[SPEAKER_01]: You know the way these stories go.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thirteen years ago, four struggling musicians made a deal with the devil.
[SPEAKER_01]: What were they chasing?
[SPEAKER_01]: Fame, riches, adoration, all your classic devil fare.
[SPEAKER_01]: What happened next?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know the way these stories go.
[SPEAKER_01]: The damned fool was gutted in their heads to try and outrun their end of the bargain.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hello and welcome to my first dungeon.
[SPEAKER_02]: The tabletop role playing podcast that helps game masters learn new games and make each one better than the last.
[SPEAKER_02]: My name is Brian Flarity, and I'm joined by the one the only Elliot Davis.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hello!
[SPEAKER_02]: And this right here is a special sponsored mini-series that is being released in time with the Backer Kit campaign for a game that we are very, very excited about, called Last Train to Bremen.
[SPEAKER_02]: This game is a tragedy for a doomed quartet of musicians who made a deal with the devil and are trying and failing to outrun their fate.
[SPEAKER_02]: This game has everything that we love in a role-playing game.
[SPEAKER_02]: Lots of flavor, innovative mechanics, and the devil incarnate.
[SPEAKER_02]: What more could you possibly want from a game?
[SPEAKER_02]: And to help us get ready to play last train to Bremen, we are talking to the game designer, Caro assertion, who will teach us the rules, and will prepare us to tell the best doom story that we can.
[SPEAKER_02]: Caro, thank you so much for joining us.
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much for having me.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a real pleasure to be on the show.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a real pleasure to have you on the show, so have me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, really, really cool game.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've made several really cool games, and in fact, and this is just the latest in that in that lineage.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I gave a little pitch at the top, but could you tell us in the audience in your own words, what is last-trained agreement?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, like you said, last train to Bremen is a tragedy for Doom Cortette.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is four musicians trying to outrun the devil.
[SPEAKER_03]: The basic pitch that I always like to give folks is it's Faust and it's Fleetwood Mac.
[SPEAKER_03]: Those are kind of weird.
[SPEAKER_03]: if you have the one thing and the other thing and you combine them together, those are the two.
[SPEAKER_03]: The thing that I think you've spoken to is these characters are running from their, they're cursed contract with the devil.
[SPEAKER_03]: They've hopped onto a box car, they've stuck onto a train, the train is hurtling to the one place they think they'll never get caught.
[SPEAKER_03]: And there is nothing to do
[SPEAKER_03]: inside of that train except sit and stare at each other and while away the hours and point fingers about whose fault it is that they wound up in this situation.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's really a game that is trying to be both a bottle episode and a series of flashbacks.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's these characters saying, well, how do we get into this mess in the first place, man?
[SPEAKER_02]: Faust plus Fleetwood Mac is such a great selling point.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's when you know it's going to get messy in the best way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, a hundred percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm curious.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where did this game start for you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where did the inspiration come to make it?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, there are a couple of different conception points where I can say like, oh, this is like the the thing that really helped crystallize it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll go through them in order of like
[SPEAKER_03]: most recent to oldest.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think the most clear point that I can say, oh, this is when I had the full idea for the game was in twenty twenty three, I was attending Big Bad Con and I had the opportunity to play test a couple of games that were using pre-generated characters in a really interesting way and established like, oh, these are these are games that are
[SPEAKER_03]: There is something really interesting here about pregence, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: I haven't done that in any of the other games I've designed.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's definitely not a space that I tend to play in as a player, but particularly when game that I was play testing, the Prince of Nothing Good by CJ Linton helped me crystallize, oh, I understand what the appeal of pregences here.
[SPEAKER_03]: I kind of want to try something in this space now.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the other thing that happened at Big Bad Con was I was sitting around with a couple of designers at one point and we were just chatting over lunch and I was like okay we've got a little bit of time before all of our next games or panels or things.
[SPEAKER_03]: We don't want to go into like a full RPG.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's just place some liars dice.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we just like pulled out all of our dice and played and I was like oh this is a good mechanical framework.
[SPEAKER_03]: which kind of goes into one of the other conception points, which is like, I learned Liar's dice as a kid and would play it backstage when I was doing student theater in a high school with the other like stage crew technicians and you're like, okay, we're bored.
[SPEAKER_03]: We need something to do to pass the time.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's just pull out these dice into play and
[SPEAKER_03]: There is something about that game in particular that's like, oh, this is quick.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's fairly easy to learn.
[SPEAKER_03]: Once you have an understanding of what the mechanics are, it kind of jumps in and pulls you into it very quickly.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so those two points were really the biggest points of inspiration.
