Arion Games and other RPGs (with Graham Bottley)

Summary

The GROGNARD Files Podcast: "Arion Games and Other RPGs" (with Graham Bottley)

Date: October 31, 2025
Host: Dirk the Dice
Guests: Graham Bottley (Arion Games), Judge Blythe
Theme: Celebrating retro and contemporary RPGs, focusing on Arion Games’ history, Fighting Fantasy, Maelstrom, and recent gaming experiences.

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the enduring appeal of classic RPGs—especially Fighting Fantasy and Maelstrom—through a long-form chat with Graham Bottley of Arion Games, marking the publisher’s 20th anniversary. Afterward, hosts Dirk and Blythe reflect on a September crammed with RPG sessions, conventions, and face-to-face play, sharing insights and laughs on new games, ongoing campaigns, and the social heart of gaming.

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1. Arion Games: History, Legacy, and Design

Guest: Graham Bottley (starts ~[02:20])

Origins of a Gamer ([02:42]–[04:31])

• Graham’s love for fantasy began at age 9; his father brought home Forest of Doom, sparking an obsession with gamebooks and eventually leading to the Red Box D&D set.
• Quote: “With a novel I’d always expanded the universe within my own brain... all of a sudden I had the option to go further with these game books.” – Graham ([03:25])

The Appeal of Fighting Fantasy ([05:21])

• Early adventures resonated due to archetypal designs: dungeon crawls (Warlock of Firetop Mountain), wilderness (Forest of Doom), urban (City of Thieves).
• Artwork (Russ Nicholson, John Blanche) crucially shaped the line’s unique atmosphere.
• Quote: “If I pick up Shamutanti Hills now and... look at the picture... I am still sat on the floor of my parents house with... the wrestling on the TV, going through the Shamutanti Hills. It is embedded in my brain.” – Graham ([06:55])

The Distinction of the Sorcery! Series ([07:32]–[10:34])

• Sorcery! felt “more grown up, a bit secretive,” using unusual art and narrative structures, partly inspired by Steve Jackson's time in Nepal.
• “It was like watching the blockbuster film... you can’t wait for [the sequel].” – Graham ([08:53])

Founding Arion Games & Reviving Advanced Fighting Fantasy ([10:37]–[14:54])

• Arion Games began with paper miniatures, then moved into RPGs, picking up the AFF license in 2010.
• Early publishing challenges: print vs. PDF, partnership with Cubicle 7, then moving in-house.
• “We’re working on the 34th book in the series... plus a whole load of PDF adventures and paper miniatures... It just snowballed from there.” – Graham ([13:49])

Translating Gamebooks to RPGs ([14:54]–[19:02])

• The original AFF RPG’s high randomization (D6+6 for skill) great for solo play, but problematic for group balance.
• No “real” armor system originally, reflecting Russ Nicholson’s scrap armor illustrations; introduced in new editions for modern sensibilities.
• “If you’re going to take it as an RPG on its own, I think it just needed that little bit of extra work.” – Graham ([18:55])

Linear Adventure Design—Updating for RPGs ([19:16]–[21:40])

• Criticisms that some adaptations (e.g., Crown of Kings) are too linear.
• New modules now include branching, random dungeon generators to provide replay and unpredictability.
• Latest release: Eye of the Dragon hardcover, with innovative dungeon mechanics ([21:27]).

Maelstrom: A Historical, Innovative RPG ([21:49]–[26:59])

• Maelstrom, written by 14-year-old Alex Scott, sold massively due to its fighting fantasy-style branding.
• Innovations: mundane professions, lethal combat, probability-based magic, real-world herbology adapted to gameplay.
• “It was quite an innovative role playing game... you could be a butcher, or a grocer... not just fighter, mage, champion.” – Graham ([23:11])

Online Community & Arion’s Future ([29:08])

• Active communities on Facebook and Discord. Fighting Fantasy’s recognition spans generations.
• Graham hopes to continue publishing well past retirement: “By the time I do retire... we could have 120,130 different RPG books, different lines, all sorts of different stuff.” ([30:17])

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2. Super September: Recap of an RPG-packed Month

Hosts: Dirk & Blythe (starts ~[31:08])

Why So Much Gaming? ([31:32]–[33:10])

• September felt especially busy due to seasonal routines and regular groups restarting.
• Dirk: “This hobby is a winter hobby because it’s indoors.” ([32:29])

New Game Spotlights ([35:27])

The Hidden Isle ([35:32]–[42:52])

• Indie RPG set in a magical, alternate 16th-century Europe.
• Forged in the Dark-based but uses tarot cards for both scenario hooks and conflict resolution.
• Mechanics in Brief:
  • Tarot cards determine scenario and success/failure in actions.
  • Players each have fortune cards to help one another.
• “It seemed a bit simpler than Blades in the Dark... more like a conventional roleplaying game.” – Blythe ([36:30])
• Blythe bought the rulebook immediately after their session ([42:10]).

Blade Runner RPG ([42:55]–[51:05])

• Free League’s adaptation—stylish, evocative, but tightly focused on being police procedural, not outlaw replicant escapades.
• “As player characters... you’re working in conjunction with the UN... making sure replicants behave themselves.” – Dirk ([44:32])
• Discussion of shift-based time mechanics: resource (time) management creates procedural tension and forces players to split up ([48:38]).
• Both agree the game is best in campaign play, not one-shots: “One shots, you just get 2/3 of the game... a schooner of a game.” – Blythe ([47:32])

Campaigns: Ongoing and Returning ([51:22]–[61:44])

• Pirates Campaign: Ongoing Traveler game, now “season four,” with the crew facing a 10-million-credit bounty each from GD Car, a megacorporation ([53:15]).

  • “I think putting a price on your head is a totally reasonable thing that they would do.” – Blythe ([53:13])
  • Ship debates: practical trade-offs vs. emotional attachment to signature vessels ([55:08]).

• The Borella’s Connection: A lengthy Fall of Delta Green investigative campaign, slow-paced due to the depth and detail of realistic, complex settings like Saigon.

  • “There are a lot of layers... that slows it down, but increases the sense of alienation you feel.” – Dirk ([59:55])
  • “Ken Hite’s got us hostage in two campaigns!” – Blythe ([61:34])

In-person Play and Conventions ([61:54]–[66:06])

• More face-to-face gaming after online-dominant years rejuvenated their enthusiasm.

• At Glorantha Games convention, Dirk observed the challenges of teaching RPGs to complete newcomers: “It was really startling to think... there’s a lot to cover in this very short time.” ([64:22])

• Planescape/5e D&D ([66:11]–[73:33]):

  • Planescape rationalizes D&D’s “kitchen sink” fantasy by giving a logic to its variety.
  • Anecdotes about comic wild magic mishaps highlight the difference in gameplay feel between D&D and DCC.
  • “It always descends as a weirdly tactical game, doesn’t it? That’s the thing with it.” – Blythe ([69:33])
  • DCC: Fumbles and spell misfires are seen as fun and thematic, compared to D&D’s sometimes frustrating consequences ([71:04]–[73:25]).

Reflections on Gaming Volume—Can You Have Too Much? ([76:50]–[82:45])

• Acknowledging partner fatigue and the risk of burnout from excessive play or prep, but emphasizing the importance of good company and balancing GMing vs. playing.
• Quote: “That is the essence of it, isn’t it? The idea that you’re just playing with people who are good players and you’re familiar with as well.” – Blythe ([78:30])
• “Can you have too much of a good thing? Only if you let it take over.” – Dirk ([82:04])

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3. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Art and Nostalgia: “You look at those pictures and I imagine there’s many, many, many people my age who if you showed them one of those pictures now, it would give them an immediate flashback...” – Graham ([06:47])

• Gamebook to RPG Challenge: “If you’ve got Bob whose character has 12 skill and 22 stamina, and then you’ve got Rob with 7 skill and 14 stamina, Bob is doing everything... and it gets boring.” – Graham ([15:17])

• Maelstrom’s Design: “To put out a candle is a really easy spell, because candles blow out all the time... making a coin levitate off a table is almost impossible.” – Graham ([24:26])

• Transitioning Hobby Generations: “I meet people at conventions who look about 22 and they say, ‘Oh, I’ve got the game books.’ And I’m like, how? You’re far too young!” – Graham ([29:48])

• Roleplaying as Social Glue: “What you can’t eliminate from role playing games—it is a social experience. And that counts for a lot.” – Blythe ([79:43])

• On over-scheduling: “Can you have too much of a good thing? Only if you let it take over... you’ve got to determine the bits you like about it to make sure you’re doing more of that.” – Dirk ([82:04])

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4. Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:20] – Open Box: Interview with Graham Bottley begins
• [05:21] – Enduring Appeal of Fighting Fantasy
• [10:37] – From Paper Minis to Advanced Fighting Fantasy (AFF)
• [14:54] – Challenges Adapting Gamebooks for RPGs
• [21:49] – Maelstrom and Gaming Innovation
• [29:08] – Building/Supporting Community
• [31:08] – Super September: Hosts recount a packed month
• [35:32] – Hidden Isle Review (Tarot-based RPG)
• [42:52] – Blade Runner RPG: Police, Investigations, and Campaign Play
• [51:22] – Active Campaigns: Traveler, Fall of Delta Green
• [61:54] – Conventions, In-person Play, Onboarding New Gamers
• [66:06] – 5e Planescape; comparing to DCC play
• [76:50] – Can You Have Too Much RPG? Gaming burnout and joy
• [82:45] – Episode Wrap-Up

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5. Conclusion & Tone

The episode blends deep nostalgia for classic British RPGs with practical discussions of modern play styles and game design. Guests speak with humor, warmth, and enthusiasm, weaving in memories, detailed reflections, and reviews in a friendly, conversational style that welcomes both seasoned grognards and curious newcomers.

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For more:

• Visit Arion Games’ store (link in show notes)
• Look forward to upcoming "Dirk’s Dossier” episodes, including discussions on running gladiatorial campaigns

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(End of summary. The summary covers all salient topics, uses selected quotes with timestamps, and maintains the podcast’s informal and engaging tone.)

Transcript

[Dirk the Dice]

Have you seen me Dice Bag?

[Blythe]

The Grognard Files.

[Dirk the Dice]

Hello, my name is Dirt the Dice, and this is the Grognard Files podcast, where we talk bobbins about tabletop RPGs from back in the day. And today I'm coming live from my den here in the heart of the northwest of Eng England, and I'm completely and utterly and infuriatingly surrounded by my stuff. Everywhere I look, there's bits and bobs.

[Host/Interviewer]

I've pulled out over the last couple.

