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- [00:00]
Sam
Oh, I've stood on a d4.
- [00:11]
Blythe
Dirt dossier.
- [00:18]
Sam
Hello, my name is Dirt the Dice and this is my dossier. An extra page that's fallen out of the Grugnad files and picked up off the floor of the den. For your ears only. I tried to keep the main episodes of the Grognard files within 90 minutes, which means that there are often chunks of stuff that gets cut out. These little dossiers allow the bits to be spliced together, like those DVD extras that we used to get excited about at the end of the 90s before we realize that they weren't worth bothering about. But don't let that put you off. This little bit extra is occasionally available for patrons. It's a bit more rough and ready, knocked together out of off cuts and framed by bits of me talking to myself, editorialising about things that are concerning me. At the moment I'm putting this on the main feed as a seasonal gift if you want it or not. You know like that YouTube album that Apple gave us all. Now I'm a big Springsteen fan, I know I don't like to bang on about it and at the time of recording I've just finished the book Deliver Me From Nowhere by journalist and musician Warren Zanes. It was the basis of the recent biopic that's been in cinemas with Jeremy Allen White playing the boss as he retreats into himself to produce Nebraska, his most introspective album. The demo recordings he made in his rental room ended up being used rather than being re recorded in the studio with the band. Jeremy Strong plays John Landu, his manager producer who said of Nebraska, this is the sound of Bruce singing to himself for himself. Springsteen paraphrases Scorsese in Zane's book as he says, we do this thing in the hope that audiences will connect and share our obsessions. These dossier podcasts. This is me talking to myself and hoping that you share the same gaming obsessions. Am I comparing Dirch Dossier to Nebraska, arguably Springsteen's most influential work? Yes, that's what I'm doing. I'm comparing this bobbins to Nebraska. What's in this one? Well, there's Blithey talking about a new game that he played at Owlbear and the Wizard Staff convention. If you listen to the episode you'll know that we spoke at some length about the Hidden Isle RPG that he played there. We'll come back to that in the next episode as I've had chance to play it now. But here he talks a bit and about into the dungeon revived a variant of into the Odd. The main body of this contained some more gladiator chat. We took some inspiration from Graham Botley's Savage Worlds Gladiator supplement. Graham talked to me about how the project was developed and worked through some of the mechanical innovations that he included. There's a discussion between me and Blythey after a couple of games of the Gladiator campaign, followed by a brief reflection from me about the roses and thorns of the exercise, what went well and the bits that didn't quite work out. The last section has more from the interview with Magna Sita, which was really well received. Talking about his book Outside the Box, his fan History of RPGs in Sweden. In this part he talks about his writing career in role playing. I'll be back at the end with some words of encouragement, but until then, Ramblers. Let's get rambling. Blythe Talking Bobbins.
- [04:21]
Blythe
I played another new game. It's called. It's not quite new. It's a variation of into the Odd. And I played Dada Alba with Neil Old Scouser and it was called into the Dungeon Revived. Into the Dungeon Revived. And it was basically. It was into the Odd. It's based on into the Odd, but it has more of a kind of fantasy feel to a few extra rules about weapons and magic and things like that and that. That was very. I really enjoyed it actually. It was kind of interesting. I've never. I don't think I've ever played and into the Odd game. I've always run them.
- [05:01]
Sam
Yeah.
- [05:03]
Blythe
But it worked very well because it did that thing, the famous into the old mechanic of you don't roll to hit, you just roll the damage. Yes, that kind of thing. And you can get better dice by having advantages and maybe it's impaired. Get a worse dice, things like that. And that mechanic actually worked very, very well and we got through it. Not sure Neil was happy because we all survived. All right. On record, I've played in a Neil Benson game where everybody survived. He tried his dumbest to kill some of us, but we all managed to somewhat pull through.
- [05:37]
Sam
It's gonna damage your brass.
- [05:39]
Blythe
Don't play that again, will it? He'll not run that again.
- [05:42]
Magnus Sita
But it was like.
- [05:43]
Blythe
It was a lot of fun though. It was. It was good. It was good. Kind of old school kind of fantasy adventure book that into the album mechanic. It made things move along a bit quicker. Yeah. You know, it moved. It was more pacing. We got. We got more done. It was interesting to think we got more done in that adventure than we would have done if you'd run old school Essentials or D and D or something like that. Because you don't have that problem of keep missing, hit, miss, miss, miss, miss, hit.
- [06:12]
Sam
Yeah.
- [06:12]
Blythe
You don't get that the fights last two or three rounds and they're quite tense because you think that that monster is going to hit me this round. You can't do something about it. He's going to do that D10 damage to somebody.
- [06:24]
Sam
Yes.
- [06:25]
Blythe
So it was quite exciting, quite simple. It's a simple concept. It's quite exciting because I've run. I've run into the ODD games and I've sometimes wondered, is this working for the plates? This is mechanic work. But having now experienced it as a player, I think it really does. Because as a player it's quite exciting.
