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- [00:00]
Dirk
Have you seen me Dice Bag?
- [00:12]
Blythey
The Grognard Files?
- [00:16]
Dirk the Dice
Hello, my name is Dirk the Dice, and this is the Grognard Files podcast where we talk bobbins about tabletop RPGs from back in the day. And today I'm coming live from my den here in the heart of the northwest of England and completely surrounded by my stuff. Recently I read Paul Auster's final novel and the narrator referred to his study room as the Cogitorium. And that's what this den is going to be from now on. A Cogitorium. I don't know what it is, but it sounds good. And the perfect place for the great library of RPGs and my grognad files. Here on my right. Here on the left is the ridiculous homemade shrine to the actor Caroline Munro.
- [01:08]
Dirk
I'll.
- [01:08]
Dirk the Dice
I'll just give it a tap.
- [01:11]
Dirk
Ah, yes.
- [01:12]
Dirk the Dice
This time the eternal champion has appeared as Die at the Earth's Core, a menagerie of weird and wonderful creatures. This time we're looking at monsters and bestiaries, but before then we've had another lovely five star review of the Grognard Files on Apple podcasts. If you're new to the Grogpod, then they're often a better guide to what we do than me explaining it. So here's the review from Magic JMS in the usa. A Warm Blanket. Just a delightful experience where Dirk and Blythey bring you into their homes, their pubs and their phone calls to talk about tabletop games from 1980s and today. My only complaint really is that the episodes come out relatively infrequently. Once I caught up and binged the whole library, the wait for each new episode becomes interminable. Keep up the great work, fellas. Thanks. That's a good name for a band. Infrequent Blanket. We're trying to catch up and become more regular, but it's been a bit difficult to get together in the recent months. But that'll start to improve in the second part of 2024. This episode is in several parts. This first part is me and resident rules lawyer returning to a tried and tested formula of stay, play and give away. Well, we've done it once before. This time we'll be grabbing three bestiaries each from our shelves and decided which one to keep for reference, which one we want to play right away, and which one is heading for the dumper. Back In March of 2024, I went to London to visit a symposium about RPGs.
- [03:10]
Dirk
You can read more about it on.
- [03:12]
Dirk the Dice
At the grognard files.com while I was there, I met China Meavel, the science fiction author of the City and the City, amongst others, including a newly launched collaboration with Keanu Reeves, the Book of Elsewhere. He's a listener of the Grog pod and he suggested that. That we looked at bestiaries and monsters are the reason I got into this thing of ours. So I've been more than willing to put this episode together. Next time we'll develop the ideas further and have special guests, including the monster man himself, James Holloway, who will be adding to the Appendix G. Until then, ramblers, let's get rambling.
- [03:59]
Dirk
Stay. Play giveaway. Welcome to the Zoom of role playing. Rambling. I've got Blithey with me. Hello, Blythe.
- [04:09]
Blythey
Hello, Dirk.
- [04:10]
Dirk
We really need to do this in a pub. It's been a while, isn't it, since we've done it in a pub? We've not been. We've been denied because of your electoral endeavors.
- [04:21]
Blythey
My electoral endeavors? Yeah, yeah, that's true. It's been a tough old few months. The local elections, and then a few weeks later, a general election. Yeah, but then again, I'm glad it's over. As I said to my boss on the night of the count, they were counting the votes, we were coming to the end where we're about to announce the results, and I said, imagine now if you woke up in bed and it had all been a dream and you had to do this all over again.
- [04:50]
Dirk
Just wait until we get in the pub. It'll be like the Taylor Swift effect, won't it? The GDP will bounce things all around. What I've noticed from people talking about the election is that particularly our generation, so Generation X is that realization that the change of government doesn't happen very often.
- [05:13]
Blythey
Yeah, it's true that, isn't it? In our lifetime, there have not been many actual changes. You know, let's face it, there's been lots of changes of Prime Minister. Let's go. For a couple of years, I've lost count. Who is Prime Minister when?
- [05:26]
Dirk
One of the podcasts that I like listening to, as you know, is Word in your ear with rock journalists David Hepworth and Mark Allen. And what they did is look at the pop and rock charts from now and going back to when there was changes in government and comparing the difference. And so they noticed that back in 1997, the pop charts were filled with Brit pop, full of bands. But now, now you look at the charts, there are no bands in the charts. Where are the bands Gone.
- [06:00]
Blythey
There are. There are bands, but they're not. I know what you mean. They're not in the charts, are they? Particularly. I don't know what's going on anymore. So I'm saying there's no bands in the charts. In all honesty, there could be, but I don't know any of them are.
- [06:14]
Dirk
Well, let's not get diverted by music. We did that last time. What I thought I'd do is look at the charts from a gaming point of view. What are they gaming? So I'm only here for the Kia. He's moved in. And this is what was in the top three of Drivethru RPG when he was elected. So Keir Starmer was elected number three. Traveler, Bounty Hunter. Have you heard of that one?
- [06:41]
Blythey
Oh, I've heard of that. It's a new thing, I think, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, quite good.
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Dirk
They bring them out quite a lot, don't they, these travel.
- [06:47]
Blythey
They did do a lot of stuff for travel. There is a lot of stuff for travel.
- [06:50]
Dirk
Number two, and this one's appeared before when we've done one of these is Fabula Ultima Atlas. Fabula Ultima Atlas. Now, Fabula Ultima are based on Japanese computer RPGs number one, and this is topical for the Grognard Files Cyberpunk Edgerunners, which is in a different setting than Cyberpunk Red. It's 2070 and it's based on the anime that's on Netflix. So of those three, it's kind of a dystopian view of the world, isn't it?
- [07:28]
Blythey
Well, I don't know if Fabula Ultima is that. Is that dystopian? I don't. I don't know enough about it. Yeah, it is.
- [07:33]
Dirk
It is like a techno fantasy, which is quite dystopian and leak and that kind of techno future.
- [07:42]
Blythey
If. If things are bad, do people go for dystopian stuff? Because I once. I. I was once watching some going back to music now, but I suppose there. There are parallel. It's relevant. I was once watching something about the 70s and. And people said, oh, the 70s are power cuts. And I. Which I know is kind of like a bit of a myth, isn't it? This thing about this 70s being really bad. But you had a glam rock and you had all this stuff going on. It was quite. People wanted to be entertained and wanted to forget about miserable stuff, you know, so the music didn't actually reflect necessarily. Some will. But a lot of the music, popular music, didn't necessarily reflect the difficult times people were living through. But that would be gaming that that a dystopian kind of thing is kind of does reflect, I would argue some medicine. But I would argue that's what we have been through, isn't it recently?
- [08:35]
Dirk
And what strikes me about it is that science fiction, science fiction role playing.
- [08:41]
Blythey
Yeah, yeah.
- [08:42]
Dirk
Very predominant at the moment. I think we're leading the trend here, I do. Let's go back to 2010. So imagine you're on the Rose Garden, a coalition first coalition.
- [08:54]
Blythey
Oh yeah, yeah.
- [08:55]
Dirk
Decades. You got the spam face puffing and meta's T boy. Do you know what was dominating at that time? Top three, if you look at the Ennis go on Pathfinder. And if you think in 2010, that's when we started getting back into it after the deep freeze started to fall out. And Pathfinder was very apparent, wasn't it, at that point?
