Five Items that Made Chaosium (with Rick Meints)

Summary

The GROGNARD Files

Episode: Five Items that Made Chaosium (with Rick Meints)
Date: January 1, 2026
Host: Dirk the Dice
Guest: Rick Meints (President of Chaosium)

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Overview

This special episode celebrates Chaosium’s 50th anniversary with a deep dive into five pivotal items from the publisher’s storied history. Host Dirk the Dice interviews Rick Meints, Chaosium’s president and head of the “Department of Nostalgia,” challenging him to select just five products that best represent Chaosium’s creativity and contributions to tabletop RPGs. The episode blends gaming history, collector insights, and warm, anecdotal discussion, perfect for both long-time fans and those interested in the legacy of one of gaming’s most influential companies.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Scene: Chaosium at 50

• Dirk contextualizes the conversation from Oslo, reflecting on curation—drawing a parallel between the Munch Museum’s preservation of an artist’s legacy and the challenge of preserving RPG history.
  (03:43)
• Rick shares Chaosium’s approach to celebrating their 50th, which officially began on October 31, 2025—the date of Chaosium's foundation in 1975.
• The unique start: Greg Stafford’s infamous misspelling of “Franis” on the incorporation paperwork—proof that “chaos” has always been a part of Chaosium’s DNA.
  (05:51)

2. The Scale of Chaosium’s Output

• Since 1975, Chaosium has produced over 750 core publications, not counting licensed products and community content, such as the Miskatonic Repository and Johnstown Compendium.
  (08:48-10:42)
• Rick explains his ongoing "All Manner of Chaos" cataloguing project—aiming to document every Chaosium publication and printing variation, down to differences in ink and barcodes.
• The community of collectors and “collaborative catalogers” helps keep the record accurate:

  “Some very, shall we say, competitive collectors or should we say collaborative collectors. They'll say, hey Rick, I know about something that's not on your list... I'm happy to get it added.” (12:38)

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The Five Artifacts That Made Chaosium (with Timestamps)

1. All the World’s Monsters (1977)

• The first RPG Monster Manual ever, predating TSR’s by months.
• Collaboration between Steve Perrin, Jeff Pimper, and the early RPG community via APAs (amateur press associations).
• Noteworthy for broadening Chaosium beyond its wargaming roots—Chaosium’s first RPG product was, in fact, a D&D supplement.
• Quirky, crowdsourced monsters; notable collectors’ item with at least five different printings.

  “The very first monster manual to come out in the entire World in 1977 was All the World's Monsters… Chaosium’s first role playing product was a D&D expansion, basically Monster Manual.” (15:46-17:27)

2. The Pendragon Campaign (1985 onwards)

• Essential supplement that unlocked Pendragon’s unique multi-generational play and “winter phase.”
• Recognized by Greg Stafford as his greatest work. Started small but has grown into epic multi-volume sets (with more to come in the 6th edition).
• Notable for its handcrafted, “cut and paste” production before the computer era.

  “It was the Pendragon campaign that brought that all to life and made it just beyond just what was a one page handout in the ruleset.” (26:16-28:22)

3. Thieves' World Box Set (1981)

• Ground-breaking for its cross-system support—AD&D, Runequest, Tunnels & Trolls, Chivalry & Sorcery, and more—years before “universal” became an RPG buzzword.
• Reflected Greg Stafford’s commitment to industry collaboration, helping found GAMA and building bridges between designers.
• The product’s backstory had industry drama: Chaosium’s exclusive RPG rights to Moorcock’s Elric led to the legendary “Deities & Demigods” copyright saga with TSR.

  “Greg believed in the industry. He believed in working with a lot of people… the Complete Sanctuary adventure pack has AD&D, Chivalry and Sorcery, Dragon Quest, D&D, Fantasy Trip, RuneQuest, Traveller and Tunnels and Trolls rules all in the same box.” (32:34-36:11)

4. Masks of Nyarlathotep (First Edition, 1984)

• The definitive Call of Cthulhu global campaign, pushing the system from one-shot adventures to epic, world-spanning storytelling.
• Celebrated for its use of physical props and innovative handouts, now central to “Cthulhu” play culture.
• Written by Hollywood screenwriter Larry DiTillio during a writers’ strike—a cross-pollination of pop culture and RPGs.

  “Masks of Nyarlathotep, especially for Call of Cthulhu, it was the big original campaign that really made people, instead of one shots, think much bigger campaigns.” (40:39-42:23)

5. Mythos Collectible Card Game (1996)

• Chaosium’s biggest single commercial success—riding the CCG wave, but ultimately flattening as the market crashed.
• Brings up the “dark years” of Chaosium: after Mythos, a mass layoff, leadership changes, and survival on a shoestring until the early 2010s.
• Rick calls it the game that “changed the trajectory of the company more than almost every other product.”

  “Collectible card games really changed Chaosium's focus for a while... and it actually slowed down the development a number of our game lines in the 90s just because we're just making money. It was a license to print money, so to speak, for a short amount of time.” (50:32-54:58)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the difficulty of choosing just five items:

  “It's like picking amongst your children. It's like, how do you say, who's your favorite kid?... I did actually talk with some of the other people in the company saying if you were going to pick five, just name one. And I got different answers for different reasons and all of them were right.” (13:35)

• On the hobby’s early days:
  Distribution of early products was mostly through word of mouth and mail order; collating games with friends in cramped apartments—with free beer only after collation for quality control! (21:34)

• On collaborative publishing and industry friendships:

  “You play guitar, you play bass, I play drums. We all got to get together and play together.” (33:20)

• On Masks of Nyarlathotep’s impact:

  “It really helped cement the use of props in Call of Cthulhu games. Like you were saying, the matchbook cover or a business card or a telegram, you know, Masks has that in spades.” (42:47)

• On the “dark years” and survival:

  “Within a year, Greg was gone, Pendragon was gone. All Runequest publications had stopped... we're very lucky to be here today through all those dark years. But it was a really cool game and it's a big part of our history.” (53:55)

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Bonus: Chaosium’s Early Creativity & Ephemera

• Chaosium’s first “products” were Greg Stafford’s handmade wood carvings—preceding even the games themselves.
• Discussion about the importance of documenting RPG history: Rick is creating an “All Manner of Chaos” retrospective, inspired partly by the Games Workshop "Diceman" coffee table book.
  (48:41-49:54)

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The Legacy and the Future

• Today, Chaosium thrives after near-bankruptcy multiple times—always rescued by new creativity and community engagement.
• Rick previews ongoing 50th-anniversary happenings:
  • New Call of Cthulhu slipcases with special covers,
  • A reissue of White Bear, Red Moon (the first game),
  • The “Harmast Saga” for RuneQuest,
  • Four Chaosium conventions worldwide.

  “We're really spending a lot of time working with game masters at conventions of all sizes to get people playing our games, because we know that once they've played them, there's a decent chance that a lot of those people are going to fall in love with them. Kind of like I did back in the 70s.” (58:10)

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Related Discussion: Running and Remembering RPGs, and the Dilemmas of GM-ing

(Post-interview topical chat among Dirk, Blindy, and Mike Mason)

• Reflections on recent convention play, with anecdotes about running games, using Tarot cards in “forged in the dark” story systems, and the evolving challenges of GM-ing games with many NPCs.
• Entertaining musings about terminology: should we now call NPCs “Games Master Characters” (GMCs)? Is “NPC” a pejorative?

  “Are the non-players bothered by being called NPCs? They don’t exist!” (75:08)

• Tips for running games with cast-of-thousands campaigns—distinguishing NPCs using quirks, visual cues, assigning to players.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Segment / Highlight | |-----------|--------------------------------------------------| | 03:43 | Start of interview; Dirk introduces Rick | | 08:48 | Chaosium’s product output; 750+ products | | 13:35 | Rick’s methodology in picking the Five | | 15:46 | Item #1: All the World’s Monsters | | 26:16 | Item #2: Pendragon Campaign | | 32:34 | Item #3: Thieves’ World Box Set | | 40:39 | Item #4: Masks of Nyarlathotep | | 50:32 | Item #5: Mythos Card Game | | 56:07 | Company’s near-collapses and rebounds | | 58:10 | 50th Anniversary plans and the future |

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Closing Thoughts

This episode is a loving tribute to Chaosium’s half-century of creative risk-taking, innovation, and collaboration. The five items chosen by Rick Meints chart not just product history, but the high drama, the personal stories, and the near-tragedies that make up Chaosium’s journey—offering listeners both a history lesson and a celebration of community. Whether you’re a devoted fan or discovering Chaosium’s myths for the first time, this episode is a treasury of hobby history.

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Further Listening

• Dirk teases more from the Rick Meints interview and a Q&A session for future Patreon “Dirk’s Dossier” episodes.
• Upcoming “Groggies” episode—Grognard Files’ annual RPG awards.

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Summary by GROGNARD Files Summarizer—keep it bobbins!

Transcript

[Mike Mason]

I mean, we weren't listening to him, but I think he did say press the big green button just to record. I think that last 10 minutes is the best thing we've ever recorded and nobody else will ever hear it.

[Rick Meinz]

No.

[Mike Mason]

There you go.

[Blindy]

Have you seen me dice back.

[Mike Mason]

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 Oslo in Norway. I'm here on a family holiday and if I look to my left, I can see our suitcases are packed and ready to go back home after a wonderful few days touring the city. If I look to my right, I can see out of the window of our apartment and I can see the Munch Museum, a museum dedicated to the works at Edvard Munch, who bequeathed his entire collection of paintings, photographs and other artifacts to the city. And they're now proudly on display at a purpose built museum dedicated to his life's work. It's a wonderful experience, visiting and of course seeing his probably most famous image, the Scream. And throughout his life, Edvard Munch was very conscious of curating his work. The frieze of life was a sequence of paintings that he put together to represent life and death. What if you had to create a museum of role playing games? What would that look like? And how would you make sure that the creators, the people who've contributed to the history of the games, are fairly represented to demonstrate their contribution to the history of the art form? That was the challenge. I said to Rick Meinz, the president of Chaosem and the head of the nostalgia department. What were the five artifacts from Chaosium's 50 year history that represent the creativity and the contribution made by the company? It's quite a challenge and you can hear it here on this podcast. The interview was part of Grog Meat Ish, our November online convention that we have as a placeholder to commemorate where we used to have the face to face Grog meet in Manchester. That's now moved to January. So when I get back, I really need to start preparing for that. Me and Blythey got together in Manchester in a podcast studio, believe it or not, that was kindly provided by the Central library. We were there to record an interview that will appear next time. But whilst we were there, we had our reflections on Grub Meat. I'll be back at the end, just to say goodbye, but until then, ramblers, let's get rambling.

