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- [00:00]
A
Have you seen me dice bag?
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B
The Grognard Files
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A
hello, my name is
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C
Dirt the Dice and this is the Grognard Files podcast where we talk bobbins about tabletop RPGs from back in the day. And today I'm coming live from my den here in the heart of the northwest of England and I'm completely and utterly surrounded by my stuff. A few weeks ago it was UK Games Expo, the largest UK tabletop games convention, and this year it was bigger than ever. Me and resident rules lawyer Judge Blythey took a trip down to Birmingham to cover the complete weekend. And in this episode we relate some of the tales to give you a bit of a flavour of the games that we played, our tour of the Trade hall and some of the thoughts and discussions that we had with people that we met along the way. Like last year, part of the experience was done in conjunction with Shadowcon. These were games that were held off site in a secret location, an obscure outward bound Airbnb detention centre hidden on a dual carriageway somewhere in Birmingham. That event was organised by Steve from All Anthraxis Gaming Vexes podcast and I've recently appeared on a panel where we discussed settings that were difficult to play. You know, the ones where despite your best efforts, you can't quite bring yourself to be a games master for them because they're too humorous, too fascist, too violent, too soon. I find it a really compelling and interesting discussion that helped me to work my way through some of the games that I find difficult to games master and play. One of the topics that we discussed was the nature of irony. It's a preconditional drama, but hard to achieve in a tabletop roleplaying game. It's not authored. The events in the game are like an unfolding present where the players have agency in the moment and how can you create objects objective distance so that there's another layer of understanding of what's really going on in the scenario. As you know, in this podcast we like to explore different games and how they interact with popular culture and other experiences. I was therefore delighted to get chance to speak to Lawrence Phillips of Hardy Roach Games to talk about his game called Phantasma del Gallo, the Phantom of the Yellow, a role playing game inspired by the giallo film genre. These are Italian pulp thrillers which originated from the yellow colours of the mystery paperback books. Then they became a popular film genre during the early 1960s and reached a commercial peak in the 1970s with examples from directors like Mario Bava and Dario Argento.
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I fell down a rabbit hole of
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watching these films and being captivated by them back in the 90s and early 2000s. I think I like the idea of them more than the actual films themselves with their lurid colours, weird plots, mysterious characters, vivid horror and brilliant posters which have influenced many films that have followed. Lawrence has tried to capture the essence of these films and other related fiction and tried to put them in within a gaming context in a manner that tries to have that ironic distance that I didn't think was possible in role playing games. Anyway, listen to the interview and you'll find out more.
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A
I always worry a little bit with
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C
these podcasts where we give reports from conventions. It's a bit like us inviting you around to our house to see a slideshow of our all inclusive trip to Madeira. I'm sure you'll forgive us a bit of indulgence. Make yourself a brew, keep hydrated, have a hobnob, press the pause button now and again and I'll be back at the end with some parish notices. Until then, ramblers, let's get rambling.
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A
Open Box. Welcome to Open Box. The zoom of role playing rambling and I have game designer and the publisher, Hardy Roach Games, Lawrence Phillips.
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B
Hello there Lawrence.
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D
Hello there.
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A
You're based in the uk, aren't you?
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D
Yes indeed. I'm from sunny Hammersmith in London. I mean originally from the west country but I live here now.
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A
Have you got a role playing club there? Who do you play with?
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D
There's a London based RPG club that kind of has branches all over the place and there is one in Hammersmith. I've only been a couple of times so I mostly end up like hosting games at my house with friends. But I do sometimes play over in East London at the Arcanist Tavern. Some people from. Sometimes I play with the Raspy Raven, sometimes do events in London with friends.
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A
Is it a regular group that you have?
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D
Couple of regular games, just kind of very loose, whatever we fancy playing kind of group where mostly we've been play testing for the last like year and, and then I've got like a regular Trail of Cthulhu group as well. And then I'll just sometimes just do like one and two shots, you know, at places. So it's, it's, you know, it's a pretty rich RPG scene in London really. Like there's a lot of, there's always a lot of events going on, you know, like these kind of mini cons I guess they sometimes called where you know, they just rent out a pub or whatever.
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A
How did you get into role playing. Just take us back to how you got into games. What games were you playing back then?
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D
Sure. So. So I got into RPGs when I was like 12 or 13. Around that at school I had a group of mates and they also were like talking about like D and D and Star Wars RPG and stuff. My first proper game was of Star Wars Saga Edition, which is like a D20 hack of Star Wars. It was decent and the first game I ended running was the next one I ran a Warhammer fantasy roleplay seconded game. And that's honestly still one of my favorite systems, even though it's not necessarily a whole lot. Like I don't play that many games like that. But I really like these days mostly because in the circles I move in, they're just not as common. Although they aren't necessarily my like my. My favorite type as a genre. But I have a lot of fondness for that game and especially like the. There's. It's got a kind of a grittiness to it, like a groundedness to it that I think other games that have been trying much harder to achieve that haven't managed. Went to university, ended up getting very involved in the role playing game society there. Ended up running the tabletop portion of the RPG society for several years along with Minerva McDander who is also professional in TTRPGs these days. And a good friend of mine gave me my first break in TTRPG writing when I wrote for her game Legacy.
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A
So you've designed a game that you're about to launch, what's that called?
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D
Il Fantasma del Giallo, which is kind of a. It's kind of a horror slash thriller kind of neo noir game inspired by well, giallo films, which is like a Italian genre of kind of neo noir thrillers and horror films. And also inspired by like metatextualist and magical realist media like the Twilight Zone and Mulholland Drive Inland Empire, funny games, that kind of thing. If you don't know about Giallo, don't worry, I wrote it for you. Like I don't expect anyone else to be like a fan of hyperspace specific, you know, European film genres. It's designed so that you can explore the themes and ideas of this genre without needing to know anything about it, you know. And it's been very gratifying thing in playtesting is that that has worked really well. Like I've been play testing it with. With people who have never seen these films quite a lot. And it's. Yeah, it's it's going better than I hoped.
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A
We make a big deal out of the fact that games are never in a vacuum either. They're part of their culture and they engage with culture. You say particularly, particularly niche genre from Italian film history. So what appealed to you about the giallo movies?
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D
First? I discovered them when I was a teenager and I was really into the then nascent brand of like kind of review online review shows that were kind of not very deep. They were quite superficial. They were more like beat by beat breakdown summaries of a film with jokes thrown in. Right. Like people like, you know, Nostalgia Critic and the Cinema Snob and stuff like that. And the Cinema Snob was the one who introduced me to the genre by talking about. I think it was like the first one he taught, the one I remember him talking about. It's an interesting one. It's quite bad. It's like really, really exploitative. And I mean that in like the filmic sense rather like, I don't know how people were treated on site or whatever, but like it's. It's very much an exploitation film. It's in that kind of genre. It's called Jala Evenencia. I think I was always. I was. I had a growing fascination with kind of horror and thriller and kind of this kind of boundary pushing media. And I ended up like actually tracking, like I ended up collecting films especially kind of very niche and weird and often very bad films. Like I used to go down to the. The market in where I went to uni every week and like there'd always be like people selling these really bizarre films like on really bad quality TBDs, right. And I. That's quite a collection. And then I kind of. I saw some ones that were actually like really quite good, you know, like, like the works. Like Daria Argento is probably like the pinnacle of this genre of, you know, Lucia Falsi and Mario Baba and Umberto Lindsay. And like, they definitely had some elements that don't. You wouldn't see them in modern films or at least you wouldn't see them as kind of uncritically deployed as they are in the 70s, right. But like in their own weird, nihilistic, violent, exploitative way, there's actually like a really interesting core to these films of like society and trauma and experience and how that kind of makes and breaks us. And it's something that breaks it away from like slasher films that came afterwards that were American, which are really very like moralizing. They're very like, you know, a big evil Guy comes along and he's pure evil. Even Michael Myers, who's in an insane asylum, the start of Halloween or breaks out of it, I should say, at the start of Halloween is, like, described explicitly as just evil, right? In his soul, he's just pure evil. Giallo doesn't do that. It's more like we're all just clay and society is corrupt and horrible and sleazy and so, so are we. And some of us have horrible, horrible things happen to us. We see our family members murdered or, you know, we're tortured as kids or as adults. And it breaks something in us, right? And it obviously, like, in real life, mentally ill people don't typically go around in black coats and hats. Killing people functions as, like, a metaphor for the way that we can be jarred into acts that are anti societal, like anti social, by how we're treated and the things we experience. And I think that's really interesting. I think people don't talk about that in, like, when they talk about these films necessarily, right? They just. How violent they are and how brutal they are.
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A
And from my experience of watching, the killer's really nonspecific is like you say, it isn't a particular character. If anything, it's like a mysterious entity, isn't it, that peers and sometimes doesn't get resolved.
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D
I think that's absolutely true. And that's part of, like, in my game, this idea of the killer. It's less like it's going to be one of the characters or at least one of the player characters or at least one of the people that they know if they're dead, right? Until the killer is unmasked. They are everyone and they are no one in a very, like, real sense. Like, you can't actually unmask them until it's time in the narrative for them to. For the waveform to collapse and for them to stop being like. I was thinking a lot about the film Blood and Black Lace, which is very much like the kind of genre, right? Like, it's got all of the hallmarks that would become, like, very common. And there's a bit in that film where the guy's mask gets ripped off and for like two frames you can see his face and he's neither of the people who are eventually revealed to later be under the mask, right? And that, that was obviously because, like, it's a stat, like, it's a standard. I think it might, like, I know Argento did this. It might even be like the director, like, Argento stood in for the killer. In. In part of the Crystal Plume agent, Deep Red. Right, but. But like, that's. In literal terms. That's what it is. But like, this is, like, really interesting because he's not ready to be someone yet. So he's no one. He's just a guy who isn't in this film. He's so not appearing in this film because he's not ready to appear yet. There's. There's me on that, like in a lot of horror games or whatever. And this isn't the floor. It's just like what they are. You are kind of. You're entered into the reality of the film, right? So you're. You're not. You're not engaging with the narrative like, you know, it's a horror film. You're just in this parallel dimension that happens to have all the same rules as a horror film. But in this game, you. You are cognizant both as a player and as a character that you're in a film, or at least part of you is, because the guy, the actor who you play is also playing a character. And they are both of these people, right? And like, I did this for a few reasons. Like, part of it was depersonalization because I wanted people to be more comfortable with having their characters do horrible stuff, with having the characters kill people, with being killed themselves, with kind of actively working against their own interests as a character. And I also wanted to, like, a lot of genre games don't work as well at tables where people aren't just unfamiliar with the genre. So I was like, well, if I have it operate on this metatextual level, they don't need to because the systems I'm building are kind of pushing. They have to engage with the genre in a, like, in a. In like an extra textual sense.