- [06:43]
Sam
Yeah.
- [06:43]
Blythe
Knowing that at any moment it's not going to miss, it's going to hit me. I just have to hope it rolls a one or a two and my arm attacks it. But it will hit me this round. So I have to do something to either take it down or impair it in some way. Otherwise I'm going to be dead pretty quick. And that added a lot of excitement to it.
- [07:04]
Sam
I find it fascinating. I find it fascinating that into the Odd is Chris's attempt to kind of strip it back through its core. And everybody wants to add bells and.
- [07:16]
Blythe
Whistles, add a few bits on. Yeah, it's true that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think they didn't add. Didn't add that much on. But it added enough on. It just. It just gave. It had like character classes. So it was the same system, but it gave each character class a few abilities. And as a wizard, I played the wizard, obviously the wizard had few. Had some spells which worked that it was that kind of thing that it added. It added a bit more flavor, I suppose, to each character. So, you know, you could just go, well, you're the ranger, so you can do some tracking and you're good with the. But whatever, you know. Yeah. And those. Those that kind of played into it. So it was still quite simple, but as I say, not entirely new game, but I suppose a new twist on something. On something. Yeah.
- [08:07]
Sam
Graham Buckley on Gladiators. I think I was talking to you before we came on air about our current project. We've got our community started Glad Gladiatorial combat and an arena using your Savage Worlds adaptation.
- [08:26]
Graham Buckley
The thing is, we started with Maelstrom. The number of role playing books we were publishing started Spread out. I've always been one of those people where I tend to be the GM for our group and I have been for 43 years. Whatever, whatever it is, I will get these ideas. I'll be watching tv, reading a book and I'll go, that's what I want to run, that's what I want to run. And my brain will say, right, what can we run it in? And I'll look on my shelves. And we moved a few months ago. Not all of my game books are out, but I've got shelf after shelf after shelf of different rule systems and I look around and go, yeah, but I don't like that bit, that one. Oh, that was not going to work. And invariably I'll say, right, I'll write it. You know, I thought about running a vampire, werewolf, ghost type game after watching Being Human on tv, looked at vampire and werewolf and so on. Could not understand the rules for the life of me. So I thought, right, I'll write one. So I took the old face rip system for Marvel superheroes, took the lower end of it because it was sort of open source, and said, right, supernatural game. And so I've written lots of games that I want to play. So the whole Savage Worlds line of books and we've got several in that now came about because back in 94 I read a novel by Stephen Hunt, who's a very well known sort of steampunk author, and it was called for the Crown and the Dragon and it was a pseudo Napoleonic where you've got things called dragon browns. So these are the scum of the scum and they're recruited into the army because they're criminals, they're going to be hung otherwise and so on. And they're used almost as disposables, infantry, but you've got sort of army battle mages and you've got these strange inquisitors who, who are blind and their eyes are sealed over with skin and they can sort of interrogate people and then you've got Steam tanks and so on. I thought what a fantastic game setting that would be. And then never did anything with it from 94. And then a few years ago I was searching through some boxes and I came across a copy of this novel and I read it again and thought what a fantastic idea for a game setting, blah, blah. But of course, the Internet being what it is, I soon found that Steve, Stephen had a web page and a contact Us button. So I contacted him, said any chance of being able to do an RPG of it? And he Said, yeah, brilliant. So I thought, right, I need a system. And I think what was key was also being a huge fan of the Sharp books by Bernard Cornwell. When you read Sharp, he charges into battle and three Frenchmen jump in the way and he cuts them down and then he charges on and two more Frenchmen, he cuts those down and then he gets to the evil lieutenant who he's going to fight and then he has a long duel that takes 12 pages of text. And so I thought what I need is that I need a game with minion rules, but also has good rules for firearms, leaders, that sort of thing. And I did a bit of research and it kept coming back to Savage Worlds, because Savage Worlds has one of the best implementations of leader type characters in any rpg. It's obviously because it's built as a, as a flexible rpg, it can be used in any sort of setting. So you've already got rules for black powder and magic. And integrating all these, I thought, brilliant, let's go for that. So I contacted Pinnacle and said, you know, how do I become a licensed contributor? And so on and so forth. And then I wrote it, published it, and I thought, this is a fantastic system. And then that just expanded out. So we, we did, I did a book called Invasion, which is the old XCOM computer game, but Savage Worlds, and that is brilliant as a one off game. Some of your players can't make it, grab your characters, fight some aliens, you know, put it to bed for a few weeks. We also, and I'm just writing this at the moment, turned it into a war game and Savage Worlds worked brilliantly as a war game. Absolutely fantastic. So over here I've got some painted Normans, Saxons, Assyrians, Egyptian Pharaoh, Chariot, etc. Because I'm just writing historical, modern and sci fi setting codex to expand that out. So we did all of these. And then because you've got an RPG