[Mike Mason]

Open Box.

[Dirk the Dice]

My name is Dirk the Dice and this is the Grognard Files podcast where we talk bobbins about tabletop RPGs from back in the and today I'm coming live from my den here in the heart of the northwest of England. I'm at Grogmeat Ish. I'm surrounded by the grog squad in their virtual homes, listening intently. On my right I've got the great library of RPGs. And right in front of me is an more impressive library because I've got the Department of Nostalgia from Michigan, usa, the Chaosium's president, Rick Meinz. Hi, Rick.

[Rick Meinz]

Hello. Great to be back on the show again. It's hard to believe how many years it's been since the last time.

[Dirk the Dice]

I've got my left here. I've got the ridiculous homemade shrine to the actor Caroline Monroe. Would you like to give it a virtual tap across the pond?

[Blindy]

There you go.

[Dirk the Dice]

Let's have a look here.

[Blindy]

Let's see if she's appeared as.

[Dirk the Dice]

Ah, yes, it's Mandy Gregory in I Don't Want to Be Born Now. It doesn't, it doesn't turn up very much that one for good reason. It's rubbish. It's Rosemary's Baby meets the Exorcist. And I think it's turned up because it's 50 years since it was made.

[Blindy]

Made.

[Dirk the Dice]

We're not celebrating the same way as Jaws and other great events happened 50 years ago because this year is 50 years since Chaosim started. So how's the celebrations been going, Rick?

[Rick Meinz]

Technically speaking, we started early because just like, I mean, how many people when they turn, name any birthday? Like, let's just say 40. We've all probably had our 40th birthday. In this group, you don't start celebrating when you're 39. You celebrate when you're 40 and maybe afterwards. And so technically, our celebrations started for our 50th year on October 31st, which is kind of a cool date. October 31st, 1975. So we're just starting our 50th anniversary. As far as the nostalgia department is concerned, we just started early because why not? How many 50th anniversaries do you have, after all?

[Dirk the Dice]

So just remind us what happened 50 years ago and where this all began, this great story.

[Rick Meinz]

Well, it began in the San Francisco Bay Area. You know, Greg and his wife Cam were living in a tiny two bedroom apartment known as the House of Chaos out near the Oakland Coliseum. And so when Greg went down to the Alameda county registrar's office on October 31, he filed a fictitious business statement for three different companies, only one of which is still around today. But the one that counts the most is the Stafford's Chaos as it was originally known. And so he filed the paperwork and that's when we became an official corporation. It's even funny because somebody pointed out that Greg misspelled his name on the application because he usually go by Greg, but his first given name is Francis and it just says Franis on the certificate. That's just, you know, that's chaos for you. As quirky as it comes. But yeah, born out of a house of chaos near the Oakland Coliseum. So that's why we're called the Chaos.

[Dirk the Dice]

So at that time you've been a significant collector of Chaosium products. I think Your nickname was Mr. Suitcase, wasn't it when you went to conventions?

[Rick Meinz]

Mr. Suitcase is a name I got back in the 90s. It was actually by. It was on the Internet bulletin boards back when bulletin boards were the way of communicating between different fans. And long story short, Mr. Suitcase is a Magic the Gathering term where somebody has all the Magic the Gathering cards and they have them all on display and then they can beat anybody in any open tournament. And it. It's not exactly a positive term, but we decided to embrace it and make it a positive term because one of the really cool things is while I have a couple of Chaosium publications on the shelves behind me, I also am trying to get, as part of the Nostalgia Department's efforts, get as many of those back into print. And we're actually accelerating our efforts in getting a lot of older publications back into print.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, good to talk about that because I've invited you to pick from your shelves five items that have made Chaosium. And I know that it's a real challenge, but that's the task I set for you.

[Rick Meinz]

Here's a trivia question. How many items has chaosium produced since 1975? Not licensees, not anybody else's products, just Chaosium's products. How many have we produced approximately since 1975?

[Dirk the Dice]

Now this should be easy to do because, you know, they're famously numbered, aren't they? All of the products, although the SKUs.

[Rick Meinz]

Are on most products, but we are the Chaosium, not the Ordarium. So not everything has a number on it. Add them all up and I could never.

[Dirk the Dice]

I could never work out the numbers either. The logic of them. So that was a bit of chaos. I'm going to hazard a guess, two or three products a year. I'm going to go for 120 products. Yeah, let's get, let's get something from the audience. 250. 250. Any advance on 250?

[Rick Meinz]

700. I'm starting to think that. So I might have tuned into one of my other seminars. It's 750.

[Dirk the Dice]

Well, I'll.

[Rick Meinz]

I'll put it this way. Call of Cthulhu came out as 2301 when it began its formal Long Lifespan series. The current publication we're up to is 23100 95. And so Call of Cthulhu alone has over 190 supplements. And then you throw on other various game lines, other various things. You know, actually 65 plus fiction books and everything else, we get over 750.

[Dirk the Dice]

And because of the licensee arrangements and obviously the drive thru Johnstown Compendium and the Miskatonic. How do you categorize those? Do they fall into it or do they are.

[Rick Meinz]

They are. We love them all. And so, you know, I'm just talking technicalities here, but those are licensed publications, the community content programs, be it the Miskatonic Repository, Johnstown Compendium, Companions of Arthur, the soon to be launched ElfQuest, scroll of many Colors community content program, along with pretty much all of our games line are going to have community content programs including Age of Vikings. Actually we had a lively debate about what would be a really cool name to call the Age of Vikings. But that's not my place to, you know, disclose that one. But the community content programs are all licensed publications. Yeah, used with our permission. We love them. You know, if nothing else, I'll say this about the community content programs. We have worked with a lot of great people in there and it's a great way to quote unquote, audition to write for Chasm or do art for Chasm. Because a lot of people that we see in there doing amazing work have become authors and artists directly for chiasm. And we think that's a win win.

[Dirk the Dice]

But I was just wondering how you as a collector and I know the person who got this right was Brian, who is a fellow cataloger of KSCM products. So how do you keep track of those things as a collector and do you set yourself boundaries for your collections?

[Rick Meinz]

Well, I have been working on the nostalgia department. A not so secret project is a book about all of Chaosium's publications. It's a little bit like the Mind Syn Dex to Glorantha, but it's gonna focus on the publications itself, not magazine articles and all that kind of stuff. Because that would just get crazy, insanely big. That'd be a, you know, 10 volume set, which would be really, really cool. But I'm not as young as I used to be and I'm just gonna start by getting all the core publications into a book. The working title is called All Manner of Chaos and it just covers all the core publications by Chaos. It may have lists of a lot of our licensees and what they've done in foreign lang and things like that, but that alone when you're talking over 750 products, that's going to be quite a task as it is. But I actually have, and I'm willing to share the list if we had screen share going. Right now I have an kiosium publication list which I've been fleshing out by system keeping unit or as we call it in the industry, sku, which basically the product number along with the initial year of publication, the title of the thing. And also because I've got basically one of all the core things, all the, you know, core publications, I've. I've kind of went into more niche collecting of collecting every printing, every edition, every noticeable difference between. So you can have one Thieves World box set on your shelf and say I've got Thieves World, but there are actually five printings of it that are actually all distinct. And if you know whether it's brown ink or whether it's a second edition or whether it's got the barcode on the back, you know, whether it's first, second, third, fourth or fifth printing.

[Dirk the Dice]

Oh my goodness.

[Mike Mason]

My goodness.

[Rick Meinz]

And so I have a. I have a Microsoft Word list that I'm happy to share with anybody who asked me to get it. I mean anybody. If you want to shoot me your email or just stick on a few minutes, I can always send it out to people because one of the things I really like by sending a list like that out into the wild is some very, shall we say, competitive collectors or should we say collaborative collectors. They'll say, hey Rick, I know about something that's not on your list. And bless them, I'm happy to get it added based on them telling me what I didn't know about. And over the years that's gotten a little bit less. But every now and then people are like, you don't know about this? And I'm like, no, I don't know about that. Please tell me. And so that's how I found about a lot of undiscovered treasures over the years that had no clue they existed until somebody pointed it out to me.

[Dirk the Dice]

So of us, the impossible then of those 700 products that KSM has produced, five that are significant that made it as a company.

[Rick Meinz]

So, yeah, you know, it is a little bit. But I'll say up front, I've only been with the company 10 years. I've loved other games since the 70s, but I was 9 when the company started, so it's not like I was involved with the company until much later. But I. I do feel very fortunate that I started playing the games in the late 70s, about four years after, five years after the company started. And so I've certainly grown up with Chaosium. But, you know, it's kind of like picking amongst your children. It's like, how do you say, who's your favorite kid? You feel like you're slighting somebody else who has amazing, wonderful things going for them as well. And so curse you for coming up with such an interesting topic. I really like the challenge. I did actually talk with some of the other people in the company saying if you were going to pick five, just name one. And I got different answers for different reasons and all of them were right. And so I'll just say up front that we have a lot of amazing products. And there I could easily, like, for example, say White Baron Red Moon was our first product in 1975, which it was, and it got the company started. You know, Greg spent a year of his life working as an intern in a hospital, which he hated doing, but it allowed him and his wife to save a ton of money and the old $10,000, which back then was a lot of money, especially to gre, never had a lot of money in his life. And they took that $10,000 and were able to publish White Baron Red Moon and get the Chaosium underway so we wouldn't be here. So if you're talking about thing that made Chaosium White Baron Red Moon, I'm going to remove all doubt and surprise and say it is epically cool and deserves its place in the hall of fame of all time and chaos and cool and anything else. But it's not on my list of five things that made the company. So I'm going to avoid some obvious choices or maybe less obvious choices, I don't know. It depends on what you love. And so I'm not going to pick call of Cthulhu first edition. I'm not going to pick RuneQuest from 1978. All epic, all wonderful. I'm trying to think a little bit outside the box and surprise people. And so for my first Entry into things that made Chaosium. I want to talk about our first role playing product and it's not RuneQuest.

[Dirk the Dice]

Now that's a surprise to me. I always thought that RuneQuest was the first one.

[Rick Meinz]

In 1977, the very first monster manual came out. And the very first monster manual that came out was not by TSR in that little book called the Monster Manual. The very first monster manual to come out in the entire World in 1977 was all the world's Monsters.

[Dirk the Dice]

Ah, wow.