- [09:21]
Blythey
It was very apparent because I have quite a vivid memory of going to Fanboy 3 in Manchester before they moved to the bigger shop. They had a small shop, didn't they? It was one of the first places we would go in there, wouldn't we? And we were a bit unsure as to whether we wanted to buy any of these new games. And I think pastime that I picked up and flick through and said to you, blimey, I can't. I can't be dealing with this, I can't be learning this. You know, I've enough games in my head. Quite funny to think now given all the games I've bought. But it's quite interesting that, because that that was. And I do remember Fanboy almost being like wall to wall Pathfinder. Yeah, it doesn't have as much in that at all, does it? But now then he had a lot of Pathfindering and I remember wondering what, what this Pathfinder was 2010 and the.
- [10:14]
Dirk
Ennis, it won the gold winner for the game, it won it for the adventure and for the GM screen. So it was the ultimate dominance of the. The thing. And I wonder what changed that. Was it the D&D 5th edition and people moved on to that?
- [10:35]
Blythey
No, never Pathfinder.
- [10:36]
Dirk
And I've read some of the adventure path. I've always been attractive. We're talking about besties in this episode. And I've always been attracted by the goblins and the way that they treat goblins in Pathfinder because of the way that they draw them. But they have a lot of variations on goblins, like monkey goblins and different aspects to their ecology that make Them very interesting as a species to include in your games. And some of the adventure paths are quite inventive.
- [11:14]
Blythey
Yeah. I don't know why I've never. I've never played it. I'm not sure it comes across. I think sometimes is a bit of a club. I've always found that a little bit off putting. I don't know. I mean, it's like role playing can be accused of being a bit clubby, can't it? You know, I would get into role playing. Games could be a bit clubbing, but. But it's like a club within a club, isn't it? You know where they. And I know. I know other. I know other games do that. I know DCC does a bit of that as well and I think Free League have started similar things, but, you know, not necessarily reflection on the game. I don't know something about it.
- [11:52]
Dirk
When I started and getting back into it and listening to podcasts. There was a podcast called RPG dad and it was about somebody of our A getting back into role playing. After a period of not playing, he brought on a number of people who explained to him the Pathfinder. I did think it sounded quite intriguing because as you say, there's a clubbish feel to it. And as part of that, they had ambassadors who were there to pitch how the game was played. 5e has started to do the same approach where it's become multiplanar, so that you know, you have multiple settings set in the Pathfinder world. So if you want space, there's space there for you. And 5e started going down that route. I wasn't doing the spell jammer and.
- [12:50]
Blythey
I think the game might be all right. I don't know, it's like you get like styles or something. Convergence, weren't we? Someone ran Pathfinder and they got. They got like. They get like stars like that McDonald's where you get star on your badge or something for running games. Yeah, it strikes me as a bit. I don't know. No, thanks.
- [13:06]
Dirk
So that's Pathfinder 2010. Let's go back to the heady days of 1997. It's a new dawn, is it not? Tony Blair is sworn in and at this time, obviously we were in the deep freeze. So I don't know whether we can say very much about this, but I think the top games of that time reflect something of the 90s, because what you've got there is multiversa. No, I don't know what that is either.
- [13:38]
Blythey
Nope.
- [13:39]
Dirk
Blue Planet, which is about playing dolphins, I think In a strange. And number one is Legend of the Five Rings.
- [13:49]
Blythey
Oh, interesting.
- [13:50]
Dirk
Yeah. So Legends, Five Rings, we've played the Fantasy Flight version of that, which I think is very different from the one in the 90s, but I think concurrent to it was the collectible card game element to it, which is very 90s as well, isn't it? Let's get.
- [14:10]
Blythey
Don't know what it says. Don't know what it says about a change to the Blair's government. I'm not sure.
- [14:15]
Dirk
Yeah, maybe gaming is immune to the zeitgeist of what's happening and it's got its own trajectory. So in the 90s it was about pushing new ideas and new ways of playing games and trying to push beyond some of the things that were developed. And yet it returned back to something more traditional in the form of D and D. And now after that, this, the cycle is now at a point where actually we want a more diverse idea of games, more diverse collection of games.
- [14:52]
Blythey
It's kind of an interesting question, isn't it? Because it's certainly true that games that are being produced now, there is a number of games that definitely want to reflect changing attitude to gender and race and things like that. But prior to that it's, it's almost like gaming. Does gaming just exist almost in a vacuum to some extent, you know, doing its own thing. And maybe that's, maybe that's a byproduct of gaming getting a bigger audience and becoming more broadly known. Whereas go back to the 90s, the 80s or 70s, and it's a very. We've talked about endlessly on this podcast. It was a very, very small group, relatively speaking, a small bunch of people. Where have you said to your, you know, for example, I went to get my haircut right the other day is relevant. Bear with me, let's get my hair cut. And I had a D and D T shirt on under my shirt and the, the guy, young guy, cut my hair, said oh, what's a T shirt? And I showed him and he went, oh, Dungeons and Dragons. Yeah, I played that. Yeah, one of my mates played it. And that. That would have never happened. That would never happened 10, 15, 20 years ago, would it? It'd be incredible. But it didn't seem like that unusual. So maybe nowadays gaming does reflect what's going on in the world a bit more because it has a broader audience. Whereas the further you go back, you do look at Legend of the Five Rings and John Major's Britain shifting to Tony Blair's visit. How is it relevant doesn't really connect to it at all. But of course back then it would still been quite a small bunch of people, wouldn't it? Play? Yeah. A smaller bunch of people.
- [16:42]
Dirk the Dice
Yeah.
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Dirk
A small bunch of people than in the 80s.
- [16:45]
Blythey
Yeah, possibly. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe. Maybe that's the thing. You know, it doesn't reflect the times. But now. Now it does. Now it started reflecting the times because people. More people want that.
- [16:58]
Dirk
So finally, let's go back to 1979 and Mrs. Thatch. Let us watch it. Francis of Assisi. Let us bring despair where there's harmony. Or something like that.
- [17:10]
Blythey
I can't remember. Let us bring discord where there's harmony. Something like that. I mean that might be not what she said, but that's what she did. Bit of politics.
- [17:17]
Dirk
Yes, indeed. And I've gone back to White Dwarf 12 and in White Dwarf 12 these are the role playing games that were being reviewed by the likes of Don Turnbull. And there's not that many but High Fantasy is a game I've not heard of before. I looked at this. It's a role playing game in the mode of D and D as all the D and D element. But it's a percentile opposed role system. Never heard of it. It gives it four. So that's why we've probably never heard.
- [17:49]
Blythey
Of it by 4 out of 10.
- [17:50]
Dirk
4 out of 10 there. And this is like the circle is complete. The other thing he reviewed was reviewed by Bob McWilliams. The Kinunir, the Kinone, the Traveler. First adventure.
- [18:05]
Blythey
Oh yeah.
- [18:05]
Dirk
Not sure which vowels to pronounce in there.
- [18:08]
Blythey
What does. What does that get out of 10?
- [18:09]
Dirk
That gets nine out of 10. It would do because it was the first adventure.
- [18:15]
Dirk the Dice
It wasn't an adventure.
- [18:16]
Dirk
If you remember when we covered it. It's very disappointing because as a lot.
- [18:22]
Blythey
Of the early Traveler ones were, to.
- [18:23]
Dirk
Be fair, pictures itself as an adventure.
- [18:26]
Blythey
Yeah.
- [18:27]
Dirk
And it is actually just a series of bullet points for you to fabricate something from. So it just gives you the material for you to work for. But there you go.
