Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan and joining me today are two very special and
overdue guests. That is John and Bri of
Breitbart Games. How you guys doing this morning?
Doing great. Thanks for having us.
Yeah, absolutely. As I said, overdue.
It's, I mean, we've had we've had Emily on a bunch.
You guys did miss the time when you were supposed to be here and
then it took us months to finally get you here.
But yeah, nice to finally, nice to finally have you and and
welcome. So for for those that might not
know who the heck Breitbart John and Bri are, who who the heck is
Breitbart games? What might people know you for?
I think the easiest answer to this one is you probably have
seen the Axolotl with a gun. And if you have seen the axolotl
with a gun, you know us and our games.
He is a horrible little guy with cute metal regenerating powers,
a big old gun and cute hobbies because it's important to have
hobbies even when you're fighting robots in in magical
wetlands. So yeah, we make a lot of kind
of fun, funky, whimsical one shot and short games and then
also a bunch of like esoteric journaling games.
It's it's a weird kind of like scale we operate on.
There you go, there you go. This nice gradient between that,
especially with the Axolotl because that's, you know, that's
the first thing I knew you guys from was Axolotl with gun.
Maybe you guys did I craved the loop, right?
Yeah, we did. Yeah.
So I, because I, I don't remember if I saw Axolotl with a
gun first or if I saw the Kickstarter or the crowdfund for
for I craved the loop first, but it was it was one of those two,
but but great. So, so well, let's get right
into it then. Breitbart.
How did Breitbart come to be like, like, how do you guys know
each other? I, this is one of my favorite
stories to tell, but it was Gen. Con, I think that originally
brought us together. And I can trace a straight line
from like where we sit today on the weekly scroll to a meet up
for a tabletop role-playing game called Mall Kids by Matthew
Gravelin, held in that mall right next to the Convention
Center. Because Matthew was like, no, if
we're going to have a meet up for mall kids at Gen.
Con, it has to be in the mall. Which I mean, obviously, yeah.
So yeah, no, we, we both went to that one of my college friends
who I was attending the show with at the time was planning on
running D&D and was inviting basically every single one of
our then like online or people we had interacted with on social
media. Friends to like come play wound
up being like a ten person game of D&D that Brie and her brother
played in. And then we wound up just
playing a bunch of games the rest of the weekend.
And that was, you know, summer of 2019.
And then over, like, lockdown, we sort of just, like, kept
playing games together. And then, Bree, you were working
on a web comic at the time, right?
I was, yeah. I was working on a web comic
that needed an editor, and John needed to have a job or some
semblance of jobs because he couldn't be a teacher anymore
because of lockdown. So I hired him to be my editor,
and then he started writing. Tabletop games are like tiny
little ones. And then he was like, well, do
you want to do art for them? And I'll like, pay you to do
that. So we just started like paying
each other to do work. And then we're like, why don't
we just stop doing that and just sell our stuff together?
At a certain point, we're like, why don't we just be business
partners? And the other one was just like
you, idiot, I think we're already business partners.
Yeah, pretty much the peak, the peak level of like passing the
same $10 back and forth in teach RPGs is literally just that.
You know, this is what happens when you finally stop doing
that. You realize you're just working
together. That's great.
And then what's the Direct Line to the weekly scroll then from
that? Like we, we just kind of like it
keeps snowballing from there, right?
We go from mall kids meet up to we freelance for each other a
whole bunch to I start reading tabletop RPGs to I run a
podcast. And now we've like come full
circle to I'm on a podcast. There you go.
Because as you know, like starting like a stream or a
podcast is the fastest way to wind up on more streams and
podcasts. Yeah, I've, I've only ever been
on one other podcast. Oh wow, yeah, you got to pump up
those numbers. We got it.
We got to get there. Yeah, you were.
I guess I'm just I got see, but I'm not I'm not a creative in
the way that like I've never published anything really.
Not like people that have podcasts and then put out a
bunch of games like you guys. So no one, no one wants to have
people ought to be like, so tell me how you critique games.
I'm like, well I'm just picking pedantic and that's the whole.
Show I'm an English major, so I think that's really interesting.
So, So what was the first game that you guys actually put out
together as Breitbart games and where did you get the name
Breitbart as well? The first game we put out
together was Cold Balls and Trench Coats.
Technically it was John's game first.
And then we just like. Right after the publishing of
the game, we were like, why don't we just like?
I think I still have one of the 8 1/2 by 11 versions.
Hold on. Oh, probably, yeah.
We have like we used to make them one pager.
So we John made cobles and trench coats, which was A1
pager. And it did really, really well.
Like a lot of people, it was like around the time when that
was the thing that people love doing was like little guys in
silly little clothes. And so we started making like
more silly little guy one page games.
And then John wrote a very like small game called Terminus,
which was a game about going on a walk and then writing and then
creating a story about what you saw on the walk through the
perspective of the place that you were in.
So like if you were like in a park, you would like talk about
there we go. There's a couple of the IT.
Is laid out in Microsoft Word by yours truly.
