Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan. Real quick, here's a volume
warning. And where is my fucking lamb
sauce? There we go.
And, and today we're joined by a very special guest.
It is mall. How are you doing today Mall?
Hello, thank you for having me. I'm doing great.
Yeah, absolutely. Got to see them all recently at
Gen. Con.
We'll talk about that here in a little bit.
But for those watching who might be unfortunate enough not to
know who you are, who the heck are you?
What? What?
Why, why, why are you here with us today?
I'm just a little guy, you know? I'm just kidding.
Hanging out, you know, Thought it'd be fun just to come and
have a little look. No, seriously, I'm Mole.
I go by Molamute Online. I am a artist, a TTRPG designer
person. I'm trying to become more
confident and comfortable with saying those things I hate.
That's one of my things right there.
Hell yeah. I also do marketing and events
for and that's another one of my things.
You guys so prepared I'd. Love that one.
I do marketing events for some of it, publishing, who you may
have probably heard of if you've seen me at one of their
convention stands. Say hi, you know, Yeah.
And I did because I I we both recently were at Gen.
Con where I was helping out this whole Muppet booth for a couple
hours every day, which was fun. And I think we've talked about
this before. I don't know, 100 have we is so
Muppet. The games we reviewed the most,
Maybe world champ. It's between those two.
Those are the top 2 at. Least we've got to get our
numbers up, apparently. And hey, listen well, I don't
think you have to release more games.
I think we've reviewed everything at this point.
Inevitable and the loss and the damned, I think, are the only
two that we haven't. Everything else.
Everything else, yeah, I, my, my 3 copies are just off screen on
the sole Muppet shelf right here that I'm going to shelf.
I got I had to get all sole Muppet.
You know they put special covers for everything so I have to get.
All the one. Yeah, I think your sole Muppet
shelf actually looks better than mine, which is kind of
terrifying as their marketing manager, you know?
Yeah, I. He's re shelved everything like
8 times so you know. Not everything 'cause I still
got like 10 stacks in my living room on the floor that I've been
there for. Like the?
Entire time I've been in this apartment, which is well over 2
years at this point so it's eventually I hope to get
everything up off the floor but you know we'll see let's.
Yeah, floor books are the way to go.
I mean, got to have those doom piles.
That's where the ADHD is, right? I can actually, let's see, Boom,
I'll throw my shelf up onto the screen real quick.
I love these shelf picks. Look at, look at, look at that.
That is, that's what's behind me.
So you guys can all see the the fancy soul Muppet shelf back
there. It's the funniest thing when I
sent this in the group chat and Zach was like, what's that blue
and orange box? I'm like, it's a blue and orange
box. No, but yeah, so saw a Muppet.
That is what you do. That is what's going on.
We did go to Gen. Con.
Was that your first Gen. Con?
That was, yeah, it was my first Gen.
Con. It was insane.
I'd kind of been like, Oh yeah, it's a super big convention.
You know, we have those in the UK.
It's it's fine. And then the, you know, the
Thursday and the Friday, I was like, yeah, this is this is
cool. And then I actually managed to
walk around at one point and I was like, oh, this is insane.
There is just so much going on, not just in the convention hall,
but also like in the freaking is it Oil Stadium or something?
I was just like that. I can't.
It's the Indianapolis Colts football stadium, Lucas Oil
Stadium. That's right, next.
To the Yeah, it's right next to the Convention Center.
Yeah, and the hotels? And the hotels, it's it's
ridiculous. I was always told that gin Con
was big. I was, I had never understood
that. It was literally the entire
massive Convention Center, all of the hotels and an entire
freaking football stadium, including all like the floors
beneath it where they were doing like LARP dungeons and shit.
It was too big. After the first day where I kind
of looked around a little bit, I was like, Nope, I'm going to
find the door that is closest to the exhibitor hall and I'm going
to walk from that door to the exhibitor hall and out every day
and that's it. I'm not.
I didn't even, I didn't go to the stadium.
I didn't do any of it. I'm like I'm it's and I slept in
every day. Yeah, I mean, and like, I think
this is such a weird thing, but as like at UK conventions, there
are quite a lot of, like, you know, there's always the
emergency exits in your convention centre when you go to
Auk Con, there are like security guards on everyone.
So if you need a 5 minute break outside, you can just go, hey
dude, how's it going? I'm an exhibitor.
Let me pop outside. You cannot do that at Gen.
Con, right? If you want to leave and like,
have some fresh air, you got to go all the way outside.
And that was weirdly, like, confusing to me.
I was like, but I just just want to pop outside and breathe for 5
minutes. But yeah.
Yeah, no. Well, what's crazy is anytime
you even would step outside, there's like 1000 people just
like hanging out right outside. If you actually want to get
away, you have to walk like literally blocks away to really
not feel like you're still in a con.
Which have you been to? Have you ever been to other
conventions in in the US or obviously been to some in the
UK? Only packs, but not as an
exhibitor. We just went and had like a look
around to see if we could maybe go this year.
But yeah, so I saw. You all in person.
