Slice & Dice | Ava Islam & Errant RPG

Oh, hey there listeners and juicers. Before we get into today's episode, I want to let you know that if you have fallen in love with the Draw Your Dice Podcast and want to help put some new fruit on the table, but don't feel comfortable making a monthly commitment? Well, you can support the show via the Acast supporter feature. No gift too large, nor too small. Just click on the link in the show description and know that I am sending you the strongest hug when you do so. How can we come together to help each other create in different ways? And money is obviously like a big part of that, and I don't think that should be ignored, but I think there's better ways to meet the needs of people in our communities that need that than trying to be like, "My name is Jeremy Gage and welcome to the Draw Your Dice Podcast." This is an educational show involving all things tabletop role-playing industry. Listen alongside me as we hear from creators, entrepreneurs, and supporters about their personal best practices, principles, and philosophies. I encourage anyone from the budding game designer to a seasoned publisher and everyone in between to sit down with us and enjoy today's episode. Hello everyone, welcome to the Draw Your Dice Podcast. My name is Jeremy Gage as you heard in the intro, but as always, it's not about me. It is about who I have brought to you today and what a treat to bring it fun fact. This is a redo. I'll say it out loud. I don't care. My file thinks that messed up, so I'm happy to bring this wonderful designer, OSR brain, hard working individual. I'd like to welcome the designer of ARRENT RPG to the show. Ava, Islam! None of those things you said about me are true. That's literally what do you mean? You're not the same thing you're not aware of. That's like the, well, I mean, that, you know, honestly, it is debatable whether or not I am the designer of ARRENT. But that one's probably the most true of the things you said. The previous three things leading up to it, I would contend. Percentile truth. That's the age we live in. Ava, as beginning of all these shows, would you just give a brief introduction of who you are and how you present yourself to the internet for anyone who might know, might not know who you are and is listening? My name's Ava. I think about Dragon Games and Dice a lot, I guess. And I did that for so long that I ended up with like hundreds of pages of random rules. People paid me money to publish those apparently. And now I ship post on Twitter all day at Young Dunn Bitch, YUNG, DUM Bitch. It's so interesting. What's really fascinating about doing this for a second time is that the first time we did this, you're like, man, maybe I should change my Twitter handle. In this time, it sounds like you're just embracing the bitch of it all. Yeah. I love that. I love the change in energy. I think I passed the Rubicon where there was like a job thing posted on Twitter and I applied for it. And it was like, leave your Twitter handle in the application. And so I had to like, type that out in like the application for like a job-ass job. And I think it like just like broke something in my brain. And now I'm like, nothing matters anymore. This is what it is. Amazing. Additionally, Ava for the show, would you also sort of walk us through your journey of tabletop like how you first started getting invested in the hobby and then maybe what was the first instance that kind of forced you to design a game? Yeah, for sure. So I started playing D&D like back when I was 10, I guess, when a family friend of mine, because I was a kid. And I love fantasy books. I really love dragons. I was like super into like dragons. So a family friend of mine gave me his old copy of like the Mensa Red Book, like the B and Beck Me. And so like I used to play the solo introductory adventure in that over and over. I would reroll my stats until I got an 18 and strength. And I would occasionally play D&D with like him. He was like in his 30s. So it would just be like a bunch of like tech bros who all worked with computers and shit in their 30s and then just like a 10 year old kid there. Just excited to roll dice. And yeah. And then I kind of like we moved away from those folks. So I kind of like lost my connection to the hobby as like a 10 year old child who didn't really actually like know what was going on most of the time. I like briefly tried to get back into it when I like remember asking my dad to take me to the store so that I could like buy some D&D books. And I bought like what was like the starter box at the time. It was like the 4E starter box, which I guess was like the current product at the time. I didn't like know there were additions of Dungeons and Dragons. I didn't know there were like different parts. Like I only knew these like random books from the 80s and like whatever I played with my weird adult friends, my weird age inappropriate friends. So then I remember like opening this box and there's like all these minis and this grid and shit. And I was like what is going on? This is looking at here. This is in the same game. So I like packed that up. And then I moved from Australia to Canada and in high school a bunch of my friends and I we had like an ongoing board game night thing. And then the 5E starter, they all wanted to play D&D. The 5E starter thing just came out. So this is like 2014 I think. So we played that and I tried to DM 5E for a bit. And it was basically like as I was like trying to DM 5E like playing it in different places. Like I started playing on Roll 20 and stuff. And then I started like googling things. And then that led me to all of these like strange blogs talking about something called the OSR. And I was like this sounds dope. Whatever these people are doing, that's what I want to be doing. And so like for a long time I tried to like make 5E like an OSR game and I failed pretty miserably at that. And I came and then I had this moment where I was like why am I trying to make this game do something that it doesn't want to do instead of just like going off and playing these games that actually do what I'm trying to do. And that was I think probably that was 2016 and the black hack had just come out which was like this like little minimalist OSR rule set that like everybody got like crazy into at that time. Me included and I essentially just started playing running the black hack and adding house rules to it and I added