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A
So it's interesting hearing you talk about that framing of the fiction and setting it within the fiction. We've been talking recently about how some settings are difficult to deal with and difficult to handle the way that you framed it. You've kind of allowed that ironic distance for the players by just stepping them out of it and putting them in a fiction.
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D
So the premise of the game is that your characters are kind of down on the level. Disgraced actors with dark pasts. Now they probably have, and, you know, it depends on your table, but they probably haven't done something as horrible as the characters that they'll end up playing do. But they've definitely made mistakes. And they might have been understandable mistakes, but they've. Those mistakes have Led them to become ostracized from society, right? And from the mainstream career. But they've ended up in this weird town, the town. The main thing of note in the town is a film studio, and it's making films. And you've signed a contract to be in every single one of them. And they're just going to keep making them just over and over and over, more, more, more. And you can't remember why you're. How you. You can't remember all the details of your life. You've got the broad strokes, but you can't remember specifics, right? Just. It's just shapes and colors and emotions. And then you. You go to shoot the first film, and suddenly you're not in. You're not on set anymore. You're on. You're there, you're on. You're in the place. You're at the thing, right? And you're not just your actor anymore. You're also the character you're playing in the film. And they're both in your head at the same time. You know, you can feel their wants and desires, but you're also aware, you know, there's this conflicting thing you play through the film. And then, you know, some. You know, various things happen that nobody knows who the killer is or where it's going. All the scenes and the. The mystery is built collaboratively. As you go from scene to scene, you're kind of. You're in this dimension of narrative, sort of physical place, really. Like, things are only true if they're narratively. It's narratively important for them to be true, and they only remain true for as long as it's narrative important. So, like, reality is malleable, and you can shift reality by changing the plot, right? And, you know, each actor has, like, a playbook where they have, like, a typecasting, like a. Like a kind of role. They usually play like a crook. The crook is like criminal types, and the don is like powerful people. And, you know, the visionary is like iconoclasts and radicals and artists. And you each have a different way of influence. You have, like, unique ways of influencing reality. Like, the crook has, like, a ability where you can kind of reach under a desk and pull out and find a gun that's taped there or, like behind a toilet tank, say, or a wardrobe or whatever, you know. Anyway, you build up these truths, which are like these hard kind of. They're almost like. They're almost like crystallized narrative, right? Like, you can't. Can't change them. Like, you can Change other things. There's a core to them. You can maybe shift the context around them, but they're hard nuggets. And then when you leave, you finish the film, you awaken into reality again, remembering, you know, you're on set, the director yells, cut. That's a wrap, folks. You're back there again and you can remember all the trauma that you just went through. You built. You built it up. And you can use the truths that you've gathered to unlock memories about your life before you got here. And they might not be exactly the same, but they're like jumping off points, right? So, like, if, I don't know if you uncovered a truth, there was a truth held against you that you were dealing drugs or whatever, maybe you had like a drug addiction at some point or something like that, right? And then you have like a layer of narrative in the real world where you can kind of try and find out what's going on, like why you're trapped here, why you can't seem to leave. And as you uncover more memories about what you did to kind of deserve to be here, you know, the more you can kind of advance the sort of what's really going on. And I'm going to have as well a lot of suggestions for what could really be going on, because I don't want to prescribe that too much. I want people to get creative with it.
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A
So you mentioned that you've got playbooks and they've got these elements in that. So what other things are there mechanically to help you resolve all this and
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D
bring it together on like a moment to moment level for like, you know, like conflicts. There's like a conflict resolution system that shows the whole game using playing cards as its resolution. And each, each player and the. And the gm, the director has, has their own deck, right? Their unique deck that's marked to make or like a different color of. When you know, in a system that is like the jumping off point for this idea was. Was Dogs in the Vineyard, which is one of my favorite games from a design perspective. I love the way that it kind of takes gambling, like mechanics that feel like poker hands and kind of turns them into dice, right? And in a really engaging back. And I love that back and forth that it has. And I was like, I love that. I want two things to be different about it, though, in. In a few things. First is I want cards because I like cards, even though they're a nightmare to design around. Second thing is Dogs in the Vineyard is like push and pull and like, you you lose ground and gain ground narratively and like, physically, right? Like, you take damage as like, it goes on. I want it to be all or nothing because I like this idea of trying to replicate that moment in a giallo film where a character who has gone largely unscathed apart from like arguing with people and experiencing scary things, suddenly get stabbed, right? Like won that all or nothing moment. So it's this trip taking system where you take it in turns to play bids that advance like a bit of narrative. And like a losing bid will mean that you have to then kind of describe how the conflict's not going your way. And a winning bid means you have to describe how it is going your way a way. And then the winner of like a bidding round can then decide whether to just continue the conflict as it's going, but without introducing any new cards or raising mistakes, making things more dangerous and thus like more traumatic by kind of escalating the conflict to something else and getting new cards or just giving up. And whoever gives up takes every bid that's been played, whether it's been played by, by you or the other. The other person. And they take it as trauma, which is like the closest thing that it has to damage. It's not so much like being physically injured as it is like a, you know, just like a cumulative thing of physical injury and mental damage and emotional damage and pressure, narrative pressure, right from round to round. You accumulate like a little bit of trauma as well, just to make sure it's not completely all or nothing from scene to scene. You have this process called scene drafting where the GM kind of gives you a few cards and you compare them to a table that gives you like a load of different, like, I think, what would it be, like 40 different story prompts. And they're quite general, but with enough kind of textual meat that you know, it guides you in a good direction. And then like, the person who drafted the scene can kind of come up with a premise for that scene that people can collaborate on and like decide who's going to be in it. And then people can gate crash scenes. The director is kind of less the sort of authority figure and more kind of more of like a mediator, right? Like the, like the head writer on like a table of writers, set the pace and they make sure everything's on track and everything makes as much sense as you can expect it to in this genre. And like, they can make sure that like, it's not like three people arguing over what color the curtains are for like 20 minutes, right? They can be like, right, like, I'm mediating here. Like, this is the color they are. Let's move on. Right. So they. They kind of decide when to, like, cut a scene and start a new scene. But, like, everything within the scene is very in players control. And, like, directors are encouraged to. If they're, like, asked a question about, like, I don't know, what does the room look like? Where. Who's standing where? Like, is this character here? You know, they just return the question. Like, I think there's something like. The other thing is, I'm very much encouraging players to engage with their storytelling, like, not through their own eyes as a character, but, like, through the camera's eyes. So instead of saying, like, I walk into the room, they say, like, oh, the camera is, like, in the room already, and the door opens and my character walks in.
- [23:40]
B
Right.
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D
Like. And even that, like, little change, once people get into that mindset, it actually really changes how they talk about narrative and how they talk about, like, how a scene develops. And they're more willing to kind of put themselves on a back foot or, like, lose an advantage because, like, it's just. That's just good storytelling, right? They're thinking about it from that perspective.
- [24:05]
A
Like you. I kind of fell down a yellow rabbit hole back in the 90s and with a friend. And I always had the view that I liked the aesthetic of the posters and the feel of them more than I actually enjoyed the films.
- [24:22]
D
I'll show you, actually. I mean, if you look at the art, like, the art on the Kickstarter and stuff like that is very much inspired by giallo posters. I literally like the two things that drove the whole aesthetic. Like, the art is mine. I'm doing the art, I'm doing the layout. I'm doing everything. It's a lot. But the thing driving, like, the style was a combination of the giallo posters and also the opening credits of Blood and Black Lace, which has these, like, shots where characters are standing in the dark with these really strong colored lights. Right? And that's like. I mean, like, it's heavily. I mean, I guess, like, it's your taste if you ended up enjoying the posters more than the films. And I. I mean, I love. I love both, you know, I love the. I do love the posters. Absolutely. I actually pondered, like, I've got about three volumes with the fourth on the way of these. You can't see this if you're listening, but I'm showing a volume of the giallo movie posters by scary images. I think it's called Creepy Images. It's a company. But yeah, there's four volumes of this and I recommend them. They're beautiful.
- [25:28]
A
I'm intrigued by these role playing games that are pushing players into uncomfortable areas and exploring narrative in different ways.
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D
Yeah, I can't speak for you, but like, like a lot of people in RPGs, like I, you know, you know, I, I'm. I'm of a progressive mindset. I'm of a left wing mindset. I believe very strongly in like, you know, not kind of perpetuating racism and ableism and misogyny and Boyd Giallo films have a lot of those. But the thing about it is I'm also of the belief that there can be value in negativity, in negative experiences. Right. I don't think something has to be affirming to be constructive. And I'm not saying that that's not like a personal judgment. I don't care really what people personally want to engage with in terms of art. But like, I think there's value in negativity, in negative experiences and in darkness. And I think there's ways as well that you can draw out value from genres that are really riven with like, or you say problematic stuff without. You don't need to bring that with you. The bad, like the horrible stuff. You don't have to replicate that bit unless you want to to kind of deconstruct it, which is valid. Right. Like, I think there's like, I think it's just being aware of it and like something I loved Lovecraft esque and it had a, it had like really detailed stuff talking about like racism in like Lovecraftian mythos stuff. And I think that's really valuable. And like I'm going to talk extensively in like the book about the stuff, you know, the stuff it deals with mental illness and misogyny and stuff like that and why there's like stuff that is like worth leaving behind, but also stuff that's worth thinking about. Right?
- [27:14]
B
Yeah.
- [27:15]
A
And I think that's why, you know, just going back to what you're saying earlier, I think that distancing technique is really effective way of dealing with that because it does allow you to step back and as you say, use the stereotypes, but in a more conscious way than finding yourself in a situation where you think, I don't feel happy about my character doing this. But if you, as you say from the, from the lens of a film, then it allows you that ability to have that distance and ironic distance as well because, you know, more than the character.