[Rick Meinz]

And so Jeff Pimper, Steve Perrin. Steve Perrin. A couple of people might, if you're into RuneQuest, might know Steve Perrin's name. Of course, he also was involved in other little products like Superworld, ElfQuest. But Steve Perrin and Jeff Pimper working with a very collaborative community online, especially through two very important APAs, amateur press associations, the Wild Hunt and Alarms and Excursion, which back then were the way to communicate information. Kind of like typing stuff up pre Internet. And so all the World's Monsters is this wonderful collection that Greg once again on his Gestetner. So it's got multicolored paper and all that. It's loose leaf because they wanted to have this go into binders. It is a collection of dozens and dozens of dozens of monsters for D and D. And so Chazam's first role playing product was a D and D expansion, basically Monster Manual. And it came out about three, four months before the Monster Manual itself. So whenever TDSR now wotc, part of Hasbro says the first Monster Manual, it's like, I'm sorry, you got to put a big asterisk next to that. Unless you're talking by the title of the book, because this has more monsters than the Monster Manual and it actually outsold it in the first year by a little bit.

[Dirk the Dice]

Is there any unusual monsters in there that don't.

[Rick Meinz]

All incredibly creative monsters. There are not a lot of bog standard. Well, there are some bog standard monsters. First of all, they were created by a lot of people. They basically went out to these APA magazine groups and said, if you got a cool monster you're running in your DND campaign that you want to get credit for, you can get credit for it by submitting it to us. And so just all kinds of people. Like I just opened up randomly that the Quelt, which I've never heard of because I haven't read the whole book and memorized, but is by Dave Hargrave, who did Ardouin Grimoire. But you know, you look through the table of contents of it out of the 127 monsters in here, Clint Bigglestone, who if you're a big white bear and Red Moon Map fan, if you're wondering where Bigglestone the name would come from, it's from his, Greg's buddy, Clint Biggleston. But a lot of the monsters, there's some standard trolls, some standard giant weasel. How can you have a campaign without a giant weasel? Right? You know, there's different Wood Go Wood Elementals. And it was so popular that Chaosium did two more volumes of this over the next couple of years. And actually, you know, they were all incredibly well, I mean this had, this had five printings which for Chaosium is almost unheard of. And the cool thing is all of them are different. So I was able to get all five printings on my shelf. So it just took me a while because I only thought that was the one printing and that was it. I got this back in like 1980 and thought it was cool, but I didn't realize they did all the other printings. But yeah, it was incredibly successful and sold from 77, 78, 79. They did three volumes of this multiple printings and it was fantastic. Quirky D and D monster.

[Dirk the Dice]

And the Jeff Stetner is a hand cranked copier, isn't it, that you write into stencils. So is that what Greg was using? Was he not using professional printers at that time?

[Rick Meinz]

Well, he did for something. I mean he had a mimeograph machine because that was the easiest way to produce things yourself that you didn't have a home printer like we have for our computers. And you know, this was back in the 70s. And so if you went to like I, I can't speak so much for overseas, but I know in my high school, my middle school or junior high as we called it back then, every time they wanted to create copies for anything, they did it on these mimeographed machines which were technology goes back to like the 30s or something like that. It was just an easy way where you typed it up on a stencil, fed it in the machine and then you would hand crank it if you had the low end machine or it was automated so it was electrically cranked if you had the higher end machine. And I remember when Greg was really proud when he got to upgrade from a hand crank to an electrically run one because White Baron, Red Moon, the rule book, many of the early issues of Worms, Footnotes magazine, some of our other early games, they were all created on Greg's Gestetner. And so in his Living room and you know, like White Baron, Red Moon. You know, I mentioned that house of chaos in the Oakland Coliseum. There was Greg, his wife Cam and his two kids living there. And one of his buddies who was relocating out to the Bay Area asked if he could crash with them for a little bit. Ended up staying months with his wife and two kids since there were eight people living in a two bedroom apartment. And that's where he collated White Baron Red Moon. It's where he collated the early issues of Worms Footnotes before they had an office. And so yeah, the he. I. Greg, if there's. It's hard to find it online now, but Greg used to have a website where he published a lot of personal stories, including the day the Gestetner machine machine died. And now it was kind of sad for him.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah, you could.

[Dirk the Dice]

You can almost smell the chemicals, can't you? So how would those be distributed? Because I'm just trying to imagine what it would be like at that point in the 70s because you started to get community of players. Aren't you established? But is it mainly the network of convention, science fiction conventions where these would be distributed?

[Rick Meinz]

You know, Craig really hadn't given that much thought when he started. He just wanted, I mean, he got a thousand copies of White Baron Red Moon printed. He collated the rule books at his place. The COVID of White Baron Redmond, he did have offset print, the larger poster size map for, you know, the, you know, the hex map. He had that professionally printed and, and same with the counters, he had those professionally printed as well. And so some of it was done by him, but he collated it all. And he used to have parties where he learned pretty quickly where he would offer free beer if you came to the collation party. And then of course he realized he had to have the beer served at the end of the collation party, not at the beginning of the collation party because it really upped quality control that way. Luckily, Greg had a number of friends, including some friends who ran Games at Berkeley. Actually that's where Tadashi Ohara, the first outside employee besides Greg and Cam, the first two employees, Tadashi was gambit. He was a game store, you know, sales rep and so on. He worked with Games of Berkeley. And he and Greg, through a lot of his friends, including some of his comic store friends, you know, comic book store friends, they explained how you have to have, you know, term sheets and distribution deals and how it works through, you know, those type of things. Greg decided to go around to some conventions and Sell it. And he did okay at that because luckily there was already Dundra Con in the Bay Area, a number of other wargaming based cons that he would focus on those. But you know, he really couldn't travel very far to some of those. And so it was a lot of it was word of mouth and a lot of it was mail order.

[Dirk the Dice]

All the world's monsters, the first selections. That's great. And what comes up next?

[Rick Meinz]

The next one, I struggled with this, but what I chose next, like I said, Runequest, Call of Cthulhu, those iconic products, I didn't want to go for the super low hanging fruit. But for Pendragon, especially since it's his 40th anniversary, I wanted to just bring up the Pendragon campaign. And so Greg Stafford considered this his greatest work of all time. And it's one of these things where it started out as a very slender, you know, 76 page supplement and it's now grown into a huge book. The last time it was published, it's a great big thick hardcover book and we're actually going to be releasing it as a multi volume set as one of our forthcoming releases. David Larkin's our line editor for the Pendragon line, sixth edition. He's been, you know, working off of Greg's material, rounding out a few things based on Greg's notes. And we're going to be launching it as a multi volume set by era. So there'll be the Boy King era, the Uther Pre era, Arthur is more of adult than the Grail quest and so on. It's going to be probably at least a four volume set. But it all started as just this thin little book and it's what really got people playing Pendragon beyond the very meager amount of material that was in the box set. Don't be wrong, the box set is epic. You know, we just did the Pendragon Classic Kickstarter and it's great we have that material getting back into print. Again, thank you to all the backers who backed Pen Dragon Classic. It's not too late. We have late pledges available. But it was the Pendragon campaign that really got people playing the game. Because you know, in the original box set you had the player's book and the GM's book and the GM's book had a really short bar quest scenario in it but very little playable material. And so that's why they quickly got the Pendragon campaign out and it just knocked it out of the park. It was multi era. It really emphasized the winter phase of the game and the multi generational aspect of the game, which people were looking at the box set just by itself. They didn't fully get how cool the winter phase was and how unique it was to Pendragon. Because I had never played any role playing game where you're going to end up playing your kids and then your grandkids. And when you talk about granddad's honor, remember when he fought against the big set of bandits? So it's like, wait a minute, that was me. But okay, I'll pretend it was like my grandfather and just that continuation of family history and all that where you play your kids and then your potentially your grandkids and things like that. It was the Pen Dragon campaign that brought that all to life and made it just beyond just what was a one page handout in the ruleset.

[Dirk the Dice]

And obviously that's 40 years ago, so that's 10 years since it started. And obviously the production quality has changed significantly. And that is a key period, isn't it, for ksem's history in terms of desirable products and the way that those products are produced, they still have a great tactile quality compared with the other stuff that was coming out, out from other games producers at the time. You know, where TSR had like flimsy modules. There was always something very substantial about Chaosium products.

[Rick Meinz]

Yeah, well, because up until the mid-80s, Chaosium did everything on paper storyboards with cut and paste layout. And so we have some wonderful things in the archives. Like people might recognize this from the Thieves World box set. But this was all lovingly cut and pasted, glued on with X acto knives. So, you know, copy, you know, there was no copy. You had to just, you know, type up another thing. Then you could paste it on. If you made a mistake, you could, you know, remove it with correction fluid, also known as tip X or whiteout. But it was all handcrafted and so it was very laborious. And we're very lucky that we have a number of these things in the vaults. They've aged a little bit. Sometimes things have dropped off. But a lot of these, you know, the special letters, it was all done one letter at a time with press on electricet letters. And so it could, you know, so this, this one heading, these are all individual letters here that they had to be, you know, put on one letter at a time to do that one heading. It wasn't typed in. It wasn't until the 1980s, long after thieves World came out, that, you know, we, we Switched over to the computer era. Thank you. Bill Dunn. That was one of his big contributions. I. I was interviewing Bill Dunn on his, you know, time in the 80s. He was working with a company and he said one of the things he was more proud of is a of lot. A lot of great products, a lot of great people. He was very happy to get them into the computer age because it allowed a lot more people to get involved in layout and it just really increased their outfit of material every year. Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

And in terms of playing it at that time. So with the Pendragon campaign. So who were the collaborators around at that time working with Greg, and who was he playing with to produce things like that?

[Rick Meinz]

Well, I mean, he. In the Bay Area, he'd never had a shortage of people coming over to his house, or eventually he switched from having it played at his house to playing at the Kassium offices. And so, luckily, when he was living on Evelyn street, the Chaosium office was just two doors down. Just two houses down there. Renting an office turned into a. Renting out a house turned into an office. And that's where they had all the ongoing weekly campaigns. But, you know, Steve Perrin, Sandy Peterson, a lot of the people involved in Runequest, so many of the people, you know, Urik Chodak, there were over 20 core people that would rotate in and out depending on who was available to play in Greg's, you know, Pendragon campaign or his Runequest campaign. Lots of names that people would recognize.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah. And of course, at that time as well, there's a lot of cross fertilization between ideas that were being developed for Pendragon and in these Runequest campaigns.

[Rick Meinz]

Oh, yeah, no, yeah. Steve Perrin's Runequest campaign was played regularly over there as well, if not at Steve's house, which was just, you know, not too far, just not too far away. And so there was a lot of just going over to each other's houses and playing in person. They didn't have this Zoom technology that we take advantage of.