enough house rules that eventually I was like oh I think I've got like a game here like that's own thing like there were no surviving it had been fully ship a feces there were no surviving rules from the black hack in it at all. So I was like oh yeah I think this is something else then. I love that I love that the the entity that is your working game now is a product of murder essentially when it comes to the past game. Just a little VOD and D. This is like it's just like a hack of a hack of a hack it's just like an infinite chain of like just just I don't even know if it's murder so much as this just like complete like D and Re constitution you just disassemble something and rebuild it and you add some other random shit you found on the street into the pile. Full metal alchemist shit right now. Can you I mean I don't know has D&D even alive anymore? I don't think so like it's a corpse like it's fully like a like a walking like animated like zombie thing. Can you like kill what isn't alive? I don't think so. How do you destroy that which has no life kill I guess you can destroy something. Shambling horror of a game. You can turn on dead or you can be on dead. I want to do the for everyone at home. I want to be a zombie. When you were sort of adjusting D&D 5E what did what did you find was causing you the most friction to start change like start adding some house rule things was it just like like OSR forum influences or was there something personal which you were operating those styles of games that you're like well this isn't doing the thing that like I need it to do and was that a result of like just you or was it a result of the table you were playing with at the time as well. I think it was. I I think it was definitely a lot of. Like the influences of like the stuff that I was reading of like seeing essentially like what this game could be like what the game could be if there are like decisions to things and like consequences and stuff like that like just. When I was reading those OSA blogs for the first time, I was looking at stuff. Because everyone pitches D&D as like, "Oh, D&D is just like collaborative storytelling," which is like fun and all. But I feel like you run into these bits of friction where there's like, "Okay, you want to tell a story." And then you've got all of this math. What's that doing there? And you have all of these, all of the Reddit D&D horror stories of players with random back stories and whatever, just acting complete edge lords and whatever or not. Just all of the problems that come when you try to use five half paying attention people at a table as the vehicle for some kind of narrative authorship, mostly in the pervade of one person, it just kind of falls apart. And then I was looking at these OSA blogs basically and I was like, "Oh, god damn, D&D is like a game, like a game that you play." It's like a video game or a board game. It has rules and it has outcomes and it has specific feelings that are created as a result of playing the game. And that was also really liberating too because just running a game is way easier and I'm going to go out on a limb and say way more fun than the onus that gets placed on a lot of DMs as being like, "Be your little stage monkey for tonight. Perform for four hours. Tell us a magnificent little story that with voices and props and that cater to every individual players like whims and desires and needs." I mean, more power to the people that can pull those off but that ate for me, chief. Yeah, I'm not looking for the 150 session campaign that probably is necessary to accomplish that experience. Yeah, it's really the biggest thing that I always point to when that sort of example is given when there's a conflict between like the game and then the storytelling is firebolt. The cantrip firebolt that everyone's familiar with. It says, "You deal fire damage to a target, but can I start a bonfire with that firebolt? Can I light a torch with that?" I can obviously wield the power of fire magic. So where's all my utility at? You know what I mean? So there's fucking create god damn bonfire and there's god damn dancing lights or whatever. But like, fire is fire. I don't care which way you swing it. You just give a different verb command and it does what it needs to do. So I find it interesting that when someone takes firebolt but they don't take any of those other utility fire spells and says, "Yeah, I could set up a fire for the night in this high fantasy magic world and I'll just start a campfire." Cool, do you have like a tinderbox? No, but I firebolt. That's not what firebolt does. Huh, interesting. Fascinating. You know, I think it's a. I agree. What I'm looking for is that I agree. When you look at it as like a game with specific abilities that are on your hot bar, I think it's a little bit more of a release to engage with those mechanisms as intended rather than trying to like shoehorn them in to give you a particular experience. Which is funny though, because I'm all for using firebolt to start a fire though. That's what I mean. I think. And I feel like 5e is like a little bit better than that than like fourth edition was like kind of nuts for that because you had all of these things which were like, you had a name for the ability that would imply that you did something like, you know, that you have like some kind of like ability that the fighter has to like pull their enemy to them and it's like do they use a chain, do they use a rope or what, how does it happen? And those things just like magically kind of like turn off after combat, you can't do them anymore. Yeah. But yeah, I just, I mean that it's like more in the sense of like in 5e, it's like what reason do you have to start a campfire? Like who cares if there's a campfire? You know, because there's like what's the goal? Like, you know, like the goal is to just like be like whatever, we're gonna like tell some stories, we're gonna like fight some monsters. That's the only part of the game that like really mechanically matters. And the rest of the time in between is just like us doing funny voices and occasionally rolling a D20. But like why bother to start a campfire if you don't have like mechanics around like sleeping or cold weather or like actually having to eat stuff to survive, which you know implies like like in 5e, there's like a fail state and a win state basically in combat only. Like you, that's like the part where usually you like die or live. And then