- [27:55]
D
And there's like, a difference as well. Like. Like both kind of parts. The kind of the real and the yellow are, like. Are kind of dark, but, like, the yellow is, like, hyper real. Like, it's like. Like reality with the contrast and saturation turned all the way up. So, like, you can really explore, like, really kind of like, shock value, you know, stuff in the yellow, because that is what these films did occur if you want to. But then in the real, you can be like, okay, let's look at that same issue. Let's take this truth and part of it is true about my character. And now we're exploring this same issue we brought up in the film, but with a more nuanced kind of lens. And you're still playing, like, a flawed person who has done bad things, but, like, in a more kind of human, humanly grounded way. Because actually, like, something I love about Jello is it's human. It's humanistic. Like, it is. It is. It's not essentialist in a weird way. Like, it's pessimistic, yes. Nihilistic, oh, boy. Yes. But not, like, actually unaware. It's not like it's unaware of, like. Of, like, the reality of living as a human in the world. And, like, what, that you don't always end up being the person you wanted to be. I mean, it's one of those things, right, where the best. For me, anyway, the best thing that ever happens to you as a designer is you have an idea of how you want to get around the problem. You design a system to get around it, and then you run it and it does it.
- [29:25]
A
Right.
- [29:26]
D
And, like, I genuinely. I'd never have playtests go this well so quickly. Like, I've, you know, I've playtested a lot of games, and, like, there's like, half a dozen games that I just abandoned because the play test went. The playtest went so badly, I was like, look, this is not. This isn't gonna work. Right. And I need to move on. Or it's just too time consuming. But, like, this is just one of those things where it just clicks so quickly.
- [29:53]
B
Brilliant.
- [29:54]
D
This is wonderful.
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A
Well, I'm looking forward to the project coming together. And just remind us again when the Kickstarter goes live.
- [30:04]
D
Yes, of course. So it's launching on June 24th. If you want, like, to keep posted, then. Then I'm on Blue Sky, Hardy Ridge Games, and I've got some of my old one pages as well. Hardy Ridge Games. And if you keep an eye on stuff on the page and on my. My blue sky or whatever in the next week or so. Then I'll be dropping like the cinematic trailer for the game, which I put loads of effort into. I did a load of live action filming and editing and like 3D rendered animated sequences. And, you know, it's got one of the tracks from my amazing friend Ed underscoring it. I'm. I'm super excited about it. So. Yeah.
- [30:45]
A
Well, good luck with it, Lawrence.
- [30:48]
D
Thank you so much.
- [30:49]
A
UK Games Expo. Welcome to the zoom of role playing. Rambling. I've got Blithey with me. Hello there, Blythey.
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B
Hello, Dirk.
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A
It's a school night, Blythey, but I've got a beer.
- [31:00]
B
You've got a beer? I could come. Tea.
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A
You're very sensible.
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B
I've always been sensible.
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A
You have good impulse control. I've bought one of those weird beers that I just got attracted to the can. And this one's called. It's. It's from a company called Pretty Decent Beer London. And they base this beer on one of their Google reviews and it's called I Could Get Better at Tesco's for a Quid.
- [31:32]
B
That. That was the review, was it?
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A
It must have been. Yeah.
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B
There's. There's nothing. There's. Right. I'll tell you something now. There's nothing worse than beer reviews. There's nothing worse. If you ever thinking of buying some craft beer and you make the mistake, and it is a mistake of Googling it and looking at a review that there's nothing worth the most. You'd think, wouldn't you, that beer is supposed to be fun and you'd like to think, well, I like to think when I've had a few beers, I'm a far more forgiving person than I am when I'm sober. But oh, no, these people. Oh, three and a half stars out of five. If you get three and a half stars at five, you're doing well. Oh, slightly weak head. Pale amber color. Average. God. Enjoy yourselves. You're having a beer, like, light on the tongue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Poor finish. Yeah.
- [32:25]
A
Plummy aftertaste. I'm gonna open this, so brace yourself.
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B
Go on. There you go.
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A
It's done me. I'm sorry to do this to you. I'd have had a cup of tea
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B
if I don't know when you were. It's all right. I've just. I've just googled it and people say it's terrible. So do I know. I don't feel like I'm missing Out everything LB is terrible, according to beer connoisseurs.
- [32:44]
D
All be.
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B
It's terrible. All of it. Terrible to average.
- [32:48]
A
We've returned from UK Games Expo and it has to be said that compared with some of our excursions to conventions, particularly, of course, for me, we were quite, you know, we were quite lightweight.
- [33:01]
B
Particularly you.
- [33:02]
A
Yeah, quite lightweight though, didn't we? I was tucked up in the sofa bed by half 12 most nights.
- [33:09]
B
Yeah, well, we weren't a bit. Yeah, we were kind of held captive by Ubers to some extent, weren't we? Because wherever we went, we couldn't really stagger home and get a kebab, could we? I mean, it was like you were at the. What's it called, the hotel near Expo and Boston Fringe Comp. But either way, you couldn't really go, oh, I'll tell you what, let's get leathered and stagger home and get a kebab. Because you. You couldn't. You had to try and get Uber and all that kind of thing. So it was a tricky, tricky business game. Pasted.
- [33:44]
A
We upgraded this year, didn't we? You could say we upgraded. I don't know, you might have a different opinion. But normally we get a Premier Inn, don't we? And we enjoy. We enjoy the adequacy of a Premier Inn.
- [33:57]
B
Yes, the adequacy of a Premier Inn. Yeah.
- [34:00]
A
But we decided that we'd get an Airbnb this time.
- [34:03]
B
We did the modern thing, get an
- [34:06]
A
Airbnb in a swanky district. Well, we thought it was swanky, but every time we mentioned we were near Broad street, everybody kind of really.
- [34:18]
B
Are you all right? Sharp and sick of your breath. Oh, he's still alive. We're from Bowen. We think this is nice. Best of boat. Yeah. Much safer. Yeah.
- [34:28]
A
We had an Airbnb and the instructions they gave us to find a place were probably the most complex puzzle that we've ever had to face. I'm going to take those instructions and use them in a game.
- [34:43]
B
I know. It did feel like some kind of dungeon puzzle to get into somewhere, wasn't it? Don't. You put this code number in and then it'll let you through the automatic door and then go to the third door on the right across the walkway. And it wasn't. It wasn't across the walkway, was it? It was just before the walkway. But, you know, that nice lady told us, go, you go the wrong way. We'd probably still be there wondering, right,
- [35:11]
A
this corridor is like some back rooms, endless space entering another dimension, just moving through with.
- [35:19]
B
With the. With the bizarre instruction. Oh, yeah. Do not speak to the concierge. Do not speak to the concierge because we will be fined if you speak to the concierge. So it was like the gaze of the gorgon, wasn't it, that whatever you do. I think at one point, when we put the code in, Jonathan put the coding and the concierge answered the intercom. Yeah. And we all went silent. I said, do not do. Don't touch.
- [35:45]
A
It's a test.
- [35:48]
B
That sounds like the concierge. Don't ask him if he's a concierge, because that constitutes speaking to the concierge. So we just. Just be quiet. I think it's the concierge, but let's not check because that's a trick and say nothing. So this poor concierge going, hello, Anybody there? Who's there? We're just stood there in silence like some weird knocker door room people prank.
- [36:15]
A
When we got lost, that helpful woman said, well, the best thing to do if you're in this situation is speak to the concierge. And we said, we can't do that.
- [36:24]
B
We can't do it. Not to do it. Although I did start to wonder, how much is the fine? Because if the fine was a tenner, it got to a point where I was happy to pay a tenner. I was happy to pay the fine for them if the concierge would actually allow us in. Yeah, it'd be worth it, wouldn't it? You know, between three of us, we could all chip in.
- [36:41]
A
We found the room, didn't we? Walked in the room and then there was like a sudden feeling that we shouldn't have been there because they hadn't cleaned up from the previous occupants.
- [36:51]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [36:52]
A
And therefore it was a bit like a Tracy Emin installation, wasn't it?
- [36:58]
B
We were. It was Tracey Emin's bed without the condoms and the heroin syringes. I mean, that would have been a step too far, wouldn't it? But.
- [37:04]
A
Well, there was apple crumble involved, wasn't there? Whatever they've been eating,
- [37:10]
B
you want to step away from heroin if you're on apple crumble in the bed. It's a short, short, slippy slope to heroin, isn't it?
- [37:18]
A
I think it was that point, because I could see Jonathan was with us and he was trying to calculate whether it was worth just putting up with it. And I said, no, no, we'll contact them to clean it up. Because it was a real mess, wasn't it?
- [37:32]
D
It was.
- [37:32]
B
It Was. Yeah.
- [37:34]
A
Was that the first point where you thought, I wish we'd retain the adequacy of the premiere?
- [37:39]
B
I think it did at that point. Although, to be fair to the Airbnb owner, he did send you some money, didn't he, and said, I'll get the cleaners and sent you some money so we could get a few. Couple of pints while we waited for it to be cleaned. So there was a reasonable amount of compensation. Did feel asking him go, that 30 quid you sent to us for a few pints is. Is that more than the fine for the concierge or less? I'm sure intrigued about what the level of penalty was for talking to concierge.
- [38:09]
A
I think it's at that stage. I mean, this. Does this reflect badly on me? But at this stage, this is the perfect point of the weekend, isn't it? We traveled up on the Thursday, and this is a perfect point because it hasn't happened yet and all you've got is the anticipation of what's to become.
- [38:26]
B
Yeah, yeah. It's like a Friday afternoon in the office, isn't it, where you think that's the best bit of the weekend? Because really, it's all in front of you and, yeah, it's not going wrong yet.
- [38:36]
A
Although, you know, we were there drinking, having a pint on this other person's money, weren't we, and just anticipating the weekend ahead as digs were being prepared. But I think we always say that, don't we, that there is that sense of we're away from all the stress, strains of normal life, and we're in this bubble for three days and we better enjoy it because otherwise, you know, we. We'll. We'll waste it. So let's look forward to it right now.