Yeah. And so we started making small
games and then John wrote Terminus.
And that was kind of when we really were like, OK, that's
this is Breitbart, this is our company.
Because I started doing like a whole bunch of art for it.
He was wrote it for a jam, I'm pretty sure, and it was like a
really small one. Page RPG Jam that runs every
summer. Yeah, he wrote it for the One
Page Refugee Jam and then he just kept integrating on it for
like months and then Zinequest ruled around for 2022 I think.
Yes, I think it was 2022. We're fulfilling A Kickstarter
the same summer that you were getting ready to get married.
Yes. So yeah, it was 2022, like
February of 2022, like 2 weeks before my dad was like, hey,
Zinequest is coming up and you guys are making like tiny little
games. Are you going to like do a
Zenquest thing? And we're like, I guess we can.
And so we pulled the Kickstarter together in two weeks for
Terminus and it has far and away been our most successful
Kickstarter so far, which is crazy.
I don't know how there's no way that we're going to, I don't
know how we're going to hit that magic again.
But I went on vacation. We, the day I was coming back
from vacation, we launched the Kickstarter and it's just a very
beautiful game about telling the story through a perspective of a
place using tarot cards. And I think really the tarot
card aspect is like what made it so interesting for people
because that was also, again, when tarot cards were like just
becoming like a thing that you use in games.
Yeah, I feel like Terminus came on the heels of Sam Lays
Animasis, which our editor for Terminus also worked on because
Marks, Bree and I got kind of into tabletop freelancing
through the Far Horizons Co-op. They were then I think called
the, they were at the time called the Centenario Co-op.
But that's how we both met Marks, who was our editor for
Terminus, who had also worked on Animesis.
So it was like just kind of a good fit.
Like tarot bump, I think yeah, I think in 2022 His Majesty the
worm was just going crazy all over blue sky every day talking
about tarot. Maybe just Twitter back then,
but but that's cool yeah. I mean, Terminus did do like how
many? And well, of course I've moved
it just smaller window so I can't see all the details now,
but did numbers. I mean, I feel like, I feel like
the, the classic Zenquest story is I, I wasn't going to do it
and then I decided to do it and I threw it together in like a
week. And then it blew up.
Like the number of times people have come on the show and said
like, well, I started writing TGRBGS because this one time I
did a Zenquest and you know, and, and, and here we are so.
Yeah. Oh, for sure, 20/22.
It was like a beautiful time for Zenquest.
It was like, I don't know, it blew up for us.
And that was when we were like, OK, we have like the funds to
actually like start a like actual company, which was
really, really cool. So Terminus was really what like
launched us into Breitbart. And for the reason we named
Breitbart is because of our online handles.
So John is resident bar everywhere and my name is Briad,
which is a like the anglicized version is like Bridget or
Bright. So there you go.
Yeah, we kind of put our names together.
That's cute. Look at that.
And then we've had we've had the grab Bound crew on a couple of
Times Now with Emily and Lucas and you guys were going to come
on with him at one point. How did you guys get in touch
with with them and kind of, I guess do some work with him,
cross stuff, do whatever because it's it's interesting that you
guys are kind of like when I first met all of you.
It's not hard to be like no way your brain, not Emily, no way
your job, not Lucas, because it's like like short girl, tall
skinny guy partnership. How does how does that work with
with you guys? How'd you guys meet them?
It is really funny the number of times that Emily has called me
Lucas. OK, it's not just me.
Great. No, it's.
Absolutely. I'm Lucas.
Shaped, Yeah. We met them, well, first I we
met Emily because I stream art on Twitch.
I'm actually coming back to streaming today actually for the
first time this year. Yay.
What's? Your what's your what's your
twitch, Hannah real quick. Bree Donnan.
Just the what it what it is on everything else, just my name
because my name is unique. I've never met anyone else with
my name. But I stream art on Twitch and
for a long time in the like my college years and like right
before, like 20, the time I met John, I was doing a lot of
actual play fan art online. And a lot of people like
followed me from that to my like Twitch stream.
And then eventually I was me and John started making games and
Emily was like, hey, I'm looking to be a layout artist and I
would love to start trying to like work on games.
Can I lay out a game for you for free?
And we're like, we'll pay you and.
I've forgotten about that aspect of It was like, hey, I'll, I'll,
I'll, I'll do the layout work free of charge.
Or like, no, we're going to. And we'll pay you.
And so Emily did layouts for our one page RP, some of our one
page RPGs. And then we just kind of decided
that Emily was really, really good at her job and didn't want
to stop working with. Her I think this is one of the
this and determinist for some of Emily's like early, early TTRPG
like work, which again we sort of all started doing around the
same time. Yeah.
And we met Lucas through Emily, because Lucas and Emily, I've
been friends for a very long time.
And so we'd like, hung out with Lucas at conventions with Emily.
And then I don't necessarily know the full graph and story,
but eventually they were like, hey, we want to work on games
together and we want to do make silly little games for ourselves
and stuff like that and be a TTRPG company.
