Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan. Oh and I'm Kayla, sorry I got
trimmed up immediately by my own self.
No I'm Kayla Dice. I am a tabletop role-playing
game designer who releases work as Rat Wave Gamehouse.
If you're familiar with any of my work, it might be from things
like Terminal Transgender Deathmatch, Legend, Follow Me in
the Night, Accursed Radio, Fiola, Taste the Bottom much
more. I bounce around genres a lot.
I tend to say that the thing that links my work is a focus on
themes of connection and alienation, and at the moment I
am on Kickstarter crowdfunding for a new game called Psycho
Dungeon, which is a fantasy workplace action drama played
with no dice and no masters. Yeah, it's I there's so many
questions that come from from that introduction.
As you know, we don't write anything down here at all Is
tangents the name of the game of the weekly short podcast.
But this is the third time that that you're here on the show.
So thank you for joining us once again.
Thank you for having me back. Yeah, and one thing you
mentioned was Terminal, which I have right here.
Gorgeous book. Very excited to get it.
I think we we, we said this too, right before the show.
It's bigger than I thought it was.
I don't know why I assumed it was AZ in size.
Maybe I didn't pay attention, but it is a thick boy and it's
full like 8 1/2 by 11. This is a lot of game right
here. Yeah, Yeah, it's I ended up
going with A4 partly just for like the ratio of it and partly
I liked how it opened up some more like layout spaces that I
felt that were interesting in a four.
But yeah, I'm really happy with the book.
I'm really happy it's in the the hands of like the vast majority
of backers. It's on my web store now as
well, and I'll have some physical copies at UK Games
Expo. So yeah, that was a long sort of
road to getting the physical one out, and I'm very excited with
it. Psycho Dungeon is going to be a
five though, so that's going to be Zine's size, but it's
probably going to end up, I think it will be like it's less
actual words for sure, but I think it will probably have a
thicker spine than Terminal just by virtue of being A5 rather
than a four, so. It'll be A5, it'll be perfect
bound or. Yeah, it'll probably, yeah, it
will almost definitely be perfect bound because I was
like, Oh yeah, probably. And then I'm like, no, I've, I'm
the campaign's live and I've only budgeted for perfect bound.
It's perfect bound. That's not changing.
There we go and the other one that like like I said, I put it
in a doom pile somewhere and I'm very sad I wasn't able to find
it And and we said this before the 2nd the show is over, I'm
going to find it. But a ritual magic for besties
was the second time you came on and that's also in in hands of
people, including mine when I can find it.
How so between both projects and a woman's on Kickstarter,
woman's on backer kit and both are fulfilled kind of how how
how's those last two projects been as far as like being on I
know because this is your third one now, at least of the three
that I'm aware of, how was Kickstarter, how was backer kit
and and how was getting all of that out of your hands and and
into the hands of people? Yeah, so ritual magic
capacities, it was crowdfunder instead of backer kit and.
Crowdfunder, that's what it is. It's me I've so I've never done
Back Again and lots of people do really recommend Back again.
I found Ritual Magic Capacities, the crowdfund campaign.
There's a huge struggle, I think with getting seen and getting
people to join up to crowdfunder in a way that I even know in
terms of alternatives like backer kit doesn't seem to have
as much of that barrier. But it was a a struggle in that
sense. The thing I did in the end find
useful is I think I think I'd like planned out my time and how
quick we're going to be doing the turn around.
So like, you know, it's kind of only a month apart that I sent
out the physical copies of Ritual Magic and Terminal.
Whereas Terminals campaign obviously ended like way before,
but it was a longer Rd. there because while we'd finished the
writing and everything, once we finished the campaign, we'd then
do all of the stretch goal writer's work because I had to
wait till the money was in to pay them.
There's more art coming in. I then had to do all of the
layout and then footprinting stuff.
At one point I had a fulfilment partner where things didn't
really just ended up being easier to split and do them
myself. So those two fulfillments for
the first time I'd done, I'd opened a store about like a
month prior, so I'd done some sort of, you know, posting and
shipping, but those two were the first big fulfillments.
There's a lot of like learning curves, but yeah, I just, it's
really nice to get books physically in people's hands.
And yeah, to see and hear from people that they've they've
received their work, especially with terminal Ware, at least to
how my brain works, if something that size, I find it so much
easier once it's physical. And so I'm excited for it to be
in, yeah, out in the world. Yeah, this is definitely one
that we're gonna chat about here on the show at some point.
I for those in pockets line that held up terminal.
The layout is beautiful. The art's beautiful.
I know I saw a lot of this prior, you know, when we were
going over stuff, I saw a lot of things in like the the press kit
and everything, but it's it's so well done.
And I love a lot of these like spreads and pages.
Like I really love this page because the blue is a lot
different than a lot of what you see in the background because
there's a lot more dark to it. So there it's just the art is
fantastic and it's just a really, really neat game.
I'm really excited to to dig in more and, and actually go over
that here on the show. Yeah, Golden Geist is a
brilliant artist and I can't give her enough sort of credit
and appreciation for just the sort of control of palette and
capturing the spirit of that game.
It absolutely won't be the game it is without that
collaboration. It's.
How was it kind of handing over like so much of the way your
game visually is going to be to like one person, whether they
just like is was there anything difficult about that or did you
find it to be like like exactly what you wanted because they
were able to capture that? Like what?
What? How did that feel?
Yeah, I so Terminal was the first time I'd worked with an
artist. It was also the first time I'd
worked with an editor. Even.
No, that's not true. It's the first time I'd hired an
editor for my own work. I'd been edited in other
contexts, but I yeah, it was, it was a really interesting thing.
I remember like very early on I was just like, you know, what
stuff's useful for you, what stuff isn't.
And I think it was a lot of figuring out what she found
helpful. And for us, a lot of it was like
I gave as much sort of details as I could in odd direction for
anything like material. But I always trusted like any of
the execution and blocking and stuff to her.