- [39:07]
B
Yeah. And it was. It was okay. The Airbnb in the end was all right. It was quite. It's quite a nice little apartment, wasn't it? Although Jonathan did get very cross with me because I had an ensuite bathroom, didn't I, which I didn't know about when we claimed our bedrooms. I thought it was a cupboard and I opened it. It was. I was fine, thank you.
- [39:26]
A
I had the sofa bed.
- [39:27]
B
It was very good. Very good. Yeah. You didn't mind the sofa bed, did you?
- [39:30]
A
Yeah, I can sleep on a washing line.
- [39:32]
B
So, yeah, I'm as. As you know, I'm. I'm funny with beds because I just don't really fit in beds at all. You know, I'm too big for beds, really. That's A problem. Too long for a bed, so. But no, I thought it was. It was good. It was. It was nice, actually. You know that. Nice as well, because you could. You could make a bit of breakfast in the morning. I think you commented on this. You could make a bit of breakfast in the morning in the apartment without having to go down to the hotel. And one English breakfast is nice, but three or four of them can be a bit much, I think. Yeah, it was nice to just have a bit of tea and toast and think. Okay, that's. That's. That'll do for now. Yeah, yeah.
- [40:15]
A
And cups of tea with proper milk and everything.
- [40:18]
D
Yeah, that.
- [40:18]
B
That's. Yeah, that's true as well. Proper tea bags. Proper, proper milk. That makes a difference, doesn't it? Having a nice cup of tea in the morning. It's what I'm used to, you know. Yeah.
- [40:28]
A
We should explain that our UK games export experience is split in two, isn't it? Because it's like the official event that we participate in and we play games there and we go to the Trade hall and we do other stuff while we're there, meet people while we're there. But there's also the Shadow Con that takes place, which is a group of the Grog Squad commandeered by Olanth Rex from Allanth Rex's Gaming vexes. And there's some games that take place there. So we divided our time between the
- [41:04]
C
official event at the NEC and the Shadow Con.
- [41:08]
A
That's why we ended up in the Ubers quite a lot, didn't we?
- [41:12]
B
Yeah, adventure, whatever it's called. Center the subcenter, which, if anyone listening is thinking of Googling that, finding out exactly where it is on a map. I'll save you some time. Don't bother. Because it's one of the hardest places in Birmingham to actually find. None of the taxi drivers know where it is.
- [41:31]
A
We had this experience last year, but it was more acute this year. For some reason, I think we tried to get there, didn't we, on the Friday night. And the taxi driver, I think he thought we were taking him hostage because.
- [41:44]
B
Yeah.
- [41:45]
A
Industrial estate, didn't we? And he looked frightened for his life.
- [41:48]
B
Yeah, that happened last time. It seems to be that the. The sat nav takes you to some industrial estate somewhere and you think, well, this isn't it. Yeah, but I did. I think you're right. I think he thought he was. He was going to be taken hostage or something like that. I think, though it does demonstrate our experience with the Ubers, demonstrates the failure of the Uber system because it's great, isn't it? Going the old Uber, we all do it now on your phone, they know where you are. There we go. They know where they're going because it's all done through sat nav and you prepay and oh, that's, that's great, brilliant. It's all right until it goes wrong. So when the Uber driver says, well I think this is it, and you go, no, this, this isn't it. I think you need to go up there and round that. And he looks at you and thinks, oh, I can't do that. Yeah, you know, because, because you've paid for this point to point trip, whereas dinner, if you're in like a black cab or something, you can say no, no, no, no, just go around that corner and obviously the bill will go up because it's on it.
- [42:54]
A
Yeah, well, can you imagine, can you imagine the situation when you've got this technology and people in Silicon Valley, they're looking forward to an age when you cut out the middleman, you don't have the Uber driver anymore, you've got these self driving cars who pick you up and just drop you off in an industrial estate and you're a whole waived negotiating anything because.
- [43:16]
B
No, no, that's right, yeah, you would have no way of even managing to convince the driver to take you somewhere else, would you? I mean, at least we managed to convince him, but there'll just be a
- [43:26]
A
load of middle aged men left in industrial estates in the middle of nowhere, forming some kind of commune like a Galadian pact, grouping together, trying to find the way to some place where.
- [43:38]
B
Yeah, I thought of that. But you're right, that's, that's the nightmare future that awaits us, isn't it? Because at least with them you could say, no, this isn't it. And to be fair to him, he, he wanted to find it. He said, oh no, I'll find it, you know, but yeah, the robo car won't do that, will it? No, no, that's, that's our thing. I have to say that that moment on Friday where we got lost in the Uber was, I don't know if it was better or worse than a few years ago where we got lost in the lingerie department of Primark. Yeah, in Birmingham, trying to find a way out of Primark because we've been told about shortcut. Do you remember Primark? Someone said, I'll go through Primark and just go through the doors at the other side and the bus stops there. We Went in and got lost and ended up in the lingerie section. And yeah, it was like that scene from Father Ted, you know, where you suddenly think, what? We're wandering around ladies underwear department for now. Okay. Strange looks.
- [44:36]
A
So he's always with Jonathan that we end up in the chasing bus.
- [44:44]
B
He had no part in organizing any of it, but somehow he's somehow.
- [44:49]
A
One of the things to say about UK Games export is the biggest, biggest one ever. I believe the announced statistics. I don't understand these. I think they count the number of tickets and the number of return visits and things like that separately, but something like 87,000.
- [45:12]
B
Wow.
- [45:14]
A
And there were some like 53,000 tickets. So it's the highest attended UK Games Expo ever. And it felt like that as well, didn't it? When you were walking around the trade halls, it felt like there was a lot of people around.
- [45:30]
B
Well, the trade halls were a lot bigger, weren't they? I'd seen. Yeah, seemed bigger this time.
- [45:34]
A
Well, they took over everywhere, didn't they? They took up over all the different halls. We'll talk a little bit about the trade hall experience, but I've got a prefab sprout game. I know we normally do these at the beginning.
- [45:48]
B
Okay, okay.
- [45:49]
A
But it's almost like I forgot that I had one.
- [45:52]
B
Almost like forgot almost like these things. Not really very well planned. It's just us talking.
- [45:58]
A
One of the explorers, one of the people who've got the endurance to go around those trade halls and visit every single place they've got to be.
- [46:09]
B
Pookie, hasn't it? Yeah, Pookie. He should get some kind of award, like the Iron man on a marathon or some. It's almost like an Olympic level thing, isn't it, that he goes around like that with his big bag.
- [46:23]
A
Reviews from Relier. So he's a blogger and a reviewer. And as part of his mission to try and improve and sustained his huge collection, Goodness knows how he does anything other than write reviews in that house of his. But yeah, he's filling out his collection. And he had that neve this time as his chaperone, looking after him. Because sometimes we've been commandeered into carrying his bags, but we. This year we've avoided it.
- [46:53]
B
Yeah.
- [46:54]
A
So I watched his unboxing of his bags or his unbagging of his bags
- [46:58]
B
and unbagging of his boxes. Whatever. Yeah, okay.
- [47:03]
A
I think if you want to see the cornucopia of different esoteric and exotic RPGs that are available out there in the marketplace, you should Go and see the different things, the complete melange of different things that he carries in his bag to see what variety there is. And I'm going to pick out some from the bag. Now, you know how this works. There's five of them. One of them.
- [47:32]
B
Five I've made up. One you made up, yeah. Yep.
- [47:36]
A
These came out of Pookie's bag. Are you ready? So make a comment when you hear them. If you think, oh, yeah, that's true. And then we'll see if we can settle on which one. Okay?
- [47:46]
B
Okay.
- [47:48]
A
Okay, let's do the first one.
- [47:50]
C
Zephia.
- [47:51]
A
Zephia is an anarchist fantasy game of fleeting identities. You travel across the wandering, sentient landmass of Offoi on a strange journey to fulfill sacred obligations and find your way back home.
- [48:08]
B
Zaphir, would you play that? Not sure. Seems a bit too high concept for me.
- [48:17]
A
But finding your way back home, no.
- [48:20]
B
Sentient landmass, Shifting identities is. Yeah, well, I don't know. Maybe it's. Okay. That's a bit like spire, doesn't it? Sounds like it's in that kind of bracket, isn't it?
- [48:33]
A
What about this one then? Does that sound convincing?
- [48:36]
B
That one? Yeah, it sounds convincing. But then there's all sorts of crazy stuff out there, isn't there? So.
- [48:41]
A
Yeah, let's try this one then. Ripples Creeks. Now this was a scenario collection for the Cryptic Curse collection. Cryptic Creeks. You play a crew of river scouts setting out to save a place. You're guided by a benevolent. I'll start that again. You're guided by a benevolent cryptid called the Watcher. And you gotta track down clues before it's too late. Well, what's too late before the cryptid to take over? I think there's benevolent cryptids in this cryptid.
- [49:20]
B
Oh, right. That sounds dodgy because you're not really. You're faltering a bit there, but anyway. Is that a role playing game?
- [49:26]
A
If I told you that it was based on the Brindlewood Bay.
- [49:30]
B
Oh, okay. It's a role playing game, is it?
- [49:32]
A
Yeah, it's a role playing game. Yeah.
- [49:34]
B
Okay.
- [49:34]
A
Would that help you? Would that give it a sense of authenticity?
- [49:39]
B
Not really. Because you could just be saying that, couldn't you?
- [49:41]
A
Okay, so it's doubtful, that one.
- [49:44]
B
Yeah, doubtful. Something under doubtful at the moment. Yeah.
- [49:47]
A
What about Dogs in Berlin? You play scavenging dogs wandering the streets of Berlin, looking for discarded rubbish. There's treasure kebabs and cigarette butts. Can improve your lot by making friends and finding human companions who will ride you ride on your back.
- [50:12]
B
It sounded convincing until you said human companions. I thought, okay, this sounds like some. A game someone could come up with. It might work. Who ride on your back? What if you're like a pug or a Jack Russell? Who's dudes riding on your back? What's the little humans? Little little ones. Little humans. It seemed like. It seemed like plausible then as a role playing game. All right, you play dog and it you. You move, you're changing like scraps of food from treasure, you know, and all that kind of thing. That might work. But why did humans ride back? Well, I'm putting that on. I'm putting that on the doubtful.
- [50:55]
A
Let's go for this one then. Kaiju control with a K. So control with a K. Kind you control is a Sunday matinee B movie. Eager, energetic, goofy and endearing game.