[Dirk the Dice]

Of months are not put away. It's gone a bit crazy. In fact, I've not been able to sit at this desk. Here on my right is the great library of RPGs. And here on my left is the ridiculous homemade shrine to the actor Caroline Munro.

[Host/Interviewer]

I'll.

[Dirk the Dice]

I'll just give a tap. Ah, yes, she's appeared in a wetsuit for the Lambs Navy Room adverts. Well, that's because we are feeling the spirit of adventure. Over the past couple of months, we've played an impossible number of games nearly every other night due to one thing and another. We've been to conventions, symposiums, and in this episode I'm joined by our resident rules lawyer, Judge Blythe, and we reflect on the games that we've been playing in September. But first, I'm joined in the Zoom of Role Playing Rambling by Graham Botley, Aryan Games, which has recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. And he talks about ventures in advanced fighting, fantasy and maelstrom.

[Host/Interviewer]

It really is a busy one, this.

[Dirk the Dice]

One, so if you stay to the.

[Host/Interviewer]

End, I'll give you a bit more.

[Dirk the Dice]

Information about how you can get some more of it. But until then, ramblers, let's get Rambling Open Box.

[Interviewer]

Welcome to the Zoom of Role Playing Rambling to Open Box, the part of the podcast where we look backwards to look forwards. Our gaming of the past informs the gaming of today. And I'm joined by game designer and publisher Graham Buckley of Arian Gabes.

[Blythe]

Hello there, Graham. Hi.

[Graham Buckley]

Thank you for having me on.

[Interviewer]

And whereabouts in the world are you, Graham?

[Graham Buckley]

So, I'm based in North Yorkshire, in Wensleydale, just on the very edge of the Yorkshire Dales, but in a very rural area.

[Interviewer]

Have you always been a gamer?

[Graham Buckley]

Since I was 9, yes. I had always been fascinated with fantasy literature. The Hobbit was one of the earliest books I remember being read as a child and it had always fascinated me. And I'd grown up with all these fantasy books. And then my father went away to work one day and as often happens in that Sort of situation. He brought a present back because working away or we come back and you feel slightly guilty, you bring a present. And he brought me this book. And he said, I found this in a bookshop. He said, but I don't really understand it. I thought you might enjoy it. And handed me a copy of Forest of Doom. And I looked at it and opened it up and thought, there's numbers everywhere. What's this? No idea. That evening I sat down and read it. I probably. Even though I was about nine, I probably didn't go to bed till about midnight because I was reading it under the covers with a torch. And the next day I did it again and again and again. And my father said, you. You're absolutely obsessed with that thing. I said, yeah. I said, were there any more? He said, I think there were. And then the next time he came back, it was Warlock of Firetop Mountain. And that's what started things that really grabbed a bit of tension that novels never could. Because with a novel I'd always expanded the universe within my own brain. I'd always read the Hobbit. And I tried to imagine what was happening over that hill that they passed. What was happening behind those mountains. This town that was mentioned, what happened there. I was trying to build this world within my brain. All of a sudden I had the option to go further with these game books. And that started me off. And then six months later, for Christmas, I got the Redbox D and D. That was the start of my. My role playing career.

[Interviewer]

So who were you playing with at the time?

[Graham Buckley]

I had a group of school friends. One of them is now in quite a big thrash metal band. I don't know if you've ever heard of Craig Le Filth.

[Interviewer]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Graham Buckley]

So Danny, the lead singer, so he. His father worked with my father. They played cricket together and he lived 100 yards or so away. And in fact, his is the earliest D and D memory I have of my character being killed by a Palkiel spell in his room in his house there. So. And indeed we even had like a club at school. Most of the people in the club are still part of my gaming group even now. Danny actually did the illustrations for this little magazine we did. It had Warhammer in it and it had Fighting Fantasy and so on.

[Interviewer]

Just going back to Fighting Fantasy, what do you think it is that's so enduring about the. Particularly those first few adventures and particularly the fantasy ones?

[Graham Buckley]

I think there's two elements to it. One element is they were very classic by classic. What I mean is the Warlock of Firetop Mountain is a very classic dungeon crawl. You've got 10 foot by 10 foot rooms with an orc sitting with a pint and you've got. And it's very mixed up and it's very classic in that old fashioned sense in that you've got one room with a vampire and then you walk through that and the next room's got a troll. Well, can't seem getting on too well next to each other. But they did, you know, you've got things that you need to collect to get you past traps later. And so it was very typical dungeon crawl. Forest of Doom was very archetypal wilderness adventure. City of Thieves was very archetypal urban adventure. And I don't think I'll have to ask Ian next time I speak to him. But I don't think that was accidental. I think because they had brought D and D over and of course they were very instrumental in the TSI UK publications. That's what their background was, those archetypal adventures. And I think what they did was they thought how can we make the most archetypal dungeon crawl? And they turned it into that first game book. So I think there's that because it has all the elements you want in there. But I think also the art was absolutely critical. It really set the tone. People like Russ Nicholson, his art and John Blanche, you know, with the Sorcery series. You look at those pictures and I imagine there's many, many, many people my age who if you showed them one of those pictures now, it would give them an immediate flashback to when they were very young. And if I pick up Shamu Tan's heels now and shut my eyes, look at the picture, shut my eyes. I am still sat on the floor of my parents house with the Saturday wrestling on the TV in, in the back room that was dining room stroke, sort of second sitting room. And I'm sat on the floor there with the wrestling on the TV going through the Shamu Tanti hills because it is embedded in my brain because of the art. And I think that's key.

[Host/Interviewer]

They are.

[Interviewer]

And there is something about those Steve Jackson ones that were quite innovative as well, weren't they? Because the use of spells. So Citadel of Chaos. I always like that one because there's of weirdness that the Ian Livingstone ones didn't necessarily have.

[Graham Buckley]

What it was apparently is that Steve had been traveling in Nepal and a lot of the names are very Nepal influenced. And if you look at a lot of the art of the villagers, they're not the right way to put this. They're not Western. You look at the Atlantia, you look at a lot of the art for that is very western, classic fantasy. It's the typical D and D fantasy. The clothing, the styles, the buildings of the. Of the sorcery series are completely alien. And I think that's what, what really gave it its charm because not only was this an alien world, but it looked completely different to anything we'd seen before. And obviously I say John Blanche's art is otherworldly anyway, that element of complete fantasy.

[Interviewer]

I think entering the sorcery ones because you knew as you were going into them that there were going to be multiple volumes of it, it felt epic. And you knew when you were starting the semi mounte hills that you were going to be there for a while and.

[Graham Buckley]

Absolutely. And I got that as a box set with the sorcery spell book and the British Chamisante hills. And then as soon as the next ones came out and again, it was almost like watching the blockbuster film. So, you know when you watch Star wars and then they say, oh, and then Empire Strikes Back, you can't wait for Empire Strikes Back to come out. And with this, you did Shamu Tangy Hills and you were desperate for the next book to come out so you could undertake the next part of that epic journey. And from a marketing point of view, that was an absolute genius, genius move. I think so.

[Interviewer]

I think as well, for me, the fact that it was a penguin imprint rather than a puffin imprint meant gave it an elevated status.

[Graham Buckley]

It felt. Yeah, it felt a little bit more grown up. Some of the. And that sounds terrible and I don't want anyone, especially if you watch this whatever, to think that, you know, the fighting fantasy, the greenspine ones were in any way childish. They weren't. But the sorcery one, it did. It felt slightly like when you're a kid and you watch a program after 9 o' clock, when you're quite small and you're allowed to. I was allowed to step and watch Blackadder, the very first series, and that felt a little bit daring because when you're 11 and 12, you don't quite get all the jokes, but, you know, it's a bit rude and, you know, you're probably not supposed to be staying up, but you are. And in a way, the sorcery books were a bit like that. They felt a little bit adult and a little bit secretive for kids to feel that bit grown up.

[Interviewer]

So.

[Graham Buckley]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And so Arian Games You've formed that and you've gone on to adapt many of these as a publisher. So what's the process there? How did that happen and what's been the process of doing that? Creating advanced fighting fantasy versions of these.

[Graham Buckley]

So I started Aryan Games 20 years ago this year. So July was our 20th anniversary celebration. We started off just doing paper miniatures, but in about 2010, I was at a games convention on the south coast. It's. It hasn't run for quite a few years and it was held in a holiday complex. And it was. It was one of these gaming conventions where I'd go along to sell stuff and if I sold £200 worth, I'd actually consider myself really lucky because it was. It had quite a lot of people attending. But it was one of these where the games would start and you would speak to no one for the next three hours, and then the games would start to finish for lunch, and then you'd all suddenly speak to a whole load of people and then an hour later they'd ring a bell and say, right, you know, roll call for this game, for this game. And everyone would just vanish again. But it was quite good because I used to run some games there and so on. We'd publish Maelstrom, and so we'd already started publishing role playing games. And the person who was next to me on their stand was from a company called Greenwood Publishing. And I'd worked with him a little bit. He was at the time publishing or had published D20 conversions of Warlock, Firetop Mountain, Forest of Doom, couple of the sorcery ones, and Death Trap Dungeon. I think I said to him at this convention, you know, I'd really love to do. I'd love to do a new version of Advanced Fighting Fantasy. And he said, oh, I can give you Steve's email address if you like. And I said, he'll probably say no, but, you know, nothing ventured, nothing gained, I think. And so I took the email address and I sent off an email to Steve. And there was very much this fanboy bit where I knew that his books and Ian's books had been such a massive part of my. Of my childhood and my adolescence and indeed my adult life. And here I was writing to him, but I wrote him an email and said, look, loved it, love to do a second version. And he wrote back and said, we're only after serious submissions. So we had some meetings and we talked and various things, and eventually they realized they were serious and I got issued a license and I thought, fantastic, because I had to rewrite the core rulebook. But I was also going to republish Titan and republish out the Pit because again, those two source books were a massive part of my childhood. They are such good quality, it seemed ridiculous to publish afl. And I knew there were a lot of extant copies out there because they sold a lot of copies. I thought, let's do it. So we, we rewrote the rules, did the layout and I, to begin with, I partnered with Cubicle 7, who obviously are, you know, big name Angus was running at that point. I spoke to Angus and he, he, he said, look, we can partner to print the books for you. Because at that stage there was no Print on Demand option. You either print and get it into shops or you don't. And even PDF copies weren't really a big thing then. And at that stage my license didn't allow PDF anyway. So I partnered with Angus, they printed them and you know, indeed, you look at the back of a lot of the early books, you can see a Cubicle 7 logo. We did that for a few of the books. But then they started moving into Warhammer and their own rules and they had quite a lot of titles and so on. And I then took it back in house. Then we got the PDFs and print on Demand and that was best part of 15 years ago now. And we've, you know, we're working on the 34th book in the series plus a whole load of PDF adventures and paper miniatures and maps and Japanese translations and French translations and all sorts. So it's, it just snowballed from there.