And that was because like that was the thing she, you know,
wanted and preferred having like the the decisions around,
whereas she felt very confident when I'd been like super like
exact down to details that don't get used on other things.
It's interesting. But also there's so many things
in Terminal specifically where I feel it convey stuff of the
world that I think would have been hard to put into words.
I think like there's a lot of like explicit trans
representation in Terminal, but I also think like because of the
art, there's a lot more sort of like, I don't necessarily want
to say subtle, but just like matter of fact representation
that comes from, yeah, just like a very sort of beautiful
rendering of, of trans bodies. Yeah, I mean, like you said,
Gorman, the art is absolutely, absolutely stunning.
I mean, even just and the color like the one thing that I can't
ever get over the whole time, and I love it as much as just
the color scheme, like you said. I mean the the kind of like the
vaporwave like matrix, kind of like computer but not computer,
which also helps with the binary code over like the entire thing.
Anyway, it was just such a it's a beautiful.
It's an absolutely stunning book.
And like I said, when you get pages that are completely like
kind of divorced from that vibe too.
It's so vibrant. It's it's it's good, good, good.
Good job. I love this book.
That's great. Thank you, I really appreciate
it. And you're back in Kickstarter,
like you said with Psycho Dungeon.
So tell me about like what, what's the, what's the pitch for
Psycho Dungeon? What are we doing here?
So Psycho dungeon takes place in a sort of post dungeon fantasy,
like a modern setting but full of magic and high tech gizmos
called Glen James. Just a a modern city in there
and within the city when people like sort of when their their
troubles and traumas get too much, basically they emerge as a
nightmarish physical structure, a physical psycho dungeon that
reflects all of their sort of pain and turmoil.
And then psycho plumbers are called in to sort of clear out
this dungeon, help someone get back from the the brink, from
the edge and close it off. And the description, the early
description, one of the first things I wrote for the game was
I described the role of psycho plumbers as, you know, one part
handyman, one part adventurer, one part therapist.
And I think that goes to the heart of what at least their
game is for the the characters you're playing, your people who
are overworked, not necessarily greatly adjusted, not
necessarily super protected by your workplace.
You're doing stuff that's really meaningful to the people you
interact with, but also that stuff is often going to like
carry you home carry. You're going to end up carrying
it home with you and you're going to be struggling in the
sense it's a lot about mental health and surviving under
capitalism. And then it's also a a very
different kind of, I think tabletop dungeon crawler because
it's mainly, you know, built on a belonging outside belonging
framework. There's no dice, there's no game
master. There's just like a variety of
roles, procedures and all stuff that sort of supports a token
based economy. And, you know, it works great
for like a really fun sort of simple one shot.
But also I think there's so much cool stuff in the game that
really lives and breathes when you just get a sort of longer
term story. It's got a sort of procedural
drama bent mixed with, yeah, sort of postmodern or a sort of
contemporary fantasy magical realist thing mixed in.
It's got some of the social commentary that has been picked
up a lot. Tanya Floka, who's a game center
really like Red and gave me a pull quote.
Well, they said Psycho Dungeon is a post fantasy, post Blairite
post like modernist Nightmare. And yeah, I think it it reflects
a lot of anxieties from the real world while also being a cool
game about being a screw up who's just doing their best.
Yeah, I you so lots of fun, interesting things going on with
this that intrigues me a lot. We've been, I've had dream
apart, dream skew on my shelf and on our list to do for a
while. But for those that don't know,
can you tell us a little bit about blowing outside, belonging
and then and then thereby also like no dice, no masters?
Yeah, so the first Belong outside Belong game I ever
played would have been Dream Askew, I think even before it
was published in like the Dream Rescue Dream Park game.
It's invented by Avery Elder and Benjamin Rosenbaum.
And then it's been featured in other games like Wander Home or
Tournament Ark or Our Haunt. And so yeah, there's no game
master figure. There's, you know, people's
characters who will have playbooks.
And then there are often different setting elements in
these games where I think for instance, in dream and stuff
like sort of the toxic, the psychic maelstrom is one or
people representing sort of scarcity where you have access
to moves where like you can do these things, these stuff happen
playing these element. And then there's sort of a token
economy to your playbook characters where you're, you
know, making moves which give you tokens often because you're
putting yourself in a vulnerable position in some way.
And then you can use those tokens to make your, your strong
moves. It's, you know, it's been
evolved in lots of different ways.
The main reason I describe Psycho Dungeon as no dice, no
masters, rather than I tend to say it's built on a belonging
outside belonging rule set because people understand that,
though I know at least in dream of skew dream of par, everyone
else has a section talking about like what the term belonging
outside belonging meant to her. And it's mentioning like this
idea of like finding community outside of community.
And I think psycho Dungeon does have a lot of focus on, you
know, where you belong, but I don't necessarily think you're
inherently in a community with the people you work with because
often they're just your Co workers.
There's actually a big section on surface life stuff where like
you might decide you've got like a really tight knit close as
family vibe. You might have really siloed
lives where you meet each other in this dungeon and then you go
home and you don't know anything about each other.
So I think it can be about belonging, but I think it's
almost about the way that like feelings of community, Psycho
Dungeon specifically, I mean, can be a bit sort of dissolved
and like a busy austerity hit city.
And yeah, so the evolution of Psycho Dungeon evolution sounds
overly prescriptive. But like the the changes I've
done, Psycho Dungeon is there's like a mix of roles.
The setting elements are kind of comboed with the dungeon, which
has responsibility for like, you know, controlling and creating
monsters and traps and things. But also then there's the third
role, which is the client and you can be passing around the
dungeon role. Then there's all of the
playbooks, which are the psycho plumbers.
They have access to normals, but then the client is someone who I
sort of described them as a special guest star because it's
only ever one unique person per job.