- [51:11]
B
It's.
- [51:12]
A
It's a bit loose. It's a loose game of asking questions until the Kaiju battle it out and you feel like you're there in a rubber suit walking over models.
- [51:23]
B
Is that.
- [51:23]
A
You want to play that one? I've got that on my shelf. Would you come and play that?
- [51:28]
B
Maybe. I'm putting that on the doubtful as well. They're all going to be doubtful, aren't they? Really?
- [51:34]
A
This is my final one. And then you have to decide, make some decisions here.
- [51:38]
B
Okay.
- [51:40]
A
Wraith of the Wyvern, a dark fantasy solo role playing game. And this is the Witcher meets Skyrim. In the Wraith of the Wyvern, you venture out into the highlands. Celtic Highlands.
- [51:57]
B
Do what?
- [51:58]
A
Which one of them made up the Wraith of the Wyvern? Kaiju control.
- [52:02]
B
What'd you do in the Wrath of the Wyvern? What'd you do, go into the highlands and do what?
- [52:08]
A
I think you fight monsters.
- [52:10]
B
Oh, I see.
- [52:11]
A
What do you do? What do you do in Skyriming?
- [52:13]
B
Is that what you do? I don't know. Black Scavenger.
- [52:18]
A
All right, so that. That blurb is lost on us, isn't it?
- [52:22]
B
Yeah, well, I think that could be. All right, the ones I'm doubting, the two I'm doubting, and I know I'm always wrong, is the one about the dogs. Simply because humans riding on the back, that just seems completely weird. It seems plausible until humans. Right. Right on the back. It doesn't make sense.
- [52:46]
A
Eating street detritus like kebabs, cigarette butts. You'll have that?
- [52:52]
B
Yeah, well, to a point, but I mean, you could see it. All right, you play. I'm not sure I'D want to play that game. But you could see it. You could play a game where you're a dog in Berlin and you've got to get food, befriend humans and survive. I suppose that might work as a survival type role playing game. Swap out the dungeon for the streets of Berlin. Swap out gold pieces for old kebabs and burgers left in bins and, you know, monsters for humans that you gotta befriend or deal with. That all works.
- [53:26]
A
Sounds great.
- [53:27]
B
This game, it sounds good until somebody says, and the humans ride on your back.
- [53:33]
A
That's when you level up, though. That's when you get better.
- [53:37]
B
To a giant Jack Russell. To an enormous Jack Russell. Oh, I'm a level. I'm a level 23 poodle.
- [53:47]
D
I've got.
- [53:47]
B
I've got a small family in a house on my back.
- [53:50]
D
Oh, right.
- [53:50]
B
Oh, a level 10 Jack Russell. I've just got some. The local butcher on my back with his sausages. Yeah. So that seems.
- [53:59]
A
Are you saying that that one's the.
- [54:00]
D
The ring?
- [54:01]
B
Well, no, that could be, but I think the Kaiju one as well. Although the Kaju one sounds plausible as well. I just. You didn't sell it. You just didn't sell that one to me. You're in a rubber suit crushing model. I thought. Who would describe the game like that?
- [54:16]
A
Well, that one's. That one's available on Drive Through Niche.
- [54:21]
D
Right.
- [54:22]
B
Well, I'm going to say. I'm going to say that the Dogs of Berlin is the one.
- [54:26]
A
Dogs of Berlin is completely made up and it was me kind of riffing on one of the games.
- [54:32]
D
Got it right. I've got it right.
- [54:34]
A
Well done.
- [54:34]
B
Well done.
- [54:35]
D
Thank you.
- [54:36]
A
It was me riffing on one of the games that was a talk of the Weekend, which was Tales of the Crichting Age, which.
- [54:44]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [54:48]
D
And.
- [54:50]
A
And I think it's by one of the writers of the Sky Realms as Jarun. It's kind of a high concept universe involving insects, isn't it? It's like Europe but with insects and people ride on the backs of them.
- [55:04]
B
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I was there when Steve was kind of trying to sell it to us all.
- [55:09]
A
It's got a four page character sheet.
- [55:11]
B
That's right. Yeah. Yeah. That was passed round, wasn't it?
- [55:16]
A
You know, and the artwork features a French insect. I did. We know there was a French insect.
- [55:25]
B
He. He's wearing a beret, wasn't he? And he was like. Not only was he a French insect, he was a stereotypical French insect, yeah. If such a thing could be imagined. Did you have like a little mustache and.
- [55:41]
A
Yeah.
- [55:42]
B
Did you have onions around?
- [55:44]
A
I think we added the onions, you know. Well, I think it just goes to show you, you see what Pookie picked up and there's a lot of games out there. Part of the talk we had in the pub, Tasman came over and she was kind of challenging the setup of this as a commercial event. That the whole idea is, is to sell stuff into which is, you know, legitimate. It's a trade show to sell stuff. But she asked a pretty decent question, which was if you were your daughter's got into Baldur's Gate, if she walked into that hall, would she know where to go next? What are the top 10 role playing games and alternatives to D and D? Would you be able to get a sense of that from walking?
- [56:39]
B
I don't think you would. And I think one of the strange things about it, the trade hall is, I mean you, you like to think we would know what to look at and yet we find it completely bewildering, don't we? Or I do at least think, think you're the same. I think a lot of people do find it quite, it's quite an overwhelming experience. There's a lot, a lot, lot of stalls and yeah, you see Free League and you see KCM and you see Modiphius that. But you're right, if you had played some D&D, 5th Edition D& D like my daughter has and you walked in, you wouldn't really know where to start. You wouldn't have any sense of direction about it. No, that's, that's very true because even
- [57:25]
A
the people who have a lot of stock, so leisure games in companies like that, and I don't blame them for this, but it still seems like very specialist when it comes to the role playing stuff. And it's a bit like a yard sale almost, isn't it? They have them stacked, packed in boxes and you have this assumption that they'll be at bargain prices, but they're not. And no, if, if I didn't know what I was looking for, where would you start in all that? It doesn't tell a story of what games are available. Role playing games are available. Whereas me, I don't know anything about board games, but I got a sense from wandering around the hall that Battle for Hothead was a new game, that they voting heavily. I had a sense that Wingspan was a very popular game and you know, I was drawn towards that. You got a, you can very easily see what are the main players in. In the board game world. You didn't get that sense at all
- [58:29]
B
from the role playing game, I guess. No, I've said two things about it. I mean I went in thinking with a very clear idea. What I wanted was a Shadow Dark GM screen.
- [58:40]
A
Yes.
- [58:40]
B
I decided, I thought surely there'll be one knocking around this place. Look at that. I'm glad, I'm really glad that we went to all rolled up. We bumped into Paul and Paul said to me no, they're out of print, no one can get hold of them. And when he told me that I was slightly disappointed at Crestfallen. I thought oh it's a shame. But I'm glad he did because otherwise I'd have spent hours and hours going around every store looking at every shelf and every, you know, because like you say it's not particularly coordinated looking for something that didn't exist, that wasn't there. So my God, Paul told me that we need to start a print because it saved me the torment of trying to find something that didn't exist.
- [59:24]
A
Yeah, you know, in a big rude.
- [59:25]
B
That's the. I got the other thing I would say about it, I think this is a strange thing is some people seem to be really good at it. I was looking at Neil old scouts for role playing. He, he, he posted some stuff. He got trade. I looked it, I thought that looks really good. I didn't see that. I'm just not looking in the right places. I would have bought those. You know he bought some like scenarios and things for stuff for Shadow Dark and a few other things. And they all look really good. And I thought, I didn't, I didn't see those. I was just looking at the wrong place. But then it's so big it's easy to do that, isn't it?
- [60:01]
A
I think there are some that do it really well. I saw the pirate Borg stall and I thought they did a really good job. They put some effort into building a store that looked like a pirate ship. So that helps, doesn't it? You know, you get an instant sense of this is what this game does. And they had the way that they displayed it, it told you the story of what the component parts were, what you got for your money and what to expect from it. And there were people on hand to explain it to people as well. And they seemed to be doing really well because they had the attitude of we're going to show you what this is. We're going to set out Wick 2 year what this is, so you can go away and you can make a decision based on what you can. What you see, because you know what you're getting.
- [60:53]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. Whereas other things, it's just a kind of massive stuff. The trade all reminds me of being about 5 years old on Christmas Day, where, you know, you open all your presents but you're a bit overtired. There's too much going on, and before you know it, you kind of sat down in tears, getting very upset for no apparent reason. It's a bit like that, isn't it? All this stuff. But I'm tired now. I've been wandering around for ages. There's all this stuff. I don't know what to buy. It's all a bit too much. I have to go and have a drink somewhere and cry in a corner somehow. It's brilliant, but at the same time, slightly weirdly nightmarish. Yes. Yeah.
- [61:37]
A
I don't think it's just down to the volume of people because people say it's very busy. It's got very busy. I think it's just overstimulating. It's just too much stuff. And it's very hard to get your eyes to kind of fix on points, to think, oh, yeah, this is worth looking at. Oh, no, they sat in our chairs. No, I was a bit more selective this time. I think last year I did a bit of a supermarket sweep and I had some ideas of things I wanted to get, but this time I was a bit more cautious about. If I'm getting stuff, it needs to be something that I'm gonna play, I'm gonna schedule to play. Perhaps we can talk about what we got.
- [62:21]
B
There's a lot. A lot of expensive stuff there as well, isn't there? I mean, I had a little bit of a. I had a. Give it a shot, didn't that, with looking at dice? Because as you said earlier, my daughter's got into Baldur's Gate, plays a bit of D and D and there were some boulders. There's a dice shop, dice stall. It was selling dice. And I mean, it's obvious now, what else could these numbers have meant? But next to some of the dice, it said 95 and some of them 75. And there was some Baldur's Gate dice. And I thought it would be a nice present for my daughter, wouldn't it? And I said to the guy, how much are these? And he said, 75. And I said, pounds. That's what the 75 means, isn't it not just random numbers he'd put next to his diet set. And he looked at me like slightly disgusted as I put them back and said, the handmade dice, I thought, oh, okay, well, I don't know, do I need a handmade dice better than machine made? I mean, there's no machine. Not more precise. I don't know. But there's lots of stuff like that, isn't there? You go around. There's lots of, like, you know, wooden dice trays and dice towers and dice bag, leather dice bags and things like that. They're quite kind of quite the pricey end of the market, aren't they? I always think.