the rest of the game is just kind of like mostly abstract stuff. There isn't really anything to it. So like use firebolt for whatever outside of combat. It literally doesn't matter because it only matters when it's doing 1d10 damage to the orc because that's the only time you can win or fail. But like if you have these mechanics, if you view the game as like a whole of like we have a specific goal which in like oh, our games is like get the treasure survived to it and it involves all these different steps of like traveling through the wilderness and exploring the dungeon and whatever. Suddenly all of those things become important outside of combat. And then the game holistically, the win states and the fail states and all that holistically apply to like the entire the entire experience. You don't have this weird cleaving of like this is the game part. This is the story part. Yeah. This is the part you hang out until you it's like it's almost like it's the in between is the pause between the next time you engage with the game, right? Like, the game happens during combat and then you stop playing the game to do something that breaks the pacing of that combat and then you engage in combat again, right? Like that's the pattern sort of. Well, it's basically because right like like combat is the only part where there are mechanics that you actually have to make decisions in, right? Like there are mechanics for other parts of the game, but like there's not really much decision making involved. It's like you're doing stuff and then your DM says roll this check and you roll that check and you either like pass or you fail, there's not like a decision to be made there. And I mean, like this also, this is like complete straw manning. Of course, like there are other like decisions that happen in the course of like a game outside of combat that you know, but like there's no systematic support for those decisions happening there. That's really on the onus of like the GM to provide those and there's not much support for them to do so. Unless you buy 25 different things inside DM's guild that lets you hobble rule, but that's a whole nother conversation. In fact, that's a conversation that leads us into all those house rules becoming something grander. Why don't you give us a brief introduction of the errant RPG. Oh man, like where to begin? I guess it was mostly it's it's a game that like errant I guess is like my is like the thing that happened that like was created. It's like the byproduct of my attempt to understand how to run like like how to run like dungeon crawls and hex crawls and all of these like supposedly I feel like kind of just like lost lost techniques like lost practices like these things that like you see in your game like you open up your your your gamebook or whatever your correct even your 5 e books, your cursive straw or whatever and you see a hex map and you're like oh cool like a hex map like why is this important? How does it work? What do I do with this and the same with the dungeon you open up like a dungeon map and there's a bunch of rooms and there's a bunch of like corridors and it tells you like all of the distances between all of the rooms and you're like what am I supposed to do with this? What am I looking at? How does this how does this work? You know because everyone like and I mean because like through like kind of cultural asmosis right everyone like knows what a dungeon crawl is but I don't know I remember playing so many games on roll 20 where the DM would take us to like a battle map it's the map of the dungeon it's a really nicely drawn like the everything's colored in it's fully aligned to the grid it's super nice and we just drag our tokens onto it and the DM like just describes the dungeon and I just take my mouse and a click and I I just start dragging my token across the map and everybody's just kind of like moving their token across the map until eventually the DM's like okay you get into this room and this happens and there's maybe a fight or something and it's cool and then it's done and then I take my thing I start dragging my token across the map to like the next part of the room just dead silence while we're just dragging a little picture over top of a bigger picture on the internet all together at a voice call and I'm like there's gotta be more to it than this right there's gotta be like something to like actually like exploring a dungeon that makes it a dungeon and so er it is really based around this idea of like of like looking at these old of of older OSR games and trying to and and and and and blog posts and stuff and trying to see how they tick and and how actually are you meant to run these things and just me throwing rules at the wall and refining them until I was like, oh, I know how to run these now with the support of these things that I've found and developed. To the point that I kind of don't need them anymore, it's one of those little things where I like, I barely run errand like rules is written anymore. It was one of those things where for a long time, I was like developing the system and I would be like, I'm not doing this right. Let me look at what I've written down. Let me change this because it isn't right until I eventually was like, oh, I know what I'm doing now. I don't need to worry about what I wrote down 'cause I've like internalized it and I can like play with the formula. This isn't actually saying anything about the game though. I don't know how to fucking describe this game. It's like, it's a dragon game. It's a Dungeons and Dragons. The main innovation is that like, you know how in combat, you have a turn where you like make a decision and do a thing. There's just turns for every other part of the game too. Like there's a turn in the dungeon where you can like do one thing. Like this is not new. This is in like literally the oldest editions of Dungeons and Dragons, but like kind of like, the difference here is this difference in perspective where like in the, in the, in the older games, it's almost like a turn is like a ruler that you like place on top of a thing. You don't measure things in turns. It's more like, you know, your character has like, they can move like 120 feet in one turn in 10 minutes and you just take the lowest movement thing of like one person. And so your, your character is like describe what they're doing in, in, in sort of older play. Like they're like, we're going down this hallway and the