Yeah, I think so. Yeah, yeah, I personally I like
packs a lot better, which everyone told me I would, and
they were completely right. I'm glad I did Gen.
Con once but I don't know if I would do it again.
How did you feel about like the crowd edge and con?
Like the like the vibe of what they were looking for.
It was really interesting. I think that I really expected
more. Again, I'm not sure if it's we
were in a bit of an odd position, but I thought that
there would be more people eager for TTRPGS and wanting to stop
by. I maybe because of the way we
positioned. Maybe we're a semi popular
company already and a lot of people have our books, but I
think there is this real growing space of TTRP GS as a lifestyle,
right? And folks are kind of here just
for like play games and hang out with friends, which is totally
fine. Or, you know, to buy that
branded mugs. The the convention culture is
really different to the than it is to the UK.
From what I've seen, at least the UK convention culture
doesn't have as much gameplay happening, right.
Whereas at Gencon, every single hotel room and every single
outside space were filled with tables of people playing Rocket
Games. And that was nuts to me.
Yeah. I mean, I got to play a little
bit in in the hotel lobby at after a day once, but yeah, they
had huge sections of people playing all the time.
It was definitely, I felt as though that it was definitely
different than packs because we we know we actually worked
packs. And so the people that were
coming up to the world champ booth or the versus at packs
versus the people that were coming up to the Sol moped
booth, and they seem like a very different group of people.
Like I can't count the number of times people walked up to us at
Gen. Con and we're like, so are these
novels. And it's like, no, no, no,
they're tabletop role-playing games where at packs every
single person rolling up was it's it's tabletop role-playing
games. So I felt like PAX is very much
like ATTRPG convention that also had some like board games and
card games. And Gen.
Con to me really felt like it was a almost more like a board
game and card game convention that had some TTRPGS outside of,
like you said, just the mass number of games that were being
played. So it was a very interesting
group. Can I ask a question?
No. OK.
Go away were. There a lot of booths selling
novels because like in my mind I find that as a weird question at
the gaming convention of anytime.
So I think that this is literally what I was about to
say. We were there was a writer's
block. I think now you guys called it
like, not you guys. Gen.
Con called it authors Ally, I think 'cause I remember being
annoyed that the author was spelled wrong.
No OUR. It's just, don't even get me
started. It's fine.
And so I maybe that was why, because we weren't too far away
from that bit, right? There was like Authors Ave. and
then there was a bit of Artist Alley and then there was like it
just kind of continued into regular con.
But yeah, it was really, really fascinating because that's not a
question I was expecting at that convention.
So yeah, who knows? Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's also because all of your books are gorgeous.
They don't have, you know, like D&D covers.
You don't see A5 adventures back-to-back with like a dragon
behind them. You know, when you look at
orbital Blues, like I can absolutely see someone being
like, oh, that looks like a cool sci-fi book, You know what I
mean? It has kind of a novel esque
kind of cover to it. Inevitable a little bit
different, especially with like the, the, the pages open, you
know, to, to the art and the words inside.
But to an extent I can see if people first first looked at
that or, or even Amy Allen's books, you know, I can see why
someone might have thought maybe those were were a little bit
fiction. But you know, I mean, I think
the longest line I saw for that entire convention, no matter
what, was like the doomsling line that was wrapped around
half the convention the entire friggin time.
But you know, again, that was kind of in a big like card game,
board game section. But I don't know, it was fun, it
was interesting. It was way too big.
Like I said, if I do it again, I would do it in a fairly
different way. And, and the last thing I'll say
about it was damn, Indianapolis was so nice.
Like I can't get over because I've, I've lived in LA, I've
lived in Philadelphia, I've lived in a lot of big cities.
I don't know how big cities are in Europe or in the UK, but they
all smell like piss and there's garbage everywhere.
In Indianapolis was beautiful. Like it was spotless.
The architecture was great. It was like a city, but it was
like the architecture was, was gorgeous.
And I would say that to the Uber drivers every time I hopped in.
And they're like, yeah, there's literally a team of people the
city hires to just go around cleaning the city the entire
time. And I'm like, I don't understand
why every place doesn't do it. But I thought I just.
I was shocked at how just how nice Indianapolis was.
Good job, Indy. Yeah.
Well done, Indy. Yeah.
So we're talking about serving up disaster.
But prior to that, this is the project that you have currently
running on Kickstarter right now.
You have done a couple of other things, things that we kind of
like showed up on screen. So I guess not not going all the
way back to like, so tell me about your childhood, but like
what kind of got you into into TTRBGS kind of to begin with?
And then what got you from you know what?
What Connor held up to to serving up disaster.
So I think like most people I started with D&D, but my actual
first introduction was trying to run a campaign of 3.5 and
downloading APDF of some, you know, dodgy website probably.
And just being like, I do not understand what's happening
here. And my friends are coming over
in half an hour and I said I was going to run this game, fuck it,
I'll just make my own thing, right?
And I quite enjoy that, that my first interaction with
role-playing games was, I'm just going to make my own rules.
It'll be fine. You know, Played a lot of 5th
edition after that, kind of got bit more into it.
