[SPEAKER_03]: Hello and welcome to another episode of Press Pause, where I have the absolute pleasure of interviewing creatives in the TTR produce space to talk about what they do and why they do it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Today to chat with me is Alexander Christopher, thank you so much for joining me today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we'll be giving her a happy new year, I'm excited.
[SPEAKER_03]: Of course, we like to start out by talking about where it all began.
[SPEAKER_03]: So,
[SPEAKER_03]: How did you happen upon TTRPGs?
[SPEAKER_03]: When did you start playing?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh boy, you know, this is something that I actually, I feel like this is a question that always gets asked when I forget to run a new group of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the answer that I hear usually is like, oh, I got into it, you know, during the pandemic, or it was like 2015, it was like, I'm into college.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started playing role playing games in second grade.
[SPEAKER_00]: with my father, which was like 2002, you know, that was the third edition of D&D.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was still a very obscure game at the time, but I just, it's not going to tell him what was like the game, because that's not what was important to me as a,
[SPEAKER_00]: five-year-old six-year-old, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I fell in love with was the connection I had with my father and that community is why still hold to this day.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think if I look at my entire
[SPEAKER_00]: 25 years of playing World Playing Games, that's the third line is community.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I care about very deeply.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's why I very naturally fell into the responsibility of Game Master sometime around 2010-ish, which I thought I would never do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was so adamant against it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was an egregious suggestion, and then it was fine.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they're like, actually, it's not too bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
[SPEAKER_00]: Gosh, I don't have it on me, but I still have my first journal somewhere in my library of stuff as a reminder, or where I used to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: And also, I do, it's a memory, it's a good memory that I cherish very much, but it is just a phojournal, I bought from Barnes & Noble, it's a beautiful, like fake leather, fake fantasy est, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is filled from page to page with scripts, not story, not character, not scenes, scripts to read.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I was so nervous about
[SPEAKER_00]: income of that I needed to give myself structure and I still do that to this day.
[SPEAKER_00]: I still provide structure myself, but I literally wrote out scripts.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, there's a story.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was so embarrassing.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a story that I've been who I was to tell.
[SPEAKER_00]: is a very first session ever as a GM.
[SPEAKER_00]: I began in 3.5, which is an already very complex system to run as a game.
[SPEAKER_00]: And not even including the most of us back to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was preparing a lot because I was nervous about the rules as well, and I had prepared a little of a quest, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I knew where they were going and what the challenges were going to be with some volcano and elements that they had to destroy in a volcano.
[SPEAKER_00]: whatever, a very classic trophy, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I love tropes.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I had nothing prepared for the beat before because I just didn't think about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't think about the exposition.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't the important part of the story in my mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when my very good friend Boone asked to explore the town,
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, what are you going to do?
[SPEAKER_00]: And he says, I would like to go inside this in this this tab, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I said, oh, you can't go in because it's closed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he says, I would like to open the door and like, oh, the door is locked.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he says, well, I would like to turn, I'd like to pick a rock.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like, oh, there's no rock.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, I would like, I would like to break down the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, there's no door.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, I would not open the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no window.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there a second?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's
[SPEAKER_01]: I was so stressed.
[SPEAKER_03]: I know.
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel like it's so stressed.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just a standard blood building and it says it on it, but it doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's so funny you didn't talk about that because now that is like that is so far for my skills now, you know, you're in familiar mistakes.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why I keep those journals.
[SPEAKER_00]: Holy shit, that was a mistake.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, I think that I have always been on the side of over preparing, so like I'll have like pages upon pages of stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: Some are scripts like if I have a monologue, I want the big bad guy to give, then I do write that up ahead of time.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I never use half of the stuff I've prepared because the players are not going to ever do anything that I thought they would do.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is, it's really funny to me to talk about this because, oh boy, I used to, I used to prep with that for a lot and it was only about five years ago when I started running games for the public that my jamming style changed drastically.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I credit that a little bit to the people who I was working with and for, but I credit
[SPEAKER_00]: both the role-playing games that I was exposed to and I had an opportunity to play, I went from having literal journals filled with every single dialogue option to having three beats and two pages of preparation.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know this to the beginning, this will be the middle of this weekend.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here are the characters and locations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's maybe some important information.
[SPEAKER_00]: If there's a fight, I like to have, actually, this is not anything unique to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just straight out of the D&D 2024.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll look, that it's like I like to define the elevation, the hazards, the reasons for movement, defensive positioning, and interesting mix groups of characters.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's probably the most pepper preparation.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do mechanically for any role playing game now is if there is a fight I want to prepare that fight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Be beyond that I. I ended up trying to fight this preparation.
[SPEAKER_03]: Especially in D&D sometimes fights can like lag or slow the game.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so when you have all that prepared.
[SPEAKER_03]: It does actually just help move the fight a lot more swiftly.
[SPEAKER_00]: It does, and I care very deeply about my combat being part of the narrative flow.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not, here's the story, and then pause, here's the board game, and then pause, here's the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is all the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: those allow you to give combat interesting storytelling through, and as I have to be through like, and as I have to be for dialogue, it doesn't have to be through plot devices.
[SPEAKER_00]: It can be through combat.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're pushing the themes and tone of what you're doing with environmental
[SPEAKER_00]: amazing depth to a fight when you flush these things out like I at the first, I ran a bunch of games for the celebration of D&D-2024's release last year and once the most regular plays are built, and I'm not sure if I'm going to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to do it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to do it, but
[SPEAKER_00]: DMG, then the Master's Guide were released.
[SPEAKER_00]: I took it on myself to kind of separate everything I tried very hard to separate my knowledge of other RPGs because I wanted to do a little experiment that if I were to just follow these rules, what would my encounter an in session look like?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was really cool I went through the whole chapter about not like campaign building but adventure building and it was this very fleshed out story about like a dragon poisoning a swamp and you in like inside of an underground temple near to go deal with it but the dragon
[SPEAKER_00]: like the fight with the dragon was so much cooler than just dragon in swamp fight them.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were underneath the water.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were pulling people into the water.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were diving between they were diving up out of lakes down into other little pockets of underground lakes.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was cool stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was really cool stuff and I am
[SPEAKER_00]: constantly impressed with how much, how well that series is.