with a war game system using the same rules, I then wrote a campaign, a 20 part campaign where two of the parts are big tabletop battles. So you run your campaign, you then have your big battle, you then go back to running your campaign. And the Savage Gladiators came about because I was watching things like Spartacus and I thought this would be a brilliant sessional rpg. So like Invasion, you can, you can play it almost as a combat simulator rather than a full rpg. Of course, you know, there's lots of ways people can play it. You could play it as loads of character building, then a bit of a battle in the arena and then loads of character stuff and a bit in the arena or you can do bit in the arena, bit in the arena, bit in the arena, bit of tidied up in between sessions. Arena, arena, arena. You can play it in different ways. And I thought, you know, if we're going to do a gladiator's game, let's do it in Savage Worlds. Because, say I did it in advanced fighting fantasy, which is obviously a system I know well and I can publish in. You can have a gladiator with your skill and stamina and a weapon skill Gladiator one. Now, I've got some miniatures here. You know, sword and shield is not actually that different from that gladiator with a sword and shield, other than in the way they fight. Now, yeah, I could create different talents, but they would have a different talent. There's not much to differentiate them. Whereas, of course, all the experience of writing for Savage Worlds means that you can have a gladiator who has things like level headed. So this is an intelligence based gladiator. So keep getting extra cards, which means they get more jokers, which means they can, you know, get that bonus and get more bennies and then what they can actually do, rather than fight the opponent, keep taunting them. Maybe they fight as part of a pair. So they keep taunting and distracting and making them vulnerable and then the muscle head whacks them. And so you can build a gladiator based around intelligence or speed or agility or brute strength or just, you know, bloody toughness. So they don't hit that hard. But it's impossible to put them down because they just keep going and going and going. And because you've got that option of building them in different ways, but you're still growing in that power level. So you can still sort of go towards the, if you like, the season finale where they win in the arena in Rome and they're given their freedom and they ride off into the sunset with a big bang of money. Great. But you can also do it very much as this sort of sessional game, as you say, as a, as a tournament. Each player can have their own stable of gladiators because there are healing and recovery rules. You know, Bobby as the gladiator might get badly injured and it's going to take him two months to recover. So actually you're going to have to bring in one of the younger ones and hope he survives. If it does, fantastic. Because then you've got another gladiator coming through.
- [16:35]
Blythe
Yeah.
- [16:35]
Sam
And you've also got some rules for base building the ludus haven't you?
- [16:40]
Magnus Sita
So.
- [16:40]
Graham Buckley
Absolutely.
- [16:41]
Blythe
Yeah.
- [16:42]
Sam
No, we're going to have some great fun with it. We've thrown in some monsters into ours as well.
- [16:47]
Graham Buckley
Yeah. I mean, so, you know, even at the start of Gladiator, various ways you can do this. You can do full on fantasy with a gladiator element, you can do full on history, you can do fancy ish and so on. I mean, again, your game, personally I prefer to keep things like magic to very subtle magic. So rather than flight, because obviously a gladiator that could fly poses a real problem because they get in the arena and they just fly away. Well, that doesn't entertain anyone. So I suspect the moment they realize that gladiator can fly, that gladiator get some poison soup or whatever, anything that would ruin that entertainment I think they would get. So having subtle magic where you slightly increase your speed or your strength, your toughness or whatever, things like that. Brilliant.
- [17:37]
Blythe
Yeah.
- [17:37]
Sam
And also you've got the crowd who's a bit of a character in the game as well. So they can influence things. Yeah.
- [17:44]
Graham Buckley
Yes. Yeah. That mechanic was worked on with Pinnacle Entertainment themselves. We, we had quite a lot back and forth between three or four of their people and that mechanic went through about five or six or seven different iterations that took four to five months to work out. Where one thing where the, where you drew extra cards for the crowd and then this happened and then that happened and you got. And we went backwards and forwards because what we wanted was we wanted you to have almost a moment momentum type mechanic. So when you're winning, you keep winning, but that can get derailed when it throws it off. Then the opponent can start gathering momentum and it's all about making best use of that momentum when you've got it.
- [18:31]
Blythe
Yeah.
- [18:33]
Sam
Well, we're looking forward to playing it, so thanks for that. GM Screen Gladiators. Okay, let's roll on here. Oh, and this is a six. And this is a. This is a campaign. This is a problem of our own making. We've talked about things that we're doing that have been pre written and this is a problem, I'll say, of our own making. My own making.
- [18:58]
Blythe
Of your own making. It is a problem for me, but it's of your making, which is a problem for other people, but of your making, not of our own making.
- [19:06]
Sam
So this is the gladiator that has started this month. So people have not been keeping the. We've got involved. There's like 20 odd people involved in this. So we've got five GMs and about 20 odd players who are once a week. Monday night is fight night.