And then there's a couple of, like, little indie game stores
here in the UK. And my partner and I just went
into one, one time, I think, to look for a 5th edition book.
And there were just this thing called Other games.
And we were like, whoa, what is happening?
Why are these so cool? And yeah.
And it just kind of like spiralled from there.
I just started kind of linking my art with my games.
So I wrote a little kind of weird little goblins Zine, which
is just use some dice, generate A goblin.
And yeah, it's just kind of spiraled from there, to be
honest. Yeah, I don't know if.
Let's see if I got one of those to hand.
What? Excuse me?
It's probably not going to show up on my terrible, terrible
screen. There we go.
Oh cool. Just weird little goblins.
Roll up the weird little goblins for me.
Yeah, you want. You want a weird little goblin?
Yeah, roll up. Yeah, right.
Roll a weird little goblin. We'll call it a weakly scroll
Goblin. Weakly scroll goblin incoming.
Give me a number between 1 and 20 my friend. 11. 11 Your
goblin's name is Burp. Perfect.
And then a number between 1:00 and 12:00 please. 9 Was that A9?
Yes. Your goblin has webbed feet,
Nick, and then a number between 1:00 and 10:00. 5.
They fight with a meaty stick between 1:00 and 8:00 3/3.
They're very combustible. Perfect.
Combustible I get. It right there, very combustible
and then a number between 1:00 and 6:00. 4.
The war machine of this goblin band is the poop tube.
I wish it was more sophisticated than it sounds.
And who do they serve? Finally, a number between 1:00
and 4:00. A2.
A2 The Doom Shrieker. This goblin saw the future once
and now screams the coming of death.
There you go. Hell yeah.
That's awesome. That's awesome.
That's that, that is like, that's an NPC right there.
Exactly. And and an encounter.
That's like, that's like my favorite kind of little
peripheral to get, you know, I mean like something like funny
like that where you just, it does a thing and it's, it's
interesting and you can drop it into stuff.
Yeah. And then I have, I have.
What is this? A dungeon for ants?
Yes, by Malamute and it's this. Tiny.
Little thing that I got. From tiniest, tiniest scene,
yeah. Which is, which is wonderful.
This sits here on my desk with me.
And then we have Serving Up Disaster.
So yeah, what is what is Serving up disaster?
What is? So this is a project you
currently have on Kickstarter. And what is what is the pitch
for them? I mean, the pitch in the
shortest thing possible is it's a TTRPG of Kitchen Nightmares.
I kind of boiled it down to two questions when pitching its
people at Gen. Con.
The first question is, do you know Kitchen Nightmares with
Gordon Ramsay? And then do you like playing
role-playing games? What if we made them kiss?
And that's pretty much it. Your GM is Gordon Ramsay.
Because what is more like a frustrated GM than Gordon Ramsay
walking into an absolutely collapsing restaurant?
And what is more like a a player than causing as much chaos as
you can to frustrate your GM? Yeah, so it kind of spawned from
my absolute obsession. Love Hyper Focus with Kitchen
Nightmares. I am not going to say how many
times I've watched each episode because that would be.
Wow dude, you, you were among friends.
Too many. It's free on YouTube, so like
it's. Something exactly he's.
Playing at my place like there's no one even in the room it'll be
playing it's. Just there.
Yeah. It's just good, easy watching.
And it's to be clear, it's a terrible show and that is why I
love it. It's so bad.
And the UK version? Forget it, I'm not interested.
He's too nice. There's no booming sound effects
constantly. I need to be over stimulated
constantly. You know, by the brown.
It is interesting how civilized the UK version.
I watch this episode. Oh, these are nice.
This is. Yeah, you know.
You know, they the, the kitchen standards aren't too bad, they
just make some questionable decisions and maybe the guy is a
bit of an asshole, but like, it'll be OK.
No, I'm not here for that. I need Gordon Ramsay looking
directly into the camera as he squeezes a four week old radish
or something. Who's?
In Gordon Where's Gordon Ramsay from?
He is British. So is he?
Does he host the British version?
He does, yeah. Yeah, OK.
All right. So the British guy host both
the, yeah, the American and British version.
He he gets to do both of them. He's still very blunt.
He's just plus yelly, you know? I'm about to probably get shot
because he is actually Scottish. I would say I thought he was.
I did not think he was British, I thought he was Scottish, but
whatever. I.
Well, I mean, technically isn't Scottish British?
Well, no, it's part of the UK. Don't say that.
Don't, don't. I'm gonna.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna. I'm gonna.
Stop now. No, I'm gonna ask because I need
to know. So the UK is the entire United
Kingdom which includes all of the island and Northern Ireland.
Isn't Great Britain the island which includes Scotland, Wales
and England? So aren't technically any
Ireland British? You know Welshman.
Either. They're not English, I mean,
they're. Welsh too, by the Scots built
Patriots Wall and you know what? Fair for them, you know.
Hey listen, I mean, we all know how everyone in the world feels
about England, so. That we you love us and that we
always give back the things that we have borrowed for a short
period of time and it. Is funny to say that as an
American, you know, like criticize another country.
We fought a war about it, you know, That's all I'm saying.