[Dirk the Dice]

And you mentioned that it's being revived through the Kickstarter. So what. What makes a particular product suitable for revival? So when you look at these older ones, what are the choices that you make? Because clearly some of them get upgraded to the new editions of the games that you're producing, but other ones, you do these great classic reprints.

[Rick Meinz]

It's a combination of personal interest, you know, that's why we had Runequest Classic a number of years ago, because we want to get a lot of those back into print. The biggest Regret I have with the RuneQuest Classic Kickstarter is we didn't do a box. I really wish we would have done a box with that because the Call of Cthulhu classic 2 inch box set is just amazing. All that box with all the supplements. We chose that one because it was the 40th anniversary for Call of Cthulhu, so that was an easy one to do. Pendragon is also for the 40th anniversary. Elf quest is for the 40th anniversary. Obviously we've already passed some games that it's past their 40th anniversary, but that doesn't rule it out. It doesn't have to be an anniversary like that. We just sometimes get lazy and, you know, certainly riff off of that theme because it's really cool. I mean, I feel very fortunate I got to play Call of Cthulhu when it came out, Pendragon when it came out in 1985. I can't say the same for ElfQuest. No offense to the peonies and all the wonderful work that Steve Prana did on the game. ElfQuest just wasn't my thing back in the 80s. I was at college and I didn't discover ElfQuest until about five years later. But you know, in terms of why we picked them, part of it is based on people writing in and emailing in about things they'd love to see back into print. Part of it based is based on, you know, what we're currently developing right now and what we think will complement our current game line. You know, Pendragon's doing really well right now in the sixth edition with the. Especially with the GM's book coming out along with the core book and so on. And so a lot of people were saying, oh, sixth edition, what was like back of the first edition? So we wanted to give them a good taste of that. And so there's a variety of reasons, but we're the Chaosium, not the Ordarium. So there's no formula that's the next project shall be. Although we do have a lot more of them coming up. And so there's a super one we're working on and a super world location. That.

[Blindy]

Sounds exciting.

[Dirk the Dice]

Let's see the next item.

[Rick Meinz]

All right, once again, not any magic order in this. I don't know which one to say for last. The next one I want to talk about is Thieves World. One of the things that Greg really liked about the RPG industry is that it was a relatively small industry, especially if you were on the convention circuit, as they called it. You would get to know most of the other publishers. The vast majority of them were incredibly collaborative, friendly, helpful people who, if you were ever asking for advice on the so what do you think about this distributor or who do you use for printing or whatever else? They would be very, very, very helpful. It was a wonderful community. And one of the things that Greg did in the late 70s is he helped found via Chaosium, the Game Manufacturers Association, United States sources known as Gamma. And so we're one of the five founding families at Gamma, along with Lou Zacchi and Flying Buffalo. Matter of fact, we're the only of the five founding families that are left in business. But Greg believed in the industry. He believed in working with a lot of people. And when we got the Thieves World license from Robert Aspin and Lib Abbey, one of the things that Greg really wanted to do is he wanted to have it be not just for Chazyum's basic role playing system. He wanted to work with a lot of his other colleagues in the industry. They were saying, hey, we got to do a game together. You know, it's kind of like playing in a band. Oh, you play guitar, you play bass, I play drums. We all got to get together and play together. And so the Complete Sanctuary adventure pack has AD&D adventures and Fantasy, Chivalry and Sorcery, Dragon Quest, D and D Fantasy Trip, RuneQuest, Traveler and tunnels and Trolls rules all in the same box. A lot of these people are still in the industry. You know, I. Mark Miller from Traveler, who helped with this, he still goes to shows. He's a wonderful guy to talk to. He's one of these industry legends that, you know, he just loves talking about his favorite industry as much as all the other people in the industry. Same thing with Ken St Andrew who did Tunnels and Trolls. Of course, that was via Flying Buffalo, but still, you know, Ken St. Andre wrote a couple other little things for Chiasm and might have heard of called like Stormbringer.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah.

[Rick Meinz]

But, you know, he was friends with the guys at Chivalry and Sorcery, the people at Dragon Quest and of course DND and AD&D. I don't know if I'd call them friends, but, you know, I love the story behind how they got the deal to get to use the AD and D and D and D trademarks for the game. And so that's kind of why I picked this product. Excellent.

[Dirk the Dice]

And I suppose the other dimension to it is that it supports another collaborative project, which is Robert Aspirin's collaborative project of creating these anthologies of his friends and collaborators. I do find. I think that's what I was indicating before that crossover between the science fiction crowd and convention scene and with the gaming scene at that time. There were friends between them, weren't they?

[Blindy]

Oh, yeah.

[Rick Meinz]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, one of the things that got a lot of publicity for this product relates to the Deities and Demigods book that TSR put out. And I don't know how much you want to hear about that story, but it was certainly one of the interesting conflicts that still bubbles up between when people talk about the book every now and then.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah, I. I do like that story. So it's good to hear it again because that. That kind of shows that kind of relationship that was happening at that time.

[Rick Meinz]

Yeah, I, you know, Chaosium had an exclusive RPG deal with Michael Moorcock for the Stormbringer, Elric Realm of Information, the eternal champion, so to speak. Not all of it, but, you know, the vast majority of, especially Stormberg and Elric. And that was a license deal through his agent and all that. They'd had it since the Elric board game came out through chaosium in 1977. It was also one of our really early projects. Before we were in our PG company, we did the Elric board game War Game. And so we've been working with, you know, Michael Moorcock through his agent for a number of years. Deities and Demigods came out in the beginning of 81. And along with that, you know, having the Elric mythos in there, it also had the Cthulhu mythos in there. And we had already been working with Arkham House publishers. Actually, we set up a licensing deal in 79 with them. It just took us a while to get a little game called Call of cthulhu out in 1981. But we had an exclusive RPG deal with Arkham House, and both of those contracts very clearly set in it. There were no other licensing deals with any other companies for any other game related material. And it's very typical for, you know, getting an IP contract for something like that. And so Chaosium was kind of surprised when Deities and Demigods came out. And it had all the Elric mythos in there. It had the Cthulhu mythos in there. And there was no acknowledgment to either of those publishing groups or used with permission or copyright statements or anything. They were just in the book. And so Chazyum sent a letter saying to tsr, the Booms in particular, but also Gary Gygax just sent him a letter saying we might have a problem here. And it's portrayed very differently from the TSR side of the equation, where we threatened lawsuits and sent lawyers and a cease and desist letter and everything's short of firebombing at the TSR print warehouse. But it was just, we wanted to work out a deal. And once again, it ties back to Greg's very collaborative spirit of, hey, you know, D and D created the RPG industry, no doubt about it. And a rising tide lifts all boats, to borrow a heavily used cliche. And so why don't we just work out a deal? And it didn't even involve any money, no damages, no nothing. It's like, hey, we're happy to have this in there because, hey, the more people that read about the Cthulhu mythos, they might want to play Call of Cthulhu. And the more people that read about the Elrig mythos, they might want to play Stormbreaker, the rpg. And so just can you put a thanks Chaosium on the credits page down at the bottom and just say used with permission? Which they did for one printing, but then tsr, some of the cooler heads, I guess, didn't prevail in the next printing. They yanked out the two pantheons. They forgot to remove the thanks Chaosium. So that's kind of cool. So the third printing has the thanks, but there's no pantheons in there. And then, of course, in the next printings and subsequent trainings that were gone, all Greg and Chasium wanted as a part of the deal was they wanted to be able to use the D and D&AD&D trademarks in Thieves World, have other people work on writing up the, you know, the statting up of various things in Thieves World for those systems, because they wanted to make the most universal supplement that actually had stats in it. We're not talking generic. There's a number of obviously generic games out there that are, quote, unquote, universal. But in terms of at a snapshot in time, 1981, that hit on most of the major RPG systems at that time.

[Dirk the Dice]

And the other thing it has, of course, is a very innovative set of tables that generate stories and is very creative. And it obviously spawned different supplements as well. Cars is related to it, isn't it? And the Ringquest Cities. So it inspired other supplements as well.

[Rick Meinz]

Yeah, they're working with Makemia to do Cars and Tulane Isles and the Cities book. Oh, yeah. Genre. The Sunken Lands. Oh, yeah. Good stuff.

[Dirk the Dice]

That's a really good choice. Thanks, Rick. And what have you got Next, like.

[Rick Meinz]

Like I said, there are a lot of epic choices I could make. I just wanted to, I wanted to, to kind of do some think pieces or just a little bit unexpected as opposed to like, oh yeah, Rick did, like I said, calling Cthulhu, Room Quest and so on. Right. Awesome. As they are now. But, but speaking of Call of Cthulhu, I did want to talk about the first Mass Chanala Thotep number one. I love the Tom Sullivan cover art. And actually Tom Sullivan, a quick shout out. He comes to Chaosium Con us because he's just up the road in Battle Creek, Michigan. You know, we're talking, you know, not even 100 miles down the road. He's happy to come, he's happy to sign Prince, he's happy to talk about his, you know, Evil Dead stuff and economicon stuff and the Hollywood stuff. But he's mainly there because he gets to chat with a lot of fans and he signs a lot of prints of that cover amongst a lot of other Sullivan covers. But inside the box, of course, is nothing but awesome. And you know, MassinAllaThoTep, especially for call of Cthulhu, it was the big original campaign that really made people instead of one shot, think much bigger campaigns. I mean, Shadows of Yog Sothoth does predate it. Obviously it's kind of a mini campaign. But Masinolathotep, written by Larry Ditilio, Hollywood screenwriter. You know, he just absolutely brought in so many new people, so many new players to call a Cthulhu and opened up this world spanning global campaign that we keep it in print. It's one of our evergreen titles to this day. It's won some of the biggest awards in the industry and it's just amazing that we're able to get somebody like Larry Dattilio to actually write for us.

[Dirk the Dice]

Absolutely. And you're right, it was the first campaign where I think we got to understand what Call of Cthulhu was capable of. And not least because of the handouts, the player handouts that are featured in it. Because the idea of actually using a matchbook, hadn't it occurred to us, yeah, we could use actual physical items to put before the players?

