one hardcover softcover
book. But that's the thing I'm the
most proud of, and I don't think that's the thing I'm known for
the most now. But I didn't make it free for a
long time because some fucking Shud game creator had started a
kickstart for his stupid fucking game that's known for domain
rules. I'm like, fuck that, I'm making
mine free now. And then I got like thousands of
downloads and promoted and stuff, which was cool because
why use overcomplicated loser Nazi shit when you're going to
have mine for free? Yeah.
So that's the thing I'm mostly proud of and it's the thing that
sells the least, which is fine. It's just the thing I'm the I
like, I'm really into and it's like what I've played with and
you know, but doing some dominations like my my favorite
thing. And it just got released in
Italy, so it got translated. So it has its cool, it has its
fans, but people know me more about my solo guide, which is
fine. Yeah, man, there's so much more
solo. Like, it's cool.
I do like solo stuff. I'm a solo adventure guy, not
really solo journaling guy. So I love the solo adventure
stuff and it's cool that that's been blowing up.
I mean, part of Post Covic and everything, but it's also just
like so many people are playing solo games.
Are you playing them because you like them?
Which is totally fine. Are you playing them because you
can't find other people? And then let's just get like 4
solo game people together and like play a game with like four
other people. You know what I mean?
That's where I'm always, yeah. So when you when you play, do
you usually find yourself in long campaigns or do you find
yourself in short arcs or you bouncing around systems like
what's your average day at the table or year at the table?
Oh, I've, I mean, so the stuff I play tested with domains and
then the later cogs and crab men, which is the follow up,
which is Medieval maritime adventures.
That is, that's a campaign that's on hiatus right now.
But I was actually talking to Ben who does empty Castle Press
and Steve from hives coming up bringing it back because they're
in that that group. But I started that in 2019.
So it's been on break for about a year and a half, but I only
do, I guess I only do forever games, you know, I guess when I
run Traveler I make it more episodic though, because I have
a OpenTable Traveler game, which I kind of treat is like a
reverse W Marches where all the players are there are in a low
passage. So they're in cryosleep on the
ship and the person that owns the ship busts them out for the
current problem that they have to solve.
And at the end of session they go back into cryo.
So the next time we play, if they show up again, they pull
themselves out cryo and they do that.
So it kind of creates like a funnel dynamic there.
But I usually do long term games.
Awesome. Yeah, I was.
I was chatting with some people at Adepticon and that came up.
So I'm going to ask me like what my favorite like games were.
And I was like, this is a, this is a hard question because I
play a lot of games and stuff. And we ended up like talking to
chatting and it came out where it's just like, oh, like it's
not even about the specific games we play.
It's about the style of game where those two people were at
the end of the day, they're like, we're we're campaign
players. We'll play one.
Like at the end of the day, we might test a couple games.
We're always going to come back to this game and run it forever.
And I was like, that's the opposite of me.
Like I, I love games and systems and stuff like that.
So more than anything I've done long campaigns, but I find
myself now doing one shot to short arcs of a ton of different
games. And it ends up being just a
completely different mindset in the way that you play games,
whether you have like that game that you love, that you're
always going to have like a campaign in the background going
forever or just like down to between systems.
It's such a different mindset than even thinking about like
the systems themselves and what they do for you.
Oh. Yeah, absolutely.
And that's like why I started doing conventions.
And I'm like, conventions are great because you can try out
these games. You know, you can do these one
shots for stuff you normally can't get a group for or like,
you know, your group. It's just like, I don't really
like, let's try this game. And then you're like, well, I'm
going to try to play at the convention so I know what to
expect. And when I get the book and we
play it, I know I don't like, I have a better idea of what I'm
doing, you know, But one shots have totally have their value.
Like the, we've got a couple of gaming clubs out here in Western
Mass that each time they meet, people are running different
games and then some people are running continuous games, you
know, so there's a lot of value in that.
And it's something where I should probably do more one
shots or like two shots rather, you know, just because every
game really does have something cool to contribute and it makes
your brain work in a different way that that's like really
satisfying. But I also like the the stories
you get from a long term game and the like the legacy of that
stuff being like, Oh my God, like yesterday or two days ago I
was at a con with with Steve and then with Tyler who Tyler
Tyler's all right, painting on Instagram.
We're just talking like war stories from DND games, you
know, just like, Oh my God, you'll remember this happened
and we just like totally like elaborated on like it was great,
you know, and you don't really get that with one shots and one
shots you you get more like meaningful encounters and
meaningful moments that you talk about, but like the legacy scars
of like a crazy thing. And then it's impact in a later
game can make a different kind of impact.
So I listen, both are great. I like both.
Yeah, yeah. Until up into when I started the
podcast. Prior to that I was running it's
the last five EI ever ran and halfway through I had already
given up on 5E but we were still running it.
But I ran A2 year weekly slash bi weekly.
Sometimes it was weekly for months at a time, sometimes it
was bi weekly but ran for two years.
An evil campaign where all the characters are evil.
Super fun. But when you run a weekly
campaign for two straight years, the burnout of of being AGM and
running to be in campaign after that is pretty strong.
And kind of in the last couple months of that, I started the
podcast where we were doing like a new system like every week or
two. And I think that transitioned
from being burned all the campaigns to then jumping into
having systems like every week and then having people on to run
them and stuff is what kind of transitioned me into where we're
at now. Like I, I, if I could find it,
listen, if I could find a campaign group, I would love to
hop back into one. But you know, right now it's
just so much easier to to do the one shots, especially because
I'm on the West Coast and there is the hobby scene on the West
Coast for everything in as far as tabletop goes is next to
nothing. I think it's because, Oh yeah,
like there's there's some people in Portland, LA War games is
dope as hell, but not much else. And you know, again, we were
talking to Depticon and it's like, well, I think it's because
people just go outside for soap for basically the entire year.
Yeah, like you can just go out and like if you want to climb or
surf or do whatever, you can pretty much do it year round out
here in, in, in California. But if you're in like the
Midwest especially, you got like 6 months where you're pretty
much just inside because it's very cold.
And I think there's a lot more inside hobby kind of spaces
because of that. So there is not.
Man, I wish I had the New England scene out here on the
West Coast. That would be incredible.
We'd love to have you anytime you come out, you know, come
visit. We'll give you games, you know.
I will be. I will be visiting in October,
but I could. I lived in Pennsylvania for a
long time and I could never move to the East Coast again.
If I saw snow again, I'd be done.
I'm out. I can't.
Do it. But Speaking of conventions, you
you have 1:00 and you're running it and this is going to be
Arcane Con 2 that's happening this year 3.