You're not following them from session to session, but they
really matter in that moment, like the patient of a week in a
medical drama or something. And they have like lesson of
access to moves and stuff. But in this game, their
understanding of their own issues, which is what allows the
game to progress. So it's splitting up a lot of
like sort of GM responsibility. I know it's just like with no, I
know some people talk about like a difference between is a game
GM less or GM full. And I think Psycho Dungeon is
like, yeah, it's giving you a lot of procedures to make you
confident, but it's GM full. And it's like really passing
around that responsibility and control essentially.
Yeah, I I like how you I like the lean that you have in the
like no dice, no masters versus of belonging inside belonging.
And tell me if I'm completely all paced with this.
But everything my sense of belonging inside belonging is,
is what you said, how like belonging inside belonging.
And a lot of the games are having this like small community
of, of people outside a bigger kind of more oppressive
community and like being a part of that.
And I when you talk about the psycho, you know, plumbers
potentially just being Co workers, like it's interesting
that that's not really kind of the the the basis for that.
But using the no dice, no masters with the token system
like that feels like it fits really well in with like the
dungeon and client and the token system and everything like that.
So it's it's because I know that like belonging as a blogging is
quote UN quote, PTA and PBTA. Like I just love looking at like
in my mind, like the trees of like where this game eventually,
like, you know, on the family tree of games comes from.
Yeah, I always love seeing a game which is maybe doing a
genre, which I've seen, I see done in both like Forged in the
Dark and Belonging Outside Belonging, because they're both
coming from Pbta as well. I almost feel like, oh, this is
like divergent evolutions of species.
Like this is different EV evolutions where you get the PB,
the like you could probably find a PBTA of a genre and then that
Bob and then the Forged in the Dark.
I do find that stuff fascinating a lot.
Yeah, it's neat. And this one feels like a break
off from that too, where it's very no dice, no masters, which
is I think kind of started with belong inside belonging, but is
kind of really not belong inside belonging.
It's kind of stretched in a different direction.
So that's really, it's really neat, kind of divergent you have
here with this game. That's cool.
One question I had when you were describing it.
So are the dungeons that come from people's minds, Are they
physically in like the real world, or are psycho plumbers
actually going into the psyches of people?
I so I don't think like the entrances in the real world.
It might be sort of, you know, oh, I've got this, this
entrance, this dungeon entrance in my closet that could be full
of implications or it's, it's in my bathroom or like, Oh yeah,
sorry. They're like this, this back
alley behind my flat is full of this dungeon entrance.
And then like that's sort of a shifting dreamscape a little bit
or maybe more nightmare scape is more accurately there are
physical location that the client is going into them with.
And yeah, the fact is that they're this thing that exists.
And if the if they're not closed off, the way they work is
they're like draining energy and motivation and feeling from the
client and they will just sort of eventually leave them as a
husk unless they are hit sort of at the root and essentially like
ripped out. But I think of them as an almost
weird half dimensional space. That's neat.
It reminds me a little bit. Have you ever looked at the
Manwa solo levelling? I know that the anime before it
just came out. It's it's it's similar in a
little bit different way, but like, yeah, this world, for some
reason, randomly in this world, these dungeon entrances start
appearing. So all you see is the gate to go
in. But it's very like Manwa, like
you, you level up in a dungeon, kill monsters, get like get, you
know, power and there's capitalism because that fuels
machines and whatever. But it reminds me a bit of that
where the way you're describing is like there's a gateway, but
the dungeon itself is like, you can go around the gateway, but
the dungeon goes in there. But it's neat.
It's it's, you should check it out.
I think you'd really dig it. Yeah, that's really interesting.
But how in, in the world, how are psycho plumbers seen?
Like, are they seen as like like, you know, like a therapist
would like, you know, some people see that as, you know,
they're like a medical professional.
So there's like a little bit of like a status to it.
Or are they more like more workmen?
Are they like more like plumbers?
Like, how are they kind of seen in society?
Are they like, appreciated or are they seen as just like
another like, you know, workman's job?
So the thing I end up saying about like psychoplum is like in
text at least is, you know, it's a, it's a low paid job.
It's definitely in a sort of working class area.
They're probably the job is dangerous and it has that sort
of level of respect of danger. And it probably does involve
like, you know. Being knowledgeable at least,
but I sort of think of like the level of intervention and
training you have is probably similar, more closer to a first
aid course than a medical degree.
For instance, if you're using like a healthful therapy
analogy. But in terms of like how they're
seen in society, like are people like seeing them as as
adventurers or heroes or sort of thing sensitively, I think the
book leaves that open. I because definitely for me, I
imagine a lot of the particulars of how the job functions.
It's one where I imagine people are taking influence either from
like basically from jobs they're familiar with either on a
personal level or probably free TVI know so much of the writing
in Psycho Dungeon was a lot of influenced by my time as a
teacher, which I did for about on and off in weird different
ways, like around four years of teaching and then I quit because
it just didn't could never work for me.
So I know if I was playing a game of people, it's it's going
to end up having that structural lot.
I'm also sure some people are big into medical dramas will
probably take a lot from like hospital settings or stuff or
people who experience with work is more yeah.
If someone had more direct experience with say, counselling
and stuff, that might inform it. It's I think of there's less
hard facts to the setting of Glendane and Psycho Dungeon than
you might imagine. It's a lot of like, well, what
is your version of this world at the table?
The I hope the game and the book does do a bit to sort of
facilitating that process of discovery.
And I also, I just want to also say in case it came out weird, I
vocations are fantastic. Plumbers and electricians,
everyone, we need you. I meant more blue collar versus
white collar, not like lesser status by any stretch of the
imagination. Because what a lot of those
people do is a lot more important than what a lot of
people with white collars that just steal our money do so.