- [19:29]
Blythe
Yeah.
- [19:29]
Sam
And we're having an arena and they have various characters. So in September they've been creating those characters and we've had a couple of conflicts already and I suppose the other spice in this is that the Games masters have char within the world.
- [19:47]
Blythe
Yeah.
- [19:48]
Sam
And they've got. They have their meetings to determine what the next form of it for the.
- [19:54]
Blythe
People of the Empire. It's a form of entertainment, isn't it?
- [19:57]
Sam
Yeah.
- [19:58]
Blythe
It's a fight but it's really a challenge. Yeah. It's about entertainment more than anything.
- [20:02]
Sam
Yeah. I think some of the players have kind of not grasped that yet. I'm saying they've kind of seen it as an outright fight the death kill.
- [20:12]
Blythe
Everything in the arena. Oh yeah. What was the challenge again? Don't forgot about that. Yeah.
- [20:20]
Sam
So each fight has a particular victory conditions that have been created by the GMs in this council and they're having to deal with things as well in the back, aren't they?
- [20:31]
Magnus Sita
Because.
- [20:31]
Graham Buckley
Yeah.
- [20:32]
Blythe
There's a few financial issues.
- [20:34]
Sam
Yeah.
- [20:34]
Blythe
Trying to afford good monsters for the. You know.
- [20:36]
Sam
Yeah.
- [20:37]
Blythe
Couldn't afford a good monster for the last fight so we had to. To stand in with something else.
- [20:42]
Sam
Yeah. Compromise with a bison. With a bison, yeah.
- [20:45]
Blythe
Two headed bison. But even so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's a league table, isn't there? A league table. The players all get points for the numbers. It's savage worlds we're using, isn't it?
- [20:56]
Sam
Yeah.
- [20:56]
Blythe
So they get points for the number of raises that they get during the game. The idea being that if you get raises it's just more impressive and the crowd likes it.
- [21:04]
Sam
So.
- [21:04]
Blythe
And then you get points for fulfilling the victory conditions. So. Yeah, yeah.
- [21:10]
Sam
And there's a bit of competitive banter going on on the Discord channel and even if you're not a fighter in the game, you can bet on the result.
- [21:18]
Blythe
Yeah. Not real money. Getting the revenue. The gambling commissioner, whoever. Not. Not real money.
- [21:25]
Sam
Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna.
- [21:27]
Blythe
It's not real. It's just RPG money. Silver pieces.
- [21:31]
Sam
Yeah. I'm not the next Fred Dore.
- [21:33]
Graham Buckley
No.
- [21:34]
Blythe
Glad Brooks.
- [21:36]
Sam
Yeah.
- [21:36]
Blythe
Fred. Don.
- [21:37]
Sam
I'm going to make loads of money then laundering it through building property in Salford. Is that the.
- [21:47]
Blythe
I did that out illegal. Your lawyers. Yes, that's my lord.
- [21:52]
Magnus Sita
Yes.
- [21:53]
Blythe
Yeah.
- [21:54]
Sam
So have you found it so far? Are you into it? Yeah.
- [21:58]
Blythe
You've enjoyed it? I've enjoyed it and I think last. Last. I ran one of them last night and it was a bit of a classroom thing, the first run. Two fights, haven't we? The first fight, I think that they found that relatively easy, but last night was pretty tough. I think everyone was on two or three wounds by the end of it, which in Savage Worlds is bad, you know. So it was quite a close run thing. There was a point where I thought. And I think the players thought, someone's gonna buy a dust here.
- [22:28]
Sam
This is it.
- [22:28]
Blythe
You know, someone's gonna die. There were points where that was very close.
- [22:33]
Sam
We're going to have player versus player probably later on. It's the fighting against NPCs, but there is victory conditions, as we said. So only one person can win.
- [22:45]
Blythe
Yeah. One person can fulfill the victory condition and get extra points. Yeah, yeah. And the rest of the players get points for raises.
- [22:52]
Sam
Yeah.
- [22:53]
Blythe
You know, which was. It's kind of interesting last night because one player got about. Got 17 raises.
- [22:59]
Sam
Yeah, absolutely.
- [22:59]
Blythe
Tons of raises, you know, and one played G. Yes. Yeah. But of course, fulfilling the rich condition, even if you don't get the raises, will get you extra points. Yeah.
- [23:09]
Sam
So they're not getting them on damage, it's just on tasks.
- [23:14]
Blythe
It's just on tasks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [23:17]
Sam
So, well, see how it goes. I think my. My vision is, if it is, we'll do multiple seasons of it and. But it's containing it, isn't it? Because on paper, it seemed like a modest proposition.
- [23:35]
Magnus Sita
Did it?
- [23:35]
Sam
To say, actually an hour every fortnight for each gm.
- [23:39]
Blythe
Yeah.