- [18:37]
Blythey
But has nothing to do with the fall of the Labour government and the emergence of Thatcherism. Had to draw any conclusions there.
- [18:44]
Dirk
Let us say that that was the dawn of Thatcherism. Travelers still in the charts. Is there a sense of continuity? I will leave that hanging in the air.
- [18:54]
Blythey
There you go. What do those games tell us about politics in Britain? Nothing at all.
- [18:59]
Dirk
Do you do my old. Okay. From one pointless exercise to another. Let us have a go at Stay play giveaway. This is a Segment that we've only done once before where we look at items off our shelf. It's a bit of spring cleaning. We're going to determine which items on our shelf we think we should keep because they might have some relevance in the future and we want to have them to refer to. Or which one have we got a burning ambition to play? It's on our shelf, but we haven't played it. And the other one would we quite happily give away now? We got complaints last time, Blythey.
- [19:43]
Blythey
Did we complaint?
- [19:45]
Dirk
I think it's because we didn't give a full commitment to actually give anything away.
- [19:49]
Blythey
Oh, you mean we have to actually give it away?
- [19:52]
Dirk
I. I have difficulty giving. I have. I have difficulty clearing up. I mean, I can barely exist in this room. There's no air left in it because there's so much stuff in it.
- [20:03]
Blythey
Yeah, it's difficult to give things away. I have a number of things lined up that I keep thinking I need to put these things on ebay or get rid of them in some way. But at the same time I look at them and think, but you never know, dear, you never know. And then occasionally I look at them and think, maybe I should run that again. Didn't quite work the first time around it, but maybe that's me. Maybe I should do it again. And then you think, if I got rid of them, I couldn't think that, could I? I couldn't have. That's not an option anymore, is it? Because they've gone. We made that mistake before, haven't we, in our youth. Yeah. So than me, you know. Yeah, I got rid of some stuff. You got rid of more stuff than me, but I still kept some. But even things that I regret getting rid of. So, yeah, yeah, I've done it twice.
- [20:47]
Dirk
Before, really, because, you know, everything mysteriously vanished when I left home. My mum got rid of it. And the other part of it was when we started playing a little bit of DND back in the early noughties with Kevin. I started to restore some of the collection then. And then when we stopped playing after a couple of years, got rid of it again. And then, yeah, I'm building up this. It's like a hoarding instinct.
- [21:16]
Blythey
Giveaway. Giveaway is difficult.
- [21:19]
Dirk
It is. It is difficult. And start of this year I proposed 365 day giveaway and I thought, I need to get rid of some of these books I've in here because I just can't move. And so I was going to give away something every day, just post it to the people so that they could get the pleasure of it. Well, I, I soon stopped because I got rid of some books and then I listened to a podcast and thought, oh, I've got a copy of that. Oh no, I haven't, I've given it away.
- [21:46]
Blythey
Yeah. So it's all right having these plans, but then you've. You've got to do it, haven't you? You've got. Then you realize the full horror of what you're doing. Giving stuff away. We've all done that. I've done that. Yeah. The thing where you've given it away or sold it, got rid of it and you can't quite remember getting rid of it. So you convince yourself it's somewhere. It must be somewhere. I've got. I don't think I got rid of that. I don't think I gave that away. And you like turn the house upside down and then it finally dawns on you, oh yeah, I think I did give it away. So yes, I agree with you. I'm not really one. It's a theoretical giveaway, isn't it everyone? The theoretical giveaway.
- [22:31]
Dirk
Does that take a little bit of a shine off the farmer? I think we should at least give some sense of commitment.
- [22:38]
Blythey
But let's. Let's see how we get. Let's see here we get.
- [22:41]
Dirk
So stay. Play giveaway. So what is going to stay on your shelf of the besteries? Well, but before we do that, what makes a good bestiary? Because we have covered bestiaries before, we looked at the Monster Minor, we've looked at some of the games that we play and some of the besteries. I suppose this is an opportunity to think of why it is. What makes them special. Why do you. Why do they have an enduring appeal?
- [23:08]
Blythey
Well, I think they have an enduring appeal because they often just lie at the heart of. They like the heart of most games, don't they? So monsters, creatures, things, beings, aliens. They do like the heart of most role playing games, don't they? Unless it's a role playing game which clearly doesn't have things like that in. So it's, you know, gangbusters, for example, clearly doesn't. Doesn't have monsters in it. But most games do have something like a vestry at the heart of them, don't they? It's hard, is. It's hard. It's a short list of role playing games that don't have monsters, isn't it? It's a short list, isn't it? Yeah, much shorter than the list of games that do have monsters. So they're quite central to most role playing games, whether they're fantasy monsters in a traditional kind of fantasy setting, science fiction, aliens kind of things. And I must admit, I always find a game that doesn't have many monsters disappointing.
- [24:14]
Dirk
Yeah.
- [24:15]
Blythey
Yeah. So for example, for example, Mark Borg, people like Mark Borg and Mark Bog is interesting because it has this thing with goblins, doesn't it? Where goblins, if you get bitten by a goblin, eventually turn into a goblin. It's like a curse. That's quite good. That's quite a good little twist on a goblin, isn't it, that. But it doesn't have many monsters in. In the rulebook. Don't have many monsters. It's somehow a bit all right, but I could do. I know people say make your own up, but it's not quite the same, is it? It's nice to be presented with a. A fairly extensive list of monsters, isn't it? I think that's one of the. That's one of the keys to. Keys to the game is a. Is a good. A good kind of extensive list of monsters that. That is quite crucial, I think, in any.
- [25:02]
Dirk
Yeah, I think it conveys something about the setting as well, doesn't it? So what you encounter in the worlds that you are adventuring in says something about the place as well. When I want to understand the game, and I've said this before, it's the first place I go to really is the best way. So I can get a feel of what is it that you do here. Because very often it's the best tree or the monsters or the creatures that you encounter, that is what you do in the world. So they're. They're the antagonist to the protagonists of play characters. So as a gm, that's the bit that you're going to have to get your head round and know how the world works and you do it through the. The people who inhabit it.
- [25:53]
Blythey
And also if you, if you buy a game where the bestry is. Is it best? Is it best? Is it. Is that how you pronounce it? I think. Is it best?
- [26:03]
Dirk
I think we used to call it a beast.
- [26:05]
Blythey
We used to. Yeah.
- [26:07]
Dirk
And the thing is, is that before we had a podcast, who cared?
- [26:11]
Blythey
No one cared. No one could correct us. People will be writing in right as we speak. Vestry. Vestry. That's not how you pronounce it. Why you speak to King's English. Oh, sorry. Monster book. Call it that. It's called monster book. Monster book. If you, if ever you buy A game that doesn't that that has a supplement, an extended supplement of monsters as a separate book. I always find that's the one thing I always go for. So if you buy a game where like with Traveller, for example, when I started buying all the Mongoose Traveler stuff, the one of the first things I bought was the Aliens of Charged Space, volumes one and two, which not quite a monster book, but it gives you the. The alien races which are kind of important in travel, they're important in a sci fi game and they were when I bought the core rules. I think the next one I bought might have been volume one or volume and volume two of the Aliens of Charge Space because I thought you need to know about the Varga and the Aslam and the Droid and all that. That's. It's important, isn't it, in the game because aliens are important in sci fi. You do want an extensive Bestre Bistri monster book and we might come on to this later because it's a, it's an interesting topic. I think you want the monsters to be interesting as well. That's a big part of it. I think you want the monsters to be interesting monsters rather than just a load of arc type things with hit dice and swords that are just essentially just over just a lot of people, but they've got green skin or whatever. You want things to be interesting. That's another key component.