So they started doing it after us.
And then we were like, hey, want to make a game together because
you are our closest TTRPG friends.
So then we made Bonds between, which was inspired by Lucas's
precious things, because John was like, you wrote a game about
little Dragons, I want to write a game about little Dragons.
And since you've already wrote in a game about little Dragons,
do you want to work together and write another game about little
Dragons? There you go.
Yeah. And if you want to hit the full
graph around story, just go back and listen to our graph on
episode. I'm sure they they told us the
whole story at some point. I don't remember it.
They're great though 'cause that's how.
Well, I guess how we got here is because I saw the precious
things little like sticker pack itch fund that Emily was doing
on. Yeah, they were doing that at
the. Same time that we were doing
loop, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, and then I guess and we
started at least be aware of the show.
We're watching the show or whatever.
And then one of the packs is, it must have been two years ago, it
came up to us and I was like, oh, Adam's not here.
And she's like, no, actually like, oh, listen, we can scroll.
I'm like, you're lying, but that's cool.
And then and then we, you know, we had her on, which means, you
know, we knew you guys were and then etcetera, etcetera.
And here we are now. So it comes down to to little
Dragons, I guess. And and here we are.
Yeah, our. Our mutual love of little guys,
really. It's all little guys, yeah.
Cuz it started with Cobalt little guys and then this Dragon
little guys. Now we got Axolotl, little guys.
And Speaking of axolotls and crowdfunding and stuff, we
Axolotl with a gun exists, but you're doing an Axolotl with a
gun 2E right now. So first of all, why axolotls
with guns? I was actually just thinking of
like about this as we've been talking about.
So like we brought up her streams and how that kind of
like introduced us to Emily from the fan art community and stuff
once she started like streaming on Twitch.
And there's a high percentage of the games that we've written
where Bree draws something like cool or cute.
And then I go, oh, that's a game and write a game about it.
So there's this kind of just like feedback, like loop of of
inspiration where like Bree draws a cute little guy.
I'm like, you could write a game about that little guy.
And then I start writing a game about the little guy and breeze
like, Oh, there's a world here and starts world building for
it. And then that leads to more game
design. And that's kind of like what
happened with Axe Law with a gun is breeze Stream chat was like,
hey, draw an Axolotl with an AK47.
Andrew was like, OK, started a 30 minute timer to to draw.
And I was like, I bet you, I can finish the draft of a game
before you finish that doodle or by the time you finish that
doodle. And so I wrote the original
draft for Axolotl with a gun in 30 minutes flat and then spent
like the next couple of hours turning it into like a, a scene.
So that's like that's the origin story for Axolotl with a gun.
And kind of the same thing happened with trash to treasure
too, is Brie drew a series of trash goblin magical girls and I
was like, we could, we could make a game out of that.
So. I I like drawing cute little
things and then John's like I'm inspired and then makes a whole
game about it. Famously, I love, I love cute
little things. My, my if, if, if we were doing
show and tell before the show with like cassette tapes and
stuff. But like I will rapidly run out
of of room to display in my hands to display all of the
little guys that I have just sort of sitting on my desk.
This little dude sits in front of me and just like holds my
phone. He's like perfectly phone sized.
Just gonna go to it for me and you got you got little guys over
both shoulders and all sorts of stuff.
I don't, I don't I surprisingly I guess I don't have any little
guys from TTRPGSI Guess the closest thing I have to a little
guy would be this horrifying thing.
Oh, I love that. That rock, it's a it's.
A monster, Yeah. Yeah, Oh, it's so many hands.
This is a horrifying little beast from from an adventure for
in the odd that Lewis Colburn did.
That's really cool. So that's the closest thing to a
little guy I have is this thing. And I occasionally will wake up
to see this across the room. But that's, I guess that's the
difference between the you and I is this is my version of a cute
little guy. But yeah.
There's there's a little like John Blind that Bree filtered a
couple of years ago, who has to live in the containment cube
because if he doesn't, my cats will RIP him apart.
I thought he would just like take over and become like the
true John. Well, it's also that like, I
have to keep him in there so he doesn't cause too much mischief.
There you go. But you, so you guys are
crowdfunding 2E for Axolotl with a gun right now.
What, what, why, what's, what's the, what's the big differences
between like 1E and 2E? And for those that might not be
aware of the Axolotl or it's guns, like what is not just the
cute little guy with like the, the deadly weapon, but like,
what is Axolotl with a gun? Like what kind of game is that?
Yeah, so this is the pitch that I always give to people when
they ask, which is axolotl with a gun is a one shot tabletop
role-playing game about axolotls with cute guns or cute hobbies
and big old guns fighting evil robots and AI who are trying to
like, mess up their habitat. And it's kind of like my
revolving door pitch. Do you want to hear more?
But like I said, when I wrote it, it was like summer of 2024,
which was kind of the tail end of the big cryptocurrency and
NFT fad. And that was already like a, a,
a topic of conversation about this was already like the power
requirements, like the, the, the GPU demand, the energy
requirements of them and like the environmental impacts of all
of those things. And it was the beginning of the
AI boom. And so those sort of topics were
a lot on my mind. Slip restarted drawing this.