- [23:39]
Sam
And then an hour a month where you do the council meetings.
- [23:43]
Blythe
Yeah.
- [23:44]
Sam
Determining what we're going to do and having a bit of backroom intrigue and politics. But it's not working out quite like that, is it?
- [23:52]
Magnus Sita
Because.
- [23:55]
Sam
You have to do stuff as well, haven't you, to kind of support it.
- [23:58]
Magnus Sita
Yeah.
- [23:58]
Blythe
And I suppose Savage Worlds is. Well, we like Savage Worlds. Savage Worlds is good, but it is like a skirmish game. So you've got to set up your tokens and do the stats and do the edges and do the hindrances and do all the monsters and things and get all that in place to run it, you know, it's not like a vague theater of the mind story game, is it? It's kind of quite a detailed combat game, really.
- [24:22]
Sam
Yeah.
- [24:23]
Blythe
Yeah. It's like a fight, really. Yeah. Like I said, literally a skirmish, I suppose. Yeah.
- [24:28]
Sam
And I'm learning a lot as well from. I've played Savage Worlds a lot. And one campaigns we're playing at the moment is Rippers, isn't It in the kind of world of the scientific romances of the. Of the Victorian pew. But I think running it, you realize how tactical you can actually be in fights.
- [24:48]
Blythe
Yeah. You know, you can see how definitely there isn't it, that you can see all these. You know, it has lots of role playing elements and it has lots of nice little mini games in it that are quite good. So it's quite a versatile game. But when you get into combat you realize that. Yeah, it's definitely a. That's where its starting point was. You can see that in it, can't you? Yes, you know. Yeah, it's got quite a detailed combat.
- [25:14]
Sam
Let's see how that transpires. Got a few more weeks of that. That's good. Roses and thorns. Now that the season has come to an end and the fights are completed, I feel able to reflect on the gladiator experience. Putting it down as a partial success. A success because it was really good fun meeting with the players once a fortnight and there was a sense of anticipation ahead of each session. As the Lannister of Miludus, I appreciated the creativities that the players brought to the fight. For instance, a character had a hindrance that they couldn't swim and when the arena was flooded, he didn't see it as a problem. He killed one of the sharks, dragged it towards him with his trident on a chain and he sat on it like a kayak to go across to the middle of the island. Although these were predominantly combat encounters, I enjoyed the emergence of character during the sessions. Ruthless cunning, compassionate cooperation and relentless crowd pleasing was on display and shaped by the players and the personalities of their characters, thanks to the creativity of some of the members of the different luduses. Ludi. Luduses. Anyway, it was possible to read after action play reports from the others. For example, in the Jamon's ludus, the Lannister, who was a disgraced general, he had a poetic gladiator in training. Mardrak the poet provided a play report in verse. Well done, Jamon. You won the race. But these chariots were a complete disgrace, a mess, a shame and utter shambles. What's that? You want to hear examples? Straps broke, wheels shook, our steering broken. It's time the fearless truth was spoken. Bad luck. No, the answer's clear. A saboteur was present here. Ah yes, the chariot race, which seemed like a good idea at the time. We did it as a token based movement around the circuit. My experience was quite exciting and was really the start of an ongoing rivalry between Tazun played by Doc Cowie, and Vexius, played by Steve from all Anthraxis gaming Vexis. There were battles between them at minus two on an unstable platform, as I kept being reminded, and audacious manoeuvres around the corners. The turns were really important, but it came down to token placement rather than any strategy. Have you ever been blamed as a gm? You know, mind tricks, played David Blaine style, numbers shouted out, it's minus two. No plus two. He's distracted and shaken. No he isn't. He's just vulnerable.
- [28:19]
Graham Buckley
Is he?