- [27:53]
Dirk
When we look back at when we looked at monster manual and that was a long time ago now, eight years ago, as part of the podcast look at D and D. And that is just like a listings book, isn't it? It's just a list of monsters and you get really relatively little information about it.
- [28:11]
Blythey
Yeah.
- [28:11]
Dirk
And I think we made the comment before that variations on the same thing are not necessarily that interesting. So we said that we made the point, didn't we? That when it gets to the point where everything's a giant weasel or giant.
- [28:28]
Blythey
Yeah, yeah. Even the giant fire, giant ice, giant mountain giant giants with clubs. I mean essentially just giants, aren't they? You know, it doesn't make them that much more interesting as.
- [28:39]
Dirk
As it's presented there. And I think when we look at some of these vestries, that's what people have built on, isn't it? That over the time that they've realized it's not enough just to do a listing. If you look at the fanzines back in the 1970s, 1980s, they were replicating, even White Dwarf, they were replicating the idea of listing the way that and you could look at a troll pack and look at some of the fanzines that looked at the ecology of monsters. And White Dwarf as well, started to look at monsters as more of how they threaded into the world and became. Had a bit more to them than just a straightforward listing of what they did or the attribute.
- [29:27]
Blythey
Yeah. And I suppose, I mean I might be wrong in this, but it feels to me that RuneQuest really was the first role playing game to really do that, to make monsters kind of integral to the world and also make monsters not necessarily evil, just. They're just different. I mean chaos, I suppose in Runequest is evil. So your jacko bears and things like that, you could argue they're evil, but things like Morakanth and trolls and dragon nukes, where they weren't evil, they were just different. They just lived differently and had a different culture. And that I suppose that is quite a revolutionary thing in role playing that RuneQuest really brought that I'm prepared to concede. Maybe other games did as well. I'm sure all the games people main mainstream kind of games that.
- [30:13]
Dirk
But maybe it's because it was two things. It was built on two things, wasn't it? Like all the world's monsters, which was Steve Perrin's supplement, but also the Sea Caves, which is a supplement that we've talked about in the past that said, you know, remember the monsters get experience rules too. And I always think that that is very telling about RuneQuest, that actually they're living in this world as much as the player characters and they've got a life beyond when they appear on the camera lens, you know, they change and do things off screen and it gives that indication also. I think Borderlands is the first time I read anything. And that supplement for Runequest where it talks about the tactics of the monsters when you encountered them, how they would respond to being attacked, what the general use of weapons were.
- [31:13]
Blythey
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [31:15]
Dirk
Which is very familiar now. Oh no, they sat in our chairs. So let's have a look at what we're going to put first up for a stair. What's staying on your bookshelf?
- [31:30]
Blythey
Staying on my bookshelf. It has to stay on my bookshelf. Is the Milleus Monstrorum, The Cthulhu Bestri, Volume 1, Monsters of the Mythos. There are two out there deities, but there is a monsters book and that it's got to stay. I can never imagine getting rid of a book like this because. So we like about Cthulhu, it is a game you go back to Isn't it? Yeah. It's a game you go back to. We're not. We're not. You. You remarked on this the other week. It says it's a long time. We're not playing any Cthulhu at the moment, are we? And it's been a long time since that's been the case. We've always had some Cthulhu going on in the. In the background somewhere, haven't we? And. And I do think it is. It is a fantastic. The monsters in Cthulhu are great. They're just great monsters. Weird, they're alien, they're frightening. They're still frightened players. You know, it's one of the few games where people can be kind of played it for a long time on and off as we have, but once you start to throw some of the monsters in, people are still frightened of them because of the things they can do to you and the effect they can have on your mind. So it's a. It's a fantastic. And it's. It's a great book because it just collects everything together, gives you all the background of everything and again, like you said, talks about. I mean, it's. It's probably not right to say that some of these monsters have a life beyond beyond, that they have a life anywhere in some other dimension. But it does give you that sense that all these creatures fit in somewhere and they kind of have their own motives and they're doing their own things. It. It has to stay. It has to stay. Cuz you know you'll come back to it. I know I'll come back to Cthulhu. There's nothing surer. Look at all the games on my shelf. It's the one game I know I will be playing again at some point.
- [33:33]
Dirk
And he's got that quality, hasn't it? The Malice Mon. Monstrovian Malice. Monstronian pronunciations.
- [33:40]
Blythey
Well, I'm picking things I can't pronounce. Should have picked Monster Manual. Monster Manual instead. Stick to Monster. My Monster Manual, Yeah.
- [33:50]
Dirk
It has got the other quality that's essential to Bestris, is that you can dip into it and if you go into there, you can start to look at some of the features of some of the encounters and they develop scenarios and it's a while since I've had a look at it. But does it expressly give you scenario hooks? But some of them do, don't they?
- [34:15]
Blythey
It doesn't. Not as such, but it does indirectly. It does. Because as you said, there's. There's so much information in there that inevitably, when you read them, ideas kind of spring forth. So it's the complete opposite of the kind of monster book that just gives you a load of stats so that players can hit things until they start moving sort of thing. It doesn't. Not like that it gives you the stats, obviously, but it gives you their ability, the background, the history of these monsters and that kind of thing. So whilst it doesn't give direct scenario hooks, it sort of does because there's that much information in. It's kind of inevitable that, you know. And at the back it also has, like. More. It has the kind of traditional monsters as well as a mummy in and things like, you know, it's really, really good book. Great book and a book you can never really be without. I don't think if you're going to play Cthulhu, it's. It's the one supplement you've got to get, I think really not going anywhere, that one.
- [35:28]
Dirk
My nomination for staying is out of the Shadows, which is book four of Dragon Warriors. When we talked about Dragon Warriors, I think I remember saying at the time that the whole appeal of Dragon warriors was in essence the best trick. And it's fairly simple mechanically.
- [35:50]
Blythey
But what the.
- [35:53]
Dirk
This book does is give you a short narrative about each of the monsters that exist in the world of legend. It has that legendary quality because that is the thing that I love about monsters. I think that's the thing that I. I haven't lost the thrill I get from encountering monsters and reading about them. When I think of how I got into the Hobbit, it was via the monsters. And I think what it does really well in here is that sense of ontology that these creatures exist and the edge of your imagination. And when they're explained here, it's like they've always been there as part of your own personal mythology.
- [36:48]
Blythey
You're right. That is the thing. When you go way back to us going into Boydell's toys and seeing the Citadel miniatures, the thing that drew us in was the miniatures of monsters, wasn't it? Some of them, obviously familiar monsters and then other things that were a bit puzzling and a bit strange. But that was the kind of initial lure, wasn't it, that you had these miniatures of monsters and things like, you know, skeletons like this and the Argonauts or a dragon or a troll or something like that that kind of lures you into. Lures into playing the games, really. That was the kind of spark, wasn't it, that got us into them?
- [37:28]
Dirk
I've been doing my own homebrew games of setting Rash, which is the world I created for a postal game that we played. And as part of it, I've been creating monsters. But what I've realized is that, in essence, what I've gone back to is how they're presented here in the Dragon warriors book. The way that they describe they are in blocks of text. So it's unlike modern approaches where they tend to be in bullet points or give you just a quick summary, quick burst of the features of the monster in this. It is something that you have to read because it's a story about how they exist, where they're likely to be encountered, how they manifest some of the features of them, but they're not expressed mechanically. It is done very prosaically. And as I say, I keep coming back to it.