Oh yeah, absolutely. So since it is a descendant of
the PBTA is it does have playbooks and as of right now
there are seven in them. Tell us a little bit about kind
of the playbooks and the structure and how you can kind
of play these characters. Yeah, so the playbooks there are
seven, there is the wizard, the witch, the Cyborg, the werewolf,
the shapeshifter, the sword fighter and the Rockstar.
And sort of my implication of the playbooks, you do get this
thing of like, OK, there's no one has a specific psycho
plumber job degree. They all focus mostly on sort
of, I think like different narrative frosts.
Like the wizard is very focused on the wizard.
Part of the motivation for the wizard was I wanted to reframe
like what would being qualified as a wizard be if that wasn't in
an academia world, if that was like a sort of vocational trade
school. So but the wizard is then like,
oh, I committed a lot to training to be a wizard.
I don't know if I fully understood everything I was
signing up for. I don't know if I'm cut out for
this. That was definitely very
inspired by teaching the witch that like the witch's focus is
very on sort of the parallel experience of like monetizing a
hobby and how that can really sort of sour that relationship
with a hobby. The werewolf is really sort of
focused on like your relationship with your body
because of wet, like Lichen Frosty will have been picked up
in a psycho dungeon, and that is in a lot of ways kind of an
allegory for chronic pain. The Cyborg is so about balance.
That's kind of an allegory for chronic fatigue.
The Shapeshifter is really sort of a story about a completely
destroyed work life balance and how you've been sort of like
crammed into different things and maybe lost everything other
than this job. The sword fighter then is a big
focus on like, well, what is someone starting out like?
The sword fighter is me when I decided I wanted to be a
teacher, whereas maybe the shapeshifter was me by the end
of my first year of teaching. And then the rockstar's a big
focus on like, ah, and some of them might came about them from
different angles, like wizard and witch.
It was me going like, yeah, I want a version where the wizard
is a blue collar job. And then the witch was kind of
almost complicating that because I was like, well, you know, if
wizard, if magic exists in the setting, but anyone can learn
magic. It's mainly sort of cultural.
I, I kind of ended up looking at which is something that was
perceived as a sort of pink collar job where it's seen as
more sort of soft scale. And obviously it's the thing
where like, by implication, you can just look at this and go
like, well, they can both do exactly the same things, but
there's some space for that exploration.
The werewolf was very like, I wrote something and then I
looked back at it and I was like, oh, this is really about
my experience with fibromyalgia, where something like the
shapeshifter that started from the point of, I want to playbook
about what happens when you are really burnt out and you've lost
this balance. And I thought about how I was
going to present that a few different directions, and then I
landed on the idea of it's a shapeshifter.
So the approach is all different.
The playbooks are sort of distinguished by the different
moves they have. They all have access to strong
and vulnerable moves as well as lateral moves by which they can
give up players tokens. They have lots to pick lists
that sort of shade in their unique back story.
You know, it's in that sort of PBDABOB style.
These sort of questions and stuff do guide them in certain
shapes. There's a lot of different ways
you could go with any of them. And then they all have their own
sort of triggers for how advancement is going.
Because in the game, psycho dungeon advancement can be, oh,
you're sort of getting somewhere good, or it can be you're
completely getting stressed out. And eventually you're going to
be in the position of having a psycho dungeon pop out that you
need someone to come in and help clear it out for you.
Yeah, that was something that I thought too is like what happens
when like a psycho plumber creates a psycho dungeon?
Is it like a super dungeon because they've been in other
people's or is it just more more of the same?
And so it's like some whole advice on it in the section like
you, the the suggestion is like, you can just follow the regular
procedure you've used for building a psycho dungeon
before, but this character has access to all of their stuff,
but they'll still pick things out.
There is a note on it though, And this is kind of inspired by
by teaching stuff where I do talk about a lot of the
procedures and I do say like they're, they're scaffolds to
help you learn and feel very confident with the system.
And you might start to diverge from them when you get further
along. You might create a psycho
dungeon where you're like, actually, I reckon, yeah, this
has got way more flaws. It's way more complicated
because this is a psycho plumber's one.
Or you might go, it wasn't as complicated as it seems.
This is smaller. You might make some of the
things up because the point is like the procedure has taught
you to be confident in making the decision that serves your
story best. But there's, yeah, a lot of
guidance on how it works. And then there's a lot of
suggestions. Cause completing your own psycho
plumber psycho dungeon, I should say, is a real opportunity for
your character to reach a turning point.
Like that's opportunities for like you might just quit here.
Like this is clearly not worth it.
You might, you can develop into some of the other playbooks,
like if you, if lycanthropy is developed in a psycho dungeon,
you just had your own. Maybe you take this option where
you're like, oh, I'd probably get Lycan frappy off this.
I'm going to become take the werewolf playbook or oh, I
probably got some injuries. I'm going to take a Cyborg
playbook. Or you might suggest a version
where he's like, you know, my character will go straight back
to work. And it's like, oh, Are you sure
about that? You don't have to and maybe
shouldn't. Yeah, it it presents options to
change a longer sort of term story of these characters, which
is really just sort of like I was about to say slice of life,
but that's not quite accurate. But because it's got that sort
of like it's situational in the way like sitcoms or work drama
DS are. Gotcha.
You know, one thing I like about the way that you write a lot of
things is there's like, how do I say this?
It's not necessarily incredibly subtle, but it's always elegant,
if that makes sense, You know what I mean?
Like you could read terminal as just terminal, but like if you
just literally just like take one layer down, there's like so
much going on with it. And you know, when you're
describing the playbooks, that's kind of how it feels where it's
just like you could just play the wizard or you could
understand like the where the wizard came from and the places
that you pull from, a lot of the things that you do, like even
the original magic for besties and stuff like that.
Like there's never, there's always somewhere that it comes
from and a meaning to what it is and, and a depth to it.
You know, nothing ever feels like, like it's added in just
like the game or something like that.
It always feels like it's added in with purpose and with
experience. Is that something you strive for
or is that just kind of like the way that you write if you if you
get what I'm saying and all? Yeah, No, totally.