- [28:20]
Sam
I'm sure he was shaken during the chariot racing session and not for the last time. I felt though my GM brain had been put through the rinser. One of the aspects that I loved about the campaign was devising the challenges for the gladiators. Last year I revived the game world we created back in 1984 for the PBM that I ran. Raklash is the name of the continent where I set some of the adventures last year for my gaming group and a couple of conventions. The gladiatorial arena was set in the capital city of the Empire of the Ruby Sword. I did tell you that I read a lot of Morkok when I was younger, didn't I? The dome of the Bronze Pakator was a new arena created by an ambitious noble Karatheon, who I played as the Lannister of Maeludus. The challenges were based on scenarios that I run last year. Corinthian wanted to demonstrate the influence of the Empire on recent events, so he recreated the battle of the Narsi. For example, their sacred tree was destroyed in the arena. A practical prop tree was created for the gladiators to fel after a battle with recently released prisoners in costumes to represent the Narsi barbarians. Part of the pleasure of coming up with the vignettes was the theatre of creating the adventures with substitutions and actors because the arena couldn't afford to populate the games with the real thing. A memorable challenge was the recreation of a story from Bakar about a princeling who was so stupid that he got lost in the forest. He encountered a wise dragon who asked him riddles. The princeling gave such odd answers that the dragon ate him out of curiosity and became stupid itself. In its rage, it wandered through the forest, destroying everything in its wake. The Empire soldiers released the princeling from the belly of the dragon in the arena, one of the apprentices from the Ludus was greased up with lard and pushed into a crocodile that had been made to look up like a dragon. A crazy hour ensued as the gladiators attempted to get the greased up boy regurgitated before he suffocated in the crocodile. I say it was a partial success as I didn't really have the time needed to coordinate and support some of the activities around the fights. Back in the day, the Gladiators Gazette the PBM organized by Jan MacManus aka Beelzebub, gave gladiators a chance to bet on the outcome of each other's fights. I tried to run Olmers grabs betting book, but in reality it didn't really get off the ground. It needed a bit more coordination to encourage the participants to engage more. The council meetings didn't really happen either. A scheduling conflict meant that we only actually met once. Instead we organised the sessions in a text chat. The political machinations are the bit that I found interesting about the TV series Spartacus and the original pbm. In the end it was all about the fights and the leaderboard. And there's an article in the latest edition of Senate, the magazine about board games. If you haven't seen it then try to get hold of it as it's a great magazine, it's got some good quality reviews in it and it looks brilliant. But the article talks about the role of competition play fighting. There are times when the teeth are shown and it starts to bite and player on player combat in RPGs feels really uncomfortable. Although most of the challenges put to the gladiators against NPC opponents they were trying to win, the final battle was more or less a straight fight. It just didn't feel right. All the appropriate safety tools and consent was in place, but it was uncomfortable when a player struck another player with a sword so hard that they were bleeding out. This was pitched as the first season. Will there be another? Possibly, but I'd do it differently. I would lean into some of the subsystems within Savage Worlds. Take the chariot race for instance. That would have worked better using the abstracted but more narrative chase rules because it would have got rid of the discussion around token placement and recreated the sensations of a chase with mishaps and successes without being overly concerned with the minutiae of actions. Also in the next version it will need more role playing element and reflect the stuff that I enjoyed about the Spartacus TV series. No, you're wrong. Not more nudity. There's quite enough of that. No, it was the backroom deals and the social climbing that needed to be recreated. The fights could be resolved using the quick encounter rules in the same way that the series does in a way. But the set pieces in slow mo blood splattered sequences that are over reasonably quickly. The emphasis should be on developing the status of the characters rather than gaming the edges to maximize actions and potential raises a partial success. Nevertheless an achievement to have an online game with so many participants, another project fulfilled, another obsession realized or not quite Magna Sita on RPG writing well, it's.
- [34:41]
Magnus Sita
A thing that it's been very interesting to see the that's also one of the reasons why I was contacted to write this book. Since after writing for role playing games since 1989, I mentioned that and I've been writing for most I've been written writing for all versions of Dragon, all publishers of Dragonbane and I've written for Cubicle seven. I've written for Telsorian games, I've written for Game Designers Workshop short pieces, not very big things except for Mutant Chronicles, the first version of the role playing game that I wrote for Target Games. And I also wrote the Bitter Reach for Free League and I've written some other stuff. But when I started in 1982, the hobby of role playing games appealed to me because it was a creationist. Not a creationist, but a creator's hobby. You created your own adventures, you created your own monsters, you wrote stuff. And instead of just writing something and sending it to someone and hoping someone will publish to read it, because I've always been a writer, I could write something and I could go to my friends and we would play it and they would say this is cool and this is cool. And then I started writing, writing for conventions and assemble a team of gay masters who went to conventions playing Cyberpunk 2020. And that was hugely popular in Sweden. And as I grew writing for conventions because you have to. When you take the step out from writing for yourself into writing for someone else, you have to have a lot more structure in your games. So then I started sending out manuscripts, suggestions to Tansorian games, for example, and they accepted it. And then Target Games, who published the Dragonbane at the time, and Mutant and Cult and stuff like that. So a very hectic period 89 to 94. I worked on Dragon Bane Occult and I wrote Newton Chronicles and Learn to Know these People. And then the role playing games sort of veined