- [38:35]
Blythey
I keep.
- [38:35]
Dirk
Keep looking at it, because there's a certain magic to Dragon Warriors. What's the best tree that you want to play?
- [38:43]
Blythey
Well, the best three that I want to play is, again, don't know how you pronounce it. I pronounce it Vasin. Is it Vaesen, Va'sen. Tomato. Tomato. But Veson, the monster section in Veson, which is one. It's one of my favorite games, and one of the reasons it's one of my favorite games is because I think the monsters in it are great. And I suppose it's unusual in that the monsters in it are drawn from Scandinavian myths. So they're not. It's quite different from Cthulhu in that the Cthulhu monsters are the imaginings of crazy people. I mean, they're kind of crazy monsters, aren't they? You know, but verse and that are not. Pedestrian is the wrong word. But they're kind of drawn from myth, so they're all relatively familiar. There are one or two that are unfamiliar, but I suppose if you were Scandinavian, they wouldn't be unfamiliar. They're only unfamiliar because I'm not Scandinavian. But they're all drawn from myth. But what I like about it and love about it is the fact they're all. So I suppose it's a bit like dragon. Like you've said about dragon warriors, what's good about it is they're also well drawn and well presented and well thought through in terms of the motives what. What these monsters want, why they're, you know, why they're aggressive towards humans and how to defeat them in. In ways other than just straightforward combat. It's not quite a case of combat. It's about, you know, Tricking them or you know, doing, doing a particular thing. Getting certain materials, a ring of salt or an iron horseshoe or something like that or luring them into a, a balm and that those kind of things that they're not necessarily straight. It's not a question of just going shooting it or hitting it with a sword so it's not moving. It's not a case of that. They're very well drawn monsters, very atmospheric because each, you get the feeling in the robot that each monster has been thought about a lot by the designers and they've thought about the monster's kind of traditional history and myth and how that monster will fit into the world. And you come back to that idea that I talked about earlier with Room Quest. The monsters are not all necessarily bad. Sometimes the monsters are the people who've upset the monster and your job is to kind of find some kind of negotiation between the human world and the supernatural world. That's what I kind of really enjoy about it is that it's, it's. Well, it's. Well, it's really well considered set of monsters.
- [41:36]
Dirk
I've played, I've played vast base more than I, I'm not actually, I've not actually games mastered it. So it's a new. It's unusual in that regard because I have a different relationship to it perhaps than you do because my experience of it is playing. What I find engaging about the game is that you have to have this role of mediating between the supernatural and the natural world and trying to reconcile the differences between the two. And as you say, it's not always just a case of defeating them or overcoming them with physically. It is sometimes just changing the behavior of the people that you're having to deal with.
- [42:24]
Blythey
Yeah.
- [42:25]
Dirk
I think the other element to it and this is what freely do really well when I come to looking at my player game is just illustrations of them themselves. Just.
- [42:36]
Blythey
Yeah, yeah. It's a beautiful book with great illustration and that, that's, that is an interesting thing about a vestry as well, isn't it? That the illustrations are quite important because. Yeah. Often you, you don't know what these things look like. Even, even if you say it's a goblin, you goblin. What A goblin. Oh, everyone knows what goblin looks like. Do they really? Everybody got a different idea, haven't they? So even the most mundane monsters, having an illustration and having a good illustration, quite, quite important, isn't it? Yeah. And as you say inversion. They're all, all illustrated very, very well. Beautiful illustrations that bring them to Life on the page.
- [43:14]
Dirk
Yeah, I agree with you that we need to play more version. Whenever it appears in a convention game, I want to play it. And so it is a game I enjoy playing. As I say, I never, I've never run it, but I've also never run another Free League game, which during lockdown I bought a lot of, which is forbid, which is their post apocalyptic fantasy world. Very much based on OSR exploration, hex crawling and discovering rediscovering a world that has been through a certain trauma. And the Book of Beasts that was produced a couple of years ago is a beautiful book that Forbidden Land books, kind of faux leather, gold inlaid and the, the way that the monsters are presented. And they've got a consistency of art. They're all drawn by Henrik Rosenberg in a kind of pencil effect. You can spend hours in this book.
- [44:22]
Blythey
Why they.
- [44:24]
Dirk
Don'T buy that. Don't buy the game, just buy this book. You'll spend hours on it. And sometimes it's about how monsters are presented and in this kind of standard approach to how they're done, there's like an excerpt of how people think about them in the world. So if you get something as mundane as a giant spider and it's how people feel about it in the world, it also has tables as some charts that you can roll against to see what the lore is or what rumors do you as adventurers know about these creatures. And so that's a games master's bit of knowledge. So you've got some tantalizing ideas who they are. But the great thing about it and the thing that they've adopted from Alien, the Alien game they've done is that they have a random attack. So they have multiple ways of attacking adventurers. And you roll on a dice. And some, some of them are just like incredible.
- [45:40]
Blythey
Yeah, you know, I do, I do like that. I know Alien does that. And I do like that idea that you roll on a table because it ramps up the tension of the fight kind of considerably, doesn't it? Because the players know that the games master can't go easy on them. That dragon that's got breath attack. You roll the wrong number. That's what you're getting if you like it or not. And I do like that. I like it because it takes a bit of the moral responsibility off the games master, doesn't it? Because there's always that moral responsibility when the players are in a fight with a monster and you, you think it's a game. This monster's not too tough. It's not too difficult, they'll be fine. And then the monster rolls really well. The players roll really badly. And before you know it, everyone's on just a handful of hit points and you think, oh, this has got a bit. That's gonna be wrong. This is, this is the opening encounter. They're all gonna die. And of course, as a Games Master, you can always go easy on them, can't you? Yeah. Oh, it's gonna use its claw again. Otherwise you're not going to use this beak that does 3d10 damage. No, it's good. It's claw that does d4. But not with that. No. You roll on the table and I'm afraid that's what you get. But it's not my fault. To court the quarter match, we know from Liverpool, it's the dice that killed you, not the Games master.
- [47:03]
Dirk
I think 50 years on from D and D, we need ways of making the familiar seem unfamiliar. And I think that's what by giving these random attacks. It's got a bit of excitement, a bit of unpredictability, as you say. It takes some of the, some of the moral responsibility off the Games Master, but it also makes it fun for the Games Master because you don't know.
- [47:30]
Blythey
No, you don't know what the monster's gonna do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's almost like a game within the game for the Games Master. There isn't. Yeah, yeah.
- [47:41]
Dirk
It's quite, quite exciting or what, what they're going to do. Oh, it's gonna, it's gonna spew out zombies in this creature. Yeah.
- [47:48]
Blythey
And I suppose what, what both Forbidden Lands and Basin do, it's a bit like you say about the law and the rumors about a monster is they give, they give a certain significance to a monster as well. They give it a certain gravitas and a bit of weight. Because one of the problems with role playing games sometimes is I can remember playing a game expo, obviously Duff Games at Expo. Isn't it of 13th age, which I didn't particularly care for. But that side, it was like a load of monsters. It was a load of lizard men, then some frogmen, then a giant slug, then this, then that. It just felt like going through the motions of just slaughtering monsters and fighting monsters and none of these monsters really felt like they had any real meaning in the world. Whereas I think what Versen does and what better lands was, it gives. Gives the monsters like some. Some relevance in the world. It gives them a bit of weight and a bit of meaning. Yeah. Whereas in Some games you just end up. They're just things to fight. They just stuff things to fight. Oh, you're ambushed by some. Remember this game? We were ambushed by some frogmen.