[SPEAKER_03]: I do not have any experience with the new version of the DMG and Claire's the 24th.
[SPEAKER_03]: I did not get into that, but I feel like what I've heard of it is that there was a shift into everything being more stories rather than being
[SPEAKER_03]: On this round, the monster of this round, the layer of it that I feel like there was a shift in it, because it's actually as new people have started to play the idea, there's been a kind of research in the tabletop games in the last 15 years.
[SPEAKER_03]: That has been where, especially with the dawning, like the exact same place, not like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: That has been where people have found their style of play to be.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so like, she's hitting the actual writing and vocal library or context of the game itself.
[SPEAKER_03]: More towards how people are playing a game now, is what I've been seeing, I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: And also, if we, if we just, if we zoom out like 15 years, you're absolutely correct, that has been the Renaissance for world playing games.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are currently in the Renaissance for world playing games.
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably maybe at the end of it, just having it become a status quo moving forward.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if we zoom out and we look at the life of world playing games, I'm going to talk about D&D because that's the biggest one.
[SPEAKER_00]: It began as a board game.
[SPEAKER_00]: D&D is designed as a board game.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a role-playing game.
[SPEAKER_00]: The function and purpose of it was not to tell stories it was to basically solve a little puzzle and then use your personal puzzle to solve a bigger puzzle in character building and dungeon exploring.
[SPEAKER_00]: And even if you go back and you're like, read Gary Geigex's quotes about D&D, it's very cold.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, second edition D&D, Gary Geigex talks about being a game about taxes.
[SPEAKER_00]: The purpose of D&D is to pay your taxes, because in that is because they could not.
[SPEAKER_00]: They could not think of another reason that people would go risk their lives instead of picking up a day job.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's because their taxes were so incredibly high that they had to go kill monsters and collect treasure to pay their taxes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, well, it was just, I mean, that's a whole, that's a whole, that's a whole, that's a whole.
[SPEAKER_00]: story that we're not going to end back right now, but it went from, it went from a game that playing paint taxes to being about story with the root, it's commonly attributed to the release of a Raven loft.
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... which are you you're familiar with regular often guessing okay yeah yeah so uh... if you need if you read the forward in the new new i say uh... curse of strad which is regular country couldn't the designer's kind of talk about why they may break
[SPEAKER_00]: And the story goes, they were playing with their friends, exploring dungeons, going from room to room, their fighting trolls and orcs, orbs, whatever, random monsters to collect their loot and pay their taxes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they came across a crypt, and inside the crypt were rules of empire and he had, you know, ex-health and why abilities.
[SPEAKER_00]: And...
[SPEAKER_00]: And he stood there so confused about why this vampire was a random monster in the dungeon if they felt like a disservice to him to the importance of their history.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he went home and night with his wife and said, we have to.
[SPEAKER_00]: we have to do something different.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they sat down.
[SPEAKER_00]: They wrote the beautiful, well, the very well structured world of Peruvia, which has had its problems, and it's, those have been addressed, hasn't been solved.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the point is that it was,
[SPEAKER_00]: it was the first real bit of world building and care that was put into something published for the for a mass audience.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a very compelling story, you know, it's a very sort and sorcery, it's Dracula, it's it's
[SPEAKER_00]: It gives you a reason to care about why you're doing what you're doing, and that was the birth of storytelling in world-playing games.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that was the...
[SPEAKER_00]: with the birth of the computer and the internet information has become so widespread, and the availability to tell you stories and listen to other people's stories has become an important part of our culture, which is why role-playing games
[SPEAKER_00]: become not just like book games but vehicles to explore and express your story.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I'm going to say this and I don't think it's a secret to anybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: So many players used D&D to safely explore parts of their themselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: their rights that are difficult to talk about or difficult to admit or hard to vocalize.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they have a chance to have catharsis about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They come out better because of it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Usually, the hope is that that is what happens.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're kind of talking a lot about storytelling here
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, D&D, as you said, wasn't originally built for that, so what type of TTR produced you think outside of D&D are kind of your preference to play?
[SPEAKER_03]: Are there any specific game systems out there?
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you choose games?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because they're narrative-focused, you choose games for specific mechanics?
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I...
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know a lot of role playing games, and I've made almost all of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I was just talking to my friend last night, going over, like, what have I played on myself and what happened to me?
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a two two role playing games on my show that I have not played.
[SPEAKER_00]: which is kind of wild because they're all very different systems.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're all lots of different rules.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very different, they differ drastically.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I do have a preference towards games that share storytelling with.
[SPEAKER_00]: the character players and the narrator, the GM at the table.
[SPEAKER_00]: I personally really care about having the GM, not knowing everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love the players who do so much of the story telling.
[SPEAKER_00]: As far as a specific game, that's hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: I truly believe every RPG is a little piece of art, and they are all here to tell us the specific story.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is not, I want to play this game because this game looks fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is, I want to tell this story and this game does that the best.
[SPEAKER_00]: the same way you would choose to carry out a umbrella with you or a raincoat or you would choose to go to the beach with swim trunks or with a with something to ambush them.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are two different things and I like to beach to swim or I'm at the beach to tame and I need to get myself the right tools for that.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was going to ask about like favorite tropes and stuff that you that when it comes to media that you might bring into play as recurring themes but it sounds like
[SPEAKER_03]: playing the game as the designer wrote it to be played rather than having a story and trying to find a game that fits what you're trying to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, the two things, the two things, kind of.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now for me, the two things happen simultaneously.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I see an RPG, I also see the story of one's to tell.
[SPEAKER_00]: And those two things can't fear a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't have to be so on the nose.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's why we have so many different versions of Powered by the Apocalypse, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: But,
[SPEAKER_00]: I would never pick up, for example, Glitter Hearts, which is a game about magical persona transformation.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a daily mood.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would never pick that up and try to run it as a slice of life game, because it's not.