So how did that come about? And for those that darn't aware
of Arcane Con, like what? What is Arcane Con?
Arcane Con is, I know it's our focus tabletop convention, but
we also are into any kind of tabletop hobby stuff that's
either old school, old school inspired or independent, you
know. So you got a lot of cool stuff
showing up. Like this year someone submitted
classic rune quest from like 1980, whatever.
So someone's running that. I got some cool 28 community
games being submitted and ran at it too, which is awesome, you
know, and I got like, you know, all kinds of shadow, dark Cairn,
DCC, yadda, yadda, yadda. And plus I'm like lesser, lesser
known gems that you don't really hear of in a convention.
So basically my whole idea is like games you don't play in a
game store. So basically I don't really
allow 5 E or any kind of like more mainstream games, you know,
not that you know, I'm not going to be OK once anymore.
I'm not going to you know it, but there's a big world out
there. And again, like going back to
what you said about like, you know, when shots are great or
doing like short term things because there's just so many
fucking cool games out there. I want to play, you know what I
mean? Like it's really cool.
And like this is the time to play them or time to try them
out or test them out or whatever, you know?
So I just want to create A cause.
Like most conventions, like if you look up a lot of stuff,
really the ones out around me, they're general purpose
conventions, which means half of it is like 5 E slash Pathfinder
Society and then the other half is like magic or like
mainstream, like bigger miniature games like battle tech
and like you know, like the current like Warhammer stuff,
you know, But there's like an old school, like old school
inspired ish bigger convention called total convention or total
con. It just had its 40th anniversary
this past year and it has all that shit at it.
But they do have like people that submit old games.
Like I couldn't get an Unguard game Unguard the 19741, the 1974
RPG that inspired Traveller couldn't get in that.
But then I learned to play at it, which is fucking awesome.
Someone was running original Space Hulk at it.
You have cool people just like old heads.
They're just like, I've had this since I was a teenager and I
like running this. I'm going to run it for other
people. I don't know, that's really
cool. But it's mostly a convention
that's like here's 5 E, you know, with some cool old, old
school stuff trickled in there. That's cool.
But I want mine all cool old stuff and all cool independent
stuff. So I curated, it's a curated
convention. I curate the vendors, I curate
the games. I kind of set the expectations.
Like I don't let, I mean I had one year, I had one guy as a
vendor, I thought he was going to sell like miniatures and you
know dice trays. He end up selling like 3D
printed junk shit. So I had to put up things.
With the wiggly tail shit. One of those people.
You know the ones. So I have to kind of put a when
I did when I set up Arc ink on this year and being like, hey,
I'm not accepting applications for people that do this or AI
anything. I only want people that create
stuff selling their stuff. So most of the vendors this
year, which is already filled up and there's a wait list, are all
independent creators or publishers selling their games
and art and like stuff like that, which is great.
So I'm just trying to like kind of facilitate that for RPGs.
The main influence for this truly was under the dice fest.
So when I went to Nemo a couple of years ago, because I've
always me and my friends that I play with always have felt a
little bit isolated in gaming. Even though there's there's a
lot of gaming, I just never really could get into the vibe
of a game store, hang out or a lot of the people I met at the
game store. I always felt like I was kind of
like an outsider in the sense of like, I don't want to sound
mean, but just like I'm one more.
I'm like socially aware and I just like this these games, I
want to play them and interacting with like rude nerds
kind of turns you off from wanting to play magic with them
or whatever. Not to say that was everywhere,
but I'm just like, this is a whole other kind of social vibe.
That's not my thing. Like so then I went to under the
dice. I'm like everyone here is just
like me, like everyone here, this convention doesn't smell
bad. Like everyone here is like
wearing like cool band shirts and shit and have tattoos.
Like it's like, it looks like my friend group just expanded into
like hobby stuff and everyone hears an artist and make stuff
and share their stuff and encourage each other.
Like that's fucking cool man. It's like, it's like the music
scene but for games. And I'm like, great, I'm going
to do this for RPGs right off the bat.
And it's blown up. Like my first year I had 175
people show up for one day, which is crazy.
And then last year I had about 300 people show up over 2 days,
which was fucking nuts. And then I pat that church got
was packed, packed, packed. There's more people showing up
than there were slots at games. I was like putting together
games last minute for people and making sure people, all,
everyone was able to play a game because you're always going to
get no shows for people that run games too.
So this year I did find a bigger space so I can accommodate up to
like 400 people at the new space.
And that also allows me to have more vendors.
So I have a lot of cool, wonderful sponsors and vendors
that will be there this year, which I'm really excited about.
And it's still in downtown Northampton, which is like a
college town that's very walkable, very scenic.
There's plenty of cool restaurants, music stores,
cafes, stuff like that. Yeah, I am very bummed that I
can't go to our King con this year.
I've not got a chance to go, but it's two weeks after.
Onto the dice. I know it sucks, I know it and I
can't. I can't find it on there.
Twice. Like if you guys had like bumped
it together and just said like 6 straight days, I could have got
the time off. But having it two weeks apart,
I'm like, I can't, I can't do that.
I can't get the time. I know.
So it's the kind of thing where I try to do it at least because
they moved their time to February or I'm into October and
I start doing ARC in kind of November.
But I couldn't get any space and I couldn't get this new space
specifically anytime in November.
And once again to December, you get into winter, winter problems
and then holiday problems. So I'm like, I have to go
earlier, I have to go into October.
And so I'm like, the only time I could do it was two weeks after.
And I asked like, you know, Steven Gage and stuff.
I'm like, is it OK if I do this two weeks after you guys?
And they're yeah, it's two different things, Whatever, who
cares? It's like adjacent, but like,
you know, different ones, all miniature games, the ones all
RPGs, you know, or rather once all miniatures with RPG stuff
and the other ones all RPGs with miniature stuff.
So it's fine. So, but having said that,
there's people that plan on going to both that live on in
totally different parts of the country that I'm like, you're
flying in twice for this. That's crazy.
All right. No I'm you do not know how
bummed I am. I'm still trying to figure it
out but between I did an event in January, I did Adepticon, I'm
doing between two Cairns, I'm doing under the dice, I'm doing
packs. My PTO is already shot.
I've been trying to make trades all year so if I can make it
work I will be there. But this will be the first year
I'm going to Utd, and unfortunately I have to, my
brain is in the skirmish space right now, so I have to
prioritize that one. But if I can randomly show up at
Arcane Con, yeah, we'll see. You're so obviously you're going
to be out there and great for all the people in New England.