I was like, he's an endangered little guy who has exactly like
this is a cute fact about axolotls.
They are endangered. They have basically like 1 lake
that they like occur in naturally and some like of the
surrounding wetlands, but a lot of those wetlands were drained,
you know, centuries ago, which habitat down.
So I was like, what would be a fitting enemy for this little
dude? I was like, probably, probably
something incredibly environmentally destructive
because that tends to be like. The like AI because it takes up
to half a liter of water and enough energy to completely
charge a cell phone just for one AI image out there.
And yes, we will have water water deserts and water droughts
increasing the next three to five years if you assholes keep
using it. So stop.
So yay Axolotl, kill all the AI. That's why.
That's where I thought John 1 is in the containment Cuban chat.
Yeah. So that's where that's kind of
where we got that and the the dudes that you fight in it.
What's on screen now is the 1st edition text.
So I kind of was inspired when I was writing the mechanics by old
side scrolling arcade game like arcade cabinets and stuff or
like some of the old side scrollers that I played on like
my Super Nintendo. And I was on a huge like havoc
engine design kick when I wrote Axolotl with a gun because I was
also like in the early stages of drafting trash to treasure,
which is another one of our games that also is like built
out of Roan Rick and Deckard's havoc engine.
They're just fun Little like I've, I've started describing
them as like narrative skirmish games where you've got like a
fun like dice mini game or like puzzle that you're trying to
figure out how to solve and then you kind of just like put a
narrative over top of that. It's not like a story game.
Like it's a little bit too whimsical and silly and topical
in a lot of ways for it to be that.
And it doesn't have like super hard hitting like role play
mechanics going for it. But it's a great way to spend
like two, 2 1/2 hours, just like hanging out with your friends
and having just a lot of really good belly laughs.
You know, yeah. I mean, you know, you can tell,
especially with the weapon choices you have, like the gun
sword going in there. That's I, I was recently
schooled on on Final Fantasy. It's Final Fantasy 8 had the gun
sword. Is that the is that what that
is? Yeah.
I saw when you were reviewing like some of the the scene quest
entries y'all were chatting about which which variety of of
gun sword was best. Yes, well, Final Fantasy 7 is
the best Final Fantasy I'll I'll take but you know, apparently 8
has a gun sword, which does give it some points, but but I will
die on that hill. But it's also the last one I
played, so I have no other frame of reference.
So we'll say 7 forever, but that so yeah, so So what what took
you to to 2 E with with Axolotl with a gun?
Like what are we funding now? Yeah.
So I, as I like mentioned earlier the summer that we
published it, you're basically like rushing to publish several,
several scenes because we wound up with an opportunity to vend
alongside some friends at Gencom, which again, the
straight line from mall kids meet up to being on the weekly
scroll today is that same friend, Matthew Gravlin a few
years later, offered to like cover my badge and a couple of
other thing and and like hotel and stuff.
If I, you know, worked a tabletop or a few booth with
him. And I've been doing that for a
few years. And so the company that we were
helping out, we wound up splitting booth space with and
we were like, Oh my God, we need all of the games we were going
to publish in the back half of this year.
We need to publish right now so that we have a large enough
catalog for these. And I was like, OK, well, I have
a bunch of scenes that I think will be like, they'll they'll do
OK. And then Axolotl with a gun line
of being so outrageously popular that we were kind of like, well,
you know, if it's done this well over the last year and a half of
us selling it, it would be nice to like revisit it and really
help it deliver on a lot of the deliver really well on a lot of
the things that it that it promises in terms of like the
arcade style kind of role-playing that it pitches to
you. So I went back and there was
like a show and tell mechanic that I had been very enchanted
with in the, in the, in the first version of the game that I
kind of like spooled into the game being like a coin operated.
So instead of like having a couple items you could use to
regenerate your character by like playing show and tell with
the GM, you have a little pool of coins now.
And any time your character like hits critical health, you just
insert like a coin to continue as though you're at an arcade
cabinet, hand it to the GM, and then like describe your
character rejuvenating themselves in some way.
You know, bounce back into the scene with iframes and refreshed
stats. I updated a lot of the rules.
There was 1 infinitely looping dice glitch in the 1st edition
of the rules in the very first print run that we discovered
because one of our friends put it into foundry I think to run
for a game of a few a few Co workers they had there nerfed.
Listen, the ability to roll 7000 dice on your first roll of the
game was maybe a little bit too good.
It was sadly too good, but it was so funny to hear that that
like we had to pack the game. That's great.
You got to keep that in. That's like some good video game
shit that you got that that goes in there.
You know, it's like the Contra codes in the beginning and
stuff, Yeah. If you if you put in the Konami
code intact a little gun, it unlocks a secret 7th gun.
Yeah, with that, let's roll 7 owls and dice.
Infinite bullet glitch like. I should just like have a
sticker that has the old text for the mini gun on it.