[SPEAKER_00]: It deals very deeply with themes of transformation, of heroic responsibility, of identity, of perceived identity and actual identity, and it doesn't have to be like magical persona, it can be a little bit different.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just cares about having sort of a having two very different sides of yourself, one that everyone sees and one that nobody sees, or one that everyone sees and knows as you, and one that everyone sees and does not know as you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yes, I think just to kind of bring it back to your question, I do think you're correct.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really pick a game with a story in mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: I usually see a game and the story comes to me because the game tells me what it wants to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, I don't, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: If it's a quote or just a,
[SPEAKER_00]: practice for a scripture, but they're, like my friends were artists often talk about like when you begin sculpting something, you don't really go in with like a perfect plan, it's going to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: The media kind of tells you what it's going to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, when you the clay shapes itself basically, and that's how I feel about world-playing games, RPGs tell me what they want to be.
[SPEAKER_03]: You have a vast knowledge of RPGs, but I feel like you also, I don't feel like I know, you also have your foot in the door in the actual place space, as well, just a jation here to teach RPGs.
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to talk about roles and told.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so roles and told is in indie actual play based in New York City.
[SPEAKER_03]: How did that all get started for you guys?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think so.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think so.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that I am asking this for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm being noisy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so I was working at the 20-sided store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and I was responsible for a lot of
[SPEAKER_00]: I want a community engagement for the role-playing scene, I ran miniature painting from time to time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did, I was a really big face of this war and one day at customer comes in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm talking in like I do to everybody can talk about all the cool things their P.G.
[SPEAKER_00]: is a muccelling him on miniatures and try to get just a moment on this way and also this is you're clerk your sales person at the store.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's your job.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we get to talking about many painting because he's buying a bunch of minis.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we have many painting tonight if you want to come play, because he's telling me about this 3D printed charasque that is friend made for him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Giant, like I mean, it's massive.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like the size of a microwave.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, you should be should go get it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or you should bring it and to many painting, he said, oh, well, I love kind of far away.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, well, let's pull up Google Maps.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's see how long I'm going to take you to keep it.
[SPEAKER_00]: get home, get back here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was like 15 minutes after the events started.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I did it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I sort of met again.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also had him on that ticket.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he went home and came back and he's painting a stag of running the class.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at the end of it,
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, right, right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was telling me about how he wanted to begin an actual play.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like an interest, but he didn't really have too much for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, oh, you know, that's cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: Talk, you know, let's go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's let's talk about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I didn't teach that many painting class.
[SPEAKER_00]: I left came back to work some amount of time later.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am running many painting class.
[SPEAKER_00]: because the owner is in another country and I go through the whole night and at the end of it this man who I have forgotten existed comes up to me and says, hey, I'm running this RPG at a bar I work at.
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you really want to come do that game of me?
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I go to myself, oh my god, I have no interest I'm going on a date with this guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so very politely I say, oh no, it's okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm going to be busy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if I'm going to be able to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I work that day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I don't have like, I don't have enough money to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I haven't that paid yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm coming up with a lot of excuses.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this man is his assistant that I should go.
[SPEAKER_00]: I should go.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's not going to leave me alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I went to grab a piece of paper to write something down.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember what it was.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I hand him a pen and paper and he goes, oh, if you're going to give me a full number, I already have it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I stand there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I actually probably have this very disgruntled, confused, like, scallow on my face that we're, that clearly said, no, you don't, I didn't give you number.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I even said that like, oh, you don't have my number.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he says, no, no, no, no, you gave it to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: You gave it to me a couple weeks ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: What, why, why don't I give it my number?
[SPEAKER_00]: And he goes, yeah, because we're
[SPEAKER_00]: and my brain started running so fast.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I realized holy shit, this isn't a date, it's an audition.
[SPEAKER_00]: and I immediately began backpacking.
[SPEAKER_00]: I immediately started saying, oh my god, well, maybe I can get that day off, maybe I can make room.
[SPEAKER_00]: My schedule, you know, oh, we tired, but like it's okay, I'll have a coffee, I'll try to find the money, because we'll get the money, okay, for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
[SPEAKER_00]: And I go and play it was great.
[SPEAKER_00]: That man's name is Tanner Neef.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's where I met Olivia Vass who was also on our team.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's my introduction for Rose and Told.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nice.
[SPEAKER_00]: A comedy of errors exclusive made by me.
[SPEAKER_03]: Tanner just like, why is this guy being so weird?
[SPEAKER_03]: And Taylor's an oblivious, oh yeah, yeah, no, he's an oblivious man.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had no idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so that's how I got into it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for the first year, well, before that, we spent a lot of time just triggering out what the heck was going to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was new territory for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of us are actors and
[SPEAKER_00]: performance, so that had production experience, some of us had stage managing experience, directing experience, but none of us had the natural play at that point.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so a lot of the pre-production and the first year was stumbling.
[SPEAKER_00]: through itself, you know, there's a lot of really great stuff from that, but there's also a lot of really great lessons that we learned from that.
[SPEAKER_00]: The biggest of which was not a live stream.
[SPEAKER_00]: Life streaming is cool, but it's not something that we could maintain.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we need a switch.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is, it's difficult, you know, especially the expectation for life streaming is campaign with like 40 episodes.
[SPEAKER_00]: The expectation for filmed actual play is 5, 10, 15, maybe 20 episodes, which is easier because it's less time, but it's more difficult because there's more involved.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's more pre-production, there's more scheduling for filming, there's more post-production, and there's more marketing that goes about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: like this is a problem because we have to do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are opportunities to be better.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's something that we really leaned into when we restructured our company.
[SPEAKER_00]: We really restructured our company and to having more proper rules.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the whole thing feels like a film set now, which is fantastic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone on the team is an excellent member.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're so good at what they do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I am our director, which I didn't really imagine
[SPEAKER_00]: the role of a director, so much of a GM does is the role of a director, and I didn't really realize that until I actually came and did, will so be true with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, and it, like, clicked.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was that, that two-month process.