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess the third was the town musicians of Bremen as a folk tale, which is one that I've always kind of held a little bit of a fascination with.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's sort of a fairy tale.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's sort of a folk tale.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's an interesting one that it's not necessarily magical and quite the same way, but it's always captured my attention.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was like, what if there was a game that also kind of incorporated this into the Faustian bargain and kind of the retelling in that way?
[SPEAKER_03]: kind of take all of those ingredients and put them into a pot.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't actually know the focus.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know either.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was going to ask, what is that?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: So this is a German folktale.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it might be part of Hans Christian Anderson's original catalog.
[SPEAKER_03]: I might be mistaken there.
[SPEAKER_03]: But the premise is it is four animals, the cockroll to cat, the hound in the meal, which might be familiar to folks who know the game, to who work on a farm and basically realize, hey,
[SPEAKER_03]: We're obsolete like we're getting older in our years we're not able to do the jobs that this farmer hired us for and so they decide they're going to leave the farm and.
[SPEAKER_03]: become musicians and go to Bremen and sing for their supper and earn their fortune in the big city.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then some classical folk tale folk lore shenanigans happen.
[SPEAKER_03]: They get sidetracked.
[SPEAKER_03]: They run into robbers.
[SPEAKER_03]: They scare the robbers off.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the story ends with then not actually reaching Bremen because they find another house.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's like, oh, the four of us don't actually need to
[SPEAKER_03]: be these famous musicians we just, you know, need each other and have that kind of community of the four of them, which is, I think often, like, I think that's lighter than a lot of classical folktales end up ending, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: But, uh, for sure.
[SPEAKER_03]: But the premise of like, oh, there's these four talking animals who decide, we want to become musicians, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: We want to become famous.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was always something that was kind of sad in the back of my mind and I,
[SPEAKER_03]: landed on a couple of years ago, this idea of like, what happens if you cross that with the Faustian bargain?
[SPEAKER_03]: And that idea kind of just sat in the back of my mind until, yeah, twenty twenty three when I play tested, you know, at that big-dadcon, I was playing Liars Dice and I was like, oh, this is the game.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is how these pieces all come together.
[SPEAKER_03]: And from there, it was actually a really
[SPEAKER_03]: quick writing process just to like get the first or have to be like, oh, here are these four characters.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're based on these animals, which makes it very easy to have like personality and and all of these things that are attached to it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And just like dive into playing out the messy fallout of this this interpersonal band drama, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's great.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love I love folklore.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love just like the like folklore as inspiration for game design.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like it's something we've we've heard from other designers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it's just like there's such a there's something so immediately evocative about like the like some of the art that like you know um you know Connor has done for the for the new book and for the original game of just these four faces you're just like man.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know who those are immediately without knowing anything else about them.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so it's so good.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah and you know it is
[SPEAKER_03]: Worth going, it's worth saying, right, that the folklore is drawing on that, you know, German folktale that I was talking about.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's also a lot of Americana.
[SPEAKER_03]: And here, right, you think about Robert Johnson and like classic American crossroads mythology, you know, blues music, folk music,
[SPEAKER_02]: deals with the devil are there there is a lot of cross cultural pollination that is happening in in this book and I'd be remiss not to like name that out front as as another huge source of inspiration and attached to remember the first time I heard the like story behind Robert Johnson like first listen to a king of the delta blues king of the delta blues singers metal album it's just like that really captures my imagination like meeting the devil at the crossroad making that deal
[SPEAKER_02]: It has a very particular Americana vibe that is, you know, root sixty-six dusty etched things that feels like it's really like pushed into this game in a great way.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hundred percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I feel like there's a, the thing that's fascinating to me about this game is that like thematically there is an inherent
[SPEAKER_00]: hostility between the characters from jump.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm curious, like, what are the, like, when you were thinking about the themes you wanted to put into this game?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what are the themes at the core of, of Bremon?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, really that interpersonal tension is a huge part of it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I realized as I was making the game, and now that it's been out for a bit, and I've, like, had, you know, opportunities to talk about it, it's like, oh,
[SPEAKER_03]: This game is in a lot of ways about the intimacy of being very close to creative collaborators with people for a very long time and learning what their ticks are, learning what your ticks are, learning how you work together, and learning the ways that you don't.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because no creative collaboration, no creative partnership is going to be a hundred percent perfect.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so when you bump into somebody else and it's like, oh, this is actually a fundamental disagreement that we have in terms of how we approach our process or what our personal beliefs are about how we're coming to the work.
[SPEAKER_03]: how do you reconcile that?
[SPEAKER_03]: Or in Bremen's case, what happens when you can't?
[SPEAKER_03]: When those are so fundamentally different that it is impossible to kind of square those beliefs, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it's about that, it's about looking back at, is there any way that we could have done this differently?
[SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, realizing, okay, there maybe there is, but in order to,
[SPEAKER_03]: come out differently, we would have had to be different people from the jump.
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, that sounds very tragic.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think it's also very beautiful, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like, okay, the reason that we are creative collaborators, I think, you know, tabletop games as a very collaborative medium and theater as a collaborative medium, right, are such
[SPEAKER_03]: You have to have multiple people.
[SPEAKER_03]: You can't do it alone, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: That is part of the joy of the work and part of the reason that we are doing this is because we want to be able to have that moment of collaboration with others.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it's about
[SPEAKER_03]: really navigating the friction between those two truths, I would say.
[SPEAKER_02]: So my first dungeon is all about preparing game masters to take on a new game and then like help them get out of their own way and help them be set up for success.
[SPEAKER_02]: But this is a GMless system, which is something we haven't done a lot of on this show before.
[SPEAKER_02]: We played Wanderholm and we played Isabel's Ben and Breakfast, but the kind of a guide is Ava's Ben and Breakfast rather than a true GMless game.
[SPEAKER_02]: So normally this is the part of the show where
[SPEAKER_02]: We'd ask the GM to say like what they're nervous about, what is making them, what is stopping them from picking this game up and playing it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But because there's not a GM, we've got to kind of change the format of the show on the fly here.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'd love to hear from you before we dive into mechanics and building characters on the nitty-gritty of the game.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you were playing test in this game, when you're playing this game with new players who haven't tried it before, where are the points that new players have the most difficulty or where there's like kind of a hitch in their giddy up, which is apparently a phrase I've started saying now.
[SPEAKER_02]: And where are the moments where things flow the best?
[SPEAKER_02]: And how do we get from those moments that might trip a new player up to them flowing through this game as easily and breezyly as possible?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's a great question.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think when I've played tested, I think the areas that tend to be the most, I won't even call it a stick in point.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's just making sure that players are on the wavelength without this is what these things are supposed to do.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is how these mechanics fit with each other is
[SPEAKER_03]: memories, which getting into the specific mechanics, the game is played like we've been saying using Liars dice as players give up dice.
[SPEAKER_03]: Liars dice is an elimination game, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: So you're you're wagering and players are losing dice.
[SPEAKER_03]: So as players lose dice, they get narrative control.
[SPEAKER_03]: They get to narrow a memory between
[SPEAKER_03]: their character and another character in the band and say like oh this is a flashback to a time when you know we were having an argument or the time we first met or a moment where we you know shared this connection
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think the thing that players sometimes do, I think there's, you know, I've tried to reframe it a little bit, is making room for players to find their own voice within those memories and get into, oh, this is what my character is thinking and balancing that with the narration of, oh, this is what this moment is supposed to, you know, how this is reinforcing the tension between the two of us, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And part of that is like the the way that I've tried to to smooth that over in the game is offering some like very specific advice around here is how to frame memories here's how to like what what tips you should be aiming for here's the things you should be looking for
[SPEAKER_03]: Because they're not quite traditional scenes, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: I think a lot of times when we are thinking about, oh, here's how you frame a scene.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is a very, like, you want to make room for the other person.
[SPEAKER_03]: You want to, you know, have some of that, that, yes, and the in character dialogue back and forth.
[SPEAKER_03]: Memories aren't necessarily that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Memories are, this is one character.
[SPEAKER_03]: They are speaking their truth.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're saying, this is what I remember about this moment between the two of us.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they kind of say that, and they end their truth.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then the other character gets to bud in and say, yeah, but I remember that differently, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not necessarily, there isn't necessarily room for that in character dialogue within the memories in that way, which is not to say that you can't, you know, I think there are definitely folks who can play and have played and make room for that.
[SPEAKER_03]: I find that the interpersonal character relationships of like, oh, there's actually back and forth happening between these is best saved for like the banter that is happening when you're doing the liars dice portion of it, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, what is that?
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess like in imagining so the the memories are one when we're just
[SPEAKER_00]: rolling dice when we're shaking our cups and we're getting ready to play Lair dice like how much do you have you seen people lean into like we're in character this whole time we're role playing through playing Lair's dice or how much are how much do you see people go in and out when it comes to like we're in a memory we're in role play when we're shaking the dice we're above the table
[SPEAKER_03]: It's interesting, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: The way this game is constructed is there are two layers to it, like you're speaking to.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's liars dice, and then there's the fiction that is being superimposed on top of liars dice, which you could just play a straight game of liars dice, and that would be perfectly a fun and enjoyable experience in its own right.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think what
[SPEAKER_03]: We've tried to do, I've tried to throw the needle on here, is not necessarily having players think, oh, how would I wager in character, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's when you're playing Liar's dice, I think there's a very easy impulse to fall into, what is the thing that I care, as a player, am going to wager in this moment so that I can win the round, right, or make it through the round and knock somebody else out.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think what happens is kind of a weird alchemy where it's not actually that that layer isn't happening in character as
[SPEAKER_03]: how under Mueller, whichever character I'm playing, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: That is happening in my own personal psychology.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so then when it's time to switch out of that, it's like, oh, I can use the adversarial nature of the fact that we've been playing Liars Dice, which is inherently a competitive game.