And like if you if you walk up and say a secret phrase to me at
a convention, you get the sticker and you can just put it
over the mini gun to revert it back to the old.
Pack. Well now you have to do that,
right? You said it out loud and I will
expect that when I see you again.
I need an. Infinite glitch please.
We got to have the glitch, you know, might be a was it PAX or
was it Gen. Con when we actually I don't
remember at this point. It was.
It was packed packed this last year because we wound up on the
same flight out of Minneapolis to.
Phillip Not just the same flight, literally sitting next
to each other because you guys were like the last people on the
plane. I saw, you know, we were
waiting, waiting. Some people came on and I was
like, I feel like I know those two.
But you were, you know, you were wearing a mask.
And I'm pretty good at identifying people even without
a mask. I was like, I'm pretty sure
that's John. And then you walked right past
me and then like 45 seconds later came like walking back up
and was like, is anyone sitting on that seat?
And I was like, no, John. And you're like Ryan.
Yep, there we go. And then we just like taught
games for the entire time. So the small worldness of my
flight, which almost always goes through Denver, going through
Where did we go again? Chicago It.
Was a midway? Yeah, Midway.
And it's actually not only end up on the same plane, but end up
like literally sitting next to each other was crazy.
And then we yeah, I think we literally just like talk games
your entire time, just like pull some stuff out of your backpack
and we were like going through some stuff.
What did you? What is?
What is that name of the thing that you put in your game so
that you don't call it that thing again?
Oh it a dupsy. There it is.
Dupsy I have in the in the
rules. We talked skirmish games a whole
bunch because we're working on a skirmish game and I'm working on
a game with skirmish stuff in it of one of yeah, my, I had my, my
relic like playtest stuff folder.
Yeah, I've told so many people about that, that the doopsie
thing where I'm just like, yeah, it named it something so that
you wouldn't get attached to this thing because it's fine,
It's good enough. I've called it that for so long
and I was like, that's perfect. I think I called it a poopy
doopy or something to somebody. But a doopsie, A doopsie works
well too. That's.
Really good. I got that from A one of the T
at like lead teen fight tactics developers riot more dog.
I think he's doing this series again on his YouTube.
I haven't watched much of this season of it, but he didn't.
He did a thing called walk the dog where in the morning he
would like just take it like go on a walk with his phone and
like talk to it about the video game industry and answer like
questions about teen fight tactics or like game development
or game design. And he talked about that thing
that they didn't. So I, I adopted it from Riot
Moore because their team has to name like they're in development
champions or like abilities, just the most insane things so
that they can't possibly get attached to them and keep them.
It's a really good strategy. Yeah, no, absolutely.
Because the number of people that I'm like, so why'd you call
it that thing? And they're like, well, I just,
it's what I put in there and I was just stuck, I guess.
And I'm like just, yeah, just call it a dupesy now.
And then of it, what's going to be funny is in like a year,
you're going to see some Zenquest project called like the
Dupesys or something. And it's just be like, well, put
dupesy in and and then it just got stuck.
Yeah. Well now you have to make a game
with a cute little guy and is for some how somehow there's a
dupesy involved. It's like the it's just a goblin
doing a little. Exactly.
Yeah, Yeah, the. Little baby got to get on that.
I could do that literally right now.
Yeah, that's the dupsy I'm doing.
Axe ladle's the good work right now, but I can stop.
I can stop. And do that the Dupsy.
Yeah, we'll have it for next time they come on stream.
We'll show you guys Dupsy. But so that's Axe all over the
gun. That is your Zen Zenuary, we're
calling it, because now there's two fucking mini.
There's Zemo and Zenquest and Zen Topia, and I'm sure there'll
be a fourth one next year. I mean, Game Found could do one
if they give a shit about TTRPGS, but it's not a board
game, so they don't. But So what else you got?
What? What else is Breitbart cooking
up right now? What?
What do you guys have on the horizon?
The like the other half of the Axolotl with a Gun Kickstarter
is like an expansion scene that has 6 new guns in it.
And the the guns in Axolotl with a Gun are basically the the
character class that you choose. And so the dice, you know, work
a certain way you're trying to roll under your number pretty
much all the time except when you're your gun tells you
otherwise. So it kind of gives each player
like an asymmetrical like dice mini game to play at the table.
They'll have like slightly different success conditions.
And so they're really just a fun excuse for me to decide to
design new and interesting and weird dice games.
So I had a lot of fun designing those.
There's one where you're like flicking dice at the Game
Masters dice to try and knock them off the table for extra
successes. That's awesome.
That's like a little wrist racket for your axolotl.
I did one that's like a railgun that just like charges and
charges and charges and charges and then fires a big blast and
you like stack a tower of dice on the table in front of you and
then when the tower falls you get the dice.
That's awesome. Anything that like actually gets
like using the dice more than just using the dice is great
because like Daiku has bug Busters and he has like a tower.
He does Mike Hutchinson put out space kits with it's like this
like orc goblin skirmish game and you have to actually like
build up a tower and like move it with your guy and if it ever
falls over it gets a problem. So that's so.