[SPEAKER_00]: something snapped and a good book like a puzzle in in my brain and it all just became very clear.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could see everything and it it it blended the art of
[SPEAKER_00]: RPGs and the art of storytelling for media together seamlessly and that is not to say like I am always our GM because that's not true but I am there to guide talent right talent is character players and the GM
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone is working together like a film set to tell a full story and a very intentional way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's my role in production is ensuring that the vision is fully met and is told in a way where the choices are big and dramatic and the strongest choices they can be.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not there's no script to her, you know, there's no like book work to be done it's this it's not like an improv show or you can just do a bunch of exercises and so much of rehearsal in my
[SPEAKER_00]: relation to themes and tone of the story you want to tell.
[SPEAKER_00]: The same way I talk about how an RPG tells me what story it wants to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the first level and the next layer is it tells the characters who they want to be and it tells them the choices they want to make and it tells them the stories they want to say with their characters for example right now we're on production for our first like our first show form season we have so you finish season one correct
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, sorry.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me really back up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk about this because I don't need to do a full tangent.
[SPEAKER_03]: I just wanted to, I wanted to clarify for like the audience, you have like the completed work that you have.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, yes, fulfilled.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, so we did the first season of the fate of Galera as a live stream format.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we have begun production on a bunch of different.
[SPEAKER_00]: series.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether they are single season or their seasons that could continue is something that we'll explore.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think if the opportunity arises for a story to have more to tell, if there is a great interest in exploring characters or worlds beyond the first sort of iteration of them, then we will offer that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right up at big.
[SPEAKER_00]: A big part of the production philosophy that I've had is we want to tell the stories you want to tell, but I want to also tell the stories I want to be heard.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm doing a lot of listening to myself and listening to the items, which is very exciting.
[SPEAKER_00]: We haven't released any of those new projects, so one for you can't really, so let's see, maybe you're just saying to see how they are received.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have been on introduction for a few things.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had films, many like a special, there was a single session episode, one shot.
[SPEAKER_00]: called Scytheidin, which actually you released a little zine for on for your PG Day earlier this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that one, that one's like an afterlife suicide squad.
[SPEAKER_00]: You die and you're pulled from your afterlife into the Scytheidin squadron.
[SPEAKER_00]: You go on these dangerous deadly missions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you pay off all of your cosmic debt, you will return the life with like a wish that you can be granted.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so that one room, that one has a really schedule of later.
[SPEAKER_01]: Later, once it ended, we did released.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, um, we, we, we've begun production on our first like,
[SPEAKER_00]: longer other series from the structure we've had, which is great.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm very excited to jump into other stories, you know, I really care about stories being focused and ending and I'm excited to have a chance to direct a five episode story arc because it is tight.
[SPEAKER_00]: A single session
[SPEAKER_00]: Ironically feels easier than five because you hit everything in a single session, you hit your beginning middle and you get your catharsis.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when you do five, you can't, you can't add so much to tell that you don't have resolution, you don't have closure.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can't add so little to tell that there's no investment in the characters and why we are doing what we're doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll start filming later this month and that that one's that one's really fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can tell you a little bit about it, it's called sliced and it follows a group of chefs who are part of an intergalactic cooking show.
[SPEAKER_00]: the most important in the world, in the galaxy, whoever wins sliced goes on to have their own restaurant opened up in the capital city of the galaxy.
[SPEAKER_00]: They become like huge, famous celebrity chefs.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a lot of themes of like industry versus nature.
[SPEAKER_00]: And without spoiling too much, the show is sliced.
[SPEAKER_00]: but it is not about the competition.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to get to see like the ugly side of the we're going to see the ugly side of it is to shop when the cameras are turned off.
[SPEAKER_00]: 100%.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Another thing about Rose on told though is that it is an in-person AP, which
[SPEAKER_03]: I call it an in-person studio AP because that's what it is.
[SPEAKER_03]: But when we're in New York, there's actually only one company I've, or one AP company that I've talked to who actually has like a professional studio.
[SPEAKER_03]: So when I'm talking about studio for the audience here, I'm talking about like in somebody's bedroom or like in a kitchen somewhere in an apartment, just so we're all aware of what I'm talking about.
[SPEAKER_03]: But what is it like kind of having that in-person place to run these games from?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I didn't expect all someone who I did, but I think I just underestimated how much of a work culture would be developed.
[SPEAKER_00]: We, and there are five of us who own the company.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is pretty unusual.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most actual plays are run by one, two, maybe three people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't mean to.
[SPEAKER_00]: exactly, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's, it's so much responsibility on those few people that getting to divide it amongst five people is both the blessing, because we can lift work off ourselves,
[SPEAKER_00]: so much passion, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a lot of roses.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I would trade every day having too many ideas for having less work to personal deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: And also work that is stronger for someone else to do can be passed off to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's the biggest part of, like, how words and told is structured, that I think is unique.
[SPEAKER_00]: That as far as, like, an in-person studio, in addition to that work culture, that's been developed.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's interesting, you know, every week for a year we filmed in the studio and I don't think if we had done that, it would not have felt that would not feel the way it does because even though our studio is one of our producers apartments, it feels like my place of work.
[SPEAKER_00]: to do work, to workers, to have production meetings, to look at assets for maps and miniatures and to develop world-building, to talk about everything and anything we need to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we are lucky enough that our studio is in a separate room.
[SPEAKER_00]: from any other room.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not in a living room.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not in a kitchen.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not in a bedroom.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a third room in the apartment, which is dedicated for it's dedicated towards doing the work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a wealth for that it's time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a least-for-very professional even when we begin.
[SPEAKER_00]: We put a lot of work into
[SPEAKER_00]: We've had a lot of work into our working for Mike for our mics to drop down from the ceiling for a little bit of lighting to begin and we have like a projector in the beginning that after we moved from life streaming we did a major overhead of the set of the studio.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had a custom table boat.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely massive.