They get to have these like 2 cons back-to-back.
There's like, it's blowing up, like there's a board game
convention, them helping out with a month later that's a
fundraiser for like a local public access company or a group
that like lost their federal funding.
And that's going to be all just board games, you know, But I'm
helping out with that. Like, you know, it's New
England. It's cold for most of the year.
You know, like, I don't know, you kind of cozy up and you read
something and you play something.
But yeah, I'll be, I'll be out between two cons as well.
So we'll hang out there. Awesome.
Yeah, I'll be there. I'm very excited for that.
It's gonna be interesting. It's gonna be interesting.
And like I love that there's a West Coast con and I can get
like a, a, a $300 plane ticket instead of like an $800 plane
ticket across the entire country.
So it's gonna be it's gonna be cool.
And and Hunter, my Co host lives in Oregon, so it's just a drive
over to Portland for him. So we'll actually get to see
each other for the first time. And like I think I saw him once
in the past like 8 years and that was like past two years
ago. And yeah, so it'd be cool to
hang out, but but going from going to Nemo and under the dice
to three years into this con 400 people, that's a shit load of
work. Like you have a job, like you
have things you're doing like how does, like how is this a
year long thing to get this convention going at this point
or lane? Like how many people do you have
helping you actually get it up and running?
I do it all myself, which is psychotic.
Yeah. I have people that volunteer and
help me out like at the convention, but as far as the
logistics and the planning, I know if I delegated some of that
to someone that's not, that doesn't have as much thrust to
be on top of certain stuff, I'm going to get frustrated and
stressed out. And I'm using a new, I'm using
tabletop events this year, which is not the best website, but
it's all right there. So it's actually you're helping
out with a lot of stuff. It's just a huge learning curve.
Whereas before I was doing everything through Google Docs
and spreadsheets and organizing and that actually was a lot of
logistical work. So this kind of has everything
in one place. I'm still learning how to use
the website, but I think like I used to book shows and stuff.
So I'm just treating it the same way.
It's just more like, I don't know you.
If you book it, they will come and I'm like, it'll be fine.
People have a good time. I'm just doing this, you know,
try not to doubt yourself. But yeah, I just do it all
myself. Although I'm going to hire my
friend Allie to help me out with a lot of it because she's a
professional event organizer for companies.
She's like someone I like collaborate with for like
anytime we need photography or whatever she like will help me
and pose with me for certain stuff.
So I'll probably hire her to help me out with some stuff.
But as of right now it's just me.
But I start doing this about 11 months out.
So when I found the space and I booked it, I immediately made
the event page and I immediately contacted all the vendors who
would see who would on return and I sent out emails to people
who ran games to let them know. The update and then from there I
just started building up to see the interest and grow from
there. But yeah, I I have summers off
as a teacher, so that's the big time.
I do a lot of this work. Otherwise I do on the weekends
right night. But as of right now, it's OK.
I mean, nothing crazy or stressful has happened.
The only time, and weirdly enough, the only issues I really
have ever had was maybe last year when I booked two people
for the wrong game accidentally. So I kind of give them a book
and put them in a game that they were double booked for.
So that was the only time I really like messed something up
and I felt really bad. But otherwise it's always been a
little smooth sailing. But I also think it's because
I'm like neurotic and I'm just like always checking, checking
the schedule, checking to see who's running stuff.
To the point where people would ask me what tables games are AT
and I would tell them right off the bat because I just had that
schedule open for months in front of me, which is crazy.
So yeah, maybe, maybe it's not the best, you know, organize
something, but hey, I know, I know everything.
So there's a value in that. But then again, everyone who's,
if anyone asks a question to a volunteer, then they have to ask
me, you know? So that's, you know, got to work
on that, you know. I mean, if the worst thing
you've had in two years is accidentally like double booking
one or two people, I feel like you're doing OK as far as like
running convention that's had like at this point over 400
people, like, you know, almost 500 people across two different
conventions. That's, that's incredible.
And at some point, I mean, you're getting bigger and bigger
already. Like you're going to reach a
point where you're like, I must delegate because now these
things aren't going to get done, so.
Yeah, it might be, this might be the year for that because right
now, like when it was small, it's like, OK, that's no big
deal. You know, like even I knew
everyone's emails and they would check in.
So like when people say their names, I'd give them the
bedroom. Like you're all set, you're all
set, you're all set, which is kind of a cool feeling to have.
But the same time, as soon as I walked away from that check in
table, it took a lot longer for people to sign in because you
know. You know all the things.
I know all the things and that's like maybe not the best, but I
think this year is the year when I properly delegate and well
that coordinate. You're creating a single point
of failure is the biggest issue that I see where it's like if
something, if you get delayed sometime nothing gets done
because you're not there. That's that's the only issue.
But I mean, hey, it's getting done and it's it's again, I'm
super fucking bummed. I really, really, really wanted
to go last year and I think that by the time I had seen it, it
was already sold out. But I'm going to do everything I
can to get there this year. But we'll see.
Are you going to, so you said you're going to between two
cons. Are you going to Pacsun at all
too? Fuck.
OK, no. I'm not doing Pacsun Folk, I've
actually applied to be there but they've like I'm always on the
wait list to get in. I don't know why, maybe I'm
doing it wrong, but I feel like I should be able to get in the
Indies indie vendor space, but we'll see.
It's, it's hard to get in. I know like people that get in
like it's, I've been told it can take multiple years to, to
actually get through the list to get on because it, it's
basically like if you go, you automatically, I'm sure it's
like this at most cons. If you go and you've been there,
you automatically get next year if you do right away.
But if you miss that, you're back at the back of the wait
list. And they always are in the same
spot. But we'll see.
It's back in December this year, which I liked when it was in
November, it was not quite as cold.
I, I used to live outside of Philadelphia.
And again, I do not miss the weather, but we will.
We will grin and bear it for packs.
But here we go. But with the convention also,
like, are you expecting like unlimited growth?
Are you going to get to a point where you're like, Nope, this is
the biggest building that we're ever going to have.
We're going to cut ticket sales for all future or you.
Or is Arcane Khan going to be like the next Adepticon in 20
years? Or I hope I'm not.
I mean, I'm. Karen Khan or any of the other
cons. Yeah, I would like to keep it
manageable. By manageable, I mean like, I
don't want it to go to too big because then it might lose so
much charm. Because I think the idea with
Arcane Con right now is that still kind of small.