DM would just like kind of like note until they hit, you know, 120 feet and then it'd be like, that's the end of one turn. We're gonna do another turn and a thing that a lot of newer old school players now are kind of the sort of modernized take is to view the turn not as like a ruler, but as like a container. Like it's not like, it's not like you, it's not like you measure things in turns. It's that you do things in turn. So instead of like, you move a definite distance, it's like you move from one place to the next. The sort of details, it becomes a little bit more abstract and it becomes more about like the decision itself. And it's the same sort of thing for hex crawls. Like before, if you look at OD&D, it gives all of its movement rates in miles, right? It says you can move like 24 miles in a day or whatever. And then you have a hex map which is divided into six mile hexes, which essentially just kind of functions as like a ruler to help you like measure how far someone gets in a day. So that you can be like, oh, at 8 p.m. They've traveled 18 miles. So they're like, at this point between this hex and this hex, whereas an errant and in a lot of other games, it's kind of like movement rate is given in hexes, not in miles. It's like you move one hex in a turn. So it kind of abstracts things into like the game level rather than like a game level plus like, I don't know, like a reality level as a measure. And it just does that throughout the whole game. There's exploration turns in the dungeon. Travel turns in the wilderness, downtime turns in civilization and initiative turns in combat. Because like turns are the part of the game where you actually play it like in 5e when you're in a turn in combat, you're actually playing the game because you're making decisions. So why not make decisions the whole time? Why not do the game the whole time? Basically, yeah, I think that might be, for my personal taste, I also think I'm very much a person who is in the camp of kind of making sure everyone does something in a round. 'Cause I think I find some struggles in games like PBTA or Blades in the Dark that don't really have like a turn or like an order or like something like that. And so I'm another layer of G.M.A.M.A. is keeping track of who's doing too much, who's doing too little. Am I supposed to engage with the person who's doing too little? Am I supposed to pull the reins on the person who's doing too much when it comes like more narrative style play. So I find it really interesting that there are procedures for also that in between time that kind of honestly takes a little bit of a cognitive bit from the G.M. as well. I don't do anything when I'm G.M.A.M.A.M. When I'm running air, I don't fucking do shit. It's like the easiest thing. It's a game that like plays itself. I'm like basically the equivalent of like, you know, and fall out when you like click an enemy to attack and then there's this little text box that comes up that's like you rolled a 19, you dealt for damage. Like that's just me, that's all I do when I run games anymore of the whole last text box. It's true. 'Cause like, okay, like I guess the other thing, the other thing that makes the turns work, the other thing in conjunction with the turns, the other sort of systematic element of it is what I call the event dice. It's usually known as in OSR circles as things like the overloaded encounter dice or the hazard dice. It was sort of pioneered by Brendan S of necropraxis.com. And so what it does is basically like, in your traditional Dragon games, each, you know, you have like I was saying, you have a turn in the dungeon, which is like 10 minutes. And you have all of these little things that are like, okay, like every turn you roll a D6 on a one, it's you run into a one-drink monster, right? And every six turns your torch goes out, every 24 turns of lantern goes out, and every six turn you also have to take a rest. So there's all of these kind of like little bookkeeping things that you have to do. What the overloaded encounter die does is it basically takes that dice that you roll at the start of every turn that tells you if you have an encounter or not. And it puts all of the other bookkeeping stuff, it shoves it inside of it. So it's something like, if you roll a one, there's like an encounter, and if you roll like a two, you have to rest, and if you roll like a three, your torch is burned down, and if you roll like a four, just something related to the area happens. If you roll a five, you get a sign of the next encounter that you have, and if you got a six, there's nothing, you don't have to worry about it. And what this basically does is it creates like a, a really easy, like sort of like almost like a, almost like a Boolean flow to the game of just kind of like logic of logic gates and like a procedural flow of like, I asked the players what they're doing. They tell me what they're doing. I resolve what, I resolve the results of what they did. I start a new turn. I roll the dice. I resolve what happens on the dice. The players tell me what they're doing. And it just kind of, and you don't really need to worry about anything. You don't need to worry about like pacing, because like the game takes care of that itself with this sort of thing. You don't really need to worry about like spotlighting characters or making sure. I mean, there's obviously still some of that, but I feel like it's, it definitely is the most stress-free a jamming that I've ever had to use to use this sort of system. I think there's also, there's also something really interesting there to when the events die sort of takes over the, what do you have to do at this space location in this turn or whatever that is sort of like predetermined results in a way. I think one of the, one of the falsities, falsies, fallacies. I don't know what the right word is. But there's this thing where like, you know, you're engaged in combat in D&D 5E. And you go, I'm going to attack the goblin, right? And then you roll your D20 and then you miss. And you're like, oh, I guess I'm not attacking the goblin this turn. There's this dissonance, right? Whereas if you have this role that sort of happens and said, hey, here's the next thing you have to role play towards or like that you have to fictionally think about moving forward. Like we are resting here. That is not an option or what have you. And it's like, OK, let's give a reason why we're tired or something like that. I