You. Guys did one thing right and
that was to leave us behind, you know, there we go.
But downhill. Anyway, not to not to insult any
of the Scots or Welsh or or or anybody, but maybe I, I, I
always thought that anyone that's on the island was
British, but I'll not say that again out loud.
Anyway, kitchen nightmares. I'm not a big I was never big
kitchen. I was I think I was leaned more
into desserts instead of the food.
So I watched a lot of great British Bake Off all of the like
cupcake in an hour things. The only real like food show I
watched way too much of was. Guy Fieri he has not like diner
jugs and the dives is great, but the show he did where it's
basically like Supermarket Sweep plus the kitchen stuff, I can't
remember. That's when I watched a ton.
But obviously we've all seen Gordon Ramsay do the Gordon
Ramsay thing for a very long time.
And also, I hate to be that guy but guy also says this as well.
It's Fieri. Yeah.
Now we're all in trouble. Wasn't there somebody at Gen.
Con that was just as Guy Fairy and.
It was like, yeah. Like a fairy.
Yeah, it was a fairy. They had like the the, you know,
the the spike tips and everything.
But anyway, OK, so for those that maybe haven't watched a lot
of Gordon Ramsay, what does that mean in making that a tea to
RPG? So yeah, again, I think it kind
of comes back to this. It's all about honestly, it's
all about annoying your GMA little bit, right, and causing
as much chaos as possible to try and kind of build up towards
this final big resolution where you desperately try and save the
restaurant. It's actually again, so if
you're more into the TTRPG side rather than the Gordon Ramsay
side, if you know Brindlewood Bay, it is genuinely A twist on
those mechanics and that throws people a little bit because
they're like, how are you doing a non mystery game with
Brindlewood Bay? I'm like, well, it's kind of
like you're still solving a problem, right?
You're still figuring out different things that have gone
wrong with this place. And at the end coming together,
going through how you solved the issue and having a big
resolution that kind of read the relaunch night.
So yeah, it's I think it's one of those things that's a really
interesting twist that I don't think I've seen people do with
Brendawood. Brendawood has been used a lot
for mystery games and a lot for kind of weird spooky stuff.
But yes, it's A twist I've never.
It's interesting. Brendawood Bay is interesting
because I think a lot of people would also ask how do you do a
mystery of Brendawood Bay? Because for those who know the
mechanics of Brendawood Bay, you know, you know what I'm saying?
So I it's interesting is that you use that because it makes a
lot of sense to be like, well, the end is kind of what you make
of it of what you kind of did along the way.
And using that as like the mechanic to do kind of like the
relaunch and everything is fantastic.
I think that's such a great system to convert to exactly
what you're doing here. And so mechanically, when you're
actually playing the game, what and what does that look like?
So as you all basically, there is a set of, it's a basically a
session cycle structure because every episode of Kitchen
Nightmares literally follows the same structure you are going
through piece by piece. You know, the introduction,
chef's trying the food, he's watching, you do service, he's
refurbishing the restaurant, and then you finally have a
relaunch. Whenever characters are trying
to show chef something or do something that is called the
surface move, it's kind of a 2D6 and you're adding one of three
stats, either communication, control or cookery.
Chefs are starting with, I'm sorry, characters start with
negatives to these stats, and over the course of the session,
they're given opportunities to improve it by working with chef.
When chef looks for a problem within the restaurant, that is
called revealing problems. If you know Brindlewood, this is
kind of like looking for clues. So yeah, so this is something
that Chef, the GM, is rolling for and is influenced by how
awful the rest of the table, the rest of the characters are
doing, right, how they're being affected by it.
It's a a really interesting way to do it.
I think that this kind of like back and forth between players
wanting to get themselves into worse situations so that Chef
can find more problems, so that Chef wants to help them improve
so that at the end they're better at solving the issue.
It's it's a kind of weird back and forth, but I think it's
really interesting. Yeah, I mean, and it's a great
inspiration for our tabletop role-playing game.
I mean it like, and you can see how it can be gamified.
I'm almost surprised this hasn't something like this hasn't been
done already. Like I'm shocked there's not
more like Food Network tabletop role-playing games.
Maybe this will spawn, you know, a glut of them going forward.
Yeah, I'm already inspired to do so many other terrible reality
TV shows as well in this kind of like same structure every
session, new characters desperately trying to kind of
like this. Will eventually branch off into
like those weird, like, romance reality TV shows and we'll have
like, The Bachelorette tabletop RPG and like, Love Island, yeah.
I've already been talking about did you guys ever watch Catfish?
Yeah, I think that would be a fun.
That would be fun because you could actually like make your
character and then decide in character generation whether
they're real or like a catfish and get the role play the
catfish. That's fantastic.
I really want to get like a hack of this for Bar Rescue.
That's one that I've seen a lot more because people that work on
the TV all the time, it's basically the same thing, the
worst. Human to ever walk the earth.
He's just a more annoying, more scripted Gordon Ramsay for bars
like that. He's also he's also like a weird
far. Right, like capitalist so.
Yeah, well, I mean. Just a character, you know,
You've got a twist on it a little bit, you know?