That's really good. That's so good.
If you can actually get the dice to do more than just a roll of
the table, that's because we all stack our fucking dice anyway.
Like, why not be part of the game, you know?
That was that was my exact like game designer thought was like,
what do you do with dice at the table?
And I was like, somebody is always stacking them.
You're just. Playing with it, yeah, yeah.
So yeah, so we have that. That's going with Axolotl with a
gun. We're actually publishing a lot
of Trash to Treasure content this year.
Trash to Treasure is I was. Going to say real quick, tell us
what trash to treasure. Let me pull that up over here
too. Yeah, Trash to Treasure is.
Bree and I both have a great love of magical girl like media.
Bree more or less I think grew up on Card Captor Sakra.
Yet you like didn't you like learn to read?
I learned how to read by reading the subtitles for Card Captor
Sakra. Yeah.
There you go. So yeah, it's about trash goblin
magical girls who are trying to save their city from corporate
greed and pollution and this mysterious magical corruption.
It's based on, like it's format is very similar to Eat the Reich
by Rowan Rukendeckerd. So it's like characters who are
designed to interact with an adventure that is part of the
book. So somewhere around like page 16
or so, there's like big spreads that have all of those magical
girls on the cover. Yeah, there's the there's the
little them in Incognito like school uniforms.
But yeah, so you play as these magical girls who have just like
gained their powers and are trying to get to the bottom of
this mystery as to what has corrupted your tiny little
dragon familiars who are themselves like the city's
elemental guardians. It's not so like quietly based
on a lot of Twin Cities like Minneapolis, Saint Paul, kind of
like places and issues like a lot of the content of several of
the chapters of the adventure allude directly or indirectly
to, you know, problems that problems that we here face,
whether it's like in the Midwest, Prairie conservation,
wetland, like conservation are really big things like
gentrification of of of like family owned and like historic
neighborhoods and things. Also big problem like there's,
there's a lot of kind of that DNA.
That's great though, I mean that very I I mean we're not going to
get too deep in this, but when anyone says like, you know,
Ghibli esque and it's just like the whimsical bullshit and not
like, you know, this kind of stuff.
And that's what it is like the first time I ever watched
Spirited Away and realized that the that like sludge monster
that goes to the bathhouse is just a polluted river and you're
just like, oh, like this is Ghibli esque or like the entire
concept of Princess Mononoke of just like industrialization
versus nature. So that definitely gives me
stripes of this and this, which is cool.
Yeah, Bree, do you want to talk about the the magical girls?
And they're like lore a little bit, because that is very much
your wheelhouse. Yeah, I, John does a lot of
really great stuff with the mechanics and stuff, but my
wheelhouse is 100% the design of world, like world design and
things like that. And I have, I spent a lot of
time trying to like make craft the chapters of the story to
like give the magical girl feel while also being as explicit
about the problems that the city is facing as I as much as I
could because pollution is itself like I, I designed the
goblins being like, OK, what are the pollutions for each element?
And so I was like, OK, well, I mean, sludge is covered in
plastics because she's using all of the plastics for that have
been like wrapped around turtles and like other sea life animals
or things that are polluting the ocean.
And like she's like made her like a recycled outfit out of
that. And so my first ever one that I
designed was burning, which was basically just like the a trash
fire. So she's like fully like trash
bagged up with like a trash can lid and like burning cardboard
and things like that. And then so I started kind of
going from there and then being like, what is like air pollution
stuff. So like Haze is covering in air
filters and is like a little inventor.
I think she's up. Yeah, she's right there.
And it's like covered in soot and smoke and smog worm is like
compost based. So her skirt is made out of like
the wire cages and like chicken wire and she's got coffee
filters and her hair and like cardboard and things that are
like biodegradable type of trash.
So like kind of like going with that.
And like my final character, which is I think the most
important one because her her name is what's on the cover of
The thing is treasure. She is like in a magical girl
anime like Sailor Moon. It's like Sailor Moon is the
main character, but all of the other characters are just as
important. So like treasure is like the
main character, but like less of like you can easily play a game
without treasure, but we've like put some things in the game
where it's like if you do play treasure, you can kind of like
lean into the like protagonist of an ensemble where you're like
a leader that like helps people rather than like she's like very
much the support character. She's very much the support
character in the game because she is the leader.
So she's like the the pollution of the heart, which to me is
greed. And that's kind of like the main
thing that this whole game wraps around is like the greed of a
corporation. And so her like main antagonist,
every three chapter of the main antagonist is like their dragon,
but treasure gets her dragon at the very beginning because he's
like the sage wise leader that like leads you through and tells
you all of the lore and stuff through the game.
And her main antagonist is the terrible, awful mech thing that
you fight at the end, which is what the antagonist throughout
the entire game has been building.
So like though it's very much of the pollution of the heart,
which is greed and then the pollution of and then that greed
pollutes all of the elements and the city and everything else.
And kind of like that's sort of the through line of the plot of
this game. I.