And it kind of provides a platform for independent
creators to share their game, share their adventures, run
their adventures for people, play, test their games, all this
other stuff. But like, once it gets really
big and you start getting like the big, big, big vendors and
the big, big people, and then it starts costing more than there's
like more pressure or whatever. Like the fact is, is that people
flew in for Arcane Con. I was just like, why?
That's crazy. That puts weird pressure on me.
But I'm glad that they did because that like they wanted to
come and they wanted to hang out.
And when I talked to those people, they had a great time.
And that's awesome. And it's also just, you know,
each year I'm trying to figure out what's the best way that I
can do this or what's not working so I can make it better
next year, you know, and that's like a very important thing.
But I want to make sure that still has its kind of smaller
intimate curated vibe as opposed to trying to keep growing and
starting to like make concessions to being like, well,
we'll have like a 5 E room or we'll have like a proper booster
drafts like, you know, magic thing because like I like all
that shit to a degree, but you can do that anywhere.
Like this past year we had an old school Magic tournament,
which was just cards from 93 and 94, which I think is really
cool, just like being like, yeah, just play Magic like when
it came out, you know. And I think this year I might
have a pre modern tournament, which kind of will be far more
appealing to a larger group. But I don't know.
I like having fun with old stuff, you know, and then
celebrating the new stuff that's inspired by it.
And that's the whole goal. And I feel like if I go too big,
OSR, shit's not that big. Still a niche within a niche,
you know, Like, I don't know, I don't want it to become just
another convention. I want to keep it kind of keep
it special stuff. So it probably can't be that big
in the long run. Yeah, curation is like the word
of the year, I think for for the way a lot of people should be
doing stuff. I was talking to CJ from Glave
because he does the magazine, which is which is fantastic.
And this what we need was more publications like that because.
And one of the best things about it is this, it's this curated
space, you know, it's, it's pulling these articles, these
ideas. And, you know, looking at, I
hate the term gatekeeping because it's got such negative
connotations. I prefer the term curating my
space. Like, you know, and, and same
thing with, with the convention, like being able to curate what
you want, not just having everything be open doors and
everyone can rush in. It's like, I'm not, you're not
necessarily gatekeeping, but like at the same time, you're
making sure that what the community that you want to build
is a community that you have and not constantly finding yourself
having to extract people from it by being what what I find a lot
is the status quo. People are just polite and would
rather deal with would rather just let some shitty person be
shitty than tell them that they're being shitty a lot of
the times or play some game that they don't want to play because
that's the game that they have in front of them and things like
that. So curating, curating your
space, curating your time, curating your your convention,
curating your games. Like that's, that's what I'm
seeing a lot more from the space, which I really like that
the pendulum is kind of swinging back that way a little bit more
of people really being a lot more discerning with again, like
how they spend their time and who they spend their time with.
And it's, it's been really awesome to see.
And I think that people like Arcane Khan, you know, hive scum
with, with Utd CTA with Glaive and a lot of these kind of it's
not, I'm not saying influencers because that's not what people
are, but like these kind of like tastemakers and the curators
that are in the space that are keeping that the way they want.
People want that. Like I, I'm dying to go to Utd,
I'm dying to go to Arcane con. And it's really great that
people like you are stepping up and creating the spaces and
creating those avenues for the smaller groups and the people
that want that is specific kind of community to be in.
So. So you're awesome.
It's awesome. Yeah, I.
Mean you're gassing me up for sure, and I appreciate you
saying all that I mean to me it's it's just like I'm just
creating the space that I want to game in, you know and I can
think that at the end of the day that's just what it is.
It's like I'm going to create a space that allows for a diverse
group of people playing a diverse group of games, you
know, and we're all kind of enjoying these moments together,
you know, And I feel like if there's like a monoculture of
gaming that's like very specific, there's just like all
current Kill Team stuff or a standard Magic or 5 E, it's all
kind of whatever, you know, kind of gets dull and you know, like
I'm from the DIY background. So I'm like, I want to create a
space for DIY creators to get their stuff out there and have
fun, you know. But I mean, like even this year
we got like Goodman Games as a sponsor, which is like really
crazy to me, even though, I mean, I'm pretty sure they're
pretty approachable and nice people, but I'm just like, whoa,
you know, that's like that's a big sponsor.
I. Mean DCC?
That's like getting up there. Yeah, that's crazy.
ETC. They reached out to me.
My first year I reached out to them, they didn't want to do it.
For my third year, they reached out to me, which is really cool.
That's got to be cool to just be like, oh, now, now you notice
me. Yeah, now.
Well. I know that people that like
worked with them, like I think they, they kept their eye on
the, or their finger on the pulse or whatever.
And like Yohai from Karen has really promoted Arcane Con, like
to the point where I am so thankful for him and his support
and encouragement because he used to live like in the town I
run it in. So like he was like a local guy.
Actually, I hung out with him over the weekend too, because
he's still in Massachusetts. He just moved.
But just like, yeah, he'll, he will go to Gary Con and talk
about it on a panel. I'm like, all right, great.
And then surely thereafter a bunch of people are applying to
go and I'm like, great, that's awesome, man.
So it's just like, you know, you reach out to the people you want
to be there, you want to see there and run their games and
then from there kind of snowballs into something else,
but still curated, you know, like you also have to have a,
you know, a policy, you know, a code of conduct policy being
like, oh, if you're acting like it should, you're going to get
kicked out by Steve or whatever. You know, listen, you got to
keep the hobby somewhat, or rather curate, as you say, you
got to curate. You got to curate your.
Spaces to create the space that you want, you know.
I mean, the kind of a restriction breeds creativity
and, and having the people in the space that you want, I think
is, is, is key to it. And we've been talking about the
OSR like a ton because that's obviously what you do a lot.
But I do have these two books right here that are something
else that you're working on. So what what pulled you into
Traveler and and then got us to the 2 heavy metal and space
truckers in my hand right now? Oh, sorry, because what I really
like about BX and stuff is the hex exploration.
It seems like there's like no limits to what you can do.
You can kind of pick a direction and go and then like
procedurally see what happens and that's really exciting.
The main impetus for Traveler actually was through Mothership
because I had the original alpha version of Mothership edition
Zero and I'm like, this is cool. It feels like, you know, this is
like the closest you can get to like a maybe a neutral sci-fi
game, which is what I was looking for.
Because if fantasy game, usually sci-fi, sci-fi has the rules of
like it has to be dictate, like the the rules of the sci-fi
thing has to be dictated. Like Star Trek has a vibe.
Dune has a vibe, Star Wars has a vibe.