- [48:59]
Dirk
Scuba divers.
- [49:00]
Blythey
Yeah, not scuba divers. That'd be quite interesting. It wasn't as interesting as that. Time traveling police, frog men. What are you doing here? It wasn't that, it was. It was hybrid men, frog creatures with googly eyes, you know, those kind of things. But it just. But it just felt like was you just ambushed by these creatures and you just had a big fight. Could have been ambushed by anything, it didn't really matter. Whereas I think Forbidden Lands and Basin, what they do is they just make those. They give the games master something and they play something where those monsters are important. They're important things, unusual things, scary things or relevant in some way. And I think that is quite crucial to any good game when it comes to monsters.
- [49:47]
Dirk
So what are you going to give away?
- [49:49]
Blythey
And it's just quite telling. This. This is almost like therapy. This goes right back to the first new game I ever bought, Numenera. And I remember being completely entranced by Numenera. And I still am. I still think it's a good. I still think it's a good game and I think maybe the reason I'm going to give it away is perhaps more to do with me in the game. I don't know. We'll see, won't we? Mostly on the surf on the face of it, the best, the monsters in that core rule book and some of the subsequent rule books, there's a sub supplement. They're all weird and unusual and there's a lavish illustration of each one. Well done, Brilliant, you know, full of imagination. But what I realized, the more I ran Numenera, the more I realized I didn't know what to do with these monsters. I didn't know what to do with them because they were all so weird or unusual. I used to sit there and think, flicking through all these monsters, thinking, you know, I was running a scenario for a convention or I think Wednesday Cub played me Monera a little bit for a while. And I remember flicking through all these monsters thinking, nah, red one. Oh, this one looks good. No, this one. Where this one? Oh no, how about this one? Because they're all so weird that you think I know what. Just don't know how to use them meaningfully in the game.
- [51:21]
Dirk
When we talked about Numenaria, we discussed this a little bit, didn't we? That if you've not got a frame of reference of what this, the, the creatures or the, the entities that you encounter in are. It's very difficult to visualize. When it's difficult to visualize, you're already on a back foot as a gm.
- [51:41]
Blythey
Initially it wasn't a problem, but the more I ran it, the more of a problem it became. Because I think when I ran it initially, you'd, you'd, you'd flip through the monsters and you'd dismiss lots of them and then you'd find a couple and think, all right, okay. Yeah, that's okay. But then eventually you thought it was like diminishing returns. You, you'd be looking through it more and more and more and thinking, there's less and less and less of them I can use. Really. You know, I just don't know what said to know what to do with them because they're so weird. They do weird things. And again, it's kind of odd because when you read it, you read all these weird things that they can do and think, oh, this is great.
- [52:16]
Dirk
This is great.
- [52:17]
Blythey
This is different from other games, isn't it? But eventually you thought, I don't know. But there's one, there's one that's like a giant with this big domed head with a population living inside it. And you think, don't you think, oh, that sounds really interesting. Bloody hell am I supposed to do with that? I don't know. Is that an adventure in its head? I don't know. Sometimes I just scratch my head over these things and in a way just kind of gave up on it. I think I have given up on it because we've not played it for a long time.
- [52:52]
Dirk
We can expect to give that away. My giveaway, you've already mentioned it is 13th age. Yeah, best rate. 30 days is a game that I've ended up with a lot of stuff because if you go to conventions, you end up accumulating quite a bit of pell grain stuff because of the offers that they have if you have a multi buy. So you find that your library is filled with it. And 13 days has always captured my attention because I like the idea of it more than actually playing it. So I've played in a few games and I've run 13th age gloantha a couple of times and I find it okay. But as a system for me, it's not for me in the sense that it's quite a lot of mental arithmetic and I'm. The numbers are really big, aren't they?
- [53:51]
Blythey
I never understood. I. I've never understood it. As a game, I dislike it quite a lot. I don't as you know this, this is why he probably brought it up to gored me into saying why I dislike it. But I've never, never quite understood it where one of the arguments, and I'm not saying this is necessarily an argument from, from the people who designed it, but one of the arguments I've heard used is you get, get these monsters. You get a character with these characters got 100 hit points and the monster's got 100 hit points. And everyone goes, all right, great. And then, but then people are rolling 8 8d8 damage or 10d12 damage. And people say, well that's so the fight's over quicker. You see, it's to get rid of the DND grind. And I just thought, well, why don't I just lower the hit points of everything? It's my least favorite fantasy game. I just, I've played it a couple of times and, and it's been. I suppose it's been okay, not been terrible, terrible. But I've always thought as a system it just seems like a bit, a bit daft. I don't, I don't see the, the benefit of the system. Don't see the benefit of ramping everything up so much. You know, when we played it once you were a barbarian, I think you did 10d10 damage to something. So the fight was over relatively quick. But you just think, well, you want to get rid of the grind of D and D, play something else or just lower everyone's hit points.
- [55:11]
Dirk
It's due to have a second edition. What I think we with 13th Edge, my experience of it is that it's full, it's ram packed with really good inventive ideas, but it doesn't cohere into a satisfying whole. And I think the best is a good exemplar of that because on the face of it, it's actually very good because it presents D and D monsters in a very inventive way. So if you take something like a Bule the Land Shark, which I quite enjoy, there's lots of adventure hooks that it provides to tell you how they may you might encounter them. They also have a number of variations of familiar monsters, so they actually give them a different appearance so they're not as mundane. So Cobalt, for example, it plays around with the idea of, you know, in some manifestations a kobold might have draconic in nature. In others there might be dogs, dog face in nature. Maybe you have a mixture of the two. How do those different factions deal with it. So it feels like a brainstorm of people throwing down ideas that are really incredible. But it comes back to what we were saying about the Kinoneer the Traveler supplement. It is just a load of ideas that you have to kind of scratch your head and work your way through. So it, it feels like a lot, a lot of effort compared with something like Forbidden Lands where at a glance you can quickly make an assessment. Okay, yeah, as a games master, I'm going to use this an inventive way. And also it doesn't have the quality of Dragon warriors because here it presents a hag and the hags are very perfunctory and mechanical and whereas in Dragon warriors they instilled by the way that they're written about.
- [57:20]
Blythey
And I think that's, that that's part of my dislike of it is a game that it feels a bit function. It feels a bit like that generally it's quite. I know all games are mechanical. I know they're all mechanical and I know you could say D and D, you could say like you know, old school Essentials is mechanical in that sense. But I don't know with 1330 always it just comes across as a bit of a cold game where it might have ideas in it but they are presented and it play when I've played it and I'm going to play it twice. So you know, I could be wrong but when I've played it it just felt like going through the motions of rolling lots of dice, doing lots of damage.
- [58:02]
Dirk
For people who like a lot of game in the game, I can understand how it fulfills that. I also like the sense of wonder and I think that that's what's been.
- [58:16]
Blythey
Extracted a little bit. Yeah, I think that's, it's kind of interesting that, that your. Your issue with the best. It does kind of lead into my issue with the game generally and the way it kind of played when I've, when I've played it that it just feels a bit like it's had all the wonder sucked out of it. Yes. Somewhere. And I know, I know. I mean I like, I like gaming me game. I know there are other games that are very gamey. There's some, some games that. Very gamey that, that I like. I mean dcc, which I love, it's very, it's very gamey because you're rolling on tables and stuff. But DCCs got a certain charm and a certain wonder and a certain something about it for me, which I thought at 13th age just just didn't. It just felt like a really cold dice game. I suppose that's kind of interesting, what you say about the best, because I've. Obviously I've. I've only played it. I've never actually read the Best Trip. But it's interesting that you. What you're saying about that does connect to my general sense of it as a player.