I first of all thank you. I really appreciate that.
And that feels really nice to be seen essentially.
I do always like to think like often I guess about the like,
what's the first layer? What's the layer where it
doesn't matter if someone gets this deeper thing?
Are they still getting that cool game in terms of what I'm
drawing on? Sometimes, because I've said for
years now, I say like I make games and there are a lot of
time about connection and alienation.
When I first thought of that, it was mainly a sort of retroactive
thing. I looked like the five games I'd
made at that time and was like, yeah, this is a through line.
This is A and analysis. I comply to my own work.
But as I do go on more, I do sort of think more consciously
and often it's I'm writing saying because I think it's
cool. The pitch for Psycho Dungeon
came semi fully formed on my flight back from Gencom last
year where I just fought. I think the Tom Psycho Dungeon
came where I'm like dungeon that comes from all of someone's
stresses or traumas. Plumbers called in to clear it
out. That obviously then expanded
though, because Len, I, as I started writing up, OK, here's
this cool idea and then I started thinking of what's this
about that brings in the client and stuff.
And then I, I'm consciously going, I'm really informed by,
by my experience teaching and that personal aspect.
So I know what I do when I'm bringing it in, Like I am often
doing that consciously, but sometimes I write saying by
accident, I wrote the werewolf, look back to it, realized, oh,
I've written a chronic pain playbook.
And then on I did the second draft of that where I leaned
into it and I went with it. But also like, yeah, there's
still that first level where the werewolf is.
You're not necessarily engaging with it as an allegory.
I think there's a lot of sort of like this will sound
pretentious, but like sort of, yeah, like allegorical resonance
and a lot of things that work on.
There's the element of lap for terminal and coercive control.
There's definitely this for like loads of different things as
well as like mental illness in general for this.
But I don't ever want that to be like the direct thing.
I sort of want this possibility where like, yeah, there'll be
people who like really look at it closely and really see it and
feel seen by it maybe. And then there's also a level
where people don't do that. And I think I guess why I do
like that first layer is also because I'm like, that I guess
gives me the separation to go that like people may have read
my work, read it really well, seen all the things I meant in
it. But also I'm aware like that
doesn't mean they know me. There's still like the book
always transforms things and I'm an awful, so I'm dead.
And so I'm at least aware of like how in a dead awful way,
you know, I'm aware of how my intentions and experience
informed my work and I'm more so aware of wanting my work to
stand on its own, even if people don't know about any of that
other stuff. So it was very over explained.
No, that I mean, that's that's perfect.
You know that, you know, then that's kind of what I was.
You know, the great answer for the question is just Yeah, like
the ability for it to stand on its own without knowing you
because without knowing you at all, I I read some of your
stuff. And then once I know what's and,
you know, I mean, you, you get it.
You know what I mean? But, you know, but then I know
you more so now we spend at this point hours together and it's
it, like you said, it does still really stand on its own.
I think you do that incredibly successfully.
Do you think that you had kind of like a self actualization in
your writing in the sense that you said in the first bunch of
things you put out, you didn't really think about it, but when
you look back, you go, oh, OK, that that's what I do.
And then like from that point forward, like thought about it
more consciously or or like I guess if that's.
Yeah, yeah. I think often where my ideas
start is often sort of from a from I guess like a sort of
simple idea. So for Psycho Dungeon, the idea
was the concept. For Terminal, the initial I
think idea was I wanted to apply like the matrix to the system
from Inevitable and other things came after that.
For something like say 30 Foes is a game I made 1.
So it's like I want to make A7 samurai game that's really about
negotiating as as a table. And then I guess I'm often
figuring out the angle in and some of that does usually go
back to like, oh, how are these themes that I'm interested in?
How am I still exploring them in this space?
But other times I think I I think I interrogate myself as a
as a creator a lot, but I do often and I feel like I've never
written something where I've like completely gone like I'm
really surprised. That's very atypical.
I like to think I'm building on myself.
I like to think psycho dungeon builds on the 1st belonging
outside belonging game I did that was called to embrace a
swamp creature. I like to think like the next
game I do with like a a real like hardly written setting will
be really informed by the work I did on terminal and I'll be
conscious about knowing it. I'm working on a sequel to
Transgender Death Match Legend 2, and I can see how that's
really informed by what I learned from doing that first
one. So even I think when I start
from this position of just, oh, what's the fun idea I want to
explore? I think often where I end up is
often thinking about what have I learned?
And that's, I guess both by other things I've made and also
what have I learned in life. And I have, yeah, I think I do
have the impulse to always end up putting it into my work,
which yeah, I sometimes I sometimes I can feel sort of
weird about the idea of like, oh, am I putting too much of
myself in? But I think, I think it's the
side I manage on and I feel good about.
I think it's a former stand up comedians impulse.
Yeah, I I like it. I'm a fan, you know, like I, I
do think that there's a through line for for all of your games.
I've read where I can read want to be like this does feel like
Kayla, you know what I mean? Like this feels like I can see
some stuff from this game too, or I can see this.
And especially when you go from like some of your earlier work
to to terminal and then on to this one.
Like there is this through line of at least the perception of
you that you can get as much as you can from someone's writing.
But also, like you said, this growth in this use of allegories
and and then the expansion on the way that the the various
systems work and stuff. So truly indeed, I'm excited to
see like sequels to things, that's what.
It'd be really interesting to see the first one and then see
the second one. That'll be cool.
Yeah, that's, I'd like, I 'cause I have done some like second
edition stuff before, but often it's like really early games I
did which I then just like rewrote like a couple months
later. But yeah, I'm interested in the
idea of really, like, properly revisiting stuff.
That's gonna be neat. So so the art and Psycho
dungeon, it's different. It's out there.
It's it looks like it's very photo collage kind of mixed with
a lot of like multi or am I trying to use like other stuff?