[SPEAKER_00]: It houses a giant titanium screen in the center of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has inlayed dice rollers and every player that can lift up and you can grow your dice.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's firm wind and it's hollow that makes this beautiful, loud rolling sound on camera, on mics every time, grow a dice in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it takes up like 75% of the studio space.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it doesn't look that way on camera.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I credit so much of that to the genius work of our executive producer and our show runner.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have like shower curtains, I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: That are blue and they have like geometric designs in the living cell.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they line our rules and it's done in a way so that every camera is angled.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one is on a flat surface, everyone's on a quarter.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it looks so big on camera, it looks, it is professional, there's a more professional, it is a, it is a approach to your in an apartment and every time we have a new production, we get a little bit better.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, sometimes, you know, that's about putting money in to get better, which we did a lot of in between the old format and the new format, but a lot of times it's just adjusting, you know, I think we are showrunner talked about like this frame is isn't right, so we have to move the campus and this is how we have to move them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we only get to learn those things because we have the rock show being able to produce so much content because we have five people working on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think it's kind of a crazy statement, but we have planned our productions for until 2030.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think there's a single year that doesn't have three productions in it, a special single episode, as short forms of five episodes and like a long forth about 10 episodes.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a lot of work, but it pays off in the end.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: We mentioned that you had done a bit of playing with us on Creepy G. And so I want to talk a little bit about Moonlight seeing as you GMs what will be our fourth season using that game.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't necessarily want to talk about the game because I don't want to give any spoilers away.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I kind of want to talk about your experience with Moonlight on Roseville Beach, the TTRPG.
[SPEAKER_03]: And like how you first came across that and like what kind of dropped drew you to that
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so again while I was working at well I was working at the 20's at its door I was saturated and were playing games I was saturated and actual plays and game designers It was like you are soaking up
[SPEAKER_00]: I had to back up and explain what I'm describing because it won't make any sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wearing grew up, there was a little restaurant called Board of Mouth, and they made a crem-gru-ray French toast.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the rainy-made this crem-gru-ray French toast was by, it was like toast this big, it was bread this big.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was like very fluffy, yeah, it's so big.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was very fluffy, it was very, like, holy, lots of air in it, you know, holy, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours, pours
[SPEAKER_00]: and they would make the country very French toast by soaking it in custard.
[SPEAKER_00]: so that the customer would be absorbed into the bread and then cooked and then they would put like a whole layer of sugar and came caramelized on top.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if that process of taking in all the custard into your body into your bloodstream and to your mind that happened at the store for real life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead of toast, it was me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And instead of custard, it was more like it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of these experiences was Mulan Rosalbeach.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was pretty very odd Richard Ruin who wrote the game is a very good friend of the owners of the store, and they were very pre-offent, whether that was to drop off that game and other games they were in for us to sell or they were running games or just saying hi, I meant Richard a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it always interested me because the front of the book, uh, there's a tag line that says, like, how can you enjoy your gay occasion when there's a mystery to solve?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it has just beautiful, very stylized artwork of like the 70s.
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... uh... like americana seventies and they eight graded my attention that the cover told me what the story was going to be it was so uh... appetizing to to look at uh... and then i i had touched it for
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I had a meeting with you and I pitched it because I was very aware of it, but I didn't actually read the game until a couple months before we began playing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was a pleasure to get to read.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of mechanics that
[SPEAKER_00]: crossover in RPGs.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's okay because there has to be some amount of structure to games in order for them to feel approachable and understandable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes again comes out and does something so incredibly different.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's very successful and there was no question about it and everyone lines up to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But most of the time it's okay to borrow.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's okay to see things that work and use those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and so like a dice proof situation where you pick up D6 and it's based on certain situations or certain questions that you wrote on the CV succeed is not anything very revolutionary, but the, what is very revolutionary is how success was determined.
[SPEAKER_00]: So many grouping games that I've played almost all of them, the GM, the sort of narrator.
[SPEAKER_00]: tells you the character player what success and failure looks like.
[SPEAKER_00]: You will think this is the consequence.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you want to do this, you succeed, here's the reward.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in one of my unrealistic beach, success and failure is determined by the players.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think I realized how impactful and important that would be until about,
[SPEAKER_00]: three four episodes into our season when the choices that were being made by the actors were so different from my expectations.
[SPEAKER_00]: They used their success and failure and to be very clear when you roll on rules of each you have several things you're checking for.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're checking for
[SPEAKER_00]: to see your goals, see if you succeed at all, to see if you get hurt, to see if you get scared, to see if you get clues, to see if your character's trauma has come to play.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot, to see if magic doesn't explode in your face.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of things you're willing for, and each one of those has a success, failure, and partial success that's possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: What was fascinating is watching players choose to succeed in areas and fail in others in a way that invited them to tell the fiction of the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to say it's my style gym and it's so unique and I'm so special because I don't think that's what it is But I do feel that it's very different from most other GM's A lot of times That will is I'm telling you everything and I don't like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to be
[SPEAKER_00]: surprised as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a player at the table and I try to set up the structure so that my players can tell me the story and then I can respond back and they can respond back and it's a back and forth of improv with each other and where we go and what happens is not something I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, I rarely like to describe things for my players.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unless it is something that is very important to know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, I'm going to correct that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I try to only describe things if they are significant to the themes and tone I want to tell if it's environmental storytelling that I want to express a world building through.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or if it is something that I am really excited to share because I have such a clear vision of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise, if it's something about the characters, if it's something about if it's something they notice in a situation, if it's something that is important for them to tell, I do my very best to give those players agency to take
[SPEAKER_00]: essentially the role of GM of narrator to tell the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the way I use the term narrator and so of GM because it's not about
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't view the world of GM as being the same as the narrator.
[SPEAKER_00]: The GM is responsible for the events that will happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: The narrator is responsible for moving the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that can be the GM that can be the plethora's.
[SPEAKER_00]: That can be anyone at the table.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it should be everyone at the table.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, to bring it back to Rosalbeach, the fact that the mechanics supported that responsibility of narrator so well and so intentionally was incredibly rewarding and incredibly satisfying.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we played like, what, maybe 20 episodes, like 20 sessions with our rehearsals
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel so, uh, I feel so satisfied with Rosalbeach.