- [59:24]
Dirk
It's a made for TV game.
- [59:28]
Blythey
Whereas the.
- [59:31]
Dirk
There's something about dragon warriors and forbidden lands that has got a touch of the otter about it. A certain consistency of style and a sense of wonder when you encounter the monsters. And despite the number of ideas that it got, it somehow doesn't capture the imagination in the same way. There are some wonderful ideas and I.
- [59:54]
Blythey
Suppose that that's true as well of Numenera that is similar to my issue in Numenera and that that has lots and lots of ideas, but somehow they don't connect in the same way. So you could argue Veson has far less ideas in it in that the monsters are quite traditional monsters. So there's. You could argue there's no surprises in there. But at the same time, like you said, there's a sense of mystery about them and a sense of. It fires up your imagination more. Whereas in Numenera, when I first encountered the game, it sortified my imagination up, but then almost burnt my imagination out because he didn't know what to do with these monsters, didn't know what to do with some teleporting robot, teapot, whatever, that doesn't know what it's doing anymore because it's from a pre. You know, there's this kind of stuff where you think, what do I do with that? And I suppose it's similar to 13th edge in that. Yeah, it feels somehow lots of ideas, but disconnected in some way.
- [60:56]
Dirk
So one of the ideas which is fantastic is that there's a bule bullet.
- [61:04]
Blythey
Land shark, another monster car weapon, another thing we don't know to pronounce. We need to pick things we can pronounce. We can just stop doing this. Why are we doing. Pathologically drawn to things that we can't pronounce.
- [61:23]
Dirk
So a land shark rodeo.
- [61:26]
Blythey
Yeah.
- [61:26]
Dirk
So scenario hook is that the locals have a land shark bullet that they have as a rodeo. So they've got to stay on the back of it.
- [61:37]
Blythey
Yeah.
- [61:37]
Dirk
However, it's got on its underside a map of a dungeon tattooed on it. So this bullet is got something else that the. The players crave. So when they've got this festival of the Bu, they Have into, you know, the rodeo and get. And somehow get hold of the bu. Now, on the one hand you say, what brilliant idea. Yeah, brilliant idea. What I put to you. Well, Blithey, you could replace that idea with a donkey.
- [62:13]
Blythey
Sacred donkey.
- [62:14]
Dirk
A sacred donkey.
- [62:15]
Blythey
Sacred donkey that the villagers wouldn't let you go near because it's a sacred donkey. Exactly the same difference. Say you're the same dilemma.
- [62:23]
Dirk
What is the bullet adding to this stuff?
- [62:26]
Blythey
Yeah, what is that? What is that adding to, you know, is it the danger of the bullet? But you know, you could, you could, you could have a, you could have a bowl, couldn't you? Be quite dangerous, you know, with it tattooed on its underside. It's the same difference here. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So there we go.
- [62:44]
Dirk
That's our stay play giveaway. And there's not enough donkeys in these things. Here's blimey.
- [62:52]
Blythey
Goodbye.
- [62:54]
Dirk
I'll get me caught. And we're heading towards the door. The game is over, but we can't resist a little bit of chatterage. What is the closing time chatter, Blithey?
- [63:09]
Blythey
The Clonestown chapter. Well, this, this, these last. This last week or two, I've turned my attentions back to the Pirates of Drinak because I'm very aware that as we get into August, to the end of August, we'll be soon starting the third and final season of the Pirates of Drinak. So I've got to that point where we. We finished, we finished. I think it was around April, wasn't it, this year? And so I've had a few months away from it and I've got to that point where you get, as you do with these campaigns, where I thought, oh, hang on, I need to like kickstart this up again. I need to fire this up, fire the engines up on this, don't I? And do a little summary of what happened in the last season and start thinking about how we're going to get back into the next season. And also it's the final season as well. So again, the trajectory of it is towards the rise or fall, as the case may be, of the Empire, the Draxian Empire, isn't it? So it's something that started preoccupying my. It preoccupied my mind in a little way where I thought I'd tell you what, I'll just have a think about the first few sessions and there's a nice little adventure in the Drinaxian companion. That's quite a nice one. I thought that'd be a good little lead into the. Then Started thinking, oh man on a minute. What happens after that? And then what happens after that? And then when we get beyond Christmas, it's going to have to kind of be coming towards its conclusion. So it's kind of filled in the last week or so it kind of filled my head with a mild sense of panic because. Because I do think, I do think people have said to me, who run Pirates of Drinks. Oh, you've done it. You've done it over three, three years, you know, three, three seasons. That's my kind of intention because I do think these things can go on too long. I don't think you can keep running it open ended forever because I think it's a danger where it will burn out. The last two seasons of it. There's been a nice momentum building up, hasn't there? And it's got to a point where even though there's lots of stuff in the Pirates of Drina, there's stuff we've not done, the stuff we won't do because you've chosen to go down certain roads. I think you gotta live with that and move it to a kind of conclusion because if you went on for.
- [65:32]
Dirk
Four or five, I think we should push you to a fourth season. Ill advised. Fourth season. Because you've been. Spoiler alert. If you're playing Pouch Drillax, put your hands over your ears now.
- [65:48]
Blythey
Yeah, leave the room. That blow painter, isn't it? When they made a Christmas present for your grandma. Yeah, grandma's. Leave there all the. Or the football results where they always say leave the room, don't they? Before they give the football results. Gives you very little time, very little time to get out of the room. I've noticed these days it's a very tokenistic thing they say and if you're going to watch match today after the news, leave the room now. Then they're giving you the results. You've got like split seconds.
- [66:14]
Dirk
Second.
- [66:15]
Blythey
Split second. Anyway, so at the end of the.
- [66:19]
Dirk
Cliffhanger last time was that we were presented the. The idea that this was all preordained. So this. It's almost like foundation where there's.
- [66:31]
Blythey
Yeah, it's very, it's very. I must admit when I read it, a bit of Pirates Adrenac and then I watched some of foundation on the. What is it? Apple tv. And so. And I thought, oh yeah, okay.
- [66:45]
Dirk
And I suppose June as well. Yeah, June have this idea that actually the conclusion of this is predestined and you as play characters can either confound that predestiny or you can try and make sure that it's fulfilled. And so you. You presented with that dilemma. You can eek that out for.
- [67:08]
Blythey
At least eek that out forever. Well, he might get to a fourth. We'll see, we'll see, we'll see. But that has definitely occupied my thoughts of late because I've started to think, all right, you know, there's. There's a lot going on here and we need to. To sort of get. Get on with. With it. Yeah. I think. I. I don't know. I think this maybe four. But it does feel where we see. I know. I know what's going on. You don't, because you're a player. And at the point we're at now and the things that are going to happen in season three, I think when. When you see what happens, I think you'll start to agree. All right, okay. Now we're getting to crunch point, really, with this. That's the thing. And I don't think it would be much fun if I held off those crunch things until season four. I think it might start to sort of sag a bit, maybe. I think there's a point. There's a good cliffhanger Before Christmas. Be a Christmas surprise for you. That's all I'll say. I'll look forward to that. Yeah. But that's my thoughts at the moment.