[SPEAKER_03]: And maybe I lose the hand and I'm like, oh, I'm feeling really spiteful.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm gonna channel that spite into the scene that I'm then narrating, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, playfully spiteful, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not like, oh, I'm actually, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I really love a game that allows you to move so fluidly and like above and below the table, like into and out of gameplay, because like said, it's
[SPEAKER_02]: We as players are playing Lairstice, and our characters are also playing Lairstice, or passing the same time.
[SPEAKER_02]: And having that clear link between player and character is really, I hadn't really thought about that being an exciting part of the game as I was reading the game, but now I'm like, oh, that actually really scratches an inch that I didn't know I had.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is great.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and it's not seamless, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, there's still, you have to, you have to have that little cognitive like flip in the brain where it's like, okay, I'm playing the strategy of Liars dice, now I have to get back into character, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: But what we've tried to do is really grease the wheels of that transition to smooth it over as much as we possibly can.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not often that RPGs are inherently like, make you put you in a situation where you're like, oh, our characters are mad at each other and our got to be mad at each other a lot in this game.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, we talked about, you know, safety tools and stuff on the show before for people who maybe aren't used to that kind of like PVP role play where it's like, no, we're gonna get into a little bit of like, hey, you fucked me over this one time, you ruined this gig for us like, what advice would you give to like people who are like, oh, I'm a little like,
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a little hesitant about like getting into that and like being a little mean in character to to my friends.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, I think part of it is setting the expectation up front, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's like, okay, we know that these characters are going to be at each other's throats, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: There's there's going to be things where it's like where we're bumping up against each other.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think there are ways to have a conversation around like, oh, I
[SPEAKER_03]: might not actually want to view into this particular kind of interpersonal friendship or there's friction about how we're delving into the specifics of these two members of the band hooking up and having a messy fallout in the way that that impacts everybody else or getting into the specifics about
[SPEAKER_03]: you know how money comes into it when you're you're doing a creative project that is also part of an industry right and so really I think the the biggest thing is having a frank conversation and making sure that everybody at the table knows like oh this is where our lines are right what are the things that we don't actually want to to delve into specifically
[SPEAKER_03]: And recognizing where those moments of friction happen if they do happen at play.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've been talking a lot about
[SPEAKER_02]: liars dice in the mechanics of this game.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's time we actually dive into the mechanics of liars dice.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if anyone who hasn't played liars dice for isn't familiar with it, if you've seen Pirates of the Caribbean too, you remember the scene where they played liars dice.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the game isn't actually fully explained even in that movie.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, Carol, can you give us a brief primer on what liars dice is and how to play it?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's funny.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like every person I know when I bring in Lairs dice, they're like, oh, my touchstone for that is Pirates of the Caribbean, too.
[SPEAKER_03]: Which I had never actually seen.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'd never watched that scene until after I was playing the game.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, oh, yeah, no, this is interesting.
[SPEAKER_03]: And there's actually like it also really interesting psychology of like how those characters are playing against each other.
[SPEAKER_03]: But Larry's dice for anybody who doesn't know is a gambling game.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a bluffing game.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a game of chance.
[SPEAKER_03]: The way that it works is every player at the table has a pool of dice.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's the same number of dice for each player in last train to Bremen.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's three, but you can play with everybody as five dice.
[SPEAKER_03]: Everybody has six dice.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's variants and variations.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the way that it works is one player will make a wager that of
[SPEAKER_03]: all of the dice on the table, say that there's the three of us are playing, and each of us has five dice.
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's fifteen dice on the table.
[SPEAKER_03]: I might say, of those fifteen dice, I know how many I have in my hand and what their values are, let's say four of them are threes.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I might start with something like four threes, and Elliot, you could look at your hand and say, okay, based on that wager, I think there are five threes, or six threes,
[SPEAKER_03]: or you could go up and say, I think there are four or four or five or four sixes.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so everybody is raising and increasing the value of the dice or the number of dice that there are in their wager until we get to the point that somebody says,
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I don't think that there are twelve-sixes on the table.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to call you out and then we all reveal our hands.