[Rick Meinz]

Of course, now I can't find the latest edition on my shelf. Shame. Oh, here it is. We've just, it's gotten more and more popular. So now it's this great big expanded slip case edition. And these aren't the best handouts you can get for it. You know, the H.P. lovecraft Historical Society, they have their standard prop set and then they have their super mega deluxe limited edition prop set. That is just amazing. And it really helped cement the use of props in Call of Cthulhu games. Like you were saying, the matchbook cover or a business card or a telegram, you know, masks has that in spades. Now, I noticed a couple of people looking at this and then were kind of like, what's up with the black. It's because the latest is the. We. It's the Black Tongue edition where we have a limited edition leatherette. I'm not trying to shill, you know, for it, but it's just. It's just really cool that we. We did a latest one for it. As you know, these leatherette books, same awesome internals, but it's one of these things we've kept in print ever since. It's. It's been probably the most. Other than the core books, of course. It's one of the most reprinted things for Call of Cthulhu. Looks like has basically been in print with a few exceptions every now and then. It's been in print since, you know, the 1980s.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

I got bamboozled into buying a copy from Mike Mason against my better wishes, but I'm glad I've got it. He started talking about Pear Soap. That was the reason why I bought it.

[Rick Meinz]

He said, there's a great Pear soap. I see the segment right there. That's odd. Be it. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, I. It. It's just amazing that, you know, with the Hollywood writers strike, the first time it happened, Larry Dilio was looking for something to do when he went to. He went to Chaosium, Sandy and Greg and said, can I write something for you guys? Because I'm going to honor the strike. I'm not going to be like some of the guys who are trying to get ahead of their work and I'll write future manuscripts. I'm not going to do anything Hollywood, but, you know, I like to think I can tell a decent story and so can I work on something for you guys. And that was one of two main projects he did for us. Every time there was a writer's strike, we. In some ways, I liked it. I wondered if they were hoping for another writer's strike so Laurie would write another thing for us. Because the other thing he wrote was the Gray Knight, one of the great Pendragon smaller mini campaigns. It was a shorter writer strike, so he didn't have as much time. But, you know, between writing masks and writing, you know, it's just the idea of somebody who did, you know, he. Man Is she Ra? And other things like that that also got to write Call of Cthulhu and Pendragon supplements for us. I just love that you know the nostalgia department. We warmer heart when we think about just these crossovers between various industries, various genres, various people all because of their love for Chaosium. Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

It's a great campaign. I really must do it again. Needs to find time. You don't have a time capsule that you can give me a vase of time in that collection, can you? So I can play all these great games.

[Rick Meinz]

No, no. I, I, I wish, I wish I had one of those timer things where you just stop timing, keep playing stuff. Because that's the one thing is I have a lot of things on the shelves I've only read I haven't played through. And I'm still hoping to get through more of those. So we'll see how it goes. Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

And, and your final thing, Rick, what is it that you're going to puff the shell for us?

[Rick Meinz]

You know I, I didn't plan them in this order so it's not like I'm saving the best or worst or anything else in between. For last I, I thought about putting in a, a couple of light hearted entries like I'd pull stomp off the shelves and say Stomp was the you know game that make Chaosium or Panzer Pranks like little quirky games like that or I, I tried to think of what was the most esoteric product they maybe never heard of that Chaosium did. I even got one of Greg's wood carvings by the Staffords Chaosium of course because the first products of Chiasium were not games. They were wood carvings done by Greg Stafford. He was, that was one of the ways he made money. And so we actually have a couple of samples of. So yeah he did these on various North American hardwoods. There are about 50 of these. Maybe he did before he kind of moved on and only did them for friends and gifts and things like that. This, this one was done in California Wall not it's the Amphibious Night which is one of the Runequest miniatures. Amphobiznae is one of the Runequest miniatures. Yeah. The little Stafford's Chaosium on the back. I was gifted this from Suzanne Stafford and it was one of these not a dry eye in the house kind of moments when that was when I learned something new about Greg and just a one of a kind gift. I always like to throw a little tribute piece out there about the first products by Chiasi know.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

And how amazing that games Workshop, of course, famously started with carpentry.

[Rick Meinz]

Yeah, yeah. They had wooden games that they did. It was like puzzles and stuff like that.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

So that is the.

[Rick Meinz]

Because Iceman. Iceman, yeah, that's a great book. I just. I just had it nearby so I wasn't planning on grabbing it. But since you mentioned Games Workshop up, who did a lot of great collaborative stuff with us, you know, especially Citadel miniatures and all that. But I had the Diceman book there and. Oh yes, it's a great read.

[Dirk the Dice]

Well, that was going to be one of my questions actually, Rick, because obviously these coffee table books are being produced like Diceman and what's. He brought out ones as well for tsr. Do you have a plan to do something like that? A great compendium showing the history. I know that we've got Mindless and for RuneQuest, but just as Chaosium as a whole.

[Rick Meinz]

Yes. You know, the working title of the book is All Manner of Chaos. A Retrospective of Chaosium Games. Just. It would definitely. It would riff off a lot of the things that the approach that the MiG takes where it would have a photograph of all the contents of Inside the box would briefly talk about a little bit of the history of the game. There'd be little sections and snippets on what never was. You know, products that were advertised that never came out. And it would mainly focus on the core product lines. It wouldn't. I don't know, you know, things tended to grow over time. You know, if it was popular enough, we might do even a second edition with more associated products with it. I certainly love cataloging those kind of things. It's just finding the time. I've been chipping away at it for a number of years now. That's why I've got the completest collectors list available for Chaosium products. That's kind of the where the book's gonna come out of that.

[Dirk the Dice]

Ah, right, okay, I understand. And what I like about Diceman in particular is all the ephemera that is included. So the kind of invoices and that kind of. And handwritten notes from Ian Livingstone. So have you got plenty of those in the archive?

[Rick Meinz]

We have some. You know, I've got a receipt from gene day for 20 bucks for two pieces of the art he did for no Man Gods. That's kind of cool. You know, we have a number. We have the printing cost breakdown for White Baron Red Moon. So I know that it cost, you know, a $19 to produce it based on, you know, 27 cents for the poster map. And, you know, this much for the counters and all that. So we. We got bits and pieces of that. But for every. Every nice little cool thing like that, we've got probably a hundred things we didn't keep. So. Yeah.

[Dirk the Dice]

So let's see the final. All right.

[Rick Meinz]

I was thinking about this and so what I decided without any bigger fanfare, is it's a little product we did that's almost forgotten now by many people. It's Mythos.

[Dirk the Dice]

Oh.

[Rick Meinz]

Because it really affected the company, probably more than almost every other product we did. I mean, a lot of companies got us started, but this is what really changed the trajectory of the company. This is a box of the starter sets. I. I do have an open game because I bought this like crazy when it came out of the 90s. I was actually living in the UK, but it was distributed over there because collectible card games were all the big craze. And so, you know, the Mythos starter decks and then the supplements for Legends of the Necronomicon and so on. But collectible card games really changed Chaosium's focus for a while because it was by far our best selling product in the 1990s and it actually slowed down the development a number of our game lines in the 90s just because we're just making money. It was a license to print money, so to speak, for a short amount of time in the 90s. And so every time they printed another set, another expansion going on to the Dreamland set and so on, they were just printing double again and double again and double again double until the last nuion came out just a couple years after the. This is just one of the starter decks. I got a box fit, but I was just telling you, in a hurry to grab it. But New Eon was the last one. It was kind of modern era, futuristic era, and they printed way too much of it and the market collapsed. Not because of Mythos, they just a collectible card game market collapsed overall. And it was a pretty dark day in Chazam where they had to lay off over 20 people in one day. And it was like it was most of the company. Matter of fact, within a year, Greg was gone, Pendragon was gone. All Runequest publications had stopped. You know, the company only had a few Call of Cthulhu titles come out and there were only three employees left at that time in the company and they were all working part time from home. The office was gone. That was the last of the big epic Chaosium offices. And, you know, it was such a success between it, Rift off of so many great Chaosium things, especially obviously Call of Cthulhu things. But it showed a lot of Chaosium's quirky humor with the High Priest of Elvis card with Greg on it and the Chaosium card with all the staff which, if you got the limited edition one, they actually signed it and stuff like that. Very playable game, very. It was more of a storytelling game. It was not a high powered collectible game by any imagination. But you know, in some ways, no matter how popular it was back then, and it was our best selling product, single best selling product between them all, you know, hundreds of thousands of copies got sold. Basically should have bankrupted the company. And it really changed the course of the company because after making all that money and being able to thank all the employees with a holiday trip to Hawaii on the company, just everybody in the company, we're all going to Hawaii, you know, get on a plane, we're going to Hawaii. I'm gonna have a great long, you know, you know, company retreat and holiday there. You know, they obviously want to reward everybody. But then within six months it was all over. And the company really struggled from 1998 until 2012, where the company could have gone out of business at any time. And it really changed the quality of our publications during that time because we were living on an absolute shoestring budget. Nobody was full time. And in some respects we're very lucky to be here today through all those dark years. But it was a really cool game and it's a big part of our history. It's just, it's kind of odd that most people either they don't think about it unless they were back there in the 90s. But a lot of current people, you know, when they sell. We did a Mythos collectible card game, they're like, really? You mean, is that like that current one that's done limited collectible card game by Fantasy Flight? Nope. This was, you know, almost 30 years ago.

[Dirk the Dice]

And during this and during that 50 years, it was pretty tumultuous, wasn't it? And would you say that you say that this was like the biggest wave of chaos?

[Rick Meinz]

Well, I mean, you know, when they made the deal with Avalon Hill to publish Runequest, they didn't realize the economic side of it at all because Chazam was a bunch of artists and authors and editors and super creative types, but they didn't think about the money. And that Avalon Hill contract basically bankrupted the country. Me and I, they should have gone bankrupt then, but they managed to limp on and have a couple of really good games come out shortly thereafter. And it got them through and they kind of regrouped and recovered. And then the same thing happened in the 90s where they should have gone bankrupt from Mythos and the collectible card game bust of the whole market. Only a few companies survived it and a few card games are still around like Magic. And I'm not even sure Pokemon or Yu Gi oh were out then. So, I mean, Magic is really the only game, I think, to survive that era. And then we should have gone bankrupt in 2015.

[Dirk the Dice]

And that was the point where I last spoke to you. Moon Design started the management of Chaosium, and we've seen the growth and development of the company from there under your leadership. As you said, the celebrations started early but are continuing. So what's planned for KFC and for the rest of this celebratory year?

[Rick Meinz]

Well, we have a number of things coming out. We have a 50th anniversary slip case set with new Kova Cthulhu covers for the seventh edition. Not a new edition at all, but just we've been working with so many great licensees, especially the suites, that their art is just amazing. And so we wanted to get new art for the 50th anniversary of the company. We figured what better way with a set of Call of Cthulhu books for us, which is similar to what we kind of did back for the 25th anniversary. But we're having that coming out. We also have White Baron, Red Moon.