think that just, I think it helps bridge a gap that I think D&D doesn't quite have when it comes to role playing for new players and that like you have to explain the thing that you're doing and just giving you sort of a prompt. It's almost like a prompt in a way, I guess, as I see it. Yeah. Well, it's, it's because it's not exactly like telling you fully like what's happening. Like it doesn't create a scenario at whole plot. Right. Use it with a dungeon. I guess I skipped a step in explaining what I do and I DM, which is like, usually it's like, players are in a dungeon. They enter a room, you know, like I described the room. I know the dice stuff happens is like, risk versus reward. So it's like, in the thing that I was describing before when I was just dragging my token like across across the room. Also, this can, this can be on the record. Right. Cool. On the mic, you know, there's like no consequences to what you're doing in the dungeon. Like, why are you in a dungeon at all? Right. Like if you don't have to think about things like like light or, or, or, you know, food or, or, or, or, or getting tired and exhaustion in the dungeon. So what the event dice there is for is not for like, successor failure. Like, Aaron has its own successor failure mechanic, which also tends to be quite binary. I think that's like an okay thing. It like, fail forward doesn't need to be in every game. It's they suit different play styles. what the event dice is there for is to create like risk and to create consequences to your actions because you can't just sit there and do everything. Because every time you do something, there's a chance you might run into something that kills you. There's a chance that your torch burns down. There's a chance that you need to rest and eat some food or something, which means that your resources are slowly depleting. It just basically is like a tool that is there to ensure that consequences have actions, basically, that every decision that you make is met with resistance so that you can't essentially make all the decisions given enough time. You are limited in what you have to do, which makes the decisions that you make meaningful. Yeah, in our previous talk, you said that you had mentioned that, Aaron's a more of a, you might have to correct me if I'm wrong, but more of a procedure's heavy-style game rather than a mechanics rolling or dice sort of game. There's simple dice rolls, but it has a lot of affordances built around it. Is this something that has come from those OSR frameworks or are there other inspirations for those things outside of OSR that have contributed to those designs? Definitely, like most, almost all my primary inspiration is OSR stuff. A lot of Aaron was just made by looking at things in BX or AD&D first edition and looking at it and thinking, like, what purpose does this rule serve? What gameplay state is it here to try to create in conference? It's a thing that gets ignored because it's annoying to track the different arithmetic weights of everything you're carrying, but it's like, why is this here? This has a purpose, this has a reason, which is in a game about carrying treasure, how much you can carry is important, and the more you carry, the slower you are, which is also important when you're in a game that takes place in tight corridors where you might get chased by things with sharp teeth. It's like, okay, there's a definite reason for this rule. There's a definite reason for this ruler procedure or whatever you want to call it being there. It creates a specific gameplay state, so how can I replicate that with what I feel like are in a way that's easier to run for me at least and hopefully for other people? But I really did design things with me as the primary audience in mind, first and foremost. This is a game that I use to run my own game, so if other people can use it or use parts of it, that's fine, but it's mostly designed for me. But definitely, I have inspirations from other places. I really like blades in the dark, and so there's a little bit of that in there in the position and impact mechanic where you lay out what the stakes of a rule are before you actually do the rule. There's a couple of like, I think I was looking at a couple of story games when I was designing the deviant class because their whole kind of stick is that they break the regular rules of the game and kind of play with like the narrative and the systems of the game itself and the way that a lot of story games do. I think I was looking at Rogue 2e by Cosmie Chen. That was one. And the treasure at the end of the Stungeon is an escape from the Stungeon, and we will never escape from the Stungeon. I think it's called by River House James. The treasure at the end of the Stungeon is an escape from the Stungeon and we will never escape from the Stungeon. That's the name of the game. So yeah, there's like a few little bits and pieces of inspiration from elsewhere, but yeah, primarily OSR stuff usually, and usually like, yeah, yeah, I don't know what the second thing was going to be. I was going to say something, but then I realized it wasn't true right before I said it. So I was like, no, we're going to let that die in my brain. That's and that is how the human brain works, everyone. Yeah, actually, I had the pleasure of playing Aaron's, what's great about this version versus the other version, that actually played Aaron's time. Yeah, I played the game this time. So I played the deviant, and I love sort of like this flashback mechanic sort of thing that was built into there. And, you know, glad everyone liked Ace, if you remember that stream, you know, it'll be coming back once everyone's in a while. He's my multiverous character. I make him for every stream. But yeah, it was, it was interesting in that I liked how just from a player, character experience, sort of like a live, you know, how did you like the game person I'm being interviewed by? Not that you asked, but I liked how a lot of the stats kind of correlated on the character sheet to different bits and bobbles that are involved in the game. I think correct me if wrong, but MV did the character sheet design for you? Yeah, great job, my MV. And but to speak to the deviant, I am sort of like, I like to mess with the narrative, like to push the game a little bit or push the push on the fiction to see where the bubbles burst a little bit. And then I'll like reign it back. And I'm not here to be a dickhead, but I