[Interviewer]

I, I started with Warlock if I Top Mountain, but I was already a role player and I, I, I got into them, I got into the. But my friends who I was playing with didn't necessarily. But that transition from the solo books to the turn it into a role playing game comes with some difficulties, doesn't it? I always encountered that when I wanted to run it as a role playing game.

[Graham Buckley]

So the original version of Advanced Fighting Fantasy written by Mark Gascoigne and Pete Tamlin. And it's worth mentioning that Mark is now the brand manager for Fighting Fantasy. So his, he's had a very successful career in publishing and he's, he's come back to be the Fighting Fantasy brand manager. So in fact I had a chat with him a few days ago about various things. The role playing game they wrote was very true to the game books. So you've still got the D6 plus 6 for skill 2 D12 2 D6 plus 12 stamina D6 plus 6 luck. For a game book that works brilliantly because it means you pick up a copy of a game book and you create a new character. And if you've got seven skill, 15 stamina, eight luck, you are going to have a tough time. But you know you're going to have a tough time. And it's very much a challenge. It's, oh, can I do it? With this very poor character, you roll 12, 2412. If you're ever lucky enough to do that, it's a breeze. Now, the thing is, that works for a game book, firstly because it's just you, and secondly, because when you finish that game book, you create another character with an RPG. If you've got Bob, whose character has 12 skill and 22 stamina, and then you've got Rob, whose character has got 7 skill and 14 stamina, Bob is doing everything. Rob's character follows around and says, do you want me to hold the torch while you go and fight the enemies? Okay, give me a shout and the fight's done. And it gets boring because Rock can get killed by a goblin and Bob can defeat dragons quite simply. So it does. That doesn't quite work. There's no armor system in fighting fantasy. And actually it's very, very recently I found out why not. So in the Riddling Reaver book, which was the first attempt at turning it into a an rpg, they put in variable damage using a little damage track. So you. Your damage track might be 2, 3, 3, 3 3, 4 for sword. So you roll a 1 on the dice, you do 2 damage, you roll a 2, 3, 4, 5 and it's 3 damage and a 6 is 4. So wanted variable damage. But the reason there's no real armour rule actually comes from the original Russ Nicholson. Art is all scraps of armour. Bit of leather on the shoulder, little bit of chain hanging from it, some leather straps here, a little plate strapped on here. So a lot of Russ's armor is not formal armour. A suit of chainmail or plate or whatever, it's scraps. And so they didn't want initially there to be an armor mechanic because of how the armor was depicted when I'm adapting it. 2011, modern role players expect an armor mechanic of some sort. They don't expect a hand. Wavy welly got a bit of R and it sort of applies, but near enough. So we had to put an armor mechanic in. You had a couple of rules, errors, things that any role player now would look at and go, aha. So you cast spells by Deducting stamina, that sorcery. But you had a spell called stamina. It restored your stamina to its original level. Now, for any modern role player, they're going, well, I'll be a mage because cast, cast, cast, cast, cast. Stamina, right? Cast, cast, cast, cast, cast. So that loophole had to be fixed and priests had the same spells as wizard things like this. And I think the original instructions to create the roleplan game were turn the game books into an RPG diary. And in that respect they did it. Absolutely. If you're going to take it as, as an RPG on its own, I think it just needed that little bit of extra work.

[Interviewer]

I've got my copy of Riddling Reaver here.

[Graham Buckley]

There is still some discussion about getting that turned into a second edition supplement. There's been some discussion with Paul Mason about that and see if we can get that updated and so on expanded.

[Interviewer]

Because the other feature I guess is about adventure design, isn't it? Because the game books are definition of certain tracks that you go along. I think when I was trying to adapt them back in the day, there was a temptation to follow that pattern of trying to have a series of set outcomes based on this is.

[Graham Buckley]

It is a tricky one. One of the criticisms in reviews of Shamitante Hill of. Of the the Crown of Kings source book we did is too linear. Not enough options for people to do now. Actually, I think it's not a particularly linear because you can go this way around, you can go this way around, you can go this way through city or that way, whatever. But it is a potential problem. And I'm, you know, I'm writing, I'm finishing off the Dauben Halls campaign at the moment. That's quite branching. That's got lots of options with things people can do equally. Brett in the Eye of the Dragon, he adapted this from both the game book and the original Daisy dragons booked by Livingston that predated fighting fantasy. There was an adventure in there called Eye of the Dragon that later became the game book. What he's actually done in here is he's put a random dungeon generator in a way partly adapted from the Adventure Crater, which is our solo sourcebook. But what it does is it means a GM doesn't just have to have these linear paths through the dungeon. They can create almost like a maze, but because you've then got a table and I'm not going to go into loads of detail about how he did it, but there's quite an interesting mechanic in here that means you get most of the encounters, but you get the harder ones later. What it means is as a gm, if your players are familiar with the game, but you don't want them to know the way through. Equally, the maps as per the game book are very linear and you didn't just want to go along a corridor in this door, out along the corridor in the next door, almost like you're walking along a row of shops and going into every one to put it in the random generator means you've then got the, the whole mixing up and, and the non linear aspect of an RPG adventure with the more linear aspect of the game books.

[Interviewer]

And so that's a new release, is it?

[Graham Buckley]

So the PDF came out a few weeks ago. This is the hardcover. The soft cover I'm hoping will arrive in the post tomorrow and when it does, that will be. That will go up for sale. But yeah, this is, this is, this is very, very new.

[Host/Interviewer]

Excellent.

[Interviewer]

And of course the original adventure is what inspired fighting fantasy in the first place, isn't it? Because that's what buffets are, isn't it?

[Graham Buckley]

Yep.

[Interviewer]

You mentioned earlier that you actually started with Maelstrom. So people who don't know Maelstrom just.

[Host/Interviewer]

Explain what that is and how that fits in.

[Graham Buckley]

When the game books were doing incredibly well. So Steven Ian wrote the first few and they were doing so well, they were basically selling out a print run before the print run had actually arrived in the warehouse. And they were selling insane numbers, hundreds of thousands a month around the world. Now of course, if you're the publisher, you're going kaching fantastic. And you're saying Stephen Ian Wright, we want one a month every month. But of course Stephen Ian were running Games Workshop at the time. One a month is tough to do even if you're at the, you know, even I think if you dedicated a month to it, you could probably do one in a month, but that would be it. And they said there's no way we, Steve and Ian can do one a month. So they then started farming out to other authors. Interestingly, the first non Steve Jackson Ian Livingston book was written by us, Steve Jackson, which is a bit of a strange thing. So that really caused confusion because it was Steve Lee, Ian Livingston and Steve Jackson present Steve Jackson. They were doing one a month and these were selling in vast quantities. And there were adverts in the national press. Got a feeling there might even have been a TV advert. Someone wrote into him and said, oh, I've got an idea for a role playing game. And this was Alex Scott. He was 14 at the time. He was at primary school. And he said, I've written this role playing game. And when he sent it in, it had a choose your own adventure to help teach you the rules. The editor opened up the draft and went, oh, there's a game book in it. And so he said, yeah, we'll publish this. As I understand it, it sold about 86,000 copies. So it was a role playing game. And it was quite an innovative role playing game. So it was published in 1984. Partly it was innovative because it was a historical game. There were obviously historical games before that, but this was Tudor England. And the character classes, I call them character class, the professions were very mundane. You could be a butcher or a grocer or a fishmonger or a beggar or a thug or a priest or a noble or a servant or a whatever. This was very different because all of the other games had fighter, mage, hero, champion, you know, Paladin, etc. And all of a sudden you could then be a fishmonger. And the adventure that is in the book was quite mundane. You had to travel from London to Milton Keynes. Was it Milton Keynes or something like that. It was quite a lethal game in terms of you could die very, very easily. Armor was hard to come by, weapons did quite a lot of damage. And it also had a very innovative magic system. So there is some suggestion, although people involved with it have said no, there is some suggestion it partly inspired Warhammer because you've got D hundred characteristics, so you've got attack skill and you've got defense skill and you've got knowledge and you've got. And you roll under those in D hundred. And I know there were other D100 ones, but this had basically your stats were, well, what you rolled against. You didn't have to separate you did it. You did have separate skills, but they just meant you could do things. It had a magic system, wasn't based on a spell list, it was probability based. And this was innovative. It meant you could do anything. To put out a candle is a really easy spell, because putting out a candle, candles blow out all the time, especially in a drafty Tudor house. But making a coin levitate off a table is almost impossible. And it's strange because it means that sinking a ship in a storm is actually relatively easy, but lifting a coin an inch off a table is almost impossible because of probability. And so this was absolutely innovative and it sold these vast numbers of copies. And part of the reason it sold the vast numbers of copies is along the front of it said a blue spine and along the top of the front it had a zigzag pattern exactly the same as that of the fighting fantasy books. Thousands and thousands and thousands of the people who bought this bought it thinking it was the new game book.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I was one of them.

[Graham Buckley]

And of course, if you open it up into the middle, you've got to choose your own adventure. So you open it up, go, oh, new game book till pay, get home. And then you start reading it, think, what on earth is this? Which I don't think was a bad thing because it did introduce a good number of people into role playing that hadn't actually considered that element of the hobby.

[Interviewer]

And I remember at the time that it was. To think that it was written by a 14 year old is quite remarkable because it is quite distinctive in style. And as you say, the magic system was like nothing else. It almost preempts indie games and story type games where it leaves the player to use their imagination to convey what kind of magical ability you should have.

[Graham Buckley]

And interestingly, it also had a big effect on the early RPG Internet interface as well. So I'm old enough, the World Wide Web really came around when I was doing my master's degree where basically you would have a whole load of pages on one topic. So if you like dash and dogs, one page would link to the next and then that would link to the next, that would link. And if you followed enough of these pages, you'd end up back you started. But it meant that you saw all the pages about Dashens on the World Wide Web. One of the very earliest role playing files I remember finding on that very early World Wide Web. And we're talking very early, we're talking early 90s here. 94 or something like that was a D and D adaptation of the Maelstrom Herbalist. Because what Alex did was he took a Victorian herbal and adapted all of these herbs for how they might have been used in the Tudor age. And again, what was interesting about these is whereas a D and D potion list, you have potion of speed and potion of healing, a potion of magic, potion of invisibility, herbs. Some of them did things like they increased your will against spirits or they increased, they reduced bleeding or something like that. Some of them stopped your feet getting sweaty on long marches or, you know, they stopped your ears ringing if you got seasick. A lot of people said, well, what is the point in that? But of course you've got all sorts of role playing opportunities from that. Because if you are a Herbalist on a ship and the Noble on the ship is staggering about, holding his stomach and groaning. He keeps falling over. The herbalist can go and say, oh, my Lord, are you getting ringing in your ears? And keep. Yes, I am. Well, try chewing this twice a day. The Noble does it. All of a sudden you have the favor of that noble. And what it does think is it makes it feel more real.