Yeah. One thing I do want to talk
about is my goodness, the graphic design in this.
Now, who did this beautiful graphic design?
That would be me. So for those that aren't in in
in podcast land, and if you're on Spotify, you can watch the
videos now too. It like it clearly, obviously
inspired by, you know, restaurant menus and things all
the way through, even to the point where there's like grease
stains on on a bunch of the pages and stuff.
It's gorgeous all the way through.
How? What?
Cuz I saw this when it was very like light blue a while ago.
What? At what point were you just
like, duh, menus like, you know, how did that come about?
So I knew that I always wanted to have that kind of menu
design. So you're talking about the kind
of the original Ashcan version that has been out Pay what you
want on Itch for about a year now.
The light blue you're referencing, I have been kind of
calling Channel 4 blue. That will again mean nothing to
the Americans in the chat, but every British person just went,
Oh yeah, I know the blue you mean.
And even if you look at that, it's kind of laid out like a
very basic menu. It's very structured in certain
ways and very much pulling from that inspiration.
I then and I'm going to upset a loss of layout people in the
chat right now. I then discovered Canva and I
would not recommend using Canva to layout anything bigger than
maybe 30 pages. And again, I recommend it for
this type of layout and probably nothing else because they've got
so many kind of like inspirations that you can pull
from. A lot of this layout is me
going, oh, it's a kind of terrible diner menu here.
Let me just like grab that, utilize the colors or the font
styling or the kind of the way it's laid out.
And by the end of it, it looks nothing like the original, but
it's a good jumping off point. It honestly started as me kind
of going, I'm going to like try and lay out a couple of pages so
that when I hire somebody, maybe I kind of have some inspiration
for them. I then maybe hyper focused over
the course of like 4 days and then the thing was done and I
was like, oh that happened again.
Don't recommend that. Please make sure.
Every single thing that on our show is done in Canva, every
single layout, every single overlay, everything for small
stuff exactly as you're talking about it is incredible.
And the number of templates and things that are available, like
you said, is great. But even just the ease of moving
stuff about, like it's it's so much easier than Illustrator or,
or, you know, whatever Affinity's version of it or
whatever, because you don't have to learn new tools.
It just does whatever you want it to do.
Like if you want it here, you just put it there.
And if you want to drag it, you just drag it and then like it's
fine. So yeah, for small stuff, it's
great. And again, the overlay that
you're all looking at right now can the babies.
So you're definitely not the win US over her Canva.
Yeah, but it looks fantastic. Like it looks really great.
It does look really good. It's really fun to go through.
Like, I love, I love the little food caricatures too.
Like, I love how I love how distressed they all clearly are,
you know? This is the other thing, like I
just pulled so much of that just straight from Canva.
And again, Canva has an open license for a lot of their
images. In fact, I think all of them.
And so you can, as long as you're kind of like not just
straight up pasting it on a mug, you can mix and match.
And so much of it has just been pulled straight there.
That's so funny. A couple of them I have like
slightly edited. So I believe on page 11, if you
have it open, there is a very sad looking chef holding a moldy
piece of bread. He was originally a very happy
chef. And you know, I've flipped his
mouth upside down, flipped his eyes a little bit, given in my
hand and make them hold some moldy bread.
So sorry chef, but you know it needed to be done.
Mom, I think my favorite character without the entire
thing is the bird on page 7. Or smile thumbs up.
And then the thought bubble is I hate working here.
If you've ever worked in service, you know those ones,
yeah. Totally.
Oh. Yeah.
Oh yeah, I have I. Have both served and worked in
the kitchen so yeah, definitely I I relate to this heavily.
Yeah, definitely did my share of of restaurants.
My group at home right now, all of them worked in the kitchen
together. I haven't worked with them, so
this will be a funny one to bring to the table with them
because they all worked in like a kind of shitty kitchen.
So we'll have like nom style flashbacks, you know?
Yeah, I mean, another big, I think a big reason why I love
Kitchen Nightmares so much is that I used to come home from a
shitty service job and I used to pop it on the TV and I used to
just watch 4 episodes and by the end I was going maybe, maybe my
job isn't so bad, I can go in again tomorrow, you know, it'll
be all right. That's crazy because I used to
do the same thing but sometimes I'd be like Oh my God that's
actually worse at my job for a couple.
I don't remember what my what my post.
I think I watched a lot of Reno 911 like binging after like work
in school and stuff. I think that was one of my go
TOS, but but yeah, I mean, and what's great too is throughout
the layout is all the different types of menus too, because you
can literally see breakfast menus in here.
You can see lunch menus in here. You can see dinner menus when
you get like towards the back and stuff.
It's just it's it's great. And I'm really glad that it
switches up like that. You didn't just go with like
let's go breakfast menu the whole way through and keep it
kind of like dinery looking. It's it's, it runs a gamut of
everything and it really keeps the entire thing feeling like
fresh and interesting every time you switch into a new the news
section. And so this PDF that we have,
the preview PDF is clocking in at about 30 ish pages.
Is that before stretch goals and stuff?
Is that most of what is that most of the book done?