[SPEAKER_03]: We count up what the values are and we see whether the person who made the call is made their way to the person who called the bluff.
[SPEAKER_03]: has kind of proved them wrong.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the loser between those two people loses a die.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then you repeat until folks get eliminated.
[SPEAKER_03]: But as you go down and dice, you have less information.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so people are gambling and kind of placing their bets in terms of, oh, here is how much information I actually have at the table.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so there's a real strategy about how you're raising, how you're calling, and how you're reading other players in terms of the psychology.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you think that they are calling something because of what you've previously called, using that they're calling something because they actually think they have good odds.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like poker in that way.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's about knowing the rules and it's also about knowing the other players.
[SPEAKER_03]: And there's a lot of variants and different regionalisms and ways that people will finesse the game, which we can get into with with Bremen, which has its own specific variations, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, it's a fun game.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a great one to pull out if you've got a handful of dice and you're just looking to pass the time with a few friends for, you know, half an hour.
[SPEAKER_00]: it's an inherently a fuck you game which I love those kinds of games like when somebody challenges you and gets you and or like they trick you with a good bluff it's yeah it's one of my favorite just like games to pull out in a group of people it's also a funny game because even just playing it not as a role playing in just playing liars dice
[SPEAKER_02]: a kind of pseudo story develops no matter what happens.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like there's always the person that goes on the run and becomes the target and like everyone like there's lucky numbers that develop like there's always a story it's not like a narrative story but like
[SPEAKER_02]: narrative starts to get formed around liars dice in a very weird and fun way that I always really enjoy every time I get to play it.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's patterns, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Anytime that you're playing a game that involves, you know, multiple people who are in sequencer and conversation with each other.
[SPEAKER_03]: And like you say lucky numbers, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like, oh, there are the same numbers are being used every time.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it's like, oh,
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, you're calling five six is again, even though we have fewer dice on the table, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: What happens when you end up repeating that or seeing that kind of numerology repeating itself?
[SPEAKER_00]: And you mentioned that there's like some variations, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's sometimes versions of like wild dice people use.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the devil's die in Bremont and how does that work?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so the devil's die is this is actually part of the way that I was taught liars dies.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I learned afterwards there there are versions of the game that don't have wild values in them, but I learned that after I'd learned a play the game for the first time.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the devil's die is a mechanic where
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, there's four players.
[SPEAKER_03]: They have three dice each and that that makes for twelve dice.
[SPEAKER_03]: The thirteenth die in the middle of the table is wild, which means that at the start of the round, the person who leads the round rolls that die out in the open where everybody can see and say that rolls up as a one, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: That means that for this round, ones are wild.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I might say,
[SPEAKER_03]: Three twos right as the start of my wager when somebody calls they're gonna put in all of the twos and they're also gonna put in all of the ones to kind of add those all up in the same tally right
[SPEAKER_03]: But if you call the wild value on the devil's die, say I say five ones, one stop being wild for the remainder of the round.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that means that any future calls also stop being wild.
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's something really interesting in the math of
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, I might know, you know, if the wild die is six and I have three sixes in my hand, that's four of any number, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: I can be a little bit aggro or I could call four sixes and know that that's a wager that's going to be met and nobody else can call the wild values, which means that they're going to have to play that that's going to shake up their strategy in a real way.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of fun to the calling the devil's dice.
[SPEAKER_02]: It feels like a kind of a fuck you to the table in a great way.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it just like immediately flips the game.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like if you're midway through and all the sunwilds are gone, it's like
[SPEAKER_02]: It takes a really fun way.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_03]: Everybody has to reconsider whatever they had on their hand.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're like, oh, is that necessarily going to be a safe way during now, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: The thing that's really interesting about the devil's die is like starting out.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, you can say one of any value, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because there's automatically going to be one dive any value on the table.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then, yeah, the moment that somebody calls that and freezes it in place, you have to reconsider that math.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just a fundamental shift.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Lyrs Dice is this core mechanic where we're losing dice and we're calling memories.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do want to get into the the characters we're playing in this and like a lot of the inspiration for these memories comes from things on our character sheets and then there's some stuff on our character sheets that gets revealed partly through the game.
[SPEAKER_00]: Could you tell us about without spoilers?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because this is a game with spoilers.
[SPEAKER_00]: If listeners don't know, which is very cool, I love a game with spoilers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Could you tell us about the four pre-generated characters that we're playing, Lyrous Diceats?
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_03]: So like I said, this game is based on this folktale, the ten musicians of Bremen, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Which has these four animals in it, a cockroach hat, a hound, and a mule.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is going back to folktales.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like, oh, these animals have so much personality baked into them from the jump, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, like, if you're reading folktales and you see a cockroach, it's like, oh, this character has a personality.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is, it's a motif that we can jump into very, very easily.