[Mike Mason]

Oh, wow, brilliant.

[Rick Meinz]

And we're having a book called Harmast Saga for all you RuneQuest fans out there. We had a. It's. This isn't the first time we're announcing it. It's basically the second time. But we had a panel at Chiasium Con Europe in Gdansk, where we talked about forthcoming 50th anniversary products. And so we went through the various manuscripts for Harmas Saga, and we're going to have that come out for the 50th anniversary of Chiasm as well. And so we're planning on a number of things, plus a lot of events at conventions. We have four Chiasium Cons where we're all going to have special events at them, be it Chiasium Con in the US here in Ann Arbor, Chiasm Con in the uk, Chaosium Con in Australia, and also we're repeating Chaosium Con Europe and Gdansk again. It was such a wonderful success that we already decided, I think after the first day we wanted to do it again next year. And so we're gearing up to have the four Chaosium Cons. Hopefully that most people can get to at least one of those.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah.

[Rick Meinz]

And so we're going to have things debuting at those. A few other small projects that marketing won't let me talk about just yet, but we have a number of things coming out, including just. We're trying to get more people playing a wide variety of our games. So we're really spending a lot of time working with game masters at conventions of all sizes to get people playing our games, because we know that once they played them, there's a decent chance that a lot of those people are going to fall in love with them. Kind of like I did back in the 70s. Yeah. And be around for our 100th anniversary.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah. Here's to another 50 years. Definitely.

[Blindy]

Oh, get me caught right away.

[Mike Mason]

There we go. Slightly near all falling off the wall. Don't be in the same breath. Recording studio. It's a step up from the pub.

[Blindy]

Welcome to the room of role playing. Rambling. I've got Blindy with me. Hello there, Blindy.

[Mike Mason]

Hello there.

[Blindy]

I say we're in the room.

[Mike Mason]

No, it's not a room. It's a podcast recording studio.

[Blindy]

How did we end up in here?

[Mike Mason]

Has this happened? I don't know.

[Blindy]

It's strange, isn't it? We're in the Manchester Central Library. I asked for a room and they've given us an actual podcasting studio.

[Mike Mason]

So this should be the best quality recording ever, or maybe the worst, because we were quite listening to what the man told us when he showed us all the buttons. So there's lots of buttons. And we both stood there and nodded and went, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. I don't know what he's talking about. Yeah.

[Blindy]

If you want to sound effects, you need to program on this one. We just put a phone in front of her sound effects.

[Mike Mason]

Because you'd been a funny guy. Yeah. Who's my sound effect? He is 75, Paul. Yeah.

[Blindy]

Well, after 10 years, I feel like we've come up in the world.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah.

[Blindy]

So, by the way, we've just been listening to Rick Meinz and he was our special guest at Grogmeatish. How did Grog meet intercourse for you?

[Mike Mason]

It went well. I didn't listen to the. Not listen to the Rick Meitz interview yet, because I was in Manchester playing dcc. I was at a cult meeting. No, it went very well. I didn't. It's a bit peculiar in as much as I didn't play anything. I just ran a couple of games around The Hidden Aisle on Friday night and I ran some DCC on Saturday morning.

[Blindy]

So at Hidden Isle, was that the game that. Yeah, that's the game subsequently played at Mork at Mark face to face, didn't we?

[Mike Mason]

Yeah, we're playing the face to face at Mark on a few weeks later and I ran it on roll 20 and had to buy a little tarot card deck and do various messing mess about with it slightly to make it work. But it did work. It worked. It was okay. Actually. It worked quite well. I think it went okay. Both games went okay. I think people enjoyed them. I enjoyed them. They were all right. They're very different. Hidden Isles. A bit of a story game, isn't it? Yeah, Forged in the Dark story again was obviously DCC is just more conventional.

[Blindy]

Yeah, I think he Described it previous 7 year, how it works in terms of using the tarot.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah, Tarot cards instead of a dice. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Blindy]

And I find when you were describing it to me, I was finding it difficult to see how it was forged in the dark. Related. But having played it, I can see now that it does use those elements, doesn't it? Except using cards instead of a dice. And yeah, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it because I felt like you're right, it is a story game, but it did deal with conflicts in a different and exciting way that it gave you a little bit more of a tactical choice and a bit of a narrative choice when you were actually dealing with things that you had to resolve. Adjusting the suits and having the numbers and playing against the gm.

[Rick Meinz]

It was.

[Blindy]

It's good fun. Reminds me quite a bit of that agon experience.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah, I suppose. Similar thing. Yeah. It does create a sense where any challenge, whether it's a negotiation rather than just combat is just as interesting because often that's not always the case, is it? You know, negotiations in the game. Oh, it's giving me charisma roll, whatever. Whereas it, it. Because it deals with everything in exactly the same way. It makes other challenges just as interesting as fighting.

[Rick Meinz]

Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

Whereas in a lot of games fighting is the interesting bit and all the other challenges are just oh well, give me a. Yeah, whatever. Charisma role. Give me persuasion role. You know, you do it. Whereas it doesn't quite work like that. The persuading someone can be just as interesting in terms of mechanics.

[Blindy]

It's very creative because as you say, it's a bit more of a story telling game and the situation was very interesting and we were able to interact to it in a very inventive Ways using the cards. And I also liked the bit of gameplay where you could swap the cards around to change suits to make sure that you max your cards and all that kind of tactical choices that you had around.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah, there's a little bit of this when I played it Albert, but it certainly came to the fore when I played it online. And I won't use any bad language, but there was some bad language used and it came to the fore as well at mobcon because it's. You could argue that the cards are no different from dice. So it's about playing your highest card against the games master and you could say that's no different from the games master saying all right, give me a 15 armor on a D20. This is no different is it? The game master's making a. Giving you a target number that you've got to, you've got to reach and so different. But because it's cards and you have a hand of cards each and you play one card against each other. There's this kind of weirdly adversarial moment in the Morpecon game. Jonathan threw a card, turned his card and went haha. We say read them and we. He said read them, read them.

[Rick Meinz]

Aren't we.

[Mike Mason]

All right? It's quite funny that it brings that out in people that it feels in the same way that as a game it makes any challenge from searching a house, persuading someone, having a fight makes them all seem to have the same weight. I suppose for want of a better term it also brings out a quite a. Not competitive.

[Blindy]

But it's the dynamic of cards, isn't it? Because.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah, yeah.

[Blindy]

Sense that you're playing a game, isn't it? I know you are playing a game.

[Rick Meinz]

Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

But it feels more.

[Blindy]

Poker. Exactly.

[Mike Mason]

It feels more slightly tenser in that you are the gamer's master's got hand.

[Blindy]

Of cards and you're hiding.

[Mike Mason]

You're hiding. Yes, you hide, you each get a hand of cards, you hide your hand of cards and then you play one.

[Blindy]

Face down and there's a sense of superiority that you're playing a hand at a particular time so that your advantage. Whereas if you're rolling a dice. Yes, it's more immediate.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah. And that's the thing on paper you could say well it's no different from dice, it's just a bit of a gimmick because it's just like dice really, just cards instead of dice. But it doesn't play out that way in the online games to the point where my Mikey the Demon Samurai said, turned his card off and said, there you go. Suck it up, mother melon farmer. All right. Yeah. But it's very funny that it brings that out in people.

[Blindy]

I enjoyed it a lot. I enjoyed the scenario a lot. What I'd say about it is that it does have that feature, doesn't it? That when you have an effect with consequences. Consequences a bit tricky and tricky because some of the ways that you're thinking, well, that's the consequence I was trying to avoid. So you're saying I'm successful, but there's still a partial effect that has kind of neutralized it. So have I not. Is it not simpler to say I.

[Mike Mason]

Have failed with those kind of games when you've got the success book to think? It does become difficult from a games master's perspective, because there are sometimes very obvious things where you could say where, oh, yeah, you pick the lock, but the guards hear you. You pick the lock, but your lock picks break. Sometimes it's easy, but it's not always easy. And in the game, it's fair to say you're more likely to succeed with a consequence than you are to succeed outright.

[Blindy]

Yes.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah. So there is that problem, and that.

[Blindy]

Came up quite a bit. So there is a buildup of consequences, which is my experience of playing force in the dark game previously, that you get steady build up of consequences because that is the most likely outcome.

[Mike Mason]

It's okay to a point. But you're right, as a games master, you make the mistake of going, oh, what? You were trying to sneak through the room, you've succeeded with the consequence, what are the consequences? Oh, someone hears you. Well, no, like you said, no, that's what I was trying to avoid. I mean, I've succeeded in that. It must be some other consequence. What could the other consequence be? I don't know.

[Blindy]

And even if you know, because the way that people say is, well, you need to threaten that up before the role is taken or before the action is taken. But sometimes not as clear as that, is it? And there is a sense of over overall dissatisfaction of the result overall, yeah.

[Mike Mason]

And it's interesting, my experience with Grow Me is to compare that with Saturday Morning when I played dcc. I played dcc and it was, you know, going into a dungeon facing monsters. There's a bit of a plot, there's something going on, must be mystery, that kind of thing. But that felt far more comfortable, I suppose, because you fail, you fail, you succeed, you succeed, you roll on a table, the table's going to tell you what happens. I don't have to come up with stuff all the time. You know, that sounds. That sounds really bad, doesn't it? Saying that it sounds like you're some kind of. Oh, you're not very creative gm, are you? But it's not really as simple as that, isn't it?

[Rick Meinz]

It.

[Mike Mason]

Because it is difficult, I think, to come up with those kind of consequences all the time. It's not so bad if during a game it's like. It's a bit like in some games where you roll a one on a D20, you're playing an old scooter, roll a one. Oh, well, we'll say it's a fumble. Something bad happens. Doesn't happen that often. So that's easy, isn't it? But like you say, there's consequences a lot. It's difficult to come up consequences all the time. As a gm. It can be quite. It can be a bit wearing in.

[Blindy]

A way as a player as well as players. An accumulation of consequences. And you kind of feel like I'm encumbered by all these consequences. It would have been easier, as I said earlier, that you just failed.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's easy to say you fail, you succeed, you fail. There you go. You might have ways of. And aid. Nile does this quite cleverly, doesn't it, with the fortune cards. There are ways of failing but then overturning a failure and turning into success. And that's quite, quite clever start, doesn't it, with the players can help you if they're in the room. They can play cards and things like that. That's quite clever. But I know what you mean. There is points that we say, can we just say you failed? Can we just say you've done it?