Mean that's a very magical girls through line, especially with
like the the you know like yeah, the sage little guy that helps
like the main girl like the entire time is very much of A
magical girl thing, which is great.
Everyone's got like a little familiar and so I needed
everyone. So each of the girls get their
own familiar by working hard to do it, but treasure gets hers at
the beginning and which also means that her familiar ability
is like not as cool as everybody else's.
Like she is a powerhouse to like start and then she doesn't
really level up a whole lot throughout the game because she
it had gets her buddy like immediately and all the other
girls like are so powerful and like can knock enemies out and
like do things like really quick and fast and very flashy.
And she's like pretty much her ability set is basically just
helping her friends. And I honestly love that for
like a leader magical girl character.
Yeah, well, it's great. It's really important and it's
and it's little Dragons, which obviously we've already spoken
about things got to have little Dragons in there.
So yeah, no, that's great. And the art is fantastic all the
way through this. I mean, you hit the magical girl
tropes and and vibes super hard. And and who?
Who laid out this this one, this book?
Emily I. Was going to say, look at that.
Look at, look at that Emily Layout.
Yeah, Emily has laid out everything of ours except for
our new edition of LGBT that's going to be coming out in for
Pride this year That that is a different layout person, but
Emily suggested. So Emily is kind of an
unofficial third member of Breitbart's team because we work
together all the time. There you go, your your
counterpart in the in the in the duo set here.
Yeah, 100% I I absolutely love working with Emily because we
work so in tandem, like I will like have this idea and like
these like all of these like art pieces and be like here are like
the vibes. And then she's like, what if we
add this vibe or like what are what are the touchstones here?
And like she really we really work together, like back and
forth. It was like very true in bonds
between where like she would. Like do the layout, like the
collage layout in person and then she would scan that in and
then send me the page that she laid out and then I would doodle
on top of it digitally. So we like really were like
passing it back and forth and like the art was like one whole
thing and like she did the layout, but like I did the
illustrations and we kind of, we kind of do a lot of things where
we work at like together at the same time.
Like I try to get as much art done as possible before the
layout stage, but there's always going to be stuff, especially in
layout when they're like, oh, they're here's like a place
where like I could use extra spot art or here's a place where
I could like fill this like space with more art and stuff.
So I try, when I'm working with Emily specifically, I try, I try
to like leave a little bit of space open for us to kind of
like mind meld during the layout process.
Gotcha. I mean, that's the best way to
do it. I mean, especially if you work
well with each other. And are there any future plans
for another collab like official collab between Breitbart and
Graphbound? I don't think yet, but it's not
that we don't want to for sure. I just think Graphbound is such
a huge slate right now and they're doing a lot of collabs
with lots of other people, which is really, really cool.
I'm so happy about it. But this current moment, no
specific collabs, but I mean, we always have ideas where we're
like pitching stuff to each other and being like, what if
this, what if this? We we work together a lot behind
the scenes. Emily did did, did DME well,
both. Bree was on vacation on my end
and Lucas was on vacation on her end.
And she's like, we could do anything.
We could do anything right now. We could start a new project,
John. They never know.
Have to do it. Yeah, just take out Bree, plug
in Emily and Vice. At some point when John it's
gone, you're just like Lucas. Like Lucas.
Let's do this. Thing, yeah.
Hop in and do this thing yeah. So yeah, you know, you said you
have something else coming out for for Pride Month once you
know, Axolotl 2 E the Kim the Kickstarter for that is it
Kickstarter back which which which Kickstarter?
Right now. Kickstarter.
There's too fucking many people listening to get together on
this thing. But when that's all done, what's
what's next? On the On the On the On the
docket for Breitbart. So yeah, after we're going to
release, we brought up trash treasure because we're going to
release a bunch of like free seasonal adventures.
So like each of the seasons we're going to have a little
like extra chapter of the story that you can play.
And I'm also releasing an SRD for it here in the next couple
of months so that people can like humble their own adventures
if they want to run like their own short campaigns from scratch
or in addition to what we wrote in the in the base game.
Because people in my experience have really been enjoying
playing in Maho City. So best give them the tools with
which to do more of that. But after those like that kind
of slate of games this year, the other thing that I'm working on
right now is like a big like science fantasy, like tabletop
role-playing game where you it's very heavily inspired by like
Destiny 2 and stuff like that. I'm a big, I'm a big fan of cool
spacers with cool space guns fighting like the forces of
evil. So that's that's another thing
that I've been working on that I like teased a little bit
earlier, but it's built, yeah. That's what's in that.
That's what's in that big old folder is.
Oh, yeah. I think it's all, I think, I
think we talked at length about what's in that folder, right?
Is that that's what we talked about on the plane.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This this exact this exact
folder will actually, if they're still here, had the the
privilege of play testing the very, very first, like danger
room play test of the the skirmish mechanics for that, and
I don't think they've played it since.
No, I don't think Will's played it since SO.
That was. We got it.
That was PAX last 20. 20 no, it's 20 yes.