[SPEAKER_03]: Same with a hound, a hound is, you know, a dog is loyal, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Same with the mule is a very stubborn character.
[SPEAKER_03]: And
[SPEAKER_03]: I found that those archetypes also mapped really well onto the band archetypes.
[SPEAKER_03]: The ideas of, okay, there's a four person band, what instruments might these characters play?
[SPEAKER_03]: How do you map these two, the personalities of these animals and also not just the instruments that they're playing, but the other parts of the band, the things like
[SPEAKER_03]: who handles the finances, who, you know, books, the venues, who holds like press relations and PR and, you know, is the spokesperson, who's the band's heart and soul, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: So the idea of these four characters having these really clear relationships with themselves and with each other came together really quickly.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was pretty easy to be like, oh, I know who these, each of these individual characters is.
[SPEAKER_03]: And from there, it was just a process of, once we know that the Cockroll plays the fiddle and is the bands, you know, PR and face, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like, okay, you have that much of an archetype for each of these characters.
[SPEAKER_03]: What are the ways that they would get under each other's skin and really just butt heads with each other?
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's where the interpersonal questions that these players ask each other as they're kind of flushing out their relationships come into play.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there a and maybe this is a fun little challenge?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there like a kind of if you if you like X you should play X that you would that you could give us for these for these playbooks?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I would say, you know, I think that the four characters have their little synopsies in the book, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like, okay, you know, fiddle and PR the face and that level of like this specificity.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's also a little bit of flavor text that players will know before they dive in to say, like, oh, this is the relationship that how it has to the situation that we're in, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the relationship that
[SPEAKER_03]: Cockrole is the one who shook the devil's hand, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And so there's a little bit of that description baked into the text that tells people, oh, this character is gonna be a flashy loud asshole, or this character is gonna be very surly and stubborn, or this character is gonna be the bleeding heart of the crew.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I think any character you play is gonna be a little bit of an asshole at the end of the day, but I think it's
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess getting specific about what flavor of asshole you want to play over the course of the game is really up to the players and their their own choice, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Every time I play a role playing game, I so rarely want to.
[SPEAKER_02]: I so rarely end up playing the messy character.
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess it's just not immediately in my personality, but I can do it as a GM, but somehow when I'm a player, I'm like, I want to be friends and let's all be perfect.
[SPEAKER_02]: But recently I've been playing had a chance to play seven part pack by changing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And like that's a game that wants you to get as messy as possible.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm looking forward to last year in a breven of like trying to work those muscles that I don't fully have as a player.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm just like, make it messier.
[SPEAKER_02]: Be a bad guy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it'll make the game more fun.
[SPEAKER_03]: The thing about seven part packed and about Bremen.
[SPEAKER_03]: that they do have in common is like every single character is an asshole, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like it's not really possible.
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess there are some ways that you could try to spin it or it's like, oh, this character is, you know, is an ass, you know, is causing all of these problems, but is well-intentioned underneath the surface, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: There's ways that you can play that do soft in some of that, but this is a game that really
[SPEAKER_03]: based on like the prompting based on getting people into these characters, we're trying to cultivate drama here.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're trying to create a situation where this is a tender box, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's going to explode.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's going to be messy and just giving people permission to embrace.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like, oh, this is meant to be a little bit cathartic.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's meant to be like, oh, I
[SPEAKER_03]: can deal with this within the safety of the game, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And it is, speaking from just seven part packs, it is fun to dive into those emotions.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I am really excited to do it in this game, because I think it's got, I think it even wants you to do it, maybe just as much if not more than seven part packs of like, really make, make your bad people and see what happens.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's fun to cost problems.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's fun to be alone.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's fun to be alone sometimes.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is a thing that I have to kind of keep remembering that like a lot of role playing games kind of like you know movies or any kind of narrative plot is like you want problems.
[SPEAKER_02]: You want conflict and it's so easy to phone the trap of like
[SPEAKER_02]: Just, it's so easy to not do that actively.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, you do have to kind of actively solve, you do have to actually create problems and conflict.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the more conflict of problems you create, the more chaotic and the more tangled the web you leave, and then solving it or playing with it and it gets so much more interesting and fun.
[SPEAKER_02]: In a way that I have to keep, somehow like when I go from GM brain, GM brain, I'm like, yeah, keep throwing problems at him.
[SPEAKER_02]: When I go to player brain, I somehow completely forget that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, no, let's all just get along perfectly and kill the dragon or whatever.