So yeah, that is apart from stretch goals, that is the book
finished. It is going to be a quite small
Zine. I believe it is the Yeah, I
think you're right. I think it's 32 pages question
mark. Something divisible by 4.
Yeah, yeah, Whichever one it is, I, I know, I know my printing
that's been drilled into me from working at some of it.
But yeah, so I've got a couple of stretch rolls to add on to
it. That is, they bring up my.
Oh, yeah. Well, yeah.
Well, let's, let's just hop over to let's hop over to the
Kickstarter page and we can, we can kind of talk about that from
the start. Let me see, do I did I pull the
window up? I did.
So you funded already? You funded day one because, yes,
you for some reason chose to launch it while we were at Gen.
Con so that you could both be working and be like freaking out
about it at the same time. So I was very glad that it
funded immediately and that was great to see.
Yeah, I said to people before I went, I was like, this is either
going to be the best idea I've ever had or the worst idea, and
we won't know until the end. I think it was a good idea.
I'm going to. I'm going to stand by it.
It was a nice distraction. It was also nice to be
distracted so I didn't constantly watch it, and it was
nice to be able to tell people about it while I was there and
be like, hey, I am literally crowdfunding this right now, you
can go and check it out. Yeah, cuz you had little Flyers
that you were like hanging out and talking to people about,
which was again, I mean, what better way to market it than
learning out of convention? Very good idea.
Yeah, QR code and everything on it.
Yeah. I think that amount of stress
would have been a lot for me, but you are very smart to have
done that. Promoting an attic convention is
a great idea and obviously you totally smashed your goal.
Yeah, it's done a lot better than I expected.
I mean, I've had to add some some extra stretch goals because
I didn't think it would push. Nice.
That's a solid problem to have, though.
You know you're cool is what I'm going to speak in USD about $673
and you're currently about about 3500.
Which is £500 and you're just over 2500 lbs.
Which did unlock another Kickstarter.
So from the top though, when when people come over here and
back it, if they haven't already, what can people get
when they back? So you can, I'm going to speak
in pounds and you guys can try that.
So the lowest tier 10 lbs that is a digital PDF copy.
You just you get the PDF. Any kind of digital stretch
goals that I add on, for example, I'll be adding some pre
generated characters and restaurants that you can play.
I'm going to be adding a little kind of expansion that covers
one of Gordon Ramsay's other shows called Secret Service.
There will also be a digital character sheet that folks can
use. Then at £20 you can get a
physical copy and that kind of again comes with a saddle stitch
scene, a PDF copy attached that will include all of the the
extras. And then the top tier at 40, you
will also get a paper chef toke, which is the little white hats
that you can get. So your chef can put that on and
go ahead and wear it. I also managed to unlock AGM
screen, which is going to be kind of like a literally I'm
going to use a menu print and it's just going to be that kind
of like 3 or 4 fold pull out that you can put that in front
of you with just some quick, quick reference rules.
That's also available as an add on if you're kind of at the
lower tier. Yeah.
So I'm kind of trying to keep it relatively simple.
There is it is just the scene and a couple of add-ons and
nobody told me not to do the paper hat.
And so now we have the paper toke.
I warned people. Funny because I backed it.
I was with you, but I was also gonna back it anyway.
But I got the e-mail jumped on was like, what's the highest
click it. And then I remember later going
back to him be like, okay, So what did I actually get?
And looking at you going, what's a toke?
And you're like, it's a chef sat.
I'm like dope, I'm getting a chef sat all right, but but
yeah, so you you I have the stretch goal thing up here.
You you funded, you got the GM screen digital character keeper,
which again is a great thing to it's nothing that's going to add
any, you know, extra physical stuff for you at all, which is
really cool. You've already passed the Secret
Service expansion. You've already now passed the
pregen staff and rest Yeah, I've just.
Noticed I need to actually update that I hadn't actually
spotted so and. Then you're going to go on to
solo rules, which is great because we cover solo games now
here on the show, but you still have, I mean, it's not far in.
You got 19 days. You are in basically 1/4 of the
way, no, 1/3 of the way through the project and you're already
adding on stretch goals. So, So what happens I see after
solo goals, it's just panic. So what happens after that?
Is that just going to be like, are you going to keep trying to
add stretch goals? Are you just going to say, you
know what, it's successful, I get to pay some people some more
and then we're going to take it. Yeah.
So I think that the only kind of other maybe expansion I'd like
to add is obviously I've done Secret Service, which is Gordon
Ramsay's new ridiculous show, which is he breaks in to a
restaurant basically with a spy on the inside.
And it's ridiculous. He has spy equipment.
And, you know, he's got the black light and the, you know,
the long tune. Light.
Oh, it's stupid. It's hot take.
It's not as good as I wanted it to be.
I wanted more spy, but it's OK. You know, I think that the fun
thing about that is that I'm going to have it.
So at the start of the game, you choose somebody to be the
insider who is like feeding information to Ramsay.
And so kind of like throughout each section of the session,
everyone's going to pass a note to the chef that they think, you
know, they think they're saying who is the insider, but the
insider is going to write a little kind of extra problem
that they can include. Yeah, cool.