[Interviewer]

And so Aryan Games continues to publish Maelstrom and Fighting Fancy. And what sense of community is around Arion, is it? How do you support the playing of these games?

[Graham Buckley]

Yes, so there's obviously various groups online. There's quite a populous advanced Final Fantasy Facebook group, has a lot of people posting to it. I've recently started my own Aryan Games Discord. Only launched it really a week or two ago and 100 odd members so far, but it's still growing. Almost everywhere it gets mentioned, whether it's on Twitter or BluesKY or Facebook or Instagram or wherever. Almost everyone knows what Fighting Fantasy is. They may not even have any personal experience of having run a game, a game book, but everyone seems to know what it is. I meet people at conventions and they look about 22 and they say, oh, I've got the game books. And I'm like, how you're far too young. Ah, well, when you know, so and so Scholastic did they rerun and that's, you know, that's how they're into it.

[Interviewer]

Thank you for spending this time. And here's to 20 more years of engagement.

[Graham Buckley]

Well, yeah, I think another, another 20 years that I'll be a roundabout retirement age. But I, I suspect, knowing the way, I don't like to slow down. I will continue to keep publishing things. And you look at a lot of the older names in gaming, they continue till the day, you know, they fail their final saving throw and pass on. Ariane Games has got a great future. We've got so much stuff in the pipeline that I think by the time I do retire, you know, we could have 120, 130 different RPG books, different lines, all sorts of different stuff going on.

[Interviewer]

Well, you certainly inspired me to go back to the fighting fantasy stuff, so thanks for that.

[Graham Buckley]

Stick Games Master Screen.

[Host/Interviewer]

Welcome to the room of role playing Rambling. We're up in the attic. The little pigeon with a white eye is plentitively looking through the window. Tap, tap, tapping and it's. The sun is shining, the leaves are falling, for it is autumn. And this is a bit of a special guest. We've not done this before. We're going to have a review of Supersept September. I've got Blythe with me.

[Blythe]

Hello, Dirk.

[Host/Interviewer]

And why have we called this Super September?

[Blythe]

Because we've had loads of gaming in September. Loads of it. Loads of it, everybody.

[Host/Interviewer]

How did that happen?

[Blythe]

I don't know. It's weird, isn't it? It kind of all bunched up into September when I look, when I have not stopped.

[Host/Interviewer]

Well, I think when I was calculating it's like every other day doing something sucked by that.

[Blythe]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

And what's incredible about it is that some of the regular stuff was even going on. So I play Unknown Armies. That's not starting again until next month.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

And we haven't been doing.

[Blythe]

What else haven't we? I mean those Sunday groups. Sunday group, yeah, it's not been going for a bit. It's restarting now but yeah, that's not been going for a bit. So. Yeah, maybe, maybe that's why do you not think it's because some things haven't been happening, that we've just overcompensated and done loads of other things?

[Host/Interviewer]

Well, I think there's a bit of that because over summer things go into a bit of an abase. Because this hobby is a winter hobby because it's indoors.

[Blythe]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there is a bit of that, yeah. August kind of. Well, my August was quite busy I think for that reason I did things in August because I thought it always stops in August. So maybe that's part of it. Maybe September's felt like a lot because it's never really stopped in August. I don't know. Possibly.

[Host/Interviewer]

Do you not think that it's instilled into you as well, the seasons, the seasonal pattern.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

That you get from school, that somehow.

[Blythe]

September's always the beginning of things, isn't it? Yeah. Restarting of things. Yes. Yeah, there is that.

[Host/Interviewer]

So that sung by those people you like. High school never ends.

[Blythe]

High school never ends. Yeah. Soup.

[Host/Interviewer]

Bone soup. Yeah, as I call it. Men in short shouting.

[Blythe]

Yeah, that's what you call it. Well, I don't know if they were short, I think. Yeah. They might have won shots at times. You don't like shorts, do you?

[Host/Interviewer]

No, you're dead.

[Blythe]

You are quite hostile to wash the shots, aren't you? Yeah, I've never worn them in your presence for that reason because I've worried what kind of reaction I might get. Yeah, really hostile reaction.

[Host/Interviewer]

A very anti shorts.

[Blythe]

Don't say no prisoners on that, do you?

[Host/Interviewer]

No, no. It's a polarizing thing So I don't really want to go into it because.

[Blythe]

You know, do you think people turning the podcast off as we speak? Shorts wearers. Clark, he'll be turning. He likes his shorts, doesn't he? Yeah, yeah. He's a man. He's a man who wears shorts in winter. Yeah, isn't he? I'm trying to hold back up there. I don't mind a pair of shorts.

[Host/Interviewer]

You know, there's some kind of toxic topics that we try and avoid.

[Blythe]

This is like the shacket, which turning into like this great sewing baby. We talked about shackets last time, didn't we? Shackets and shots and shorts. Call it that. You, you know that maybe we've run out of road on this RPG thing. Let's call it Shacket and Sharks and talk about fashion items that we do and don't like. Yeah, I don't mind sharks as long as you're not too short. The very short shots are a bad idea. I think the knee length short is okay. I don't mind it, but I know you have a. Yeah, I am. Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

I haven't exposed my legs since 1979. They haven't seen sunlight.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

They're very pale. Yeah. So what I thought we'd do is with games Master Screen, I'm going to erect this in front of me special September 1st.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[Host/Interviewer]

And I'm going to hide my secrets. I've got a secret table here.

[Blythe]

As it should be.

[Host/Interviewer]

I'm going to roll on a table.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

And I'm going to pick some topics at random so that we can freestyle about the stuff we've done in September. Yeah. Okay.

[Dirk the Dice]

Here we go.

[Host/Interviewer]

Okay. I've rolled a one on a D6.

[Blythe]

Okay. I'm just keep.

[Host/Interviewer]

I'm keeping it simple. The D6.

[Blythe]

Yeah. Just do a D6. Yeah. Keep it that way.

[Host/Interviewer]

And first up is new game. So what new games have you played in September?

[Blythe]

A couple of games at Owlbert that were new. Well, one was very new. One was. One was a variation on something familiar. So I played a game called the Hidden Isle.

[Dirk the Dice]

Hidden.

[Graham Buckley]

Hidden.

[Dirk the Dice]

Hidden.

[Blythe]

I've seen hiding. Hide and seek. Hidden isle. So it's like a hidden island.

[Host/Interviewer]

Island. It's an island in the middle of.

[Blythe]

No, not a hidden isle. No, that would be. That'd be very niche, actually. Could be a niche architectural niche.

[Host/Interviewer]

It is Hidden Island.

[Blythe]

Hidden Island. Let's call it that.

[Host/Interviewer]

I've never. I've never heard of it.

[Blythe]

No, I had never heard of it. And when we signed up for games at Albert, I thought, well, it sounds all right. It was the Friday afternoon game, wasn't it? A new. A new thing at Albert. Because we don't normally play on Friday afternoon, but we did. It was run by Dan Connolly. I enjoyed it a lot. It's based on. It's based on Forged in the Dark.

[Host/Interviewer]

Okay.

[Blythe]

But I don't know whether this is just my bad memory or whether I've just got used to these games a bit more. But it seemed a bit simpler than Blades in the Dark. It seemed a bit more like a more conventional role playing game when Blades in the Dark. And it uses tarot cards.

[Host/Interviewer]

Right.

[Blythe]

Rather than dice, which seems a bit. A bit gimmicky, but actually works quite, quite well. I quite enjoyed the whole experience because it's.

[Graham Buckley]

So this.

[Host/Interviewer]

Is this any tarot deck or is it a very specific Tarot deck?

[Blythe]

I think it's any tarot deck. You don't have to. I think they sell one with the game. Right, but you don't have to use that. I don't think Dan used that. You can, you can just use a standard tarot deck. It's not, it's not custom made or anything. So just.

[Host/Interviewer]

But what's the setting? What. What's the setup? What do you do? I'm a player.

[Interviewer]

What do I do?

[Blythe]

Okay. The idea is it's set in 16th century Europe.

[Host/Interviewer]

Okay.

[Blythe]

This is a little bit de sanctioned. So in 16th century. Well, not 16th century. 16th century world, I suppose. And the Hidden Isle is a place that's in the Indian Ocean which is full of sorcerers and scientists and enlightened people and what they do. You live there, so you have a bit of magic. You have some kind of special combat skills. You're kind of elite, I suppose, of people and you're liberal and enlightened people. And the idea is that you go off into the world to do missions to right wrongs in this tumultuous 16th century world. So it's a world of colonialism and religious wars and the Inquisition and all that kind of thing. And the idea is you go out and put things right that are going wrong. You get your missions through a tarot card reading. So you get tarot cards that give you a clue as to what's going on and then you get sent somewhere to sort it out. Basically, that's it in a nutshell, you know, and there is like magic and monsters in the world. So this fictional 16th century world is very much like. It's very much like the historical 16th century world. But there is magic and there Are a few monsters and things like that to deal with.

[Host/Interviewer]

Scale it back a bit. So what are the tarot cards doing then? Are they determining?

[Blythe]

Well, two things. Tarot cards. I didn't know anything about tarot cards until I played, so I understand like some kind of expert. I don't. Didn't really know anything. So tarot cards have two. They have. There's two elements to them. There's cards with like the pips on the numbers and then there's cards with just pictures on. So like the death or the Empress, so that the picture cards give you an idea of the scenario of what's going on. And then the cards with the pips on are used to deal with sort of resolution of combat or challenges or picking a lock or creeping around or persuading or whatever. And basically what you do is your carrot sheet will indicate how many cards you get. So you get dealt at least one. But if you've got skills, you might get extra ones or you've got abilities, you might get some more. And the games master gets some, depending how difficult it is. So you might get three cards, games master might get four. And what you do, you look at them in secret and you play one of them face down and turn them over at the same time. And whoever's got the best card wins. So you could, if the games master's got a better card than you, you fail if you've got a better card than them. And then there's some complications in depending on what suit of card it is, that can influence things a little bit. But that's how it's done really. So it's a little bit like, I suppose, like rock, paper, scissors, you know, that kind of thing where you bit like torchbearer. I think we talked about that a while ago, where you basically play a card. And I suppose the interesting thing about it is all the players have a couple of what are called fortune cards. So they have cards that they can play at any given point. So if you fail, another player can play a better card and say, actually no, we succeed. So that's a interesting element of it. And I suppose what's interesting as well is it says in the rules that as a games master, you don't have to play best card, right? So you could have four cards and think, well, do you know what? Picking this lock, it's not that difficult. I'm not going to play the best card, I'm going to play a slightly worse card and make it easier for them, right, because they could still fail. Because they could still have a worse card. The difficulty is but some extent governed by how many cards you get as a games master to pick from. But equally, you can argument that difficulty by not playing your best card. You'll play slightly worse card to give it the players a bit of a break to make it easier for them.