[Blindy]

Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

Can we just say you've done it? Yeah. I suppose people who like those games might say the defense that maybe you succeeded, but the but is optional. You don't have. As a G. Maybe as a gm, you don't always have to say, hold it to you, could you? You've got that option at a gm but you don't have to use. I suppose you could say that. Which is one way of getting. Getting away from it a little bit. Yeah. Just always just use it when it really matters.

[Blindy]

It was enjoyable and I'd like to pay more of it because I felt that moved at a good pace. It was an engaging story and you can see how being in that kind of world.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah.

[Blindy]

Fits that mechanic that it uses.

[Mike Mason]

And it's quite an interesting game as well because you probably played Two thirds of it as a one shot. Because there's another bit of the game where there's bit downtime stuff between missions, you know, and that kind of thing where you have contacts and you have relationships with NPCs and things like that which don't really feature in a one shot. I mean you could, I suppose if you did two little adventures and did a little bit in the middle, you could do that. But generally don't feature in a one shot. But there's another aspect of the game where there is this kind of downtime character development stuff which is quite interesting as well. So it's a really. It is a really nice game. I never heard of it. Here I am with you in a recording studio. Recording studio. Having actually eventually pressed the button to record. But all those things, talking about role playing games for donkey's years. I never heard of it. I mean it's quite a new game. But even so I like to think with new games of, you know, I've got my finger off the pulse, haven't I? But no, never heard of it.

[Blindy]

No.

[Mike Mason]

But it is a very nice game, you know. Yeah.

[Blindy]

And they chose the. The benefit of going out and actually playing games at conventions.

[Rick Meinz]

Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

Because you encounter these things.

[Blindy]

So my got me ish was a unmitigated disaster. I'm gonna say that it was nightright fail but it wasn't fairly with consequence.

[Mike Mason]

It was just a fail. Was it? Did you roll a wall on the D20?

[Rick Meinz]

Yeah, it was.

[Blindy]

The plan was I was going to run the 24 hour Dracula dossier with a group of players and over the week and well a couple of weeks I'd like studied the campaign. We'll talk about it. Because I learned something from that experience of trying to get it into my ram headspace so I could run the campaign over a short period of time.

[Dirk the Dice]

But then I got hit by the loo.

[Blindy]

The full on man flu.

[Rick Meinz]

Oh.

[Blindy]

Took me out. So I ended up organizing an event that I took no part in.

[Mike Mason]

Was we failed your constitution times five. Yeah.

[Blindy]

Thud thong. But yeah, I felt. You seen that Louis Theroux documentary about the swingers? Do you know the one?

[Mike Mason]

I do know the one. It reads. Yeah. Yeah.

[Blindy]

And there's Margaret there and she organizes these events with her husband.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah.

[Blindy]

And her husband is like scuba dive good old time.

[Rick Meinz]

Is he?

[Blindy]

Yeah. Margaret's there at the door sorting out the hors d' oeuvres and collecting the tickets. I'm like Margaret, you're Margaret.

[Mike Mason]

You're Margaret.

[Blindy]

I'm Margaret. Just Organizing the event. Everybody else having a well of a time. I'm having no fun whatsoever.

[Mike Mason]

Maybe Margaret was a bit funny. Her own wet mean to see and.

[Blindy]

Organizing things, not having participation in them.

[Mike Mason]

Isn'T true from your perspective. Yeah, that's very true. Maybe from Margaret's perspective. I don't know. There's nothing stopping the journey. There's no.

[Blindy]

I wanted to ask you though, with that experience of doing Dracula dossier and the stuff we're doing with the Barelis connection, these big campaigns that have a cast of thousands. There's loads of NPCs here. Or as we're now meant to call them for political correctness. I don't know. It's political correctness. I'm assuming it's political. Could call them GM characters.

[Mike Mason]

GM characters? Yeah. Why do we have to call them that? I want the NPC. Have the NPC's got a union. Union of imaginary people who come pressure group. Stop calling them as NPCs. Where's that come from? You made that up. I never share with you. I never shared. But I'm never sure if it's a prefabs brow thing. Where have you got that from? What they call GM. GM carriers.

[Blindy]

GMCs.

[Mike Mason]

GMCs. Not NPCs. GMCs.

[Dirk the Dice]

GMTS.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah. That is a real thing. You've not made that one. That's not a thing. Where have you got that from? It's just like in evidence you claimed. Where have you got where.

[Blindy]

Citation needed.

[Mike Mason]

Citation needed. Where have you got that from? I don't know.

[Blindy]

I think it does. It does non player make it sound like it's less dynamic than it should be.

[Mike Mason]

But the. The non players are bothered. They're not bothered. It's not like someone's bothered, is it? By saying, oh, excuse me, I know I'm an imaginary person. I just like to point out by calling me a non player character somehow demeaning not.

[Dirk the Dice]

Are they.

[Mike Mason]

Because they don't exist.

[Blindy]

Has it not become like a pejorative term like at school? Pejorative to who?

[Mike Mason]

At school? To whom?

[Blindy]

At school my son was referred to as an NPC and.

[Mike Mason]

Right.

[Rick Meinz]

It was.

[Dirk the Dice]

It was.

[Blindy]

It was down to when he was playing basketball, he used to put his head in the air and put his arms down and they said he was like an engineer.

[Mike Mason]

He's come from like a computer. Computer gaming kind of thing.

[Blindy]

So if he was referred to as games master moderated character, it'd give him more agency.

[Mike Mason]

But I can. No, the thing is I can see. Well, if. If someone said Well, I. I don't know. Player character, for example. Play character. I don't like being referred to as character because some. For some reason, best known to myself, I don't like it. That's. That's different because you are a player character. It's like if a Games master said, I. I mean, I've seen these kind of discussions. I don't like games Master. I. I'd prefer to be called referee. All right, fair enough. Game moderator. Don't make a game moderator. Game medals or a maniac, whichever, you know, in your case. But you. You can. I get that. But the NPCs, they not. They're not real, are they? So they're not. You can't say it's pejorative to them because they're not real, are they? Well, no offense is caused because they don't exist.

[Blindy]

They may not exist, but there's a lot of them in the Dracula dossier. There's a lot of them in the Bareilles connection. A lot of them as a games Master, for you to deal with and present to the characters in a way that they'll remember where they belong in the story that you're trying to present. And with the Dracula dossier, the way that that's formatted is that it's an improvised ASTUB campaign. So it's improvised as. From point of view of the Games Master. They're given a set of resources, like locations, like game moderators, characters or NPCs if you prefer to call them and.

[Mike Mason]

Well, yeah, I do. Even if the NPCs don't like it. Seldom. I don't care.

[Blindy]

There's the. There's different elements, there's different frames of the campaign. So there's. There's essentially two main antagonistic elements that you've got to deal with as a player and as you move through the conspiramid, the vampirid, as if the vampiramid, the vampyramid in the Dracula dossier. And depending on the actions that you take, it'll have consequences on the actions of the other NPCs that are happening. So you're kind of having to construct this as you go along. And it's a real challenge, isn't it, dealing with just so many NPCs you've got a big campaign with. Again, another gauss minder.

[Mike Mason]

I know. Yeah.

[Blindy]

With Pirates of Dwelling.

[Mike Mason]

Yes.

[Blindy]

Where we've been given a galaxy full of characters to deal with. So how do you deal with that in a really.

[Mike Mason]

I do find it One of the trickiest things in role playing games, the NPC is a tricky. It's a tricky thing, isn't it? Because, all right, they're not tricky in as much is games are full of NPCs, aren't they? And monsters and this, that and the other fine, you know, henchmen who get shot, whatever. That's all fine, isn't it? But they are tricky if you have a level of. Players have a level of interaction. And I imagine Dracula dossier's bit like this. Yeah. A level of kind of interaction with them that can be prolonged and might go in ways that you as a gm, don't anticipate. So it becomes like. It's like a movie. If you think of a movie, you've got the extras, haven't you? And the guys in the fights and all that, the stormtroopers in Star wars who get shot. They're NPCs. They're NPCs, but that's fine. But when you've got the main NPCs, like a main antagonist or a main ally, and the players interact and then you've got an idea as gm, what, what their agenda is, this npc, this villain or this ally got. They've got their agenda, you know that. But then the players take it in a particular direction, you start thinking, oh, hang on. And it's like method acting where you think, oh, God, why would this person think that? What would they think about that? I wouldn't expect you to ask that, but what would they think about it? I've got something consistent and I've got to think on my feet. And it can be quite tricky. I find it quite a tricky thing.

[Blindy]

The way that's presented in the Draco dossier as well. So each npc, depending on how you wanted to play with the. There's really three statistics. There's the complete innocence who have no awareness of dead conspiracy. There are the vampires, so they're kind of the monsters who are trying to do things. And then there's the human antagonists who are within the agents here, trying to do.

[Mike Mason]

Do stuff.

[Blindy]

Now, each NPC is presented in a way that actually gives a background for all three. So depending on how you want them to fit, because they're a lead that people, the players have found. So if you go to a particular NPC and depending on how you want to play it within your frame, they might either be totally unaware of what's going on, have a few red herrings to deliver, or they might be aware of the human Conspiracy. Or they might be actually in the thrall of the monsters and they could be one of those three. So orchestrating that is cheating us to you.

[Mike Mason]

That's quantum to the quantum npc. Is it? That's. What's all that about? That's a bit. It is a bit weird that, isn't it? I've never encountered that, I don't think in a. In an adventure that I've ever read where you've got that option of flipping them one way or the other. But I think. I wouldn't say, to be fair, I have done it. I have done it where I've flipped an NPC and thought actually, you know, this guy be great as a villain, so I'm going to make him a villain. I've done that. But I've never actually had a pre written scenario. I don't think I have. Where NPCs. You've got that option because they can be this, this or this.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Blindy]

And that's quite interesting. For each thing they've got a different backstory and different level of interaction with the story that has happened within the Dracula dossier.

[Dirk the Dice]

But I think.

[Blindy]

I think it's the same.

[Dirk the Dice]

There's that element of it where you've.

[Blindy]

Got like very consequential NPCs and you as a game to master choosing which ones to have and where to put them and what impact that they have on the players. But there's also those scenes and there's a few of these scenes in the Borallis connection, the one that we're currently dealing with and I know that you've had to deal with in Pirates of Drillax where there's multiple NPCs in the same scene. So at the moment you are doing surveillance on a convention, a conference of drug dealers that are converging on Cyclops. So there's multiple NPCs that I've got to relay to you and explain to them and you're watching and trying to understand how they fit into the story. But how do I get it? So that. That's interesting. And you remember each of them.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah.