So like talk to me about the art.
It it's, it's unique and especially compared to if you
look at something like Terminal. Yeah, so Terminal does.
No, sorry, Psycho Dungeon does have like a more traditionally
drawn cover by just Kasinski, which is a really awesome cover.
That was a great experience. But I ended up looking, and this
was admittedly mainly for budget reasons, as I was trying to keep
this as a low budget project and see I guess almost sort of like,
oh, what's like how well can I do when I'm being quite sort of
self reliant? Mainly because just at the
moment I'm trying to turn being a self-employed game creator
into a job. So I need to sort of see how I
can be spending that. So yeah, it's a lot of the art.
Internal art is all by me. It's a lot of digital collage
which is then sort of very manipulated in ways.
That's where playbook images come from.
They're all like I've sort of collaged and meshed and it's
going to say Photoshop is a generic term, but I think that's
a bit, I use Affinity, but that to get different things.
And so of the playbooks, it's trying to get like a sort of
nice iconic image for things like the wizard, which is I
believe like that's an image of an electrician.
And then I've just added the wizard staff and hat and then
added lots of exposure and colours to the art with the
werewolf as well. Yeah, that's a like woman in a
shopping market where I've used like a dog features from another
public domain thing. I've also started taking a lot
of photos. The ones then for the individual
dungeon representations is where they get a bit more weird.
That's where it's often like very like very open to
interpretation, sort of like self consciously capital W weird
images. So like a thing representing
social life. I've got like a a snake running
out of a payphone for adolescence.
I've got someone whose face facial features have all been
sort of like melted and they're surrounded by people whose
mouths are sort of like ravenous.
And yeah, because of the way it's overexposed, sort of
posterized, like adding halftone stuff.
I remember someone compared the style, the literal visual look
of it, of it kind of looks like old Game Boy advanced
screenshots, which is something I've, yeah, tried to lean into a
bit with the physical layout of this, this book.
I'm sort of drawing a bit of inspirations from like a literal
instruction manual from video game manuals as well as then
yeah, lots of sort of more designee elements and it's.
I don't usually, I don't openly describe myself as an artist
ever. I've done like this digital
college stuff before. It's similar to, but often
usually in combination with other things.
So this is like AI guess a big shift for me in terms of yeah,
trying to see does this visual style, which I think is often
really fun and really interesting.
Is it saying that interest people enough that like, they
are really sort of charmed by a book featuring that style?
And I'm, I'm hopeful and the reaction I've got has been very
positive. But it's it's, it's definitely
an experiment. And admittedly, I'm listening
like the second Kickstarter, third campaign I've done
everything I'm doing at every point is still sort of an
experiment of just seeing what works.
But yeah, that's a bit of the how the process of the art comes
together. Yeah, it's neat too, because
like, you know, for anyone that can go to the key starter page
right now, which you should and go back this even with the
layout like in the top, there's like those the the little
buttons. And when you say like DVD give
advance now all I see is like controller buttons.
So there's like a yellow circle, a green circle and A and a red
circle. And now, now that's all I'm ever
going to see is like the the XY, you know, pyramid what whatever
various controllers see on it Now that's all I'm gonna be able
to see. I mean, the layout looks great.
It like, I mean, you did a you've done a really good job
with the art. I think I I can't wait to see
more of the dungeon art specifically because of how like
on reality based it needs to be. You know what I mean?
Like it can get weird because people's like he's get weird.
So I'm really curious to see to see that.
But yeah, and you have a couple other people on the project.
I know the I just did that cover.
But also listen, here you have Alyssa Ridley is are they
helping you with writing, editing?
Like what's her associate with the project?
Yeah, so Alyssa, she's the editor.
She's from Biscuit Fund games stuff, things like Tournament
Ark and Goblin Country and Levante papers.
So we first took up on Terminal. She was the editor of Terminal.
I felt like she did such an awesome job on Terminal in terms
of really helping like clean up things which were like sort of,
you know, maybe less clear or less focused on what they were
trying to do. So, you know, in the same way, I
think it's even in the fangs of Terminal where I'm like, this
game isn't what it would be without Gorman Geiss Star and
without the way Alyssa helps develop that.
So yeah, so she'll be working on editing the manuscript.
I've sent out the initial draft at this point.
This is obviously an interesting thing here because I the the
stretch goals can end up expanding this game a bit.
So I guess we'll see on how the campaign does there.
But yeah, as it is like she'll sort of start working.
We've talked about those ideas a lot and it's just someone I
think is a really brilliant editor and I do feel like,
really understood by, I think I feel very seen as a writer by
her. And so I think that's, that's
part of why I enjoyed working with her so much on Terminal.
She was also the editor for Ritual Magic.
And so yeah, as long as she's got availability, I wasn't too
busy. I I always love having a look
over my stuff. That's awesome.
Yeah. It's, you know, it's everybody
out there writing stuff. Editors are great.
They're really important. Not only will they make sure
that your stuff is readable, but also understandable.
So get an editor people. If you're gonna use a
crowdfunding thing for anything fun and editor, they're great
people. So the project's been out for, I
think it's about 5 days. There's 25 days left to go.
I think you're about, so the goal in American is 2835, but
the goal in pound 1652 you're at about 2100 for American.
So more than like 4/5 of the way to funding with 20 with only
five days in. I think the last update I got
was like 70% of the way or 72. It may even be to initial
funding. I think like it's been a good
launch. I find these things definitely
when I'm in the middle of them, so hard to judge.
But yeah, I think it's been a good launch.
There's a lot of fun here. Some of the cool ones are gone
or close to gone. I sold an annotated copy where
I'm going to go through, add lots of little notes.
I think there's still some chances for people to get their
name in the book in sort of in universe locations or or other
sort of structure of a present ways of presentation.
But as it stands out, yeah, you can get the game.
You can get it either digitally, physically, signature versions.