[Host/Interviewer]

So it's a bit of a pacing mechanic as well for the games.

[Blythe]

Yeah, I suppose. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When we played it, you know, at the end, fighting the big baddie at the end, Dan would play best card every time because he said this is like a monster, this demon we had to fight. Played the best card every time. But other points. I think one point we might have been sneaking through somewhere and he said, well, there's a lot of people. There's a bit of noise to cover you. So, you know, he played not such a good card and make it easy for him. But I did. I really enjoyed it actually. The settings very. A lot of flavor to it. You know, the setting's quite good. It's an interesting setting and it's an interesting. Like you often say about these games, the idea of what do you do is very clear in it.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yes.

[Host/Interviewer]

I like the idea that. Yes. Kind of an elite squad.

[Blythe]

You're an elite squad who are sent out into the world. So you're sent to Spain, you know, and there's the Inquisition and someone's been taken prisoner and you've got to kind of rescue. That's your job. Off you go. It's quite. It's quite a good quirky system.

[Host/Interviewer]

But it must be good because you immediately went out and bought it.

[Blythe]

It arrived the other day, actually. I had to order. I don't know where the company. It's very. It's quite obscure again because I don't know if the company are based. The game came from Poland, but I don't know if the company made it a best in Poland. I don't know if they're best.

[Host/Interviewer]

Quite a lot of the books are published.

[Blythe]

Yeah. I think they might print in my head. Sure. Dan said Austria. I might be wrong. I might be wrong there, but they're best in Europe. Beautiful, beautiful rule book. Came to it without knowing very little about it and wondering how this tarot card thing. But it's not. It's not as complicated as you think. Everyone's got a bit of magic. Maybe that's why I liked it because I always like playing a wizard. But everyone, even the warriors got a little bit of magic that they can do that kind of thing.

[Host/Interviewer]

So yeah, yeah.

[Blythe]

I really enjoyed it. Good game. Yeah, that's good.

[Host/Interviewer]

AD Alba. I ran a game of Blade Runner rpg.

[Blythe]

Oh, new game.

[Host/Interviewer]

A new game.

[Blythe]

New game, whatever. What did you think of that?

[Host/Interviewer]

I didn't get the Kickstarter. I resisted the Kickstarter even though I am a massive fan of the first film of Blade Run, as you know.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

It's one of our core.

[Blythe]

It is, isn't it?

[Host/Interviewer]

When we were kids.

[Blythe]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

Defined our imaginations a lot. That is very important in terms of the way I see science fiction and visualize science fiction.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

And so the Free League book is really well presented. The artwork's really good. It's one of these that is. They kind of make a lot out of a little. In terms of the background where they. It's. It's sat between the two films really. So it's at a point where there's a transition from the Tyrell Corporation is expired and they move in towards Wallace and the reintroduction of replicants into the world after a period when technology went into abeyance because people moved over to analog because it's sh down. But now there's a parallel to our current life. Everybody's saying that really for us to become more productive and a better economy, we really need to embrace technology in the form of these replicants. And so as player characters, what you're doing is working in conjunction with the UN which you're trying to make sure that these replicants are economically viable and you're working with the company.

[Blythe]

So.

[Host/Interviewer]

Wallet. So you. You really just an adjunct of that corporation, just making sure for reputational reasons that replicants behave themselves.

[Blythe]

All right. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

It is a good setup and I know that it simply say alien. It feels quite limiting, doesn't it? But I think with the way that it's pitched, it opens it up a little bit more.

[Blythe]

Could you play a replicant on the Grum?

[Host/Interviewer]

The way that it's geared is that it's investigative. So you're playing the police.

[Blythe]

So. Yeah, like police procedural investigation.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, it's very much that. It's very much that. So you could have pushed a Replicant on the run, but it's not really in the spirit of the game. Game mechanics.

[Blythe]

It.

[Host/Interviewer]

You're really on the side of law enforcement.

[Blythe]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

And if you've got a problem with that, you're not going to like Blade Runner. You know, you're playing the authorities.

[Blythe]

Basically.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yes.

[Blythe]

Yeah. Because I'd say that's a strange thing with Blade Rose. I think when I first saw the games coming out, my instinctive feeling was, wouldn't it be fun to play a Replicant on the run from an RPG perspective as a party of replicants on the run? In a way, when you think of the original film, isn't it better that the player characters were Priss and Roy Batty and the other two, they're better player characters in a way than Rick Deckard, aren't they? Because they're on the run and that. That's more adventuresome, isn't. There's more adventure in that.

[Host/Interviewer]

They have more agency in what they're doing because. Yeah, they're rogue actors, aren't they?

[Blythe]

Yeah, you're rogues and you. All you try and do is survive and not be detected and not be hunted down. Kind of more fun in a way because you think, well, yeah, that'd be good. You'd be on the run.

[Host/Interviewer]

You can't play Replicants, but you're a Replicant working on behalf of the.

[Blythe]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

Obviously your characters, depending on the archetypes, because it's really. You've got a set of archetypes.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

You might have a. Depending on the archetype that you adopt, have a different attitude towards being a law enforcement officer. You might not necessarily be a straight down the line officer decade.

[Blythe]

You might be fed up with it or.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Blythe]

Question the morality of it. Yeah, that'd be quite interesting. Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

Being burnt out agents during the game, the backgrounds of the characters, you realize that that's an important element of it. And in the space of a one shot. So you. Three. Three hours that you've got in a one shot, you've not really got enough time to explore that element of it which it really hinges on.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

All games you could run in as a one shot kind of in a convention one shot. Of course you can't. But it's whether you're getting the best out of the game.

[Blythe]

Some games are better than others. Yeah. As in a one shot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

And to me it feels like one of those games that is best suited for long, languorous interactions with NPCs moving into different locations, having a bit of space to explore the location. Yes.

[Blythe]

That's true of a lot of games, isn't it? That you sometimes in a one shot only getting 2/3 of the game. Yeah. Get a schooner of a game, aren't you? A schooner. Schooner. Like 2/3 of a pint apparently is a schooner, isn't it? Getting a schooner of a game, aren't you? Right.

[Host/Interviewer]

Fleshing.

[Blythe]

See.

[Host/Interviewer]

So yeah, same price as a pint.

[Blythe]

I suppose that Hidden Isle was like that because there's, there's some, some rules in it that I like about. You've got like, what's it called now? You've, you've, you've got something like a virtue and you've got like a bad thing and you can lean into those to get extra cards and in a one shot it doesn't really matter. But when you read the rules there are consequences to doing that. So these things can become more long term problems for you. Yes, but course a one shot doesn't matter. You've got a virtue and a, let's call it a vice but a burden. That's it. You're virtue and a burden. But if you lean into a burden too much it can become a vice, which is worse. But that's more of a long term thing. In a one shot you don't really get that idea at all.

[Graham Buckley]

Yeah.

[Blythe]

You know, and it has like downtime rules. You go back to the island after a mission and you do downtime things because you don't do that in a one shot.

[Host/Interviewer]

Well, I, I tried doing some of the daytime activities in Blade Runner because it does use a really good pacer mechanic called shifts and I know that they do them in Dragon bit. Yeah. But they work a bit differently here and mechanics that you could easily port across into something like call the Cthulhu or any investigative game where you've got four shifts in a day and you've got to really. One of your resource management is how you use that time because if you work more than three shifts then you start to get stressed and you start to take on an emotional thing. But what it means as well is that it encourages the players to split up because if you're using those shifts you're not going to go mob handed to every single scene. You can split up and cover more ground and also you can have, you can use those shifts to set the pace of forensics. So you can say, yep, you can take that to the lab, but it's going to take two shifts, two shifts for it.

[Blythe]

When you're done, you'll find out.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yes.

[Blythe]

Yeah, that's good. I suppose that is, that is one of the things, isn't it in those kind of police procedural things, isn't it time. And I was talking to someone about, I was talking to Jeremy about this. He played later on, he really liked it and he said one of the things is the shifts when you decide to sleep something could happen in a shift.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yes, but.

[Blythe]

But because you have to sleep, you don't. You know, you don't. You're not there. So you just find out about it afterwards.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Blythe]

So it's like a set. Set pattern of things that will happen. And if you're not around on that shift, it will happen anywhere. Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

So as a games master, what you're doing is populating the shifts of when the bad guys are going to make their moves.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

So that's all predetermined. So as you say, if you're not available, that action is still going to take place. But you may not necessarily.

[Blythe]

I think you need to. I think you need to run. I need you to run it. I need to play it.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Blythe]

I mean, it's a player.

[Host/Interviewer]

I'm gonna run it. If I'm gonna run it, or I want to do it over three sessions.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

Obviously, with an investigation, you've got to reach a conclusion. And it feels a bit hurried reaching that conclusion.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

Because what you don't want as well is just always to be a big confrontation. And that's what Cthulhu lent itself to, doesn't it?

[Blythe]

Call it Cthulhu or it building up to the dynamite.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, it's building up to that moment. Whereas in Blade Runners, this is a bit more subtle, isn't it?

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

Something is revealed.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

It might not be as devastating. It just might be a conclusion of just this little narrative that you put together. But you need that space for it to build up a bit more, I think. Blade Runner. Blade Runner and Hidden Isle. Let's roll on the table again.

[Blythe]

Roll on the table.

[Host/Interviewer]

Okay. This time I've come up with a three and it's campaigns. So we've got some campaigns on the go that we've got scheduled.

[Blythe]

Ye.

[Host/Interviewer]

Some of those have resumed.

[Blythe]

They have.

[Host/Interviewer]

And some of those have continued. And we're on year seven, is it.

[Blythe]

Of Pirates in year 107, season four. Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

This is. This is our winter game.