You know, like like sci-fi, such a huge spin, like a huge, huge,
huge genre where it's like it's just an umbrella term for a
bunch of many genres and many different vibes.
So Mothership had a vibe to it that felt like you can do
whatever you want with it, but in play it turns out that's not
really the case. It's a little swingy and it's
like it's really dependent on certain mechanics.
But I know it's inspired by Traveler.
So while I was waiting for my box set to get ordered, I didn't
want to flip through the PD FS. I did have a Traveler book and
I'm just started reading it because I was working on Cox and
crabbing at the time where I have trade rules in there.
If you want to start like shipping stuff around for extra
golds and get a little more XP while you're traveling to
another place on a boat and I'm then just start.
Being like Oh my God. There's like procedural
everything in here. I can make a planet that's
awesome. I can make a Galaxy that's
awesome. It's just like it just kept
going. I'm like, oh, this game is 0
limits and it's mechanically the most simple game I've looked at.
Like if you're familiar with Powered by the Apocalypse, like
Apocalypse World or Dungeon World, stuff like that, which is
a 2D6 game that uses a bell curve chance.
Well Traveler did it first in 1977 and the old Traveler stuff
is like. So it's such an interesting
look. Like it's literally like the OD
and D but for like sci-fi games. Even though it's not the first
sci-fi RPG, it's the one that made a neutral sci-fi RPG that
never went away. It's just went through different
iterations, but as core it's 2. D68.
Or higher, you succeed. If you succeed by a lot, an
extra thing happens. If you fail by a lot, an extra
bad thing happens. So there's that curve, which is
really nice. And so it helps you with that
risk reward and a sense of agency when you're playing the
game being like, oh man, is it worth overthrottling the the
power system in the ship to make the weapon stronger while we're
doing our space combat, which is also stressful because it's
basically submarine combat. Sure.
You know, Yeah, you can. It can create really fun, tense
environments in it. The current version by Mongoose.
Oh yeah, and now we're talking. Does it have all three books in
it? Very cool.
Awesome. My issue with classic Traveler,
especially since I call myself a dumb, dumb idiot because it's
hard for me to learn rules if they're not in my face right
away, is like it doesn't explain the rules to you right away.
It doesn't explain to you the mechanics right away, which I'm
like, how does this game work anyways?
But you know, it was running from a different time period.
But once you figure it out, it's like, oh all this makes sense.
The layout of traveler makes sense because they have a two
page spread of character creation, two page spread of
planet generation, 2 page spread.
So you can lay it flat and just go from step one to Step 2, Step
3 to step four and there you go. You know the current version of
my Mongoose has a free edition online which I recommend most
people check out because Mongoose Traveler is very
similar to classic Traveler. It just has some added elements,
like it has a advantage disadvantage mechanic, which I
don't like in 5 E, but I like it here because it just means you
roll an extra D6 and then you keep the two highs or two
lowest, which creates like a minor plus 1.5 or -1.5 to your
die roll. So I like the math of it and I
think it's very clean and elegant, but I don't like how
the publisher churns out a million books every year.
They're 60 bucks and the PDFs are $30.00.
That fucking sucks. It makes it inaccessible, but
all you need is that core book and the free starter rules is
basically most of the core book without all the GM stuff.
So I highly recommend that. So is that your preferred?
Version is the Mongoose traveler.
Yeah, that's the one I run. But I run classic adventures
from like as written like you like.
You can just use them. I just recommend that one
because if you go into a game store, that's the one you'll
find and if you afford online, that's the one you'll get and
print. Granted you can do print on
demand copies of classic traveller.
I just think for if you're curious about the game, that one
explains the game to you the best and that core book is very
good. It's a very well done core book.
You don't need any of the other ones though.
All the other ones are just fluff you don't need.
And I, I supplement my my game with the classic books or I'll
raise something like Heavy Metal because I'm like, I want Mex in
my game. Here we go.
You know, that's awesome. Yeah.
No. I'm a 77 truther.
I like the yeah versus like the 81 which they only tweeted a
couple things in 81, but like I'll still stick with 77.
It's funny because I'm an 81 guy if.
We're going to talk about additions.
I love that starter set, so I love the booklets.
The thing about? I agree with you.
I think in a lot of the. Games that I especially review
on the show and stuff, I think accessibility and readability
and like having a book that like you pick up, understand and then
play will actually get the game played right.
It's one of the things we talk about most in our reviews is
usability of the game. Like if if you make this
difficult to parse, there are a million other games and if
someone puts it down, they might not ever pick it back up.
But for a game for me, like Traveler that I found so far
after the fact that already existed and is already its own
thing. I like how it's a little bit
hard to like get into it. You know what I mean?
Like that's what really drew me to it in part.
Also, 2D6 make success is my favorite mechanic.
I do not like Apocalypse World. I do not like PBTAI do not like
moves. But I think the two D6 for that
exact reason. Yeah, I just think that initial.
Mechanic. I'm like, Traveler did it first
and you don't even need the freaking moves to do it.
That's what I'm saying. So you got it, you know.
So like instead. Of Dungeon World World.
Of dungeons, which I know John Harper, it is the first Pbta
John Harper calls it Pbta. I don't consider Pbta just like
I don't consider fist Pbta. If there's no moves, it's just
286 make success to me is the perfect is the perfect
resolution mechanic. It's it is, yet it is a built in
yes and or yes, but, and I love that role-playing game.
So, so that also like when I found out Traveller did that and
everything, same as you, I kind of followed that path down into
Traveller and then it's just you can, it's like you can do a
whole solo game. It's like getting it set up,
which is always going to be fun. And the number of it's so
awesome. The number of games you can
like, yeah, I talk. I corner people.
I'm like, you don't. You don't get it, man.
Like character creation's a game.
And the number of games that are inspired.
By Traveller's character creation are endless.
Fucking endless like so it's it, it has a lasting impact that I
think a lot of people that have been impacted by it don't get.
And I'm really I'm I do. Not want to talk about this.
Giant thing that's currently going on with Traveller right
now because I'm just going to get mad, but I'm hoping.
Who are you talking about? I have a lot of issues that I've
done. My own research and it's kind of
sketchy, but anyways, that's nothing to do with Mark Miller,
it has nothing to do with Mongoose.
It's its own thing, but. I'm hoping.
That that funnels a lot of people.
Into classic traveler, even if it's a Mongoose one, because I
I've never actually read any of the Mongoose traveler stuff at
all. Like I was just like, Nope, I'm
going to go with classic. I got, I got 77, I got 81.
I got the traveler books. I got like a lot of the big, the
big beefy books like these guys, the collected traveler stuff for
for all of those with like the adventures and stuff, yeah.