like to push the boundaries for sure. But the deviant is exactly that and really allows for me to really just spend those tokens, spend those, but what are they called? I have a pulled up. Don't say it. I want to do it. Debian. I use those jetons to make a wager. And I also love how the GM gets to do sort of a devil's bargain thing as well to sort of like, let's me know what I had like. It's like, I'm trying to burst the bubble of the game and the GM's like, cool, go ahead, try to burst my bubble. You fuck it up though. It's gonna be all bad news bears. So it was a really great experience. And I and I really loved everything I got to do for the deviant. It's been a little while since I since our first version. But I guess as far as like what a player is doing in the game, were you just trying to like nail the four classic like typical classes that like existed in AD&D and everything like that? God you said you get in here. What were they? Oh AD&D had a bunch of classes more than four. I don't think there's actually ever been four classes in D&D. Really? I think OD&D had your fighting man, your magic user, your cleric, and dwarf elf and hobbit. And they were called hobbits in the very first printing and then they got sued. Rest in peace. So there's never been actually the classic four. There's never been an addition with just four classes. But the classic four are what everyone thinks of is your fighter, your rogue, your your your wizard, your cleric. And yeah, I did want it. I don't think you beat any other classes. I don't think you. I don't think. I mean, there's like two arguments to that, I guess, is the one is that like, oh, I want a class for each character concept. Like a fighter is not the same thing as a barbarian or whatever in the fiction, to which my answer is like why not? But it becomes one of those things where it sort of justifies itself. Like if you have a game with like really tight tactical mechanics or a lot of like mechanical differentiation, like sure, you can have those things and then they can like play in very different ways. But Aaron is like not that game. And then it's the other thing is just that like what like how many things do you need for your game to function? Like what are like all of the things that you that that happened in your game and do all of the classes provided, give players all the tools they need to handle those things. And if yes, then I don't think you need more things than that. But yeah, I mean, I did try to like structure. That's why I call them archetypes too, because I tried to structure them in such a way that that was like these are like the four big roles. They're not like character concepts in the way that like a barbarian or a mug sort of implies like a very strict like it doesn't just imply like what your character plays like it applies a lot about like what do they look like and what was their background like or whatever. And so archetypes meant to be much looser where it's like they're they're not a fighter. They're the violent. If your character does violence regardless of like how they do it or what they look like when they're doing it or whatever they they fit in that bucket because their job is is violence. And there's like little choices within the class that like allow you to be like I'm going to personalize this and I'll maybe get like a little mechanical like widget for it. But yeah, that's widget. Yeah, you know, like a little like a lot of things in Aaron aren't explicitly like you know you get like a plus one for this or whatever but it's like if you're a rat person and you want to identify cheeses by smell and you're like I'm going to be good at this because I'm a rat person. Like sure. Okay, I believe you. Why would you lie to me? We're all we're already lying. I don't need you to find the law in the book that says that you're not lying to me that a rat person is good at smelling different cheeses, you know, that's fine. What are you talking about again? Did I want to nail the feel of the four different classes? Yeah, I did. I wanted them to all play differently. I want, like, they all have different subsistence. And I wanted them to, to, when you play a different class, to feel like you're doing a different thing, like you're flaying the game in a different way and making different decisions. And if you had picked another class, yeah, that's it, I guess. It makes me, because I'm thinking about, you know, what is a class? Is I write some things in my own personal time? And one of the things that have been really fascinated by is, like, I think, I think you said basically the two things that I'm thinking about is, like, is a class a character concept or is it a tool set, right? Like, I think when you talk about this version of archetypes, it feels like a tool set or a teachings. And then that makes me think of, like, jobs from Final Fantasy. I don't know if you ever played Final Fantasy or any of the game. But I think about, like, how jobs and professions work. And like, hey, there is a guild for Paladins and they teach you these things. And Paladins can be, I think there is this line that D&D could have where, like, the base class is the tool set. And then, like, the subclass is the character concept, right? Like, I think that's, as we're talking about this, that's what my brain thinks of. And that, like, that's a D&D second edition. There you go. See, I haven't read it. I don't know. But, you know, it's, it's like, I think there's just something in there that, that, when you have these games that the world's most popular role playing game, the world's only role playing game, the big ampersand, you, we talked about this on the previous episode about, like, the original character culture and how a lot of those concepts are being brought into. And I still have that article. So I will link it in here for people to read, but in the show notes. So go ahead and check out that article. It's really good. But, you know, it's a thing about bringing your character concept and layering it on top of what the game is trying to do. And I think sometimes you get kind of pigeon-held. Well, maybe, see, this is not my brain works. I talk about it, but then I like argue with myself internally. And I'm like, well, that's not necessarily true, because then it can help people like, if they've never played a role playing game before, it can really help drive like what their character might be behaving as in the game or something