[SPEAKER_00]: I get a need to pick it up again to play.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do want to, but the game is like watching a really good movie, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: The game was so incredible and the story was so engaging that I, I, I could, I could, I could leave it and not pick it up again for years and still be in love with it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I actually really agree with that sentiment because it truly was a fantastic story that we all came together to tell and the game was so fun and like just kind of added to what we were doing that I almost don't want to pick it up again because I'm like, well, I've done it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I've done it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't.
[SPEAKER_03]: What else am I supposed to do?
[SPEAKER_03]: We've done it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think that's why we run those little beach.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would have to do it outside of the sea.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we are in the setting provided by Richard, because it's a fantastic evental setting.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very relevant to our world today.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm not going to talk about the specifics that we touched on such important themes in that story, that I don't need to explore those themes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have serious catharsis about what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and if I were to pick a rehearsal beach again, I would want to tell a queer story any different space where that's a different time period or it's a different situation or it's a different universe or it's not about queer people but it's about other people.
[SPEAKER_00]: I, I want to, I want to play a game again, but I don't need a play rehearsal beach.
[SPEAKER_03]: Speaking of themes in this game, I asked Richard this because we had a conversation just a couple weeks back about Moonlight.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I wanted to get your ideas on it and pose it to you as well.
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you think the biggest difference is between games that are intrinsically queer versus games that a group of queer people can make gay, but don't necessarily have it built into the system.
[SPEAKER_00]: it's intentionality.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's what I talked about with a game telling you what it wants to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can have a blank slate and you can turn anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to use that our analogy because I think that was very successful.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can have a blank piece of paper and you can draw anything on that blank piece of paper.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can be given crams or markers or pencils.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can give in watercolors, ink, and you can draw anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can draw the most beautiful mountain.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it will never be a sculpture made from that mountain.
[SPEAKER_00]: it will never be the wrong, it will be an image of the wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that has its place.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not a bad way to enduring life.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not bad to enjoy a painting of, it's not bad to enjoy a painting or a photograph of a location, but it is a different experience to visit that location.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are for two, again, they're two different purposes.
[SPEAKER_00]: having the opportunity to visit that location is almost a luxury, you know, if work, if I'm gonna run with sort of how I've been talking about it, you have to pay for the tickets, you have to pay for looking, you have to pay for food, you have to pay for travel, you have to pay to get to that location and to get back from it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to pay for the flight back home, you have to take off work, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: When you are in that location, you don't think about the work.
[SPEAKER_00]: You just get to experience the beauty and the real mess of it all.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the very honest place you are in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you go back home, you were left with a piece,
[SPEAKER_00]: When you go back home after visiting that location, you will always have a piece of it with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that's going to be a memory that you keep forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not the same as looking at a photograph of that location.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, in a world-playing game scenario for this,
[SPEAKER_00]: The designer has done all the work.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're the ones who have put in the labor.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have done the research.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have made all the intention.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have worked extraordinarily hard, not only to make a game designed to tell queer stories, but to put it on the market and get it into your hands.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the hardest part of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once it's in your hands, that's getting to be there.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's getting the opportunity to have this really beautiful experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the designers
[SPEAKER_00]: who help you get there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can only imagine that's one of the most rewarding experiences giving you this very honest arrival into a queer story that is not a depiction of a queer story that is a queer story.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean in realsville Beach, a lot of that work is done through world body, sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's done through the village and we have descriptions of the locations
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's beyond that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about the choices.
[SPEAKER_00]: You look at the playbooks and all of the playbooks push queer stories.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about people discovering their identity and not believing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about people being able to transform themselves into someone more appropriate.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about people exploring new world.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about people being casted as dangerous because of who they are.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are queer stories in a way that you won't get from playing a rogue or a paladin or a sorcerer.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can tell those stories with those classes, but it is not designed to tell those stories.
[SPEAKER_03]: I really liked that analogy and I think that's a beautiful kind of end note about Rosalbeach.
[SPEAKER_03]: But since we're coming to the end here, I've got kind of a fun one to close us out.
[SPEAKER_03]: Can you tell me one of your favorite moments at a table?
[SPEAKER_03]: It can be sad, it can be happy, it can be joyous, it can be traumatic, just kind of something that you remember you look back on fondly.
[SPEAKER_00]: can I do two?
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm choosing to because one was something that I felt very successful in doing because of my agency and one is that I felt I provided agency to my players and it was so successful.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're actually, you could actually throw out a one because we did it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the first one, I was playing Chris Astron.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my,
[SPEAKER_00]: My players are all my colleagues.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're very good friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were on a contract in Alaska.
[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't even be living in a cabin in the woods.
[SPEAKER_00]: We played through a six-one contract.
[SPEAKER_00]: We played the entirety of Chris Astral.
[SPEAKER_00]: They did everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: We did all skip a single thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I began that game in a way that I had never done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where I said, OK, we're doing this differently.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm telling you what the story is going to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm telling you what the story, what we're going to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here is the end of the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where we're going.
[SPEAKER_00]: Make a character that tells that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in Chris Straud, that was make a character that tells classic Gothic horror.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to think about your favorite story and make a character for men.
[SPEAKER_00]: Make a character from Dracula, from Frankenstein, from Dr. Drekel and Mr. Hyde.
[SPEAKER_00]: Be a monster or a victim of a monster.
[SPEAKER_00]: and all of my players locked in.
[SPEAKER_00]: They locked in and we had the Debbie Talk Turn vampire because she fell in love with the wrong person.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had the thief cursed by a witch and now she's slowly turning into a witch herself.
[SPEAKER_00]: which, in this case, is like very classic, like the English imagery.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had Whirls of the Andes in that birth, who did not know they were Whirls, and is only coming to terms with that now.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had a later edition, which was a pirate sail into the wrong dock.
[SPEAKER_00]: and now is cursed with this thing they cannot undo.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so these stories already pushed the narrative in a way that was very successful for me as the GM.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, it also affirmed them on how to tell the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I did not do this consciously.