And then that's. As far as I got, so I think the
latest traveler stuff I played is like the 81 stuff cool.
And it's just it's so good. It's I wish people played more
old games like they're they are hard, They're hard to parse,
like, you know, but the point thing with the the classic
traveler. So I mean, there is a difference
between terminology between 77 and 8177 Is more terse,
obviously, but also character creation is more deadly in that
one because they were, they didn't realize like the
percentage chance of you dying was like 15%.
So by I think 81, it's like 5% or it's like 1.5% chance of
dying in character creation. But I mean, that's like what's
known for, right? Like I talked to all the old
headset conventions. They're like, oh, Traveler, I
was pointing that before you're born I died in character
creation. I'm like, yeah, what else did
you do? They're like, I don't remember.
I'm like, well that sucks because the game fucking rules
and if that's the only thing you took away from it, unfortunately
that's what people know it for it.
But like Mama's traveller does a good job at you can do that.
But as written, you get injuries and then from there you incur
medical debt. So you'll your injury instead of
you dying is you like take D3 to your strength and then you have
medical debt to pay off because you got injured.
So it kind of adds to the debt level.
It's kind of fun. I like it a lot.
But you can also shoot. Oh, you fail, you die.
I don't know. Yeah, that's awesome.
But you. Also didn't did explain why I do
like 77. I like I like the fat chance of
dying every time like it's just fun.
I don't know it's it's cool. It's a lot fun.
So so you've done heavy metal, which you already said this is
like putting mex into the game and then you also put out space
truckers. So why so?
Cuz mechs are awesome. That's the answer to this one.
So what what inspired you to do spacewreckers?
And for those that obviously we said heavy Metalist mech, what
is spacewreckers and and what does that put into your travel
games? All right, so and Traveler.
As you know, but for those that don't know is often times you're
hauling shit across space to make ends meet to pay off your
the mortgage on your ship. Great gameplay mechanic right
there. You have to make ends meet
traveling through space? Great, but it's always.
Like temporary and you're always trying to.
Having to broker to find a new person on a planet to buy stuff
or sell stuff to you so you can ship it somewhere else and hope
that someone else over there is selling it.
Space Truckers just adds temporary contracts for you to
work for a company to make shipments for them on their
behalf. So you're just trucking, so you
don't even have to do the adventures, but adventures come
about because you're just doing the truck and you're hauling a
ton of stuff and you're going to get attacked for it.
Or you show up to a planet that's an amber zone, which is
like a restricted area and all kinds of complications that come
from that. So I just made it so if you want
to just focus on trucking through space and that really,
you know, doing a weird patron, odd jobs, which you can still do
on the side. I talked about that you don't
want to get caught. You can join the trucker, the
Teamster Union and like get benefits from that, which I kind
of treat like the Traveler Aid Society, which is another kind
of perk of being a character and traveler, if you get that.
So I basically it came about because I'm writing and have
mostly written and I'm currently doing layout for a solo traveler
guide that's inspired by my OSR solo guide, but for Traveler,
which I'm also sharing as like a rule cyclopedia of just like
here's the reference for rolling weather on the planet.
Here's a reference. Like it's instead of you having
to parse through all these fucking paragraphs, it's just
here's the mechanic and here's a brief description.
Boom. It's right there on A2 page
spread with everything related to it.
So it's easy to use, easy to use at the table to referee and easy
to use in a solo like setting because Traveler had solar rules
built into it from the very beginning, which is fucking so
cool. What a pioneer game.
Wow, so Space Truckers came about because I started running
like a like a starter campaign for it.
So if you look through and flip through, you can see that does
have that solo DNA to it. But I just kind of put that out
because I'm like, you know what, I'm just going to put this out
on its own thing. I really elaborated on it
because I was going to have my solo guide ready for under the
dice last spring. So I'm like, I'll use this, you
know, But yeah, so it just came about that way.
But like I've used it a bunch and like my own games being
like, oh, here's the current contract, here's the current
employer you're dealing with. They're sending you to a weird
remote location. You don't even know that's what
those are, just coordinates. That's not going to plan it.
Let's see what happens. You're expecting to be paid on
arrival because you know, your trucker, you know, so it's
temporary employment as opposed to you're always looking for
employment. That's awesome.
And especially. For people that might.
Like again, I like the minutiae and everything like that for
people that might not be like, yes, I like that, but maybe not
as deep as you want to go. Like that's, it's incredible to
be able to have that where it's just like you can peel back,
maybe just like a layer and make it just a little bit more
approachable, which is fantastic, Which seems to be a
lot with the stuff that you do is just like making this cool
stuff more approachable in a modern time and for like the
modern audience. Then like the parsing stuff and
like if anyone's ever read OD and D, it's that kind of stuff.
We're just like randomly here's a paragraph that gives you a
rule like 80 pages after, well, like 10 pages after, like you
really needed it. So when?
So when do you think the solo rules are going to drop for
Traveller? Oh boy.
I gotta do layout. Layout's the thing I hate doing
the most, you know? It takes so much time and you
have to make it make sense because layout is how you
inform, how you deliver information.
So I really think about layout a lot, especially for this kind of
thing because it has to be visual right in front of you in
a two page spread. You have to be able to see it.
So it's going to be hard to do. So I'm currently doing that,
although I'm taking my time on it, which is stupid of me.
And This is why I took cogs and Crab in forever to come out.
It was written, it was play test.
I just took. I dragged my feet doing layout,
which is what I'm doing right now.
So the play test should be I'm going to give myself the heart
out. It's going to be out by June
because I want to have print. Copies to hand out at.
Between two cons for play testers and then SO won't be
available for for purchase or in its final form anytime soon, but
it will be available for those interested to try it out and
check it out in a month about if.
You so I'll see that between yes, that's.
I if you could just put one aside.
Like I would, I would love that. That would be incredible.
So are you, are you, you know, maybe I'll pin you down a little
bit. Are you thinking maybe like done
and printed for for Arcane Khan or is that Yeah, yeah.
So I have. Two goals for under the day
specifically. I have to have that out for it.
Obviously I need to have that released out of my brain.
But then Steve also challenged me to finish my Year 0 engine
version of Vampire the Masquerade I Call by Night,
which I've already written and I play tested with him and some
other people and I need to do more refining.
But that is that's written and ready to go too.
But he's like, you need to have that out by under the dice.
And I'm like, OK, so that's also something that's happening.
Year 0 engine Vampire. The Masquerade.