- [68:18]
Dirk
Very, very similar. I've been thinking about Battle beyond the Stars, you know, the 1980s.
- [68:26]
Blythey
Oh, yeah.
- [68:26]
Dirk
One film. Roger Coleman. John Boy is the.
- [68:33]
Blythey
That's right. Yeah.
- [68:35]
Dirk
Magnificent.
- [68:36]
Blythey
Can never take it. They would take it seriously because of. Because he was in it. John Boy.
- [68:41]
Dirk
It's a Magnificent Seven or Seven Samurai in space. You know that it's Magnificent Seven because Robert Vaughan essentially plays the same character in Ball. He's in Ball. And clearly they saw that there was a lot of money in Star wars, so this is a Star wars ripper. And a young James Cameron did the effects and. Yeah, a bit on the nose, some of the design of the spaceship, if you want to. I won't.
- [69:14]
Blythey
Yeah, a bit. Yeah.
- [69:15]
Dirk
I won't go into it here, but they wanted a feminine shape for the spaceship because it was controlled by an AI called Nell. And. Yep, they did a feminine shape for the spaceship.
- [69:28]
Blythey
Yes. Maybe not the most appropriate feminine shape.
- [69:31]
Dirk
And I got this idea whilst I was watching it that I think. I think I've got an idea for a sequel. And the idea that Gelt, Robert Vaughn's character, has a lot of treasure and somehow that could be the. The McGuffin that the sequel was looking for. And Sedar, the big baddie who is able to reconstruct himself so he can use body parts from different elements to make sure that he's continues. He's got like a longevity because he's able to replicate. He's got this mad doctor who's able to put the limbs from other alien species and it becomes kind of this hybrid of different things. I got this idea that Robert Vaughn gets killed at the end of battle beyond the pikes. But what if Sedar tried to recover himself by replicating himself as Robert Vaughn? Rolling gels.
- [70:39]
Blythey
Yeah.
- [70:40]
Dirk
So this idea. So I, I did a one shot for Savage Worlds botcon using it. Well, what I'll say is I've run it once and I've got it out to my system by then.
- [70:54]
Blythey
Yeah, yeah. As you do. As we do with these things. That's what we need to do, isn't it? You know, we're not the kind of people who run something seven times. We don't, are we? We're not the kind of people who say, ah, there's a convention next, next November. I think I might dig out the old Battle Beyond Stars Savage World scenario that I've run 17 times. That is never going to happen with us, is it?
- [71:21]
Dirk
No.
- [71:21]
Blythey
Three. Three times. Three strikes and you're out maximum for anything.
- [71:26]
Dirk
I went, I went into that thinking, I'm gonna play this with a straight back. I'm gonna play with straight back. The idea because it, it's pretty risible the whole setup of this. You know, a cowboy with a whisky and soda belt. But I'm not gonna play into that. I'm gonna try and play it straight lace, as though it's Star wars or something. Within minutes I was taking the mickey out of the whole set.
- [71:51]
Blythey
Possible. I'm surprised you tried to play that sprite. Oh yeah, I couldn't.
- [71:59]
Dirk
Yeah. And the players really went for that kind of artificiality of it.
- [72:05]
Blythey
Yeah.
- [72:06]
Dirk
You're in, you're in a cave, but the floor is incredibly flat and black.
- [72:15]
Blythey
There you go. Sci fi is the order of the day in it, you know.
- [72:19]
Dirk
Sci fi is the order of the day. And I'm going to make an admission now. We're amongst friends.
- [72:25]
Blythey
You're amongst a friend.
- [72:26]
Dirk
Yeah, that's true. And nobody's listening to this.
- [72:29]
Blythey
No one's listening to this.
- [72:31]
Dirk
I, I very proudly displayed the characters that I made for Savage Worlds Battle beyond the Stars and showed them on. Formerly known as. Showed them on. Formerly known as. Shown them on the discord of How I'd managed to very carefully recreate the characters of the Nastar the Cowboy, Shad the Valkyrie and Caiman the Lizard. And you know, people gave me likes, you know, that self validation. Forgive me blithely, for I have sinned because I created all of those using chat gtp.
- [73:13]
Blythey
AI. AI generated pre. Generated characters.
- [73:17]
Dirk
Yeah, it's incredible. It's amazing. If you put in an instruction that says create me a Savage Worlds Adventure Edition character of the cowboy from Battle beyond the Stars, it will do it.
- [73:33]
Blythey
It will do it.
- [73:34]
Dirk
If it's not quite what you want, you can say to it. Okay, make sure that you've got the whiskey and soda belt created. Shad, you've not recognized that he's part of a. One of his hindrances is that he's a pathetist and doesn't like violence and you can refine it in that way. I know that there's a lot of people who have a downer on Chad GTP and, and generative AI, but I have finally found the use of it.
- [74:06]
Blythey
It's the one use. It's. Don't worry, it's not going to launch the missiles in a Skynet style fashion and wipe out humanity. But if it does, if it does at some point in the future at least in the meantime, it makes generating savage worlds pregens easier. Or maybe any. Any pre genesia.
- [74:26]
Dirk
Yeah, I could have spent hours doing that.
- [74:28]
Blythey
I didn't. Yeah. So even though humanity's time may be shorter on Earth because of AI, at least some of that time's not spent wasted tediously generating prens for gaming conventions. It's not all bad, is it? Not all bad. People knock AI. Well, I. I don't know. Yeah, I welcome our AI overlord.
- [74:51]
Dirk
And I got loads of likes and I passed it off as me.
- [74:54]
Blythey
Oh, there you go, you see. Yeah, that's the modern world. You know, get the AI to do the work, get loads of likes and. Yeah, what's wrong with that? It's not going to put anyone out at work, is it? Can't see a problem. These Luddites, what do they know? Yeah.
- [75:11]
Dirk
All I'd say by these don't tell anybody about it.
- [75:14]
Blythey
No, I won't tell anybody. I think. I wouldn't worry because I think at this probably now peep. Do you think most people stop listening? We bored them with all the bestry stuff. I probably annoyed them because we kept saying bestry when it's best to the point where no, no one's listening to this. But you'll be fine. You'll be absolutely fine. They're not listening or they just zub through it to see whether they're going to get a patron's going to get a poof or whatever or something off a random table that wouldn't worry, I think be fine. No one will know. The secret SA for me is Blindy. Cheers.
- [75:49]
Dirk
There isn't another bit.
- [75:51]
Dirk the Dice
We've got more of this Bobbins next time with our guest James Holloway. If you're interested in the role of RPG monsters in gaming, you really must listen to the Monster man podcast. It's interesting, illuminating and useful. There's no Grog Meet in Manchester this year, as our normal weekend in November 2024 four clashes with the MTV Awards in Manchester. Taylor Swift's entourage has requested to move our event so that it leaves some hotel spaces for them. Instead, it will be held face to face in January. See the grognard files.com for details. However, I want my RPG.
- [76:41]
Dirk
So we're.
- [76:42]
Dirk the Dice
Running an event online on the 8th to the 10th of November, and Grog Meet ish has all the fun of grog meat, but online instead. Thank you for listening to another round of this Bobbins. Please pass it on if you think someone else might like it. Thanks to all of the patrons who've supported us in the past and in the present. It's really appreciated. Next time I'll hand out some virtual monster stuff, but until then, adios amigos.
- [77:34]
Dirk
SA Sam.