[Blythe]

So we plan a Saturday, Saturday morning matinee. Saturday morning cinema. Not matinee. Saturday morning. Saturday morning. Sci Fi cinema. Isn't it? Saturday morning. But yeah, season four. So I said, would be the last one. I do wonder. I do wonder. Still quite a lot to do. But, yeah, kick started that in September. That started last week, didn't it?

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah. And I think in an earlier episode, I said, you know, we need a bit more jeopardy ejecting.

[Blythe]

So you've got a price on your head now. 10 million credits.

[Host/Interviewer]

The evil Didi car GD car. Terrible.

[Blythe]

GD car. Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

Which is a kind of corporation who've been on our. Well, we've been provoking them and tormenting them and causing problems for them under the radar.

[Blythe]

Yeah, they're kind of like judicial are a corporate power in the Trojan reach, aren't they? So they have a lot of fingering, a lot of pies and you as pirates have gone around causing problems but you've now overstepped, you've crossed a line. Now I think end of last season you crossed. Or can't put any spoilers obviously, but you cross the line to the point where I thought, well, now you've done that, they just want you captured or dead. Now that's. That's the end, you know, there's no going back from it really. No rowing back from where you are now. So I think putting a price on your head is totally reasonable thing that they would do.

[Host/Interviewer]

And how much is the price on that head?

[Blythe]

10 million credits on each of you, which I know you object to because you think. You think it should be different. You think you should have more on your head.

[Host/Interviewer]

Well, I think there's a false equivalence across characters because I just think that some of us are more of a risk to GDCO than others.

[Blythe]

Regular men. But they don't know that, do they? Maybe if you made that clear to them, they might up the price on your head. But it'd be interesting to see what happens because it is kind of drawing to its conclusion. But there's.

[Host/Interviewer]

I just think the offer is derisory as well.

[Blythe]

10 million credits.

[Host/Interviewer]

10 million credits. Because they're not alive. They're all like. Yeah, but I mean, you know, how much was their didy car on their fleet of a starship spend on pest control?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, you know, just keeping making sure.

[Host/Interviewer]

That there's no infestations.

[Blythe]

That's still a lot of money though, isn't it? 10 million.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah. I just think we need to rethink.

[Blythe]

Each on each there's four of you, so it's 40 million, isn't it? And then some of your associates are on the ship, it's a million on them. So you could end up coming out with 50 million if there's somewhat a bounty on that gets lucky.

[Host/Interviewer]

It took a bit of time just to do the recap, didn't it? It did a bit, yeah. We've got so many, let's call them passengers that we've got in law birth.

[Blythe]

Yeah, yeah.

[Graham Buckley]

Some might.

[Host/Interviewer]

Some might describe them as hostages, some.

[Blythe]

Might describe them as hostages, but they Might describe themselves as hostages. You describe these passengers? Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

Just passengers. Yeah. Giving them still a lot.

[Blythe]

Still a lot to do. I realized that as we were. The first half hour on Saturday, as you were talking, my brain was thinking, okay, there's a lot. There's a lot to do here. Brain's kind of ticking over thinking there's quite a lot to do, isn't there? You need to sort that out then you need to sort them out. Then you need to sort these four planets out who haven't joined the Empire yet. And then you've got the real issue of dealing with the Imperium in the Aslan. So when do we get. Might be five seasons this way.

[Host/Interviewer]

And we did spend about 20 minutes arguing whether we should change our ship.

[Blythe]

Yes, you did, didn't you? You want a bigger ship, one of the biggest ships, don't you? But they're all attached to. That reminded me of a TV show. It reminded me of like a TV show where the. The carrots have got a ship and it's some production meeting where it's go, let's give them a different ship. Yeah, but it's gonna be the same. Would it? It's like the season four of Blake seven when they got the Scorpio instead of Liberator. Come on.

[Host/Interviewer]

I've been outvoted.

[Blythe]

You have been up for now, but, you know.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, I just think we could. It should increase our firepower.

[Blythe]

Combine. Traveler is a strange old thing though, I think, because it's. It's true in any role playing game that you could have second level characters in D and D and the GM could throw a dragon against them and people would say, well, that's just stupid, isn't it? That's just stupid because the dragon is just gonna make mince meat of them. And there's a kind of equivalence in Traveler in that some of the spaceships in Traveler have you encountered some of the ships. Your little Harrier would be swatted like a fly. Yeah, some of these, like, think one of the pirates has a pocket warship with 15 fighters, 4, 4 missile bears, 20 lasers. You think you've no chance, You've no chance. But that equivalence kind of breaks down because the difference is in a fantasy game, those terrible monsters, terrible monsters like the dragon, they're not walking down the street, are they? No cared somewhere. Gotta go looking for them, haven't you? Yeah, but in Traveler, those ships are floating around and they're gonna come looking for us. They could come looking for you. And they're floating around, aren't they. So they're there in the. In the Trojan reach. Those. Those warships and battleships, they are floating around. So they're not. They're not hiding in a cave so you could encounter one. You encounter one, you've no chance.

[Graham Buckley]

So it's a strange.

[Blythe]

It's an odd thing, that power dynamic of.

[Host/Interviewer]

And I don't want to reconstitute the debate, particularly with you, because you've no skin the game, haven't you? But that's the reason why we and our fleet. We've got the pocket warships.

[Blythe]

Yeah, I've got some Chucky warships.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Blythe]

But that's Lasland mercenaries. You might be setting it, but you've got some good ships.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah. But we're having this idly little area which I must admit is decked out quite nicely.

[Blythe]

It's a nice ship. Yeah, but I like the rain.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The fixes and fittings won't matter if.

[Blythe]

We'Re blown out of the air anyway. Stop making your case through the podcast. No one's interested. All right. Decision has been made.

[Host/Interviewer]

The other campaign that we've restarted, it has been in fits and starts, and this is mainly due to scheduling. And that's the Borella's Connection, which is the Fall of Delta Green game that we've been playing. My intention was to finish the campaign within 12 months. We're on the second operation and we're only about halfway through it. And we've been playing it quite a bit. It's just as we were saying earlier, by investigative games, I'm finding that it is better if they've got a bit more space to breathe.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

As you know, classically, I'm a person who kind of wants to get the pace moving and get you moving through events and encounters. Well, I think it just doesn't fit in that well.

[Blythe]

Yeah. And I also think with that Borealis connection, it does feel like the real world. So it's. There's a lot of detail. So unlike some games, some games, you might say, okay, you go into old London town and Victorian London, whatever, and you go to a couple of places, fight. You can move it along. You know, it was a British museum in London. Yeah. The Victorian era, whatever. But in that. That we're in, like Saigon, aren't we? And it feels there's a lot of detail in there. So as a player, you're thinking, oh, wow, there's. There's all these things. There's all this stuff. Yeah. I'm trying to investigate this cult in Saigon, but there's all these options. Because it's done in quite a detailed, realistic way, isn't it?

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, A lot of moving parts in the city. Yeah.

[Blythe]

And. And I think that's what slows it down a lot because as a player, you play characters, you're kind of oming and arring about what we can do, who we should talk to. Maybe we should talk to them this time. We haven't talked to those people over there, but they are there because there's this detail and layers. There are a lot of layers to it, aren't there? Whereas a lot of games, even if they're set in the real world, supposed real world, they're often a simplified, distilled down version of it, aren't they? Yeah, you see what I mean? That.

[Interviewer]

And I think what I've come to.

[Host/Interviewer]

Appreciate is that those layers, normally I'd probably put them to one side. I think let's just focus on the points of action. But what I've realized in building those layers up is increased the sense of alienation that you feel because you're there on your own doing the secret mission.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

With all these different agencies that you can build up alliances with. But ultimately you feel very estranged from all of the people who are operating because they've all got different motives. And I find that interesting because you've had to pick your way through it to find your allies and who you trust.

[Blythe]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that does slow it down. It's not a bad thing that it slows it down, but it does slow it down, doesn't it? If we'd have gone to Saigon, someone would have said, right, well, there's a couple of people in Saigon that you could speak to and there's an old house on the hill that everyone's suspicious. All right, we've got to go into the old house and we've got to speak to these two people and find things out and then go to the house. Right, okay. That's what we do. But it's all right, though, at all.

[Host/Interviewer]

And you've encountered some other Delta Green agents.

[Blythe]

Again, it complicates it. It's quite complicated, isn't it?

[Host/Interviewer]

They've offered to switch nations.

[Graham Buckley]

Yes.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

And put you in a compromising position.

[Interviewer]

Of do we do this?

[Host/Interviewer]

Do we trust them? Oh, yeah, we've been playing.

[Blythe]

Yeah, it is. It's quite. It's quite a thing though, to write, isn't it? It's Ken Heights, isn't it?

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, Ken. I think it's a concept's by Ken Hype. I Think Gas Rider. Hannah has written the.

[Blythe]

Oh, there you go.

[Host/Interviewer]

Exactly.

[Blythe]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

We'll be paying it for four or five years.

[Blythe]

Hanrahan's got us hostage in two campaigns. What's going on? He's made us hostages. Tricks on pens. He's written send help.

[Dirk the Dice]

Ignore this. It's a rug covering a hole.

[Host/Interviewer]

Let's roll. Again, we've got a face to face. So we mentioned Alba and the Wizard Staff was a convention that we've attended.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

But we have played quite a bit of face to face this.

[Blythe]

Yeah, we have, haven't we?

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah. And that's kind of rejuvenated me, I think.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

Got me more excited about playing. Yeah, I think like it's like explained over the last couple of months I had a bit of gmitis, but I think playing face to face and meeting people really does revive it Indy, doesn't it?

[Blythe]

Yeah, it does. And, and it's great playing online because obviously you can get more gaming in and you can play with different people and you know, like pipes during accident, playing with Mike who's in Sydney, you know, you think, well, you never do that face to face. Could you. But so it's a great thing playing online, but yeah, playing face to face does. It's a different experience. Is it always better? Oh, face to face is better. It's different. That's kind of like. I don't mean to kind of. That point's gone. And all the online stuff, it's not really case, is it?

[Host/Interviewer]

I, I went to Birmingham to Glorantha Games, which is the convention set up by Pookie and Darren Happens and I, I had a good day though. It was, it was very restorative because it. There was somebody who was on the first game. I wasn't running it, I was one of the players. It was completely new to the game. So not only new to go on the. One of the ambitions of the convention is to introduce people, to go on to for the first time, so existing role players, but also to try and attract some people to role playing for the first time. And do you realize when you meet somebody for the first time, what an uphill task it is? Just explaining a role play game. Role play game. So I think to begin with you started trying to explain Glanta and I thought.