You can help contribute to the community copy pool initially,
which was said at the start. Yeah, there's a lot of different
tiers, which are mainly just me sort of giving people ways where
if they feel like they really want to support the project and
earn more money, they've got that that option there.
Yeah, yeah. So, so tears wise, it's always
interesting when we talk about other countries and stuff, but
there's always, you know, the supported tier, the one, the
$1.00, well, $2.00, one pound, one digital is only 10.
Is it pounds? Is it pounds?
Yeah, that's down as 10 lbs actually.
Yeah, it's this is the weird thing because I set my, I set my
pledge levels on Kickstarter in Great British pounds.
I set my prices on each in dollars, but I actually usually
keep the numbers the same. So should probably actually
think. About that, if, if, if
capitalism could just make EUR pounds and dollars like the same
across the board, that would be great.
But how would people make money by stealing people's currency?
So digital copy is only £10 or $13.
The physical copy is only £20 or $26.
The signed copy 25 lbs thirty $2.00.
And then signed copy plus the name in the book is £35 or $45.
And Oh no, there's still the signed copy plus the community
copy donation. Community copy is always great
to, to put out there for people that aren't able to, to have the
funds to be able to still participate in tabletop gaming.
I mean, that's one of the reasons we talk about value on
the show is if things are, you know, too much, you're, you're
really wiping out a lot of your audience.
So having things like community copies are such a great thing to
have. And then, yeah, the annotated
copy is gone. So very affordable, especially
for the quality of writing that that you do all the time.
It's fantastic. Anyone that didn't get
terminable for, I highly, highly recommend going to ratwave.uk,
grabbing a copy of everything the kids.
That's what I did as soon as just oral.
But I was like, click, click, click, click, click.
All right, I have everything now, so we're good.
I remember that, yeah. That was the first big order.
I was like tab all right, still some distance.
Now I have. Now I have everything.
Yeah, you know, I, like I said, I really enjoy your work, being
able to get it physical. I mean, clearly I have a
problem. So if if I enjoy people's stuff,
I want to have everything they've ever touched.
So we went ahead and do that. But I of of all the things, I
think a really great entrance into the into your work is
terminal. I think it's an absolutely
fantastic game. And I know it is a little bit
bigger than, you know, a Zine, but I, I, I can't recommend this
game enough and I'm really excited to go over it with
Hunter here on the show. But I definitely want to grab
that. And with 25 days left to go, I
think you're so the pledge is at 20.
So are your stretch goals right now in in great British pounds
too? Have we looked at stretch goals
or am I looked at great? British pounds.
Gotcha. Yeah.
So I'll yeah, I if if it's easier for currency wise, I can
run them down off the top of my head.
Oh no, I just so for the stretch goals just in general.
So you have Dungeon Textures is your first stretch goal.
Dungeon Scenarios is your second.
The fiction excerpts is your third unextended example play is
the, what did I say, 4th and then the 8th playbook.
I'm really excited to see what the 8th playbook could
potentially be, but the stretch will sound really, really
interesting. I'm excited.
But one thing I think we missed is textures.
What are textures? As far as the game goes?
Yeah. That's actually an element I
forgot to sort of explain. I guess if you're familiar with
Wonder Home, think of them as, I guess, the evil twin of natures
from that game. But basically, so the dungeon
has access to lots of moves, and it makes aggressive moves where
it's trying to essentially attack the people inside.
And it makes manipulative moves where it tries to sort of play
on the client's emotions or the emotions of the psycho plumbers
because, you know, they're not made of stone.
They're affected by the things they see and it uses that to
gain tokens. But to shade in an individual
dungeon, you pick textures and these textures usually just
reflect the real world issues. And then they're bundling
together sort of a different desire.
The the the Psycho dungeon wants that to bring up this texture
and it comes with some sort of monsters and aesthetics to lean
on as long as they're all sort of included.
Some quote that gives an example of how stuff might work and
play. I recall.
Yeah, like work is one. And the quote is about someone
talking about how they were so dangerously over works that they
were wishing they could have an accident just so they wouldn't
be in work. And then it's mentioned that
this is from a a client whose Psycho dungeon was full of
skeletons of rusted iron. And then some of the monster
suggestions that might be like, oh, yeah, if you're using this,
maybe you use, you know, construction equipment come to
life. Maybe you use these sort of
goblins or stuff and it can go very sort of, they're kind of
like broad enough that the way you imagine them for an
individual client will really affect them.
You know, if parents can be one. And that's obviously so
influenced by what what are you deciding this character has as
their relationship with their parents and what kind of
monsters or stuff is that inspiring?
So then the first stretch goal is adding some sort of niche
nastier ones. Basically the the first one, I
ended up moving those stretch goals around because just in the
back of my mind I kept thinking of more texture ideas and I was
like, OK, yeah, this will be the first goal because I, I have
thoughts on how I want to do a dungeon texture relating to
dysphoria, basically to gender dysphoria specifically.
It's in. Yeah.
So that's in the goal. Others, maybe the numbers of
stuff will tweak around as fish as ideas come up, but they're
all kind of about like just expanding the base offering of
the game and making it a bit bigger.
Everything about the game as it is works great.
But you know, if people are interested and I have the money
where I can sort of devote that time to it, I'd like to sort of
beef it up in fun ways. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, so dysphoria, medical trauma, unemployment are some of
the ones listed in this trust goal.
Those are. There's some, there's some
heaviness to that a bit, you know.
Yeah, Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of notes in
the game about, yeah, how you're making sure you're sort of
keeping a, a safe table culture, definitely.
But I think if you're all being sort of safe and comfortable
with each other, I definitely think Psycho Dungeon is a good
game for digging into some quite sort of familiarly painful
things. Yeah, you know, that's one thing
I really enjoy about TGRPGS. Like I I TGRPGS are not therapy.
If you need therapy, please go get therapy.