like that. Anyways, summation, archetypes, nailing them, I think it's very cool that you've thought about how to allow people to sort of play whatever they want in a lot of ways and then give them basically, it's almost like a deck of magic cards. Each magic deck is, do it, a deck of magic, the gathering cards, I should be specific, because magic cards might be just a trick deck, a sleight of hand deck, but, you know, a agro red deck is going to play differently from an agro black deck and a black deck is going to play differently than a green deck. So, I think taking in classes that do very different game things are basically a different game and of a self is very, very cool and adds a lot of replayability and entices a person to like want to play something different as well. Like, ooh, I played the deviant last time, this time I'm going to play the violin because I just want to see how that game plays if they're that curious, right? I think it's a triumph. What we're in making a game like this, what were some of like the biggest challenges in design? Some of you just really struggled with for like more than two days because, you know, I consider you a genius, but that's just me. Like really dumb shit. Like, most of the big stuff was pretty easy because I stole it from other people, so I didn't have to think about it. Like, but like really dumb, minute stuff, like movement mechanics of like, of just like being like what dice should I use for this? Like, how does the number that they have here translate into how many spaces they can move and how many dice should I use to I broke down my long struggles with the movement mechanics in a blog post. But yeah, usually it's stuff like that. Like one time I was, I spent like an entire day trying to think of, so like in air you have like three types of weapons, they're heavy, medium and light, and basically the only difference mechanically between them is that heavy weapons do plus one damage and medium weapons do minus one damage. But like, I really didn't want there to be like any arithmetic in my game. So I spent like a full day just like agonizing over like, how can I represent a damage increase like this like that, my new in a different way and just trying out so many different permutations of like different ways to represent it with dice to whatever before just being like none of this works. I'm just going to keep it plus and minus one stuff like that. Other stuff is just is just like in the magic system, you know, there's no set spells. You roll a bunch of different, there's like a bunch of different grimoires. There's like a hundred of them that are like these like creepy objects that like determine that like our prompts for what kinds of spells you make and just like coming up with like a hundred of those and like three miscasts for each of them was just like hard and a slog. So just just stuff like that, I guess. Yeah. Who is it? Adrian. Is there a name? Yeah. That class, the name of that class being the cult. Dang it. Why I have a slumber. I'm sorry. I didn't know. I didn't know if that was a prompt for me. No, it's your game. I should remember it too. Yeah. Adrian really loved the magic system. You ended up creating inside of that because it makes it feel so much more grounded and tangible because you make items matter. You like make the components of the spell matter. And I know that in some cases people who play spell cast is DB5. E can like they can choose to but most of the time materials are like hand-waved, right? Like I just cast Fireball. Cool. Did you have the bat guano you needed for that? Whereas this it's like the spell originates from the things that I'm creating or the miracles originate from the thing that I'm creating which is very, very cool. And it's also like a fun creative exercise for the occult player as well which is really, really awesome. What on the opposite of the spectrum? What's like your favorite piece that you made for the game? Something you're really proud of. I love the downtime mechanics and the way that the downtime mechanics and like the downtime mechanics in combination with like the rules for XP. I just think make the game. So the rule for XP basically is that you only get you get experience in two ways. You get experience for money wasted. So money that you spend on just like drinking a bunch of booze and partying and doing drugs. Money that you that is essentially useless to you. And you get experience for whenever something you bought like becomes unusable even temporarily. So that doesn't matter if it's like your sword breaks or your cow is stolen or someone deposes you from your kingdom. Once you have like a thing that you've put money into that you can't use anymore for any amount of time, you get experience for that. And I find that it creates this thing where so like I feel like in a normal dragon game you look at the prices and it's like a loaf of bread is one copper and a hundred copper makes a gold. And your character goes into a dungeon for the first time and comes out with like 3000 gold pieces. And it's like why would you ever do that again? You have so much money now just live the rest of your life. And then players want to do things with do things with that money and they're like I want to set up a bakery and it's like cool and they get so invested in that bakery and the game just threatens to become like bakery simulator 2021. And it's like that's that's rad but we're playing dungeons and dragons. You have to go into the dungeon and fight the dragons. That's what it's therefore. And so I feel like these rules like help with that because it does this thing where like you go, you get your money, you have to waste it. And then there's another rule which is the lifestyle rule which is like instead of being like oh for a month, you know it costs like a hundred gold pieces in rent and 20 gold pieces for food or whatever. It just is like whatever money you have left at the end of your downtime turns when you're about to go back onto an adventure is halved like no. if Sanser buts doesn't matter if it's a hundred gold or ten thousand gold whatever you've got left is halved and i find that that creates you know that like that like very sort of classic feel that you get in these old sorts of sorts and sorcery stories or like how we be bubble whatever where your heroes are like always fucking broke doesn't matter what they did they're broke so they're they're broke now so they need to go