Yeah, So kind of like a little bit Among Us esque as well, you
know, that kind of like emergency meeting, who's the
insider? I'd love to add potentially
doing Hotel Hell, which is his kind of, it's Kitchen Nightmares
in a hotel very kind of similar but maybe slightly different
prompts, you know, have a little bit.
He stays the night as well quite often.
So yeah, that kind of adds an extra cycle and that extra part
of the cycle. They show up his butt a lot and
that. Shows up, they do I.
All the time like. He loves getting his ass.
Out. And like genuine like frames.
I was literally thinking should I say this?
I'm so glad you said it. Yeah.
Don't understand you guys are both talking way over my head
and I don't want to see go Ramsey's ass he.
Takes a shower in every episode of the Hotel Hell the test and
the showers are always like God awful or he's like 6 foot
something and so they're like up to like the shower heads of his
nipple line, but they show a shot of his fucking butt like
every goddamn time. But I'm not sure if it's if it's
Ramsey or if it's the cameraman or if it's just like.
Like make sure you get my ass in the shower.
Be ridiculous. If they were like we have to
show Ramsey's ass every episode but then they get like a butt
double, that would be just. You could just choose not to
have a butt double because you're paying someone just to
show their butt. That's crazy.
I think it's Ramsey because like.
I think it's. He goes to the gym like he looks
like a guy who goes to the gym. Sometimes he grabs a thing with
I'm like that. Your arm is like you look like
you go to the gym, bro. So I think he's just like, I've
been working on my squats and I've been doing my hip thrusts.
So make sure you get a shot of my ass in this, you know?
Yeah, and also. Like the idea of Gordon Ramsay
just being like, I don't want to do these fucking shows anymore.
I'm going to do ridiculous shit, like show my ass every time, you
know what I mean? Like.
He's like cameraman getting closer, you know?
58 year old ass. On screen.
Every time too. Funny.
Too funny. So basically.
A cultural icon by the way, that we're like, I think this game is
great. I think it's also like, I just
think it's very interesting of the fact that like there is this
reality show start that like has been such a part of so many of
our like entertainment experiences.
Like I feel like this game is so incredibly relatable.
Like even if you maybe aren't like a tabletop RPG person, like
millions of people have watched that show and like this
resonates so deeply with like that experience.
I just, I think it's really charming.
Yeah, I think it kind of works quite well, right?
The Venn diagram, right, Of like, even if you haven't played
a tabletop RPGs, but you know what Kitchen Nightmares is, and
you'd love to be able to sit around a table with your friends
and make your own one. But also, if you are a fan of
TTRPGS that doesn't watch Kitchen Nightmares, but you
understand the premise or you kind of, you know, the vibe of
what you're going for, I think that it kind of works quite
well, right? Because yeah, it's that kind of
Venn diagram, right? Yeah, absolutely.
You know what, you could also make a family game because there
is he he hosted MasterChef Junior and apparently I did
watch a little bit of it. He's like a fucking sweetheart
to the apparently to the entire time, he's like the nicest
person ever. So you can.
Literally split the whole thing. Yeah, Well, yeah.
It's it's it's mostly an act at least, but then he always he's
also like expects better from chefs, right.
So everything he says is super valid, right?
Whenever he gets crossed with adult chefs, it's very
understandable. You know, he's also a guy that
has had a very tough upbringing, has four children, 5 I think.
Something like that, yeah. And you know, a wife that, you
know, he's very much a wife guy, and he's just a sweetheart.
And you kind of forget that because you only see him in this
expecting better from adults, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Six children 6. Children.
Damn, that's why he gets his ass out all the time.
I just say he gets his ass out all the time.
He's got six kids. But listen, if I was a
bajillionaire, I would have no kids.
But I can see why some people would would would have a bunch,
I guess. But but yeah, so the plan, I
guess so for stretch goals is to cut is potentially more
expansions. That's kind of the idea is to
just more writing. Is it?
Would it all be in the same scene?
Would they be digital expansions?
Like what? How would those come out?
I think it kind of depends. This is going to sound kind of
print heavy, but it depends how many pages they come out at.
I will most likely just include them in the scene because I
think that to have it all together is super easy.
It's a bit more accessible for people.
It's just there on the shelf. I do not want to have like extra
pages floating around if I can help it.
So yeah, but I think that's going to be a point where I'm
actually like, you know what, guys?
That's it. That's the game.
I've made it. You could.
You could do that now if you wanted.
You don't have to scope creep yourself into.
Scope creep in like feature creep.
Do you worry about that at all with your idea?
Add a few more stretch goals. 100% cool I think.
Again, I've worked with some Muppet for nearly two years now
and have worked on several Kickstarters with them, and the
scope creep is real. There is a reason that on this
Kickstarter, although I would love to work with other writers,
there is a reason I'm not because it gets difficult, it
gets expensive. It gets, you know, very easy to
scope creep on both payment and also waiting for people or
relying on other people. I mean, this game is done by me.
Yeah, sorry. I mean, you also now have over
128 people on on on Kickstarter's mail letter.