Yeah, Interesting. Yeah, I like the year 0 engine.
I've become less of a fan of Free League over time.
I wish they would maybe do a couple less IPS, as in like
their entire catalog now. But the year 0 engine is like an
incredibly like good hackable system that I feel like is not
hacked as much as it could be for cool games.
They just keep hacking their own system over and over again.
Yeah, but that's really interesting.
I'm very curious to see Vampire the map because I was not.
I missed all the scenes and I was not allowed to play D&D as a
kid. Like when I asked for a deck of
tarot cards because I thought the art was cool.
Like my parents made me talk to our preacher and shit.
So like, I did not. I envy.
The kids. That had like, you know, a
Warhammer store in town and like a vampire LARP and like all this
other stuff. But Vampire Masquerade's
interesting and anything that's put out for vampire that's not
from White Wolf is always cool. So that's I'm really curious.
It's funny. I've like.
I've only played Vampire once and I can see what's cool about
it, but like I look at the catalog, I'm like, I'm not going
to read any of this shit. I don't even know how to play
this game. If I'm looking at the core book,
even the newest rule book, you can't even make a character with
it. It's but it's fucking this
thick. You have to use the website.
It's just like, this is all like there's just way.
Like people love White Wolf and they love vampire, especially
from the 90s, but like this? Like people love the.
Lord, people of the world, I'm just trying to make a cool
modern vampire game that's like inspired by it, but without the
baggage of it and without the baggage of like it's, you know,
maybe convoluted mechanics to a degree.
Even though they're technically simple, they cannot be after a
while. Yeah, your zero is perfect for
it. You do the D6 version as opposed
to rolling 2 D 10's and adding dots or whatever.
The D6 is the perfect dice, the best.
DTRPG Dice. And again, once again, you like
making a thing that's really cool, accessible to people, not
having to do all that parsing stuff, which is really
incredible. And you said that's going to be
down for Utd as well. I mean gone to my head.
Yes, I wanted to be done. I mean, I guess you get the.
I guess you get the. Summer off, I mean, I guess.
You get the summer off and I got to use my time wisely, right?
See I I can't do. My ADHD if I get out of any type
of routine now I get nothing done and if I have too much time
off it ceases to exist. So my work schedule is I
basically work like 2 on two off with a little bit of a variation
if I ever have a couple extra days and I get like 4 off time.
Especially because I'm night and all of my windows are blacked
out so time just doesn't exist for like 3 days.
And then on that last day I'm like wow I got four days worth
of stuff I should have got done. If I had a summer off my life
would like I would have nothing would get done because seeing
three months away would be such a like infinite amount of time
that I would just be paralyzed. So let me tell you something.
That's what happens to me. Which is why this shit takes
forever to come out because I have all summer.
I'm like, and then it's like, yeah, I have all summer and then
end of August where I was trying to like, oh fuck, I got to rush
this out now. There you go.
Hey, if you pile. Enough stuff on you'll yeah, you
can trigger you can trigger that like the panic to to get things
done. So if you're like I got two
books and the convention and all of this, maybe it'll maybe it'll
pick it up a little bit. That's The thing is I'm stacking
up my fucking. Load.
So I got to like, actually do something.
But it's hard too because it's like, yeah, I teach all year,
middle school kids. So like, when I got time off,
I'm like, I'm not doing anything, you know?
But yeah, no, I am. I'm very excited.
I'm very excited for between two cons too.
It's going to be interesting to see what Yohai does on the West
Coast of Portland. That'll be, that'll be
interesting. They asked us if we wanted to do
a live episode at the con and I'm like, I guess we do our
episodes live already, but I don't know, in front of people.
So I guess we'll see what happens.
Well, it's fine because he was telling me because they did one.
At Gary Con. So when I was talking to Yohai,
he's like, oh, it was a mess. It was like a nightmare to do.
Or he said it was like, it's harder to do because you have to
do it live and you have to maintain the pace.
You got to do all this other stuff.
So it seems like it's, it's a lot more work to do a live
recording, especially when there's an audience, because
then you're also performing, you know what I mean?
That was the vibe I got. But I you should do it.
We'll see. We a very.
Very very this is what I said to Brad too.
I was like this is a very, very soft.
Maybe we'll see what happens, but very excited for that and
for all the stuff that's coming up, especially our king Khan
again. Now now now I have to try to
figure out how to get there twice in two weeks.
We'll figure it out pressure. There's always next year.
You know what I mean? I'm.
Going to try not to and they overlap with under the dice as
much. So even if it was just like a
month, like even. But I I tried to do a month out
but. Time works the way time works.
Yeah, and. We'll, we'll, we'll figure it
out. So that's.
What's on your docket? Right.
Now is you have the Traveler solo thing coming out, you got
Arcane con on the horizon. You have again 0 engine Vampire
the Masquerade which I'm very excited to.
I'm calling it by night as. Like a night, because like they
put out books there, like London by night, New York by night.
It's like by night. Whatever.
That's the working title. Yeah, like it's working title.
I mean it says exactly what it. Is because by night, I mean
because I think there's like a isn't there like a vampire by
night, like AP2 that some some people do or whatever, but I
think by night sounds fucking awesome.
I mean, I I love empire shit. I mean, you can't not, you know,
I'm the right. I'm the kind of night.
Shift edgelord. So it is what it is, but yeah,
very excited to. See all the stuff?
Coming out so for. All of these things that you're.
Making for the things that you have already available, like
where can people find the all of the OSR stuff you put out?
Where can people find the traveler stuff you can can put
out? Where can people find
information on the convention? Like where?
Where are you that people can actually get information on all
these things? All my stuff?
I have a website. Called that you can find at
arcanesortpress.com. All my stuff is available on
drive through RPG and I also provide print on demand options
on Amazon if you want to support Jeff, which you don't have to go
through drive through. And then if I'm also on
Instagram with arcade or press as well.
That's probably the best way to find me.
And then Arcane CON is listed on tabletop events, so you can sign
up. Follow that.
Tickets go live on May 31st, but if you submit a game before
then, you'll get $10 off per game.
You submit up to three games and tickets are $35 online.
So if you submit three games, you're paying 5 bucks plus fees.
I'm just trying to get people in the door.
What, what? What's the day?
For the tickets. Again, May 31st SO.
Once you get your ticket, you can sign up for games right
away, but Even so, I make all the games currently available
public so people can see what's available on which days.
You're also doing a couple. Like leaving a seat or two for
in person sign ups this year too right So.
I got a lot of positive feedback for that.
Some people don't like it at all.