PAX 2024. Yeah, PAX 2024, which this
game's been, yeah, this been, this game's been in development
for a very, very long time. And it's it's John's, it's
John's baby. And I'm I'm the mean overlord
that makes him write other things that he.
Can yeah, it's like I I finish all of my work for the drafts
that I must release in the next like three to six months and
then I open my drafts for the game I will release in two to
three years here. We go.
It's good to have that though, because trust me, if you have no
one telling you to do that, you'll never put anything out.
Because that's where I'm at. But if only we all had to
breathe. Yeah, as as the as the woman
owned owner of this company, which is super sick.
I I get to have, I dangle just a little bit of power over John
just being like, here's the carrot at the end of the stick.
Please write a game. I think that.
Game maybe can release. Tweeted literally the other day.
If I finish at the Armed and Dangerous draft, I can write
about space with spirits there. You go.
Here's a Here's a picture of a cute little guy.
Do you got a game for it? Do you got a game for it?
There you go. Just sliding a tiny little
concept art budget over the table to go hire like an art
friend to make some concept art if you finish the draft.
Finish the deal like we could like allocate funds for this,
yeah. Yeah, best way to do it, best
way to do it is to have somebody to help you do it.
And you guys, you know, seems to be working really well together.
It is 2026 and we are getting older which is crazy and like
you guys had 2019 like pre COVID is feels like so long ago.
But you know, the TRPG space changed a lot after that and
it's really cool that you guys navigated that and got to where
you are now and just continue to kind of get bigger and bigger.
Axolotl with a gun. Was it a short campaign?
There's only 8 days left on it. Did you guys only do like a
three-week or what was it? I think it was like 3 1/2 weeks
because yeah, John didn't want it to go into March, so we are
ending it two days before the end of February, so.
Gotcha. It's only two.
Three and a. Half.
There's only 8 days left until the end of February My.
It's gone so. Fast until the end of February,
but yeah. Like 11, damn.
It is. And it's a short month too, but
I have something I need to finish by the end of the month
that I keep putting off. And then every time I look at
the calendar, I'm like, oh, that's like a week and a half.
I really need to get this done. Yeah, yeah, it's.
It's scary. Yeah, no, the time just keeps
marching by. I mean, you, you little young
and you know you'll get there one day.
But but here we're at so Speaking of the Kickstarter,
obviously you can go find that on Kickstarter, but where can
people find all the rest of your stuff?
Where is Breitbart AT? And where can people get all the
trash and all the axolotls and all the guns and all the things?
The little dragon guys. Yeah, we have a website,
breitbartgames.com that has physical copies of all of our
games and PDFs. We also have an itch store,
Breitbart games dot itch dot IO. Our website also has like some
of our other merch, we have a few pins and things that will be
restocking a bunch of here in the next couple of months and
adding to more more designs of more little axolotls with guns
and cute stuff for that. You guys got to get hurts.
I I I have whole like drawers in my closet that is just for teach
RPG shirts. You guys got to get shirts and
just remember big design goes on the front because then stream
can see it. So yeah.
Yeah, yeah, we should definitely.
I've been thinking about a lot of merchandising stuff recently.
Pins are like our hugest thing because people, even if people
don't want to buy our games, they love the cute little guys.
Yeah, there you go. They love the cute little guys.
So merchandising is like a huge part of what I do these days is
like what can, what can my when I turn my drawing into something
cute little guy that we can like sell, But that's that's a whole
business. There's a lot of business stuff
in teacher PGS. Like we've talked a lot about
the creative stuff, but there's so much business that you have
to do too. It's it's a lot.
Yeah, got to got to pay bills and and sell stuff and and do
what not. And that's, that's, I feel like
that's the hard part. I feel like that's where a lot
of people start to fall apart with it.
So, I mean, thank goodness Breeze doing all that right,
John. We're having a conversation
about this the other day, but I was like, do you want to like
delegate some of the logistics work that you're, you're taking
notes on right now? And she was like, I need you.
I need you in the word minds and the e-mail minds.
If you can answer emails and write games.
Yeah, basically. It's like if John can talk to
people and then I can just tell him who to talk to, that would
be great. That sounds, that sounds again,
if only I had a birdie, maybe I could actually publish
something, but it would it would be out there.
But listen, it was overdue for you guys coming on.
You definitely have to come on again.
I know at one point we were talking about playing games When
hunter schedule gets a little more situated, we're going to
get back in to do some APS on the show and we would love to to
be axolotl shooting things and or magical girls doing things
Good. This is not the first magical
girl teach RBG we've talked about on the show.
So we got to actually be magical.
Little guys are. So they're goblins, right?
Yeah. OK.
You're trash. I was like, yeah, they're trash.
Goblin magical girls. Yeah.
So we got to have you back on to do that.
But seriously, thank you so much for being here.
It's a pleasure talking with you guys.
And again, overdue. And we'll definitely have you
back on the show. So Bree, John, thank you so
much. Thank you everyone that was here
in chat. And.
And that's going to be it for today.
We will see you all later. Bye.