[SPEAKER_00]: at the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that was my first instance of providing agency to my players to be the area.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it formed a way where two of my characters, the vampire and the witch had become incredibly antagonistic towards each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: in a way that could be a problem at a table, emotionally for the players, but it was a very safe environment.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they took wrong and that's a time afterward to decompress and to, I think really after one session, they hug each other for like five minutes straight.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a very intense game, because the themes are very intense.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: about almost at the end of the campaign.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a moment where you go to a top-of-mounted in Vurovia.
[SPEAKER_00]: and it's filled with all of this very dark magic and they had already been fighting each other in party dynamics and they had antagonized each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our vampire had held our which is familiar hostage and that sort of blew up into a moment of extreme moment in this evil temple.
[SPEAKER_00]: and begin initiating their own combat with each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: They hate it.
[SPEAKER_00]: In addition to their own combat, and we're running the rounds themselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was not a character in this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I played the Environmental Storytelling until out of nowhere because he can turn into this or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: The bad guy shows up stabs their vampire who's the primary antagonist.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry, who is the player vampire who's acting as antagonist in the situation through the chest, throws her off a mountain.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was just this most delicious satisfying.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was more satiating pain.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I've ever inflicted on my players that I felt so safe to do because we had successfully caught them in a space to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can get him goosebumps talking about this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I,
[SPEAKER_00]: I look back so much, so you're just talking about this with my friend, I look back so fondly on that moment of interrupting the scene and forcing them back together so it was just such a successful moment for me and it changed everything, I mean that was the climax,
[SPEAKER_00]: was more recent, I had, I've all had modules because I've write so much for actual plays and other things and I can't write for my home games.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we were playing through Wilde, on the rich side, which I love, it's a free wild adventure, it's one of my absolute favorites.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone should play it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want tips and tricks, I have it down to nine sessions, that is a nine session campaign, fully fleshed out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the whole concept is,
[SPEAKER_00]: Who is your boss?
[SPEAKER_00]: You are thrown to another world and you have to find your way out.
[SPEAKER_00]: You go around and basically the Olympic road.
[SPEAKER_00]: You meet your companions.
[SPEAKER_00]: They help you get to the castle and you've got to, you know, the emergency and you have to get out.
[SPEAKER_00]: with more of a look, fantasy, film into it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And non-session is known about not a lot of time to build investment.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're just talking about five episodes being difficult for professional actors.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you're doing a home game and you're not putting as much production behind
[SPEAKER_00]: I, at this point, I was very comfortable with my current style of jamming, so it was all a very, uh, intentional for them to tell me their story, they told me the stakes, they told me, um, what was important, and I just helped guide it, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I helped make it more important, I helped connect it to things, um, and so there were already very emotional connective of these characters.
[SPEAKER_00]: You go in the campaign, and you're planning on for years.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're planning on putting them out of time.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're emotionally invested.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very difficult to end that story, because you don't really feel in behind.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you put your real world?
[SPEAKER_00]: We talked about it without getting to put your real world.
[SPEAKER_00]: fears and love and potentially unintentionally you do do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's very hard to say goodbye to these characters, especially when it just happens abruptly, which is almost every campaign.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every time I've heard someone describe the end of a campaign, it is abrupt, it is sudden and unsatisfying.
[SPEAKER_00]: And people are left with a feeling of, I really want to play that character again.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't want that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't want that for rather be on the witch light.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was too important to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I picked up another RPG called the World Ending game, which is specifically designed to end the campaign.
[SPEAKER_00]: It lifts you out of the mechanics of whatever you're playing.
[SPEAKER_00]: and lifts the GM out of the GM role.
[SPEAKER_00]: It makes them exclusively in their area.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are only there to help guide the story and it asks the players to initiate out of the scenes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are some of them in the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're all very, they're all very,
[SPEAKER_00]: intentional, very specific.
[SPEAKER_00]: They end threads.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I don't want to say the end like your story, but it gets an end to a thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, one of them is the confession.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have a character who's been keeping a secret being tired of game.
[SPEAKER_00]: You never got to tell it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're really disappointed about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's your opportunity for the confession.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that ends that plot point.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have an unrequited love
[SPEAKER_00]: finish that story, you can do the kips, or you can do the Y, you know, and so that's either we end up together or I let you go be with someone better.
[SPEAKER_00]: It gives you a lot of options and what you want to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the rule system, only that's what we chose in once, because our stories don't end the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: You should be in different places as characters
[SPEAKER_00]: by the end of our story.
[SPEAKER_00]: We should not, whether that's physically or that's emotionally, we should be in the different place that we began and from each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why it's important.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why every character is there, is to tell fair stories, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: which is unique for everyone else's.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, I followed it very by the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had everyone fill out a little questionnaire which hits hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: The questions are like, sort of, I'm like, oh, when you return to the screen as a person, what do you think about the most, but did you enjoy?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is your character deserve to be happy?
[SPEAKER_00]: If intense questions, and you build a collective playlist together, you play it while you're playing some of the rules systems that everything has its own rules, some of them directly use them, like we didn't do this, they'll be played there, but there's a karaoke track where you put on a song and you sing as your character singing that song, and I think that's one of the most powerful ones.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that would have been a little out of place in our game, but I see the vision.
[SPEAKER_00]: For the purposes of our home game, again, there's a difference between production of our product and playing a game for two foreign German.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we go through all of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a lot of crying from my players.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of good guys as people are legitimately upset in a way that's satisfying.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I mean, the way we ended those character stories was very intense.
[SPEAKER_00]: One person was looking for the boyfriend who got rotten.
[SPEAKER_00]: They thought left them years ago, but it turns out they got lost in the fake world, and they never made a back home.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the story, we never got to meet them.
[SPEAKER_00]: We got lots of clues about them, but we never got to meet them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they concluded, through a series of scenes, they found their perfumes.
[SPEAKER_00]: They reconnected, they got married,
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, one of them was a failure, there was humans, so they died out, and that's about 100 to use.