[Blythe]

And I thought, whoa, whoa, what a good start.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, let's just take it back. Let's just explain how these dice work.

[Blythe]

Yeah, nice work. And what the whole basic concept of role play game is. Yeah, we had to go on the.

[Host/Interviewer]

This guy said, so, so will I have a script? Somebody got a script prepared. And we said, well, no, no, there's not a script. You've got a character sheet and this is how the dice work. And just grasping that you realize how difficult it is to start. Were you, you're intrigued by what's happening, but you're going to try it for the very first time.

[Blythe]

Wow.

[Host/Interviewer]

It was really startling to think, right. There's a lot of. There's a lot to cover in this very short time.

[Blythe]

You take it for granted. How hard can it be to get your head around this? Yeah, come on, cut that difficult. But you don't realize people who come at it and don't know anything about it, don't know nothing about it, might just go, oh, what on earth is this? I think back in the day you were a bit more aware of that because you met more people who said what the hell is this?

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Blythe]

But nowadays, because there's more people who kind of know what it is, they might never have played it, but they have an idea of it D and D being like shorthand for it. You kind of assume, well, it wouldn't be that difficult for people to get their heads around it. But it is. It's just as difficult as it was back in the 80s. If you've ever encountered it and you don't know anything about it, then you know. Yeah. If you've listened to critical role or you maybe have played a PlayStation game where you're a character that you, you might have, you're gonna have a better understanding of it. But if you've not done those things, then yeah, you would come at it and think, well, I don't know what this is. Why did this is this work?

[Host/Interviewer]

So you know, from that experience I learned that it's not good to start with how Waha's rope established a food chain in.

[Blythe]

It's never a good idea to start with that even with experienced role players.

[Host/Interviewer]

Let's face about starting is this is how a D4 works.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

Other face to face game we played, we played plane skate. Played 5e.

[Blythe]

We played 5e. Emult come, didn't we?

[Host/Interviewer]

We should say that it's 2014. None of this newfangled stuff.

[Blythe]

Oh no, it wasn't in the new. New D and D. Whatever. The new D and D. What's the new D and D called? See, even I'm. It's an old mal. I don't even know what DND.

[Host/Interviewer]

So it's 5 5E14, not 23 is it 20.

[Blythe]

Is that how it's referred to?

[Host/Interviewer]

I don't know. I think. I think so. Somebody asked me if it was 14 or 23 and 14. 14, yeah. There's none of this newfangled stuff. We're strictly old grognards.

[Blythe]

We're playing five E's quite good now. Just because five E's become that. It's an old game now. We can play that now, can we? Yeah. That's okay then.

[Host/Interviewer]

It's the first time I played it for a long time. It must be about three or four years.

[Blythe]

Yeah, yeah. We played a lot of it, didn't we, at one point. But where I've not played it. I played in your game at mark and it's the first time I played it for a while.

[Host/Interviewer]

Does this say first that we did it in Planescape. So it's your first game? I've run quite bad Planescape. Well, that's your first. So what did you make of that?

[Blythe]

I quite enjoyed Planescape because I felt that it rationalized the daftness of D and D. Yeah. So I think we've talked about this before, where the problems with D and D is particular 5th edition. It's full of like monsters and, oh, the genies run the local pub and the elves have got a bakery, you know, oh, there's a demogorgon down the road who's got a. Sells shoes. And you just say, well, what is this stupid. This is just bizarre. But the Planescape idea was good. Cause it is a slightly surreal world, isn't it? It's like this sigil, this city and all these doors to different planes of existence. And it sounds weird to say it all makes more sense because obviously it makes less sense because it's all completely over the top fantasy. But it makes more sense for D and D to be set there than it does to try and set it in some pseudo medieval village.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yes.

[Blythe]

Like say, genie runs the pub. Stupid. So I thought it worked very well. I thought. I felt it was a good setting for D and D. It kind of married the game and the setting together quite well. So, like that when I think a modron came into the tavern, didn't it, to have a drink. But it was all right because it's an extra planar existence where there might be a modron who's visiting from another plane because there's all these doors to other. So that's fine. That's okay, isn't it? So, yeah, I thought it worked very well and I liked it that we ended up going to hell, didn't we? And met devils and stuff like that. And it's always kind of good with D and D because even back in there you would read the Monster Mountain, you'd see all the devils and demons and read about Abyssal and all these planes of hell and you thought, good to go there. Yeah, it's kind of fun. Sounds fun that it's like full of. Full of weird monsters and again, just weird stuff that works perfectly for D and D because it's perfectly acceptable. Because you're in hell, aren't you? Find a talking skull on a post, it's fine. Because it's in hell. You're in hell, you don't have to worry about. What the hell is that doing here? Yeah, it's fine. So I thought it was a good. It's almost like perfect setting for D D, you know?

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah. Players love love letters. You've run before.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

Where you've got to deal with unknowingly. You've got to deliver a letter to a succubus.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

Who's trapped. Yeah. Okay. Romeo and Juliet between a devil and a demon.

[Blythe]

That's right. Yeah.

[Graham Buckley]

Yeah.

[Blythe]

But quite good fun and I did enjoy it.

[Host/Interviewer]

Good fun. We did engage that thing with Diesel, didn'? It? Quickly all came back, I think of consulting the rulebook to see under what circumstances things were applicable.

[Blythe]

Yeah, yeah. It becomes always. It just always descends as a weirdly tactical game, didn't it? That's the thing with it. It all becomes like very tactical.

[Host/Interviewer]

It wants to be. Wants to be a role playing game, but ultimately always ends up with, well, I'm sorry, you're not within 10 yards.

[Blythe]

Yeah, within 10 yards. And it isn't a Tuesday that you haven't eaten a ham. Sand cast that spell. Oh, okay. All right then.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Blythe]

But then again, if he moves within five feet of you, you can. Okay.

[Host/Interviewer]

But the other remarkable thing is that you played the sorcerer.

[Blythe]

I did. Sorcerer. Of course, yeah. And I cast the wild magic table. I managed to. I wasn't even casting fireball, but the wild magic table, when I fumbled, gave me a fireball cast on myself.

[Host/Interviewer]

A fireball cast on you.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

Which you managed to survive.

[Blythe]

Just survived by making a serving, taking half damage. Otherwise I would have been toast. Yeah, yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

But we reflected, didn't we, that it didn't seem like fun that that happened.

[Blythe]

No, no.

[Host/Interviewer]

But yeah. You know, this month you'll have played more DCC as Elliot.

[Blythe]

Of course. Of course I've played in Andrew McDonald's game of DCC that was the Sunday after Mark on I played DCC. So first to face again.

[Host/Interviewer]

So when that kind of mishap happens in dcc, everybody has a big old.

[Blythe]

Hoot about yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's hard. It's odd that, isn't it? It's odd. It's odd to compare the two things, isn't it? Because that happened in not this session, but the last session of dcc. I played in Andrew's game. My very first roll for my wizard, the very first spell roll was a one. So it was a fight. And I said, leave this to me, stand aside. And I rolled a one. And it was a misfire of charmed person. And I ended up convincing one of the other players, one of the other player characters was charmed into thinking that he was in love with one of the monsters. So the whole fight went pear shit because he was then in love with one of the monsters, started defending the monster kind of thing.

[Host/Interviewer]

I suppose that's more prosaic result than having a fireball.

[Blythe]

It is, it is. But there are. But maybe that's the thing though, maybe that's what it is in dcc, is it that the results of the fumbles and misfires of spells and things like that are more colorful, perhaps, than just casting a fireball on yourself? Yeah, you know, maybe. I don't know. I mean, there's a lot of misfires in dcc, so maybe there are similar things that happen, but I don't know. It is odd. I think maybe it's the spirit of the game because I think with D and D, going back to what we were saying before, sometimes it just feels quite like a tactical war game type feel. So when you cast misfire a spell, it's just. Oh, it's just annoyingly inconvenient. Whereas in DCC there's always a lot going on. There's a critical here, there's a fumble there, there's a mighty deed D dice being thrown to smack the baddie in the face with the shield or doing, you know what I mean? There's more, there's more going on in it than in D and D. D sometimes just feels like a slog of hit points, bag of hit points and it just slog them down. Whereas when I played DCC the following week, there were fights and there's armor class and there's deities. They're similar. It's the same thing, isn't it, really? But for some reason more seems to happen. Yeah. And the fights just seem more colorful and more engaging. I Think.

[Host/Interviewer]

I do think as well that a setting such as Plane's Game, which is very creative, I think Monty Cook was one of the writers of the Elysian Bois, and you can see the essence of that. He experienced in Newman area a new maner of inventiveness and doing things a bit differently and being able to let your imagination go wild. I think DCC would fit quite well with it.

[Blythe]

Absolutely, yeah. Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

And I bought the Planescape 5th Edition slip case, which is beautiful, by the way. Beautifully done, but also a bit rubbish. A bit. A bit rubbish in that. It's beautifully done, but the writing isn't great in it. And it's very thin. You know, it. It's mainly it. The production quality is really good. The quality of the paper quality of the entire thing is really well done. But this campaign with it, for example, I thought, I'll just run it over a big book campaign. But it's really poor. It's really poor. I'll tell you how poor it is. It starts with Amnesiac players.

[Blythe]

Come on. Oh, no.

[Host/Interviewer]

Come on.

[Graham Buckley]

Come on.

[Blythe]

Mind you could. You could be right, actually, that. Yeah, I mean, you got. It's a good point that. Because that was when I played DCC the other week with Andrew, the scenario he ran. I think it. I don't know which one. It's one of the modules. It's Blades Against Death. I think it is. I think it is not bread, obviously, but plainly. But the setup. The setup of that was very, very good. So it was like you had to go into a temple and steal his sword, right? But the sword had to be blessed by a ritual in the temple. So you couldn't. There's a massive ritual going on. Hundreds of acolytes, and there was this sword somewhere in the temple. You walk, you see the ceremony taking place, but the sword isn't there yet. So you think, where's the sword? Sword. Gotta find the sword. But equally, you've gotta let the ritual take place to bless the sword before you steal it. So too many acolytes to fight. So how do you get the blessed sword out of here after the ritual? And it created a really good kind of debate amongst us. Someone said, oh, let's just go and kill all the acolytes. No, no, you can't kill the high priestess because she's got a blessed sword that we've got. It's gotta be blessed. The sword's gotta be blessed before you stay up it. So the. So I know what you mean. Maybe sometimes it's that Setup of the scenario. Because I was saying to Andrew afterwards, on paper, maybe it doesn't seem like it's such a big. You got to go into temple and steal sword. So what? But. But setup was such that everyone started being quite inventive about how we're going to do this. How do we get out of here alive with the sword, Avoid all the cultists, but equally let them do what they need to do so they can then steal it? Do we. You know, we tried to find the sword with a view of switching it, thinking we could just switch it. That didn't work. So maybe. Yeah, maybe that's it. Maybe sometimes it's.