- [63:36]
A
Yeah, those items are for people who have everything. And you want to buy a gift for somebody.
- [63:44]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [63:46]
A
Might be a special gift that you want. Yeah, a particular point.
- [63:50]
B
Yeah.
- [63:51]
A
I think I much prefer to have that kind of artisan stuff and that kind of unique stuff than some of the AI stuff that they had, which has caused a bit of controversy because there were stalls selling materials that were used in AI art and printed materials. So, yeah, I think I much prefer that there's those kind of unique items that. We're not in the market for them, are we?
- [64:18]
B
Clearly.
- [64:19]
A
But there are people who will buy that kind of prestige.
- [64:24]
B
Yeah, yeah, I can see that, yeah. I just. Being a skin flint, I just look at it and think, yeah, turn into it. I turn into Eddie momentarily. Turn into Eddie and say, yeah, but surely that's just a glorified pencil case.
- [64:36]
A
So what did you buy, then?
- [64:38]
B
I bought some more dice. About those. This kind of big, chunky dice. You've got set, haven't you, from all rolled up. The big. Oh, yeah, the big ones. Mega megahedrals, they call them. Quite big. Quite like the.
- [64:51]
A
They're good. They're good for convention games.
- [64:53]
B
Yeah, they are, actually, because everyone can see you dice. And I use them in my game on Sunday morning. So, yeah, they're good. And I bought the other thing about Troubleshooters, the Troubleshooters rpg which I played, which you ran on the Friday Morning Expo, and I really enjoyed it. You really enjoyed it so much that I bought the game.
- [65:13]
A
You brought the Prime Directive and got a Prime Directive.
- [65:17]
B
But yeah, I bought it because I really, really enjoyed it. I think it's a really nice, neat game. Bit different from the stuff we play normally, but at the same time there's a lot of familiar elements in it that work very, very well. I would say this might be a very bold statement in this, but it's one of the best interpretations of BRP that I've encountered, I think. I mean, I like the seventh edition Carl of Cthulhu version of brp with luck and with hard successes and extreme successes and all that. I think that's a nice version of it, but I think troubleshooters version is. It's hard to. It's hard to explain, isn't it? But it works really well. So it gives you things where you can spend like what they call. Look their look points where you can.
- [66:07]
A
Yeah, story points, aren't they?
- [66:09]
B
Story points where you can spend a story point to reverse the numbers. So you can reverse the numbers. So if you're all 52 and your skill's 30%, spend a lot token and switch it to 25, can't you. You can do that. That's one thing you can do. And then you. The thing with pips where if you get a 2 pip bonus, if is. It is the. If the units is a one or a two, you still succeed. So if your skill is 50%, you've got a two pip bonus and you rolled 81, you still succeed because you've got a one. It's very, it's very clever. I thought it worked very, very well when we were playing it. Yeah, yeah. It's a bit tricky to get your head around. It's a bit tricky to explain because you, you explained it to me a few days before we played it. And I remember thinking, well, okay, well, quite sure, I get that. But it's surprising. But once we've 10 minutes into playing, very, very quickly made sense and I thought it would. Very, really nice. Really nice game. Really, you know, good fun. And I like that fiction. It's set in like a fictional 1960s, isn't it? Like comic book, like Tintin or the Avengers, that kind of stuff. Crazy science and mad scientists and that kind of thing. Really, really, really good game. So that's one of the good things about the trade hall, that what I could do after the game when we went to trade off is buy that game because it's there. Go and buy it.
- [67:36]
A
I mean, we should point out that even though it uses percentiles, it doesn't trade itself as a BRP derivative. It's its own thing, isn't it? It's kind of a Swedish. If you pick up the rule book, it is very consistent with the art and it gives that flavor, doesn't it, of comic book Tintin universe. I played it at Grog Meat. I ran my first game at Grog Meat and I learned a lot from that experience in that what you realize is that story point economy is very important to it and, and when I played it the first time I didn't really drive that. But in this one it was an important element, wasn't it? So you were constantly using your story points to adjust things and you were also seeking as players how to refresh them because you knew that they were vital for you to succeed in some situations. I think what it does for those percentile games is that it just makes you feel more competent and able to do things well.
- [68:38]
B
It's like. Yeah, you're right, it's not, it's not BRP or such, is it? I suppose when I say brp, what I mean is it's a percentile system.
- [68:45]
A
Yes.
- [68:45]
B
And on the face of it it adds the same kind of flaws where you're at 15% in a skill and you think, oh for God's sake, I'm never going to make that roll. But there's enough in the game that you can make those rolls if you get the story points and you can manipulate things or use, use an ability or use a piece of equipment that gives you the pips bonus and things like that. You can actually do things, which on the face of it, if it was just a straight percentile system, you'd be hopeless like you are in those kind of games. But you're not hopeless. You've got ways of manipulating it, but at the same time you're not always going to succeed. I thought it was a nice balance that people did fail, but also you weren't staring down the barrel of failure when you had a 20% chance of doing something you did know. Oh, hang on. There are a few things I can possibly do here to argument that and be successful. Yeah.
- [69:44]
A
Because the other element of the game is if you get double, so 1122.
- [69:48]
B
Yeah.
- [69:49]
A
33. You get good karma if it's under your skill, bad karma if it's over your skill. And that created some interesting situations as well, didn't it?
- [69:57]
B
Yeah.
- [69:58]
A
And because of the setting, which is that kind of optimism of the 60s where science and international travel is the flavor of the day and it really sets about being more knock about than you know you're not, you're not going to die in this, in fact. No, it discourages you mechanically from violence really. Out and out violence.
- [70:22]
B
Well, you don't have. Yeah, that was interesting that we didn't have guns. There were a few fights. There were some punch ups, weren't there? Yeah, because my character was a Journalist who was a black belt in karate. She knocked a boxer out, didn't she? Shit, yeah. Knocked him down a laundry chute or something. There were like fights, but yeah, it's interesting, there were no guns. It was all like. Like you say, knock about kung fu and punching people. Not. Not machine gunning people to death or anything like that. It was. It was more. Yeah, like more kind of brawling, that kind of thing. Which again, can be unusual in a game because a lot of games like that default to guns down there a lot of the time. Eventually I'll default to everyone having a gun. But I did. I think it was very good. And the other thing I liked about it was it has things like story points and it has things where if you play to your weaknesses or you play to this or you play to that, you get story points. But again, I thought it was a nice balance between that story game stuff, a more traditional role playing game where you're rolling dice to do things. If you see what I mean. Yeah, it was a nice. It's a nice balance. It's not. It's not a very mechanical, traditional role playing game that's trying to be like the Avengers and failing. And equally it's not all story points and inventing stuff and justifying this and justifying that. It's a nice. Just a nice sweet spot between feeling like you're playing a regular role playing game where you're rolling dice and doing this, doing that, and then on top of it, you are sometimes using story elements to fuel the action a bit. But there's neither. There's not too much of one or the other. I think that's quite, quite an achievement with it. Quite a nice balance, really. Very, very good game, I thought. Really good.
- [72:14]
A
Of course, I used the usual safety speak, as I always do before game setting, the cats, the concept, action tone and safety tools. And I gave a trigger warning because that morning Bessos's rockets had blown up on the launch pad. And that was the subject matter of it.
- [72:35]
B
It was a rocket you had to blow up. Yeah,
- [72:41]
A
people felt quite comfortable about seeing Jeff Bezos rocket blowing up.
- [72:45]
D
Yeah.
- [72:46]
B
People are almost apt to be reminded when. Yeah, good.
- [72:51]
A
So what other game did you play at Expo? You ran a game, didn't you, at Expo?
- [72:58]
B
At Expo I ran Cult of the Reptile guard, an old AD&D module that I kind of converted into old school essentials. There's always a good. In all the AD&D modules, there's a good adventure trying to get out.
- [73:11]
A
Have you done that one before or is this the first time you've done it?
- [73:15]
B
First time I'd done it, yeah. Yeah. No, it's good. And I met Michael Davis, the man who sent me his Return of the Ripper. Dungeon Crawl classics adventure. He was there. And he played in your Troubleshooters game. Yeah, Troubleshooters game as well, but we didn't.
- [73:30]
A
And do you know what else? Blighty, his Ripper supplement for dcc,
- [73:38]
B
did it. Yeah, well, he said. Do you know what? After the. That's very interesting that. Because he said he'd sold someone, I thought, all right, okay, there you go. He was one of the purchasers and.
- [73:49]
A
And he described the writer as a ripperologist. Is he a ripperologist?
- [73:54]
B
I don't know. He described.
- [73:55]
D
I.
- [73:56]
B
He didn't describe himself as a ripperologist to me, but I think he. He could be. Yeah. I think he's very, he's very affair with the history of it. Yeah, yeah.
- [74:06]
A
It's quite unusual to have a DCC game, but it's kind of an urban fantasy type thing.
- [74:11]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like a city adventure. Yeah, yeah. Quite. Quite a chunky adventure. Yeah, Quite a little. Almost like a little mini campaign. It's quite a. Quite a big adventure. Yeah, yeah, He's. He's a. Yeah, I think he. I got the feeling he knows about the Jack the Ripper kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. Of a ripperologist. I didn't know that was a thing, but maybe it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. As well as moments. I mean, as he left, he was heading back to Geneva where he lives. He works for the cern. You know, the CERN thing. The CERN project. Yeah, yeah. And I just thought, where did I go wrong? Local government in north of England. Okay.
- [74:57]
A
It's little wonder when I was ham fistedly describing this future tech, he was actually saying what the name was, wasn't he?
- [75:06]
B
Well, that's you with you. You've made up nonsense. Somebody works in scientific world. All right, okay.
- [75:21]
A
I played in the Morning with Sunday Morning. While she was doing that, I joined Paul Fricker's charity game. And so the KSCM guys were running games throughout the weekend and they charged slightly more, not a lot more. I think it was £3 more. And it was like a charity event, small charity.
- [75:43]
B
It's for charity game. Yeah. So it's not for old Paul, to be clear.