[SPEAKER_00]: And their story ended with the death scene where they, uh, it was really sad.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were on a bed.
[SPEAKER_00]: and everyone that they left was around them and they saw like the lights of the carnival from like the first session outside the window and they walked down to the carnival and were greeted by all the people they love and that's how their character died and that was the end of their story.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was a really sad and there was a lot of crying from it because of this very overwhelming amount of closure.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the other character went on a whole story about rescuing the last of the Javelawks and providing, that was a little silly.
[SPEAKER_00]: They rescued the rest of the Javelawks.
[SPEAKER_00]: They opened up a daycare for the rest children in the day wild.
[SPEAKER_00]: they made friends with one of the primary antagonists, which is this kooky old hag, and they took care of them, and then that story ended with them passing on responsibility to the next generation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they were done with their career as an adventurer, but the next generation was just beginning.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the end of it, my two players said something to me, which
[SPEAKER_00]: That was so fun, and I never need to play that character again.
[SPEAKER_03]: That had a lot of good.
[SPEAKER_00]: That, oh my God, I felt like the most successful GM in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was not, there's nothing that I want more than for someone to complete their story
[SPEAKER_00]: and we're currently in our next home game and we're just in it now because those two players saw the end, it just informs everything else differently.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there will be a moment that's like that first one because that first one was so special.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think any of us expected it to be what it was and it is going to be coming wrong for my campaigns for my home and honestly for actual place that I do as well but
[SPEAKER_00]: I am grateful to have the knowledge going into it, because it lets, and I've already seen it, it lets my players and myself make bigger, builder, more intense choices, because we know that they will be resolved.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's never going to be something that's left open and unsatisfied.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I enjoyed the use of that little system when I could do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is your experience with that?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I think, honestly, I have never, okay, saying never, that's a bit much.
[SPEAKER_03]: My,
[SPEAKER_03]: The majority, 88% of my experience as a player in a TTRPG has been for an actual play.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, therefore, I don't necessarily feel like that was strange for me.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that if I instituted that
[SPEAKER_03]: in my home game for my players, they would be taken aback, they would be like, what is this new fantastic thing that I'm being given or shown?
[SPEAKER_03]: But I feel like for me so much of actual play is narrative driven and you are trying to find that closure to wrap up a story that it's almost, I think I think it provided a better avenue for that than just like being like, and your story
[SPEAKER_01]: But I, so good, so good, yeah, you're just going to get into the mess in the story.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I, I feel like in, I've, I always in the games that I run on, on, on an actual place or the games I play in an actual place, there's always like that epilogue moments.
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, but I, I think this was a better avenue to do that.
[SPEAKER_03]: with entirely so.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, it's it's just more intentional.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says here is the concept of saying everyone gets one paragraph to end their story and says that but more.
[SPEAKER_00]: That but for everything and once you're done, you want to feel satisfied and you're done, you're done.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't,
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's hard, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard because we love our characters.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard because we don't want to say goodbye.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that I think what's so interesting too is as kind of like a last note here about Moonlight which everybody will get to experience and you'll see it for yourself.
[SPEAKER_03]: At least in my perspective of it and the character that I played.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love that character.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love playing that character, holds a super special place in my heart, but there is nothing more I can do with that character in trying to play her again, is a disservice to her and the story we told.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I agree with all of my heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: The character that you played can see went through such a journey.
[SPEAKER_00]: They began in a very different place in the end.
[SPEAKER_00]: Without talking about the story of their journey, just more about like what every character kind of goes through, which is about the struggles that you face and how you overcome them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, going back to the mechanics of the game, you as the player when you were past the narrative focus shows to make such.
[SPEAKER_00]: strong choices with your success in failure that pushed that story in a way that I could have never done for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was very magical to see you go through this journey and then at the end at the end getting to to getting the reward of going through all of that all of those struggles
[SPEAKER_00]: was, it was so satisfying to see, as, as, as the narrator, as the GM of the story, I was so invested in your character.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is, there is a, um, and a lot of indie RPGs, especially part of the apocalypse.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a,
[SPEAKER_00]: GM agenda, as a player agenda which is usually have a strong character and like engage with the world and when there's a GM agenda, which usually has like support the players and and No rules or whatever.
[SPEAKER_02]: Drama add drama exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: But one of them that's in every single one is be the players and characters biggest fan.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was how I felt running Roseville Beach for queer PG.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every day I arrived.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was not let me, I mean, on some of it was let me tell the story, but it was more of, it's like when you sit down for live TV.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we don't really have this experience anymore, because everything else that's streamed.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's like I made it a week.
[SPEAKER_00]: for the next installment of this TV show and I have to know what happens because I'm only edge of my seat.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so invested in these characters and I need to know what happens next.
[SPEAKER_00]: I Which I think is why the closure was so important for me because I yeah, yeah, I couldn't wait for the next thing You can't let it go either you have to yeah Well, you heard it here folks season four is gonna pop off
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, thank you, Alex, for chatting with me today, as our audiences heard, they can look out for the new roles and told shows coming out, they can catch you GMing, oh yeah, go ahead.
[SPEAKER_00]: Site-famous squadron will be the next show that we release.
[SPEAKER_00]: Keep an eye out.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to join our Discord, you can go to our Instagram www.Rozontold.org or to our YouTube.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there will be a link to that Discord where you can chat with myself and with other cast members for www.Rozontold.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can hang out with our community.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have sections to talk about an episode discussion, but we also have
[SPEAKER_00]: stats for sharing your art and your creative passions and my favorite channel, the Dyson design, which is all about showing off your dice.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had somebody show off their RPG dice.
[SPEAKER_00]: So show up your craziest dice you own.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and in addition, that channel also talks about real play games where we get to share real play games.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've been writing real games that we love, or if you just want to pick my brain, you can always do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Say Alex, I have this story, please tell me what, what, what RPG wants to tell that story, and I hope you can check it out.
[SPEAKER_03]: Great, so everyone go over there, join the discord, and then you can also catch Alex in a wonderful jamming skills on season 4, queer peachy.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you all for listening, and until next time.