Like I got two people that are just like, that's not fair,
That's not cool. I'm like, well, I don't have to
tell you, man, I'd rather there because the year before this is
a learning thing where people sign up ahead of time.
They show up and then like the table would have two players at
it, even though they're supposed to have 5 because people there's
no shows, you know. So to prevent that, I'm like,
well, I'm going to pull one or two seats from each group.
And then because there's always people asking if there's a game
available that session. So I had a sign up thing and
then all those tables filled up. There's not an empty seat at
that game because there's people at the convention looking for a
game when there's free time and like some guns do that now like
GAIL Con in Dublin only allows for in person sign up an hour
before the game so they know the people they're going to play are
actually there on site. But then that also creates.
The thing of people making a huge.
Fucking line so they can all get in Yohai's game, you know what I
mean? Yeah, to the point where he had
to. Make a speech.
Be like hey. Just let everyone know my game
is not open. Stop asking me.
I assume you're not talking about Dublin, Ireland?
With this GAIL Con or is that No, Yeah, Dublin, Ireland.
Yeah, I haven't. Been but my friend Jason, who
does Solarian games, who puts out top secret, he said he
wanted he was like, oh, this is one of the best cons I've ever
been to. It was awesome.
Oh, I should also mention I'm in this thing called the analog
union that he started along with some of the sewer rats guys like
you know, Joey Royal's in there, Brian Sutter, John Hambone,
McGuire, a bunch of great, great people.
What's that? And wife is in there now too,
right? Still fleets in there.
Yeah, Yeah. It's great, great community.
All these guys are awesome, you know?
So every week there's a newsletter that we're a part of.
People put their stuff that they're working on, or they
write little articles like I do old magazine reviews currently.
And Joey's been doing like articles on game stuff or what
he's been working or what inspires them.
And then some people do their Kickstarters and stuff.
So each week it's like a fun little thing.
On Tuesday at lunchtime, you get an e-mail with like some updates
in the hobby scene from a variety of different creators.
So I haven't contributed this week or the past week because I
just got some magazines in the mail.
I got a review, but it's forthcoming.
I'm working on, I'm working through my list, but that's been
really fun. I saw the one that dropped this
morning Joey is talking about. Deathblow, which is a dope game.
I got it back there. It's definitely on the Lister of
you. So.
So that's cool. Yeah, definitely subscribe to
that. It's cool little newsletter.
You get a lot of interesting things popping out, especially
from the sewer rats. Anything that Joey does, I'm
like, I'll fucking, I don't care what it is, spin a box and send
it to me. Like I'll play with it.
Like I don't care. Like, he's such a cool dude.
He sent me a little baggy of hair the other week.
It's. Supposed to be a monster hair.
I am unsurprised and jealous at the same.
Time yeah he's awesome got chatting with him I got I had
him on the show and then got to meet him at pax in person and
the the best thing I can say about him is it's not an act
that is him as a person and it's Oh yeah 100% him and his family
is awesome his. Son Elvis is awesome, like, and
his and his son's friend Elvis or Paul, who goes by Paul
Cthulhu. Oh my God, these kids are
awesome. I don't know what's going on
down there, but well, these love, love Joey and everything
he brings about. Like he'll be under the dice for
sure. Like last year we were tabled
side by side. It was like me, him and like
Tiger Wizards. So we had some cool exalted
stuff there too. And we were just like, it was
just hard hanging for many. Days in a row along.
With hanging out with all the people that come for under the
dice. Best time ever.
I cannot express how important and great that convention is.
Yeah, this is going to be my first year for.
Another dice. I'm very so I can't wait.
I can't wait. I mean a lot of the same people
from Adepticon and then, you know, some of them are brain
dead fast, which is cool too. Oh, interesting.
Yeah. How was that?
It was. It was cool.
It was very. LA it was.
I've lived in LA and I'm just unsurprised by like kind of the
way a lot of this stuff went down.
But it was cool and like it was fun.
Like at the end of the day, like it was super fun.
It was also cool to see some people from Adapticon like 2
weeks later. So you almost got like, almost
like a, it helped the withdrawal a little bit to be able to like
a week and a half later and just be like, oh hey again, I made
some new friends and stuff. Yeah.
But again, bought too much stuff, randomly saw like Elijah
Wood, put on a DJ set, which was actually fucking fire.
That's really funny. So yeah, it was cool.
It's. Interesting.
I, you know, I think I have opinions, I think their heart's
in the right place. I just hope that you know best
intentions cause. Harm every day, so we'll see.
How things work out and and go from there.
But it was neat. I bought some brain dead shit
that's way too fucking expensive because why are you spending 60
bucks on a T-shirt? But I got it.
It's actually this right here but but it's cool so I'm
excited. I'm trying to do a ton of events
this year, like I said, to hit like 6-7 things and and I'll see
you at I'll see you in June for that.
Yeah, I'll see I'll see you in Portland.
Never been my first time going to a.
Convention that I can't drive to, so it'll be exciting.
I'm gonna mail all my books to a stranger.
We'll see what happens. Yeah, I have.
I been to Portland. I feel like I've either been to
Portland OR Seattle. I know I've been to Seattle.
I don't know if I've been to Portland, but I guess we'll see.
I'm getting up there a couple days early to hang out with with
with honor. So we'll see.
We'll see how it goes. But listen, Brian, it's been an
absolute pleasure to talk to you.
Please come on the show sometime again in the future.
If you got anything dropping, I'd love to have you back on.
If you ever want to run some Traveler, we'd love to have you.
But yeah, I might. I might do a sneaky Traveler
game out under the. Dice I was, I almost did it last
year, but I get overwhelmed at conventions where I'm just like,
oh, there's so much noise. There's like all then I didn't
know that there's a downstairs room that people are doing games
in. I'm like, oh fuck, if I knew
that this was here, I wouldn't do it in there.
So we'll see though. I know that's going to be more
tabletop focus this year because Arcane comes like right next to
it. But I mean, I can be convinced.
We'll see. We'll see what happens.
Whatever we do, it's going to be fun.
But again, seriously. Thank you so much for being
here. You're awesome.
Go the links are down below. Click on the thing.
Make sure you go buy a ticket to our King Khan if you get a
chance. And and again, seriously, thank
you so much for for all the stuff that you're doing to the
community, being an awesome curator.
And again, thank you so much for being here on the show.
You, you flatter me too much. Thanks for providing me the
space. To talk about my dumb, stupid
shit I make. All right, that's going to be
asked for today. So thank you all so much for.
Listening and we will see you all later.
Bye. Thanks.