- [75:49]
A
He didn't hand the ball out at the end of it and ask for tips. But I think I, I think Jonathan played a Rivers of London game Mumbai. Lynn Hardy Friday morning, didn't he? Part of the same thing. But I won't give too much away. But it's an adventure that's appearing in the forthcoming Innsmouth book, which is companion to the Arkham book that they did a couple of years ago. And yeah, it was really good because, as Paul was saying, like, because you've got Innsmouth, it's very. It's very difficult to avoid the fact that deep ones are involved. But this scenario kind of moved a little bit away. It's a bit of a. It's quite a different investigation with different outcomes. But what I would say is, if you've never played with Paul Fricker as a ngm, he is terrifying.
- [76:40]
D
He's not terrifying.
- [76:41]
A
You know, the Innsmouth look, he had
- [76:45]
B
a baseball cap on and he was
- [76:47]
A
playing like the people of Innsmouth. And he was very convincing. There was a point where he shouted very loudly and I genuinely felt the hairs on the back of my neck come up and I thought, wow. And it reminded me that Bladey, that the scope of Call of Cthulhu. I think in recent years I've tended to air towards the Call of Cthulhu as a horror adventure type approach. But you forget that with that game, you can create some terrifying scenes, can't you?
- [77:23]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think we've said before, it's quite a versatile game, isn't it, called Cthulhu. You can do a lot with it. And I suppose by virtue of the fact you can do a lot with it, you perhaps sometimes drift away from its origins as a. As a horror game. Whereas, yeah, you might play it more like an adventure horror type thing. I mean, I think when we were younger, when we were kids, we always played it a bit like that, didn't we? Like, we always played it in a kind of pulpy way, didn't we? Yeah, even though. But. But you're right, that's not necessarily. Its origins is. Its origins are that it's a horror, proper horror game, isn't it? Doomed and everything. Yeah, very, very creepy.
- [78:03]
A
People that kind of emerge from it and when you're interacting with them can set you on edge. So, yeah, that was a good game. I look forward to seeing that.
- [78:14]
B
And also, I think the good thing about exporting the traits, you do meet, you do meet people. I think that's one of the good things. I mean, you know, sometimes you might think that's not necessarily a good thing, but is one of the conventions. It's the of all the conventions where you go to during the year, it's the one where you do, you do meet different people or you mix with different people that you don't normally meet at some of the smaller conventions. So there is that kind of side to it, which can sometimes be a good thing, I think, you know, opportunities to play with different people, that kind of thing. So it's good. Although I did, I must mention, I did, did have the, the. The thing that happened a few years ago where when I got to my room on, on Sunday morning, there was no table for me again. There was no table. I didn't even told you that. Did I tell you this or. No, I don't think I did. I don't think I did.
- [79:09]
A
I saw you wandering about.
- [79:10]
B
Yeah, when I got there, I got into the room, I was in the right room and I looked round and there was like, all the tables are occupied. So I went back to the. I thought, oh, he would go again. This happened a few years ago, so I'll go again. And that's the time when I lost all the players because the players couldn't find me. So I went back to the desk and to be fair to, to be fair to the guy behind export, he handled it very well. He came with me to the room and he dealt with it. But it was funny because I went. It was like being at school. We walked in and I stood next to him looking rather sheepish, and he went, right, right, someone's in the wrong room. One of you shouldn't be here. He should be here. One of you shouldn't be. So I'm going to read out the games. I'm going to read out the games and it should be in here and you tell me whether it's you. So you read out each game and everyone. Yeah, that's me. Yeah, that's me. Yeah, that's me. Oh dear, I'm in the wrong room. And he had, he had to. He said, well, you move all his bling. Yeah, yeah, he had all these bling out and everything. The guy, the guy arguing said, well, you're gonna have to move because he's right. He's. It's all right to put him in another room like me, but his players will struggle to find him. So you, you have to move. Oh, and he's. To be fair, the guy said, I'm sorry, but to stand there in this kind of weird silence, but felt like an eternity, Felt it wasn't, but it felt like an eternity where he gathered his GM screen Up and his, his dice train, his, his tokens and his, his map and folded his map and put his map in his bag and put this in his bag and put that in his. But I'm just stood there thinking, oh come on, this is awkward. And then he left.
- [80:47]
A
But it felt, it felt a bit tighter though. I think in general the organization there were more RPGs running than ever before. But I did think that the organization was a lot better and they got those little slips that you have to
- [81:02]
B
hand in and yeah, it was and I suppose that's my point. There was a cock up where someone had obviously, for whatever reason, genuine mistake, gone in the wrong room, set up and that fine. But they did, they did handle it very well. I thought you're right, it seemed slicker kind of organization, bit tighter. And they did deal with it and they found him and he went away with this guy and said, look, don't worry, I'll find out where you should be. So although he helped me get my table, he helped the other guy as well because he left with him and said, I'll come with me, I'll show you where you should be. I'll find out which room you should be in. And that. So yeah, in that way it's a bit more. It did feel a bit of a slicker operation.
- [81:46]
A
Ignore this. It's a rug covering a hole. We didn't only play games at Expo, we also went to Barstool, this off Digital Carriageway to the Shadow Con and there were games being played there on the Saturday. So what did you play in the morning?
- [82:05]
B
In the morning I played Conan the New Conan by. Is it Monolith? I might be wrong here. Monolith games. Yeah, I play the new Conan game. That's what I played in the morning run by Matthew. Matthew Broom. And it's very good. I enjoyed it. Yeah. I didn't know what to expect because I signed up to it thinking, oh well, I'll play the new cone and see what that's like. Because, you know, I've played the two D21 and we found that a bit, it was a bit kind of complicated and what have you. Well, this was, this was very simple and slick. It was kind of. It reminded me a bit of Barbarians Lemuria. It's not the same system, but reminded me a bit of that kind of thing, you know.
- [82:49]
A
Yeah.
- [82:50]
B
But it enjoyed it. Yeah, it was good. Quite a good game, I don't think. Sure. Matthew said you can't. It's not for sale yet. I think he'd done the Kickstarter but he said it. I'm not sure it's at retail yet, so I don't know. I think PDF.
- [83:03]
A
PDF is available, isn't it?
- [83:04]
B
Yeah, maybe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that was. That was. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Yeah.
- [83:12]
A
In the morning I played Symborium, the free league version because I think there's a new version that's currently being kick started. But the old one that you can't get a full oven of money apparently because they've all gone out of circulation ahead of the new version. I never played in that world before but it reminded me a little bit of our experience of playing Han with Eddie. Yeah, it felt like a world that was well documented with maps and a bit like Eddie plays Hahn in the Robin of Sherwood kind of mod where it's very green and lush and simple. That's what the world feels like. Some of the humans have migrated out of areas because of this blighted curse and your role in the game is to return to some of those areas to kind of recover. Sort of post apocalyptic almost some of the monuments that the humans have left behind and they're trying to avoid this corruption and curse and the magic causes this blight. So it's quite dark I guess in a sense it feels very European. But yeah, it was good fun. We faced a terrifying abomination at the end and there was only three of us playing which was quite nice because there's a trio of players. I was an inept treasure hunter. We had a little goblin and also a duelist who was a changeling. So it was kind of a good. It felt very like Robert Silverberg Adventures.
- [85:02]
B
Good fun. Very good. Yeah. Yeah. Never heard of it. Never. Never played. Never played it. No. I didn't know much about it to be honest with. It's one of those things I've seen but never really. Never even gone beyond the COVID I
- [85:16]
A
don't think Dave Patterson run it for us and he has really got into it and got all the stuff.
- [85:24]
B
Ran a good game.
- [85:25]
A
It was.
- [85:25]
D
It was good.
- [85:26]
A
Felt like I really understood where the game was coming from at the end of it in the afternoon played Vase and I played an adventure I think Eve done before I grog.
- [85:38]
B
Grog me. Yeah. Mike's game of basin. Yeah, very good. I enjoy. I enjoy Mike's games of basin and I enjoy Vason anywhere. Yeah.
- [85:47]
A
Film from Mike is the king of bling.
- [85:51]
B
It just. It is, isn't it? It's like it's not all bling but the Bling that you get is very good bling. That's what I would say. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [86:01]
A
So the, the character sheets are delivered to you with a wax seal.
- [86:06]
B
Yeah, that's right, yes.
- [86:07]
D
I like that.
- [86:08]
B
Yeah.
- [86:08]
D
You don't quite know.
- [86:09]
B
You don't know where you're getting, do you? When you. Till you open it. Yeah.
- [86:13]
A
And you open it up and there's handouts.
- [86:15]
B
Glower.
- [86:16]
A
It was a really good scenario actually set in London and they're quite procedural, aren't they, those Vasin kind of investigations. But it's quite good because there was a couple of things going on that were unraveling simultaneously. It made the story quite interesting. Good characters as well.
- [86:43]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, very good.
- [86:46]
A
And what did you play in the afternoon?
- [86:48]
B
I played Neil's game of shadowdark. I played a bit of shadowdark, which I was quite looking forward to and I enjoyed a lot actually.
- [86:56]
A
There's a lot of people in the Grog squad who've contacted me to say that we need to get into shadowdark and investigate it and speak to the creator and all sort of people quite keen on us exploring it further. So. So what did you get from playing it?