Yeah. But I love TRPGS in the sense
that it's a way to engage with things that you don't really get
to engage with as often in real life.
And by things I mean like like if you're playing like an action
shooter, video game, whatever, you're not going out and
actively shooting people, but like if you were playing like an
adventure game and you like feel heroic, you can play like a high
fantasy heroic game and engage with those feelings.
In the same way you can watch horror movies and engage with
fear and various things that you don't engage with a lot in real
life. And I like being able to play,
to put up role-playing games and engage with concepts and
emotions and feelings that sometimes you don't get to or
you in a way that should be safer because you engage with
them as much or as little as you want.
It's kind of like getting as close to the danger as you can.
But there's always still that like barrier, like in the way of
it, almost like looking at like a well, first of all, zoos are
unethical. Don't go to a zoo, but like
looking at like a dangerous creature behind a pane of glass.
You know what I mean? It it's, you know, and a lot of
times with a lot of the space, especially a lot of OSR games,
it's very much like, I have a sword, I have a shield, I'm
gonna go like fight a goblin or whatever.
But again, one of the things I really like about the way that
you write is it's engagement with concepts and and ideas and
themes that are not like any of that at all.
Thanks. Yeah, I think definitely certain
kind of RPGs. I think almost all RPGs are
like, in different ways, engaging with empathy.
And sometimes that means kind of like suspending it if you're
playing like a film where you're having a bit of a disconnect
from your character. But I definitely think the
Psycho Dungeon and other things the, the reason you should have
like open discussions about keeping a sort of your table
safe and comfortable with each other is because, yeah, I think
it's a game that does want at least as a as a text.
I think it does want some sort of like high degree of empathy
to your characters and to your client.
And I think in itself, it's then also saying about how the fact
of like, if you're going into situations where you're seeing a
lot of upsetting things, you're seeing a lot of people in who
are struggling in ways you can't always help, you know, how is
that sort of affecting your own empathy?
I think it's only thing like, you know, if you're watching an
action scene, you're not doing that action scene.
But Psycho Dungeon is all about feelings, and feelings can be
that. Yeah, TDWG is definitely not
therapy, but you can find things therapeutic that aren't therapy
in its own way, as long as you still know where one is
separate. Yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's
ability to get a little bit of catharsis, you know, in, in, in
hopefully in a, in a weekly or biweekly game with friends.
So 75 backers use 70% of the way. 25 days left to go.
Definitely want to go check out Psycho Dungeon.
Grab this. I want this in hand and the same
way that Terminal came in hand. A5.
Not the the gift of a much bigger game that we got with
Terminal. If anyone's on the fence about
Psycho Dungeon, what what what can push them over?
I think I'm trying to think, I guess I'm sort of imagining
what's on the fence for you and then trying to sort of
triangulate a thing. But I guess in terms of I think
it is a game that is got a real sort of bite to it.
It's definitely a thing that I think I'd encourage about.
I think it's got so many cool ideas at play.
I think it's going to look beautiful.
And I think we're really going to work at exploring the ideas
the game is interested in. But yeah, I also think
specifically it's it's got a bite.
It's got a sort of acidicness to the world it portrays.
You know, it's about living in a city like so many that's been
just like, hit and hit and hit by, like, austerity, where your
job that is like, so necessary has been like, privatized
virtually out of existence. And yeah, it's fun and exciting
while also being nasty and angry.
And then I think asking the question of, like, why do you do
this? Like, what do you want out of
this? And I think, yes, it's informed
by an experience of a figure I ended up quitting.
But I also think Psycho Dungeon can be a game about figuring out
where you belong and what you care about and how and how you
care about yourself. I think is like the sort of
central question of Psycho Dungeon, a decent longer in a
longer sort of multi session play.
And I think if that's a question that interests you, but also you
love the idea of being a Cyborg who's going to blast apart a
dragon with a laser cannon and the dragon represented someone's
difficult relationship with their mum.
Like that's the game Psycho Dungeon.
It's it's all of these things at once.
Yeah, I'm, I'm very excited for it.
I, I can't wait to get it for Psycho Dungeon.
I know you said you had a short URL for that, So what is that?
And also what are where can people find the rest of your
stuff? I know we mentioned it before,
but your shop, your itch, all that kind of stuff where if
people are looking for you, where can they find you?
Yeah, so if you go to ratwave.uk, that's my website
which has on there lots of links to all my other stuff.
You know, it has links to all of the social media I'm on in
different ways because I don't have any consistency of name
tags. It will have link to my H there,
the digital store, and it will also have another link to the
square site I run If you want to grab things from physical store
and if you I have lots of short form links off of ratwave.uk.
So if you just type in psycho dungeon.ratwave.uk, you'll get
the Kickstarter. Same way like socials rat wave
dot dot rat wave dot Uki think the web.
The physical website is Rat wave dot square dot site, but yeah,
via Rat Wave dot UK, I've now said it too many times.
I'm starting to worry mixing up by there.
You can find links to everything, and I also have a
big blog on there which has loads of like granular
breakdowns of different things about Psycho Dungeon that I find
interesting as well. So if that's another thing, if
you're still going, just like I want to know more, I don't want
to wait until August or whenever the game's finished.
Go read my blog. It's full of Psycho Dungeon.
Here we go. Yeah, you definitely want to go
check out right wave.uk. That's right.
Wave dot U dot K. You got to say it a bunch.
We all listen to radio ads. Kayla, thank you so much for
coming on. You know, it's always a pleasure
to have a conversation with you. Always look forward to
whatever's coming next. So really excited to see Psycho
Dungeon get funded and get put in our hands.
So again, if you haven't backed it yet, go back it.
And thank you. Thank you so much for being
here. Thank you so much for having me,
it's a blast. All right, that'll be it for
today. We'll make sure all the links to
everything are down there, just in case you didn't get that.
It's right wave.uk, and we'll see you all later.
Bye everybody.