[SPEAKER_03]: Hundred percent.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that that aspect of wanting to make these characters that people can really step into very quickly and say, oh,
[SPEAKER_03]: I relate to cat because of these particular personality aspects that I identify with or I see the worst of myself and cat and also the best of myself and however it is that you relate to these characters.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think a lot of that comes from
[SPEAKER_03]: my work in theater, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And knowing like, oh, this is, this is a mask work.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is about helping people have the tools to step into and embody a role as quickly as possible so that they can then like get past like, what is my motivation?
[SPEAKER_03]: What am I trying to do within the scene and get into?
[SPEAKER_03]: How is my character feeling?
[SPEAKER_03]: How can I let the feelings and form the actions and play?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's also a great, I feel like
[SPEAKER_02]: games like this when they when it really hits you know it because you're able to embody a character that goes against who you are but in a way that is safe and fun and exciting to play in in like a safe I'm really just saying I like safety tools are good in this game is good but but but but it is exciting to get to play in a space that you don't normally operate in try it on see what that feels like and then oddly enough like
[SPEAKER_02]: being more involved in whatever that character trait is like those bad ends of humanity helps better define who you are as a person like you get to explore those things in a safe way and then come back and say hey this is actually reaffirmed the positive aspects of myself because I've now seen I've played around in the negative aspects in a way that doesn't actually hurt anybody in a real way.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that actually goes back to one of the questions you were asking earlier about like safety tools and how to make sure that people are making the most of and and taking care of each other as they play.
[SPEAKER_03]: The other thing that I think really is helpful in in that is from and is a one shot right is the game that's going to take baby.
[SPEAKER_03]: three hours, you know, three and a half of your playing long, right, which means, okay, you only have so much time with these characters.
[SPEAKER_03]: You can say, for the next three hours, I am going to be channeling, you know, by petty, spiteful, resentful, all of this bad energy into this character.
[SPEAKER_03]: Who we know, again, is probably going to get killed by the devil, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: We know that this character is bad and is, you know, probably going to have a bad ending, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And there is something cathartic about being able to use a character who
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we know is damned for the pire, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And have that as a cathartic emotional outlet to channel some of that bad energy into so that when we do get to the end of the game, like you're saying, Brian, we can we can come out and say, oh, this is reaffirming of who I am, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I'm glad that my creative partnership's aren't as bad as whatever those four had going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we've been saying a lot lately for one shots that like the recommendation we remind ourselves of is drive your one shot character like you stole it and like this is a character that you're gonna emotionally drive like you stole it because there's not like you're not like doing physical conflict or anything like that, but it's like, no, I'm gonna be I'm gonna lean into the mess.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's also drive like a stole in the cops are right behind you.
[SPEAKER_02]: You got to move, buddy.
[SPEAKER_02]: As we kind of start moving towards a close in this interview, I'd love to hear from your experience playing this game and play testing it, and stories you've heard tell of, and I think this heard tell is a great way to describe the vibe of this game somehow.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know why.
[SPEAKER_02]: Are there any standout moments or stories from games of Bremond that you've played, games of Bremond that you've heard of, that you think are emblematic of what makes a great session of last train of Bremond?
[SPEAKER_03]: I think as I've had the opportunity to play the game a number of times what
[SPEAKER_03]: I often find, particularly when we're getting into memories, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And the act of narration, like, let less be more, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes a scene doesn't need to have a long conclusion of like, oh, this is the point that we are building to.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, a memory can just be, here are three sentences about the relationship that we had, you know, these are the facts.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is how I felt this is why you fucked it up.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then the other player gets to retaliate and say, I didn't fuck that up.
[SPEAKER_03]: That was actually your fault for this reason that you don't know, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And leave it at that.
[SPEAKER_03]: It can be great to sit in the narration and and expose it and be like, Oh, this is where that is.
[SPEAKER_03]: But also when you leave things a little bit shorter, it makes it
[SPEAKER_03]: It leaves a little bit of a fruitful void for people to then in future rounds or future iterations come back to that same idea and say, oh, I'm iterating on the exact same thing that you did in a previous memory, but I'm twisting it in a different way and I'm going to twist the knife a little bit differently as a consequence, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: So finding, finding ways to
[SPEAKER_03]: Make memories count.
[SPEAKER_03]: You only have so many of them, but not feeling like you have to really dig in super, super deep.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like the prompts alone are going to be enough to help get you most of the way there.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think the other thing that I will say is that I've found really interesting is I have not played a game where somebody has managed to beat the devil and win.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've heard people do it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I know that it is possible.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is designed to be win-able.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's designed to be really difficult to do, but it's possible to do.
[SPEAKER_03]: I know it's been done.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think
[SPEAKER_03]: Embracing the competitive nature that comes out when you're playing that liar's dice, like we were saying earlier, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: If you know, oh, what is the way that I want to strategize to really win this on a mechanical level?