[Blindy]

The temptation is to nowadays is to.

[Dirk the Dice]

Do images for all this.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah, that is. And I've done a bit of that with poster and I. And I think we've done it in other games, but I think it's a bit of a highway to nothing really with that. I think it can be a bit of a problem because you've then got. It's one of those metagamey things that if you don't have a picture of an npc, Players immediately think they're not important. That's part of the problem there. And that can happen, can't it? Because we've all played games where Pirate Strain I. You land at Starport, you get into some debacle with an official, the Starport, and that official seems somehow more significant than they are. But really your GM's just making it all up and you haven't got a picture for the players. Yeah, well, it can't be that important. He's not got a picture. Yeah, a picture for all the important people. And there's an argument for not having pictures. Never used to, back in the day. No, I know it sounds a bit like, well, then, by the way, we didn't have pictures, everything was fine. But there is that sense, I think, that it's a very tempting thing, partly because of sport, of online play, that idea that you can just present images and things, but it can be problematic because.

[Blindy]

Yeah, there's something attractive, though, when you. Particularly in like a convention where you've got a fixed period of time and you're presenting a set of characters and you've got them as cards on the table and you're showing them and you can. And in doing an investigation, knowing, oh, yeah, I remember her, we know what she looked like.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah. But I did that once with a game, Cthulhu Dark, that was set in long time ago now, Cthulhu Dark, that was set in the kind of Salem witch trials kind of thing and had pictures of all the suspects. And it did work quite well. But I suppose the difference with that was it was very clearly defined who the suspects were. Yes, if you see what I mean. There wasn't much scope for a inconsequential NPC being perceived as important. So it worked quite well. I think it's like you say, if it's an investigation and you're being very clear about who the suspects are and you're very clear about who the key characters are, that probably works quite well as a visual clue to remind people who. I think it's less of a. It's is a bit more problematic when you're improvising a little bit. You know, players are doing things that they want to do that you weren't anticipating. Which parts of Dream Acts has been like that at times, hasn't it? That can be more problematic because you have. You don't have a picture for everybody. You know, one of the things that.

[Blindy]

We'Ve done is that the old faithful of using actors as.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Blindy]

And usually that's a bit better that players lock onto, isn't it?

[Mike Mason]

Because you say he looks like Robert De Niro.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

It's like, all right, okay, I get it. He is Robin De Niro playing him in the film. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Blindy]

And. And for some people, that can take the mate of it. But it is a good way of saying, okay, you got. You got an idea of who that character is for the actor.

[Mike Mason]

I think that's something you want. You started doing that and I stole it off you. Because I do think that is a very good idea to say that. Oh, it looks like.

[Rick Meinz]

Like.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah. Robert De Niro or it looks like Stephen Graham or it looks like whoever. Yeah, yeah. Gives an immediate kind of picture in someone's mind. I find as a player, that works very well for me.

[Blindy]

Al Pacino.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah, yeah.

[Blindy]

What do you got?

[Mike Mason]

Sorry?

[Blindy]

What do you got?

[Mike Mason]

You like doing that? Okay, yeah.

[Blindy]

You do like doing Open Sesame?

[Mike Mason]

I don't like doing it. I thought you do like doing it.

[Blindy]

The thing is that when you do that on Zoom, it cuts out. It cuts out of the same. Yeah, I've noticed this when like doing monster impressions or.

[Mike Mason]

I'll try and do it sound level.

[Blindy]

It's got a sound, all right.

[Mike Mason]

It's not trying to sensor. So Al Pacino's got some kind of deal with Zoom. Anyone does an impersonation of me, I.

[Blindy]

Like cutting on you. Anybody what uses the word NPC.

[Mike Mason]

And MPs don't use MPC. I'm not having that NPC. That's just. Just stupid.

[Blindy]

That's stupid. The other. The other trick is to give them a little characteristic tick. Isn't it a color that you associate.

[Mike Mason]

With in a hat or a walking stick or monocle, Something that people could go, oh, yeah, I remember it. The guy with the walk. Yeah.

[Blindy]

Because people don't remember the names. I don't remember the names because in the Pirates of Drinics campaign, I refer. Oh, yeah, that's the robot.

[Mike Mason]

Robot governess.

[Rick Meinz]

Yeah.

[Blindy]

I don't know what she's called.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah, you can't.

[Blindy]

Yeah. What is she called?

[Mike Mason]

I can't remember what she's called. She's called a robot. Yeah. On number one, she's a child, but she's an Android. Yeah, yeah. That's a spoiler. Might be that. Know we just released a spoiler. Ignore that again. Playing Parish through that.

[Blindy]

Yeah, that's the one that I've set a timer on. A battery.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah, A kill switch.

[Blindy]

A kill switch, yeah.

[Rick Meinz]

Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

There you go, you see, that's unanticipated player moves. So disrupted child robot. But she's not a child, she's a robot. As you've pointed out numerous times. Yeah, yeah.

[Rick Meinz]

Yeah.

[Blindy]

Cast of thousands.

[Mike Mason]

But the tricky, this is tricky business. I do like I say, I, I sometimes find it one of the trickier elements of role playing, the npc. But it's that one thing I. And it's, it's only in recent years I've started doing this because years gone by I would, I would do very differently and kind of stupid. But one thing I find really tough is when an NPC joins the players. So it's not so bad. If it's some peasant that you've rescued and you put them in charge of minding the horses, that's okay. But if it's a character who's kind of got abilities like fighting or magic or something or whatever, and they join the party, that can be quite difficult if you then decide as a GM to play that character. Because it's another thing to keep your eye on, isn't it? Whereas I think, and we've done this in Pirates of Renault, there's Quite a few NPCs on your ship and I'll just let you play them. Just let you play, Let the players play the character so they don't become an npc, they become a kind of. Yeah. And I'm sure the NPCs, you need to be very happy about this idea because it's elevating them, isn't it?

[Blindy]

They are slightly more elevated.

[Mike Mason]

Elevated.

[Blindy]

It's like Nesetto, isn't it? He's one of our mercenaries. She's not an npc.

[Mike Mason]

No, she's like a character.

[Blindy]

She's like nicely animated.

[Mike Mason]

Yeah, she's like a second tier player character.

[Dirk the Dice]

Yeah.

[Mike Mason]

But from a GM perspective, that's quite good because it does mean that as a gm you're not burdened. But it sometimes feels like a burden. You have to remember, oh, in this combat, oh, what's the 10th level magic user that's joined your pie? What are they do or spell? Are there Cassino? Hang on a minute. I don't know, I'm too busy running them on. So monsters, they have to run the wizard as well. Yeah, it's better to just go, right, he's on, he's on your side. Someone complain. There you go, you decide. That is a better way of doing it sometimes moving them, shifting them out of NPC status, I suppose. You know, the, the good news is.

[Blindy]

Is in April, when we do Virtual Grog Meet, I'm going to revive the Dracula dossier 24 hours. But I've got to get it back in my RAM space.

[Mike Mason]

You got to get it back in your head. I've got you. It's all disappeared there. But now he's gone.

[Rick Meinz]

All those.

[Mike Mason]

All those people.

[Blindy]

All those NPCs.

[Mike Mason]

NPCs drifting away.

[Blindy]

Oh, no thought for them this Christmas.

[Mike Mason]

Better. Thoughtful this Christmas. Sent 20 pounds to dirt the Dice. We'll pass that on to the NPCs to make them feel bad at this, you know, festive period.

[Blindy]

Cheers, Biden.

[Mike Mason]

Goodbye.

[Rick Meinz]

Bye.

[Mike Mason]

Hello, Grognards. This is Mike Mason of Mason and.

[Blindy]

Fricker's Eldritch Stories, and I'm just here.

[Mike Mason]

To tell you about our new season.

[Blindy]

Of Eldritch Stories coming at you.

[Mike Mason]

Come and find [e-mail] keep it eldritch. Yeah, you can turn it off now. Very good.

[Dirk the Dice]

Thanks to Rick Meinz for inviting us into the Department of Nostalgia over at krcm. I really enjoyed that time I had with him. I hope you enjoyed listening to it. Chaos EM have been very generous to convention organizers all around the world. In celebration of their 50 years of existence. They've given a variety of their products to organizers to give away in any way possible as part of the convention. I've got a stack of games here that they've sent which I'll be distributing at Grog meat to the GMs as a thank you for taking part. Keep your eye out for other 50 year celebrations that are continuing throughout 2026. There's a little bit more to the interview as well, which I'll put out as part of Dirk's Dossier in the next few months. Dirk's Dossier is an extra podcast that I gave a sample of last time, which is normally distributed to patrons who put a tip in the tip jar each month. There was a Q and A session at the end of the interview and there was a revelation from all the World's Monsters Discovered by Scott from the Titterpigs podcast. So it's worth listening out for just for that. Sorry if it sounds a bit strange. This episode, the introduction bit I recorded as I was leaving Oslo. It was five o' clock in the morning and my family was saying, what are you doing it now for? So I was trying to keep my voice low and also not disturb them and also do it quite quickly so that we could get away and leave for the plane. So if it sounded like a bit more weird than normal. That's the reason. Also in the recording studio, goodness knows what, I did the interview that we did which will be coming next time, but came out okay, but the bit that we did just beforehand that didn't quite work. So the recording is something that I've salvaged for my phone. Ah well, you know we're only new to this, you got to give us a bit of slack. So thank you for listening and thank you for listening throughout the year. And if you've only just discovered the Grognard Files, I hope that you settle in and listen to some of the back catalog. If you've been a loyal member of the Grog squad, thank you too for being part of this great listener community and have enjoyed playing games throughout the year. In the next podcast we'll be doing our usual groggies, so if you listen out for that, it'll be coming quite soon. At the time of recording, Grog Meat is only a week away. Just saying those words makes my stomach turn over a little bit. Still quite a bit of things to organize, but I'll get on with that. Thanks to the patrons for supporting the podcast throughout 2025 and onwards. It's their tips in the beret that make sure that we can fund the different projects that we organize, pay for the outgoings and give us encouragement to continue. Please, like subscribe, pass on, let people know about the Grognard files if you think that they'll be interested in it. We've got lots more planned for 2026 and I'm looking forward to putting them out each month, so until then, adios amigos.

[Blindy]

This is the what industry? Free enterprise.

[Rick Meinz]

So let me sit you down and tell you how I want the spot.