[Host/Interviewer]

Do you have the juices in this scenario?

[Blythe]

Yeah, maybe it is. Yeah, maybe that is exactly it. Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

Do you do my old. Okay, the last one is a critical.

[Blythe]

Oh, and this is critical on a D6.

[Host/Interviewer]

Have you done that with some modifications.

[Blythe]

Oh, because you're all. The one before says that would be a six.

[Host/Interviewer]

I roll the sex with a modification.

[Blythe]

Absolutely.

[Host/Interviewer]

Subtract it's because there's. So the pigeon isn't present. So I adjust it. Okay.

[Blythe]

It's a good job that GM screens there isn't forming the psychological barrier between me and you. So you can pull that kind of stump. Critical on a Critical. Yeah, critical question. Go on.

[Host/Interviewer]

Can you have too much of a good thing?

[Blythe]

My wife thinks she can. Yeah. Because she's rolled her eyes a bit this month going, are you playing a game again? What's going on here?

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, Ms. Mrs. The dice. Just assumes I'm playing.

[Blythe]

It's quite surprise when you're not. Yeah, I've had. I've had a bit of that, you know, again tonight. No, no. Oh, really?

[Host/Interviewer]

Can you have too much for the thing, though? Because we managed to schedule this in and this is probably the most we're playing in one month. Do you think?

[Blythe]

Yeah, probably. Yeah. It's a lot of gaming. What I've been very aware of this month is I played a lot of games, but I've played a lot of games with people I like and get on with. And that makes a difference. That makes a difference to the experience.

[Host/Interviewer]

Very few of them have been with me.

[Blythe]

Yes, it's funny you should mention. So that's not true. I played in your runequest game at Albert. I played in your fifth edition game and I played in your. You say that. Yeah, yeah, you say that. That's not true at all. But I do think sometimes it's. That is the essence of it, isn't it? The idea that you're just playing with people who are good players and you're.

[Host/Interviewer]

Familiar with as well.

[Blythe]

Familiar with Eda Alba. I played with some people I didn't know, but they were quite engaged with it and they were okay and good players. And it's all. When I say good players at all, that sound like some kind of Olympic sport. Doesn't it say, oh, well, I was playing good players. They were excellent. They were players at the top of their game. Premiership players, none of your amateurs. I don't mean it like that. What I mean is they were nice people who engaged with the game and had fun. That's what I meant. I don't mean it in a snooty kind of. Oh, yes. Well, as long as they're good players, then you can have fun. But if they're people who, I don't know, walked off the street, that's gonna be rubbish, isn't it?

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, that's not.

[Blythe]

I don't mean it like that. All I mean is people. I think, oh, you're all right. You're all quite nice. We're having fun.

[Host/Interviewer]

It's okay.

[Blythe]

You know, no one's kind of being a smart ass and no one's being difficult. No one seems bored. It's all moving. You're all taking this in the spirit with, you know, like when I ran Mutiny 0 Albert, there were some people I knew, there's some people I didn't know, but everyone got on board with it in the right spirit, and that's why it was enjoyable. You know, I think, like we've said before, what you can't eliminate from role playing games, it is a social experience, isn't it?

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Blythe]

And it's supposed to be fun and it's supposed to be social experience. And that counts for a lot. I think if that's missing, then you can have too much of a good thing because maybe it's not such a good thing.

[Host/Interviewer]

There are elements of it that can become a bit of a chore, isn't there? So preparing.

[Blythe]

Yeah, preparing.

[Host/Interviewer]

I mean, this month also created about.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

14.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

Pregens. Yeah. And that, to me is a choreo. Get any fun from doing that kind of thing. I. Where I get the fun is that social engagement.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

But if I'm so knackered from actually preparing the game or the game's not straight in my head.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

That can diminish the.

[Blythe]

Well. Yeah. And I think I'll go back to like this super, super September that we've just been through. I would say the best Thing about it is it's been a good mix of running games, but playing games.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Blythe]

So I've run some games and they've been good and I've enjoyed that, but I've also played games.

[Host/Interviewer]

I. I think that's the risk of over scheduling. You got to make sure that you got a balance between when you're running and what you're playing.

[Blythe]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You want burnout, do you not?

[Host/Interviewer]

Burn out.

[Blythe]

Burnout.

[Host/Interviewer]

Burnout.

[Blythe]

VM burnout. Know that's buying, isn't it?

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Blythe]

Different thing now.

[Host/Interviewer]

There's. There's an article in the Guardian today. Is that on the 30th of September, the end of this super September, is there? And it says, hate your job but can't afford to leave. And it gives you 20 tips.

[Blythe]

Does it? 20 tips? Yeah. Go on.

[Host/Interviewer]

Well, I'm not going to give you.

[Blythe]

You're not giving it up? No, I don't have my job. You. I don't have my job job. I can't afford to leave. What about don't hate your job, but. But still can't afford to leave?

[Host/Interviewer]

Well, I think it. It is the thing with it, though, it's one of those. It almost could be AI generated. If we sat down here, we'd be able to come up with 20 things.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

And they're not quite as infuriating as some Guardian things. You know, read the Guardian articles. Everything you like is.

[Blythe]

Everything you like is rubbish.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah. Look at you.

[Blythe]

So it always. You're ranked, isn't it? Ranked things you like, ranked in the wrong order. Thing you love the Most at number 40. Yeah. Because you know nothing. You know nothing. This is. Yeah. The thing you like least. Ranked one off. The thing you've never heard of. Ranked one. There you go.

[Host/Interviewer]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But a lot of the 20 suggestions are really about reframing what you're doing and rewriting it and adjusting it so that you do it. The things that you like doing. And I think that goes for this, doesn't it? So can you have too much of a good thing? Only if you let it take over. You've got to be in control of it and you've got to be able to determine the bits that you like about it to make sure you're doing more of that.

[Blythe]

Yeah.

[Host/Interviewer]

And less of the stuff that you don't like.

[Blythe]

Yeah, that's true. Yeah. You should. You should aim for things you enjoy.

[Host/Interviewer]

They call it job crafting.

[Blythe]

Job crafting.

[Host/Interviewer]

Or as I like to crafting a jobby. Same, different day Right.

[Blythe]

Oh, dear. On that bombshell, October 8th, October 8. Off we go.

[Host/Interviewer]

See you. Bye bye.

[Blythe]

Hello, Grognards. This is Mike Mason of Mason and Fricker's Eldritch Stories, and I'm just here to tell you about our new season of Eldritch Stories coming at you. Come and find [e-mail] keep it Eldridge. Yeah, you can turn it off now. Yeah, I can.

[Dirk the Dice]

There isn't another bit? Well, if you're listening to this, when it drops, you'll realize that it's the end of October. Where did that go? I must apologize too, because in the discussion with Blithey, there are a couple of S bombs. I think we get away with it. Hope it doesn't damage your sensitive ears. Thanks to Graham for appearing on the podcast. And here's to another 20 years of Aryan Games. There's a link to their store on the show. Notes. The reason I invited Graham in was to talk about Savage Gladiators, his supplement that he developed for running gladiatorial combats using Savage Worlds. We talked about that, but it ended up on the cutting room floor, as did me and Blithey talking about our experiences in September of running our grand tournament of Gladiators. So I'm going to bundle that up and put it in a Dirk's Dossier. Now, if you're a Patreon supporter of the podcast, you'll know that Dirk's Dossier is an occasional podcast that I do exclusively for Patreon supporters. However, what I'm going to do as a special treat, and to give you an introduction of what Dirk's Dossier is all about, is I'm going to put it and the main feed in the next few days, soon after this one drops, as a bit of a sampler so you can see what's in it. It is usually off cuts and me just mumbling and rumbling and rambling on about a certain topic. So when it comes, it'll be me talking about how to set up gladiatorial games and a bit of a campaign around it. Thank you to everyone who has listened to this podcast and those who continue to support it by sharing it with people that you of people who you don't like, who you think might like what we talk about. We've had a couple of reviews since the last one, so thank you for that. Also, a big thanks to Patreon supporters who chuck a few coins in the beret each month to keep us going. Keeps the show on the road, pays all the bills for discord and hosting and other services and incentivizes us to continue. Now, as I'm recording this, I'm in the throes of Preparing for a 24 hour game of the Dracula dossier. I did say that we were trapped in a Gareth Rider Hanrahan universe. Yes, I'm going to be running over 24 hour period Ken height and Gareth's classic Knights Black Agents campaign, the Dracula Dossier as part of Grog Meat Ish. So for new patrons, I'm going to reach into the dossier and pick some special items to thank them for their support. So joining at the fancy poof level is James Fallows and Dee Re. Thank you. Joining so far so good is Andrew Walter. If I roll on the dice, he gets a spirit board, a lacquered wooden board engraved with the letters of English and Hebrew alphabets with the image of two grotesque faces. Enjoy. And also so far so good is Andrew Coombs.

[Host/Interviewer]

I just roll on here.

[Dirk the Dice]

Well, he gets John Dee's journal, a fine leather codex with beautifully tooled binding bearing the cotton family crest in gold leaf. Have fun reading that. Upgrading the membership to a hide back.

[Host/Interviewer]

Chair like, you know, like one of.

[Dirk the Dice]

Those Parker Knowles that you might find in an old folks home is Paul Fricker.

[Host/Interviewer]

So what does he get?

[Dirk the Dice]

I'll roll on the table and he gets a vampire hunting kit. It's a Gladstone bag filled with vampire hunting paraphernalia. I'm sure it'll come in. And joining us at the contour rug level, you know, one of those little rugs that you might find around your toilet, for example, is lapsed gamer and he gets as his special gift, let's roll on here, he gets a portrait of Dracula.

[Host/Interviewer]

There you go.

[Dirk the Dice]

A talking point for any bathroom. Right. Well, thank you for that and thank you for your patience. If you've been waiting for this one since September, you'll appreciate it has been quite busy. But don't worry, there's a lot of podcast content to come your way over the next few weeks or so. Until then, adios amigos.

[Host/Interviewer]

Her penultimate sighs caught softly on the kindling wind. Her saintly eyes filling with tears, lifting.

[Blythe]

With truth and then a golden flash like the onset of heaven leaving. Her screams breaking my heart and in the grip of fire I knew the death mobile.