Basically, you could always not scope creep and just for Kitchen
Nightmares expansion Kickstarter that's coming out next year,
they have a bunch of people on another Zine or another project
or a bundle of of menus that are all the expansions and stuff.
You could always just kind of push it off.
Obviously this one was successful.
And once you have a successful project, it's much more likely
your next project is also going to be successful, especially
with the way Kickstarter pushes the I mean, no matter how much
we all, you know, despise Kickstarter and a lot of things
that they've done, they stuff sells on Kickstarter.
Their their algorithm for getting people to back stuff
that that have never seen the stuff before is really great.
You know, again, once you have one, it's always a lot easier.
So I mean, scope creep could always just turn into the next
project and I'd back that one too.
Thank you. I appreciate that.
Yeah, because again, like there is a point where it's like you
have to figure out, and I'm going to get a little bit
numbers that numbers heavy here. You have to figure out actually
how much am I making extra? Because at the end of the day,
if 40 people have bought the book at £20, if that's what I'm
going to be selling for, anything that I add is actually
reducing from that value for me. And for a Backus point of view,
they always like to be able to push forward to something.
There's a reason that they want to be able to like share or kind
of like tell their friends or upgrade their pledge or get the
add-ons or whatever. But yeah, it does become a point
where you have to kind of sit back and go.
If I add more and if I put 40 extra hours of work into this,
I'm now not making as much as I would be.
Right. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, and again, you're five times funded.
You could just say all right, 19 days a chill and I'm good like
we're already there so or or again, make more and we'll we'll
we'll be happy for it. So that is on Kickstarter right
now. We're going to make sure all the
links to that are exactly where you think links are on the
Internet. But for yeah, the below beside
around in the about sections, you know, in the comments,
whatever and get in the comments.
But for all the rest of of your things we talked about, I assume
you have an itch. I do.
I most definitely do. Do you know what your itch
address is? This is a.
Question I do. Oh my gosh, because it's just
the. Same as my name molamoot dot
itch dot IO. That's great.
You would be showing the number of people who, Yeah, the number
of the show were like, So what? So what's your itch?
And they're like, oh, wait a minute, what is my, where's the
dash? Where's how many dashes do I?
Have pulled up and say it before they actually say it so.
Yeah, I am literally at Malamute pretty much everywhere you'll
find me. So yeah, and potentially even a
little online web store coming soon maybe or at least an online
portfolio. It's something I've been putting
off for a long time and have really wanted to been doing
somewhere where I can say, hey, all of my art is in this one
place, you don't have to browse my social media anymore.
And you know, because you're not just, you're not just a game
designer and layout and all those other stuff you, you do
are we talked about that kind of in the beginning and you are
accepting commissions now for. Art I am, yes.
I've currently got some emergency commissions open
actually. So if you're looking for
something at the moment, now is the time because I am very much
kind of going donate some money, ask what you want, I'll Draw
Something. But yeah, I usually do it a
little bit more structured than that.
But at the moment I am accepting pretty much anything.
Not help, not hateful stuff, obviously, but yeah.
So just come to me with an idea, tell me your budget and I will
make something work. This industry.
I want more human art to exist. I don't want people to go, damn,
I can't afford that. So I'm not going to do it.
Instead, I'm going to generate something or I'm just not going
to, you know, do XYZ. It's OK.
Like I have on my itch, I have various Creative Commons pieces
of art that you can go and just put in your game.
If you are on a budget, tell me. Just tell me your budget and I
will make something work with you.
It might not always be, you know, the most polished,
beautiful piece of art you have ever seen.
But if you say, hey, I only have $25, I really need just like a
little piece of art, great. I'll make something work because
there aren't people out there that have the budget and that
will work with me. And I want to make sure that
everyone has a little something, you know?
And that's always gonna be better.
I mean, your own stick figure drawings are always going to be
better than generative AI. I can you can only assume here
on the show how we feel about that if you know how we feel
about everything else. But if instead of your own stick
figure drawing it, you can get them all the mood.
I always suggest that get. Me to draw your stick figure
drawings. There you go, I have.
Been. Write that.
Write that down, RPG of stick figures.
Oh, I'm I would be shocked if that doesn't exist.
But there, there, nothing says that we can't have more than
one. But but Malamu, thank you so
much for coming on the show. Thank you for having me.
Yeah, absolutely. Please come on again.
Maybe maybe when this drops and we have the physical on our
hands, you can come on and and we can annoy you as a chef and
we can run some here on the show or something but that.
'D be awesome. That would be great.
Really appreciate you being here.
Please come back again. Obviously, you know, we're huge,
some of it fans and and that means we're also big fans of
yours, both because of and in spite of, I guess, Yeah.
So I can I can be both there? You go so, so again, thank you.
And and that's gonna be us for today.
So catch us. Catch us.
I don't know. I don't know when, whenever,
whenever we're on. Whenever I think we do have an
episode on Friday, I think we have We're going over an
adventure this Friday, which we've done.
Our first one. Our first.
Adventure. Yeah, we'll see.
But again, thank you so much and we will see you all later.
Bye. Thank you.