in Sweden for a while and they started picking up again in 2000. And by coincidence I happened to work with one of the illustrators that has been hugely influential in role playing games in Sweden, which is a guy called Peter Berriting. Peter Berting after this. He's grown into a prolific comic creator, working with Dark Horse comics and a lot of things. But I started a web company together with him and we got the contact with some people who said, we want to talk about Peter writing for us. Can we come up and just have a talk? And I'm like, well, that's cool. I work for Target Games, so I can also maybe help you. So I started to know the right minds, people who created Sreutvang. And that was sort of like my return into starting to getting to know people. I wrote little for them. And some people I had met through the conventions started doing the Mutant, not the Mutant Year zero, but the iteration before that, which is called the Heirs of the Apocalypse, which was the Iron Ring, which is now a part of Free League. So I knew them and then I started getting to know the people at Helmgast who are doing Eon, which is the major Swedish open game, which hasn't been translated, but they also publish, for example, Troubleshooters, which is a fabulous game. And I sort of stayed in the community writing stuff here and writing stuff there and learning to know people. And that sort of tied everything together for me. And I realized that we were much more closely knit community of creators who wanted the same thing. Basically during the early 2000s, we still had this mentality of, well, I have this game is my game and your game sucks. But that's almost gone in Sweden now. And people started to learn to know each other and started to cooperate and well, we sort of share experiences. And then also I started being involved in one of the the Swedish Internet forums, which is called RPG Nu, basically. And today I run that. And it's not a huge community, but people have been there since 2000 or something. So 25 years together as. Friends on the Internet, arguing and shouting and screaming and sometimes agreeing with each other has also sort of like helped us to get to know each other within the community. I've been writing games since 1984. I kind of joked the first thing I wrote for the first iteration of Dragonbane was a short random table about what kind of fish you could pull up of a creek. And then I wrote some stats for snakes. That was my start. And after that I sort of just hammered away at the typewriter writing short adventures for my friends before I sort of started sending out things. And that's also why I describe myself as much as a fan, as a creator. And I always try to make sure that I remember that when I meet other role playing Gamers. My strongest, strongest skill is structure, being able to write so that people could read what I write. And that was not a very strong representation of that among the authors at the time. So I would send it to Target Games and I would like, okay, this is great. That's printed, printed, printed, printed. Today there are so many talented role playing game writers, Free League, Helmgast, other companies, but also fans who create things they put up for free on the Internet, that I think that it will be a lot more difficult for me today to sort of break through and become an established role playing writer because the it is so much easier to get your stuff published. You can publish it yourself and you can reach out to people and talk to them and everything. But also the amount of talent creating enormously cool stuff out there today is so much larger than it was when I was young and started breaking into this. For example, four or five years ago, something came out of Sweden that was like, is this possible? Is this legal? Are you allowed to do this? And that was Murk Borg. And suddenly something exploded onto the scene that was like, wow, this is real creativity, what I'm doing. While writing sort of quaint, cute adventures for Dragonbane, which are well playable, but they're nothing to write home about when it comes to creativity or breaking new ground and stuff like that. But, well, fairly popular. And then suddenly something like Merc Borg comes around, comes along, and it's insane on so many levels.
- [42:40]
Sam
What it does, it really taps into that DIY culture, doesn't it, of role playing games. It's kind of built on that. And that's what's so remarkable about it.
- [42:51]
Magnus Sita
Really it is. And it's also a testament of something that Free League has also moved towards, is a sort of testament of letting your creation go. They have a very. Merc Borg has a very generous license, and so they say, well, you can do whatever, just don't be a Nazi. But apart from that, you can do that. And I think that's quite reasonable, actually. So there are so much stuff for Merc Borg out there and Cyborg of course, as well. And I think that Free League sort of looked at that and they also, they did have a license for Forbidden Lands or the Year Zero license, but that was not much used. But then they did the Dragonbane license, which is much more permissive and we've seen now it exploding. The amount of material that's put out for Dragonbane, not just in Sweden, but also internationally, has exploded. There's so much stuff being put out of so high Quality that I'm totally blown away by it. And the fans are as much as part of the game creation as the writers. That's Johan Noor, who was the designer for Mark Bore. He says that he. I think he says he hates the fans, but he means that he hates the, the separation of game creator and fan because he's not comfortable with there being fans who sort of like, well, Johan and Pele, they did this thing and oh, they are so good. They are so good. He's like, we did this thing and now you go and do your thing and send it to us or publish it yourself. Don't be a fan. Be a part of the community and be a part of the creation of this huge gaming experience together. We don't need to sort of separate. We don't need to have different levels of stardom within the role playing game community because we are a niche hobby and a fan today can be the next Merc Bore. Basically, if the Old Geese is like us, if we encourage the young people to do that, they will create much better stuff than we ever did. But we need to be open to encouraging, encouraging them to do that and not, not be gatekeepers. We can do cool stuff. Let's, let's try this. Oh, this looks merc. Boring. I don't really understand what's going on here, but let me try it and see what happens.
- [45:38]
Sam
Last year we went to Stockholm and I was really surprised.
- [45:42]
Graham Buckley
Oh, it was a surprise.
- [45:43]
Sam
But there's a real developed sense of a geek culture over there. You know the shops there. Incredible. Yeah.