- [87:15]
B
Well, it was a good old fashioned dungeon crawl, but I would say the dungeon itself was quite cleverly constructed. So it was called Raiders of the Raiders of the Lost Tomb. And there's a bit. Took me ages to work it out this. Neil was laughing. But at the end there was a certain point in it where I won't spoil it, but there's bits where I thought, oh, it's based on red as a lost art of it, isn't it? I've not really worked that out until now, but anyway. But it was. No, it's quite a clever dungeon where one of those dungeons that has like a couple of factions in. You don't quite know which faction to trust. So part of it is not just going through the rooms killing monsters, it's. It's working out these factions. A kind of. One of them's lines here about what's going on and of course you have to kind of work out which one's the bad faction, which one's the okay faction and deal with it. So it's one of those kind of dungeons, little dungeons and written by Kelsey Dion, the person who then wrote Shadow Dark. It's. It's an OSR type game but I suppose brings in a few things from 5th edition like Advantage, disadvantage and stuff like that. But it's, it's quite a nice. Quite A nice game. Nice. If you're looking for like kind of an old school game which has a few new school things in it. It's, it's okay. So it's a good, it's a good choice, you know, and there are some elements in it. There are some elements in it that you don't, you wouldn't really get in a one shot things about character progression. So it, as you go up the levels, you roll on a table to see what talent you get rather than get, you know, fixed. You know, like in a lot of old school games when you, when you become a third level fighter, oh, you get another plus one to hit. You get some more hit points and you get this. That's it. You, you actually roll on a table and get different things depending on what you roll. So all the characters as they advance, they all become slightly different. You know, 1, 1, 1 Fourth level wizard will be different for another fourth level wizard because they'll have different, slightly different abilities and things like that. So it's got some nice touches like that in which you wouldn't necessarily get at a one shot. You can see why people like it. And one, what I can see as well is why people, and I don't want to sound patronizing when I talk about young people here like I'm an old dosser, I am, but there's, there's. You can imagine somebody who's played fifth edition moving to Shadow Dark and it feeling like a breath of fresh air because it has a lot of, it has the same kind of feel as 5th edition but it's straight back and simpler. And you could see why a generation of gamers who get into 5th Edition D& D as a kind of the gateway drug like we always say, like my daughter, daughters got into boulders gay. But fifth edition is that much and we've played old school essentials and a bit of Shadow Dark and she kind of prefers that. You can see why people would get excited about it because if you switched from one to the other you would find it perhaps quite refreshing that it has a lot of simplicity to it. And also I played, I played a wizard in a dungeon and I'm never happy really when I'm a wizard in a dungeon. You know, I, you know, I'm sorry, I know some of these games are sophisticated. I could be playing a dog in Berlin with people riding on my back. I could be, I could be doing that, couldn't I? There's nothing wrong with that. Even though it was made up. I could be a KAJU in a rubber suit, crushing models. I could be all those things, or I could be traveling across a sentient landscape. But sometimes quite like being a wizard in a conjuring. Yeah, quite like that. Thanks very much.
- [91:08]
A
Sometimes I come away from these events, Blythe, and I feel, like, exhausted. But I must admit, this time I felt a bit differently. I came away from it feeling invigorated and particularly that last game of Call
- [91:22]
B
of Cthulhu with Paul.
- [91:24]
A
It really inspired me to want to play more. I felt like my game went well. I felt like the games I played were really good.
- [91:33]
B
Yeah, yeah. I felt. I felt the same, really. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [91:36]
A
Came away from it feeling that it was a good event. Before we go, what I bought, for the record, I bought that outgunned.
- [91:45]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [91:47]
A
And that's. That's a bit of a prime directive break.
- [91:49]
B
I've got the adventure. The adventure one. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah.
- [91:53]
A
And I also bought the. The Dragon Bane campaign.
- [91:57]
B
Oh, yeah. Glory.
- [91:58]
A
You know, I wasn't going to buy anything that I wasn't going to play, so I've already booked it in, haven't I've already put a map to say that we're playing it on our Wednesday group?
- [92:08]
B
No, I would say. I would say it's one of the best, possibly the best expo we've been to. I would say. I think it's partly learning how to navigate it a bit as well. Yeah, I think some of the early expos were a bit of a bumpy ride for us, weren't they? Yeah, some of the games we ended up on and some of the things we experienced were a little bit. We came away feeling a little bit despondent or a bit slightly confused about the whole hobby. But I think now we've kind of even. Like the Trade Hall, I bought. I bought Troubleshooters, the GM screen troubleshooters as well. But I feel like I bought those and I'll play them and I wanted to buy them a bit like you, that sense of, I will use this. I've not bought some rubbish. Whereas in the past, sometimes I've kind of bought stuff that I've come away thinking, what. How have I bought this for a good idea at the time? But I don't think we're susceptible to that now. And I think as well, choosing the games that we play and rub, we kind of. It's a bit of an art, isn't it? You know, doing, you know, doing these things. It's like people who go up to. I don't know, music festivals and things like that. You know, you hear people who go to Glastonbury, I always say, oh, the first time I went to Glastonbury was a disaster because I didn't know what I was doing and I got really drunk or I did this or I did that and I missed this and I missed that. And then eventually they perfect it so that they get what they want from it. And it felt a bit like with Expo that we are getting to the point where we're kind of getting what we want from it now. And that's no bad thing, really. Yeah.
- [93:44]
A
Although I do think next time we'll have a fallow year because we always enjoy that. To use the Glastonbury analogy, it could be good to try something different and.
- [93:53]
B
Yeah, yeah, good.
- [93:56]
A
And just coming back before we end, we should also say that we're very lucky to be alive, aren't we? Because we used one of our nine lives during that weekend.
- [94:05]
B
Oh, we did the taxi coming home from Expo from the hotel, was it on the Saturday night? Yeah, yeah. That was quite a scary experience, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know you're in trouble when you instinctively and almost involuntarily say to the taxi driver, slow down. Like I did at one point. I just said, slow down. Didn't help. Two things didn't help that journey. Well, three things. The first thing didn't help was you drove like a maniac. But that's the one thing that didn't help. The other things didn't help the fact that I was in the front and I could see two cans of Red Bull. And I thought, all he's run two cans of Red Bull. Are you a long shift? The other thing that didn't help was when we were waiting outside the courtau, Jonathan said, oh, he's pulled into a lay by. When has he done that? And he was in the layer by for a few minutes. Do you remember?
- [95:00]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [95:01]
B
He pulled into a rod and Jonathan said, oh, he stopped. Why has he stopped? And then about three or four minutes later he's. It started again and he was on his way. And when we were in the car on the motorway and driving like a mania, I got visions of him stopping this lay by saying, come on, come on, wake up, wake up, have some more Red Bull. You'll be okay, you'll get through this. Quite terrifying, you know, as we stumbled out of the car, all shaking slightly
- [95:27]
A
extra, my fingers from the back of
- [95:29]
B
the seat, one by one, you were talking in the back but every so often you would realize the jeopardy you were in and you were saying things like, well, the thing about Glaranth sir, You were trying to talk in a casual way. So we just want to just what, calm everyone down. Chris is going to talk about role playing games in the back, he's going to talk about role playing games at the back and it'll all be fine. But every now and again your voice just trailed off as you
- [96:06]
D
as he
- [96:07]
B
overtook another vehicle at 95 miles an hour because I was in the front, I could see speed he was doing.
- [96:14]
A
All we can hope for is the time when there'll be driverless cars and we'll get there safer.
- [96:20]
B
That's true. Yeah, that's true. The driver. The robocars won't do that, will they? Be fine.
- [96:26]
A
Right, see you later. Bye then.
- [96:28]
B
See ya.
- [96:29]
A
All right, it's Cowie Norland Vex's Gaming
- [96:33]
D
Rexes or whatever it is.
- [96:36]
E
Thanks for the intro, Dave. I'm Steve, host of All Anthraxis Gaming Vexes, a podcast documenting my ongoing mission to run, or at least play all of the RPGs. So I seem to be incapable of stopping my myself buying.
- [96:51]
A
You'll see me frequently fiddling with something in my hands.
- [96:58]
E
Each episode I get together with a group of fellow gamers that have either played a game I've run or who've GM'd a game for me. We chat through what we've enjoyed about the game and some ways we could have improved the experience whilst making a series of terrible jokes along the way.
- [97:12]
A
Was it hot chat action?
- [97:15]
E
Sometimes we con game designers who really should know better to to come along and talk to us about their games and maybe run an actual play segment to give us an idea of their vision for their game.
- [97:25]
B
I've told this story before and bore anyone.
- [97:28]
E
My topics range from old school favourites like Runequest through to some of those newfangled narrative games all the cool kids talk about. When you listen, I want you to feel as though you're sitting around our gaming table taking part in our post game chat and helping dispose of the last of the crisps and ale, I'll
- [97:44]
A
just wax my bowstring and think about
- [97:46]
B
the death of The Tainted on 0898.
- [97:49]
E
So if you like listening to people droning on excitedly about games in a range of regional British accents, all Anthrax's gaming of X's is the pod for you, and you'll find it on your podcasting app of choice. On occasion you may even hear something really insightful but I'm making no promises.
- [98:04]
A
Over to you Dave Pie to Ponxes and Mecha Titan. There isn't another bit.
- [98:20]
C
Thanks to Lawrence for appearing on the podcast and telling us about his game and I'll put a link in the show notes so you can find out more. I should say that the week after going to UK Games Expo, I was at another convention, a microcon organized in Bradford called Rolling in the Ruins by our friends at Breakfast in the Ruins podcast. Like the podcast, it was a morcot flavored micro con where I played Coram and using the Stormbringer Rules and had great fun and it was great seeing everybody there. Fantastic weekend. Thanks Andy.
- [99:02]
A
I know that I've been a bit
- [99:03]
C
tardy with the details of what's happening with Grog me in November, but please look out. Soon it'll be on the grognard files.com and you'll be able to see everything that's happening in Preston.
- [99:16]
A
I still need to sort out a
- [99:18]
C
few things so but it is going to go up there very soon after this episode drops, so look out for it.
- [99:25]
A
The best way to keep up to
- [99:26]
C
date is to join the Patreon, which you could do free now, but thank
- [99:31]
A
you to all the people who throw
- [99:33]
C
regular coins into the BUA to help keep this show on the road. I've got some new starters that have joined us recently, so I'll give them an individual shout out next time. Talking of next time, we're going to return to the subject of RPG magazines in the 1980s. Got a special guest joining us and
- [99:55]
A
we'll be looking at those Thunder page
- [99:57]
C
letters from 1983 sent by the Grog
- [100:01]
A
squad, so it's not too late for you to submit yours.
- [100:04]
C
Send it to me@dirtthedicegmail.com and we'll make
- [100:10]
A
sure that it gets covered.
- [100:11]
C
Remember, do it from the point of view of you writing it in 1983. I realize some of you may not have been born by then. Never mind.
- [100:20]
B
Here we go.
- [100:21]
C
I feel really invigorated by gaming at the moment. I've had some great experiences playing Face to Face with Friends and I'm looking forward to to the second half of the year doing more and more. So until next time. Adios amigos.
- [100:50]
D
La.
- [100:59]
C
La.
- [101:25]
E
Sa.