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, winning the game of liar's dice, but also embracing, oh, if I lose, I still get to send my character off or I still get to, you know, have these great moments of narration in the same way.
[SPEAKER_03]: So recognizing that
[SPEAKER_03]: This is a game where you, whatever way you end up losing, you still win something at the end.
[SPEAKER_02]: Love that.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's really good.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, Caro, at time of recording, last trainer-bremond has not yet launched on Backer Kit.
[SPEAKER_02]: By the time this is coming out, it likely will have and hopefully is funding to the stars.
[SPEAKER_02]: But can you tell people what people can expect from the Backer Kit campaign, what you can get if you back the project?
[SPEAKER_02]: And also I'd love to hear why Possum Creek was the right partner for you for this game.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll start with that last question.
[SPEAKER_03]: First, Possum Creek has, you know, such a near and dear place to my heart, Jay and I are definitely in conversations and, you know, bounce bounce ideas off of each other all the time.
[SPEAKER_03]: And when I first pitched Bremon as a game, I was I was still very like in in the process of play testing it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Jay was like, oh, this game has juice.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's something interesting here.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so once I put it out into the world, I think very quickly on we started talking about like, what would the process of, you know, getting this to publication look like?
[SPEAKER_03]: And I explored a couple of different options.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was like, oh, there are a number of different publishers that I think could, could be a good match for this game in different ways.
[SPEAKER_03]: and kind of thinking about all of the different strengths and merits of each, but I think one of the things that Possum Creek cares about very intentionally is not just having a game that is a great, you know, playable object and a beautiful physical artifact, right, but making sure that those pieces are in conversation with each other.
[SPEAKER_03]: right you flip through the pages of wander home it's like oh this is a beautiful art book right you look at the the box set of gazebas and it's like oh there is a materiality that is intentional and is underscoring what the game itself is trying to accomplish in a way that reinforces it
[SPEAKER_03]: like on a thematic level.
[SPEAKER_03]: Every step of the component design feels like it is very intentionally reinforcing what the game itself is trying to accomplish.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I think that kind of segways really nicely into some of the things that we're doing with the the backer kit.
[SPEAKER_03]: Part of the backer kit campaign probably the biggest part is going to be the physical book itself.
[SPEAKER_03]: The digital version of Bremen is about thirty pages.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to be giving it new layout and some new formatting to bring that up.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not going to be a Zen booklet.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's going to be a physical hardback book with new cover illustration by Connor Fossett and some new very snazzy interior illustrations.
[SPEAKER_03]: Connor's art is
[SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely gorgeous.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's stunning and really drives home what we're trying to do and the themes and the vibe and the atmosphere of the game.
[SPEAKER_03]: So really, really excited to have, you know, all the possum creeks like art, art talents and chops to really make bring the book home in that way.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're also going to be doing a box set.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's going to be a version of the book that also comes with some dice.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we're really, really excited to see how that, you know, comes together as a game that you can pull fresh out of the box and play, you know, with three friends, even if you've never read the book, trying to make that as approachable as possible.
[SPEAKER_02]: And my wallet cries yet again.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's so exciting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there anything content wise changing about like are you adding anything to the game or is this like let's bring this game to polished print?
[SPEAKER_03]: I went back and forth on this with with Jay a fair amount of like is there anything else that the game means like you know rules for a three player variant or you know how to play with more or fewer end to end
[SPEAKER_03]: really what we ended up landing on is like, it's solid as it is.
[SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't really need too much polish where we're going in and finessing just a couple of the small bits and pieces to make sure that the game flows as smoothly as possible.
[SPEAKER_03]: But if you have the digital edition, it's more or less the same.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just going to be smoothed over for ease of experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: Cara, thank you so much for joining us for this first episode of this mini season of My First Dungeon.
[SPEAKER_02]: You want to tell people where they can find the backer kit and also where they can find your other games online if they're looking for.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you should be able to find the crowdfunding campaign for last train to Bremann if you just go to backer kit and search for last train to Bremann, the REM EN.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you want to check out any of my other games, you can find those online at sea excursion that's S-E-A excursion.ich.io.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I always love that joke every time I see your age, it's like it's a great bit.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a secret riddle for anybody who takes the time to sit it out loud and be like, oh I get it.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's really good.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is all for this episode of My First Dungeon.
[SPEAKER_02]: To the next time as we begin this tragedy of a doomed quartet, and if we're lucky, by the end of the night, one of us may still be left alive to tell the tale.
[SPEAKER_02]: And as always remember, if you're having fun, you're already doing it right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Bye-bye, everybody.
[SPEAKER_02]: Bye-bye.
[SPEAKER_02]: Take care.