- [45:53]
Magnus Sita
It's also a question of Swedish role playing gamers growing out of the science fiction fandom and the Tolkien fandom. So a lot of the early creators knew each other through the Tolkien fandom and the science fiction fandom. And that's also two fandoms that are really close to the sort of like close to our hearts. And I've been a part of the science fiction fandom. I've read more science fiction during, in my life than I have read fantasy actually. So which is why I started writing for cyberpunk genre and I wrote Unicronicles and stuff like that. But still I come back to fantasy because it's fantasy and fantasy is cool. But the SF fandom sort of like we could tag along with those people at Tolkien fandom as well. We could sort of like grow from there. They would know each other and we would sort of like come in through the role playing game Backdoor. And it was amazing seeing people sort of like just Nerding out, dressing up as characters and having names like the people in the Tolkien world. And even though we didn't want to do that, we saw someone who really engaged in their geeky interests in the geeky hobby. And that encouraged us to, oh, we can do this, but we can engage in our version of the geeky hobby. And also from the SF fandom grew a bookshop which is called the science fiction bookstore SF Bukandan, which has always been an important part of getting science fiction literature in Sweden. And since some of the people writing the most influential role playing game products worked or were engaged in that company, they would also carry role playing games. So it has always been possible to get role playing games through one or two shops. Even if it was a downturn during the end of the 90s, you could always get role playing games from the science fiction bookstore. And they were knowledgeable because they were the people who made or had made the games. So the geek culture, we don't exist. Gamers don't exist in a bubble. In Sweden, at least it's not as if we are the gamers, but we have the SF fandom people, we have the talking. I don't know what a Tolkien fandom is, they do now, but they are probably as vibrant as ever. But we have the essay fandom, we have the talking fandom, we have the fancy literature, we have the anime people, we have the LARPers of course are a big part of this as well. I'm not a larper, I'm a tabletop role playing gamer, so it's easy for me to forget about them. But they carried the role playing game hobby for a long while in Sweden because they were engaged and that's a maker culture. They put together fantastic arrangements. But they also do chain mail and they knit things or I spoke to someone the other week who had woven her own silk shawl and a leather work as well. A little work, yeah. And I also met someone who I just realized that he's a weaponsmith, he's an armorer, so he's a weaponsmith basically. So he makes armor and he had one on display at the free league arrangement the other week where he had made a helmet for a duck that people could wear and stuff like that. The maker culture of role playing games I think is what makes this hobby such a powerful hobby. Because it's not a question of this is this person who has written something, then the rest of us just take part of that and wow, this was a good written, well written adventure. And Stuff like that. It's like I did the convention arrangement for Free League two years ago at one of our larger conventions and sent out Adventure and I met up with the game masters and there was this game master who came up and she said that, well, this is the first time I'm a game mastering at a convention. I'm really nervous, but I've made this. And she had built a diorama of the adventure place, the site of the adventure. So she just put it on the table and had minis and people would walk around in an almost like, are you insane? Have you done this? How long did this take? Four or five hours maybe, something like that. I'm like, wow, this is so cool. And that mentality is what really brings energy to me as well now that people are using. Well, role playing games can be seen as a very text heavy hobby, but it's also a very tactile hobby and people are doing a lot of tactile things with minis or terrain dice towers, stuff that enhances the play experience, not just endless role master tables for everything. I love role master or at least I loved it and we played it for years and years. But today it's like maybe not that many tables. We can do stuff other ways instead, basically ramble, ramble, ramble.
- [51:29]
Blythe
Well.
- [51:32]
Sam
That was great. Thank you very much.
- [51:34]
Magnus Sita
Thank you.
- [51:35]
Sam
There isn't another bit. Thanks to Graham and Magnus for the interviews and thanks to the patrons who make all of this possible by covering our expenses and encouraging us to continue. If you like this dossier and want to hear more of them, you can listen to the previous ones over at Patreon. As a Patreon, we organize Grog Meet in Manchester and two online conventions every year and you'll be the first to find out about them. There's a book club every month, a film watch along most weeks, and we also run online one shots with me and Blythey, usually six a year. And as a patron you can be part of that. There's a lively but not overbearing discord that you can be part of. And here of the other projects like the Grogvine and another Grogzine possibly, and lots of other stuff like the Gladiator event. It's a chance to be part of an RPG community. And if you've been away from role playing for a while and fancy coming back, you'll find it helpful, supportive to help you get you started. At the time of recording, December 2025, it's still time for you to promote or review the Grognard Files for a chance to win Magnus's book Outside the Box How Sweden Conquered the world of RPGs. All you need to do is let me know where you've shared or written about the Grognard Files and I will put you into the hat to draw from a chance to win a copy of the book. Okay, as I say, I'm recording this in December, so this is a bit of a end of year treat for you. There'll be another Grognard Files coming out this month, a proper episode. But if you're listening to this that comes out, it's around Christmas time, so I hope you have a great celebration or however you celebrate the end of the year. I hope you have a good time. Sometimes this time of the year can be difficult for people, and if that applies to you, I do hope that you find some peace. So until next time, adios amigos. Sam.