and get more money and then they're going to use that money to pay for the shit that they broke while they were adventuring but it also does the second thing which is that it like they're like i'm going to lose this money anyway so i'm just gonna spend it on stuff i'm gonna like buy a bunch of things or maybe i'm going to like set up a bakery stall because my players want to make fucking bakery so much i put rules in it for that and then their bakery now becomes like a source of adventure because when you roll the event dice during a downtime turn it might be like hey someone is poisoning your flower and you cannot get you can't you can't make any more bread until you find out who poisoned your flower and so now you get xp for that you get xp for your bakery and now there's an adventure for you to do because you got to go find out who's poisoning your flower so you can get your bakery up and running again and get xp from it later and it ties it ties everything it like it does the thing where like let's players do what they want to do which is like come up with random shit to do with their money and invest in the world and stuff but it creates at the same time like a loop that keeps the focus of the game like on adventuring it doesn't like devalue all the stuff you do in downtime being like it doesn't matter like if you have a bakery that's going to give you like in-game bonuses for when you adventure like you're gonna have a bunch of fresh loaves of bread to bring with you on the stuff maybe that's gonna like give you a boost to your health or whatever but it just like make sure it like ensures that it like ties in that it complements the other part of the game without like overtaking it and I I really like how elegant that system is and the way all of these different parts of the game like feed into it yeah yeah my drop it's it's good and you know I think that is something that in my earlier days of GMing I kind of struggled I ran it was a called dragon heist for dnd a while back and they get like it's built into it they get a headquarters like they get an in or an old tavern that they can just have let me tell you the adventure full stops at level two and we just go into an HGTV channel series of just renovating this place and making dollars no one cares about the 500 thousand gold that's hidden somewhere in the city and you know in my in one of my minds I'm like well let's just turn that into a dungeon let's just open up the basement of this thing and just go in but yeah I love that you've taken the consideration to sort of connect everything in terms of the fixture the procedures that are present in the game because it allows it to sort of feed into itself and can really like I mean I don't I don't know what the cap limit of play on a single campaign is for this game but it seems like can go pretty indefinitely based on what what I'm looking at slash what I'm hearing here today would you agree would you disagree yeah I mean I think Aaron is built like I mean a big part of that like a big part of the reason why those why this downtime mechanics and stuff is in there is because if you look at like all of the old original additions it's in there right like in in in OD&D your ninth level ability as a fighter is not you get an extra attack it's you get a castle and people and you get like retainers you get like you get an army to go with that castle so this whole part of of the game where you know you you like invest in the world and you change it and you like build stuff has always been there for the beginning and it's been part it's tied to it's like war gaming routes right like the idea that like you would advance a dnd character to like max level and then they would become like the general of your army for your war games or whatever and and I think that like kind of reflects in the fact that like players want to do this kind of stuff even from the first level because you know opening a bakery is basically the same thing as opening a castle at just at different scales and so it was about trying to find a way to to take that aspect of the game the domain game and simple to make it more gameable and integrate it through like the entire structure of the game not just something that you do at the end of it but yeah at the same time Aaron is is designed for campaign play like long term play like like those old like those old dragon games and I think that's like where it really shines like it's fine for one shot but like honestly if I was gonna run a one shot for my friends I wouldn't pick it I'd pick like into the order or or something like that but Aaron is a game that like I think like really shines when you when you play it for an extended length of time and there are definitely people who are hungry for that style of play that will actually like feed and you know what is the end of dnd but level 20 or fizzle right like one of those two things are going to happen and then it's over amazing Aaron RPG go get it buy it tell your friends about it share it give a bit of money give all the other collaborators money or just give a bit of money I don't know just send it to a paypal account yeah so usually in this section Ava I ask you know what sort of trends are you seeing within your within the industry and your own social circles discord twitter's facebook groups personal text messages whatever or what are you seeing in the industry that's being maybe detractive that you want to caution people again so maybe maybe give a new perspective to that angle excuse me or if there is a trend within yourself that you would like to give to a listener that they can just run away with and kind of tying that up with the tip section as well because you have a really amazing blog that I have found like the my still my favorite one so far is the concept of someone turning into a dragon because of their horde I think that's a really fascinating article but yeah if you have like a like an article someone should read or if you want to like get into one on here I would love to I would love to hear about it thinking of this blog post by Ian use him who's a big big person in the mothership community big organizer their mothership did super well so many projects and mothership and zing plus three may just a bucket load of money and that really came down to the way that these folks were all collectively organizing and helping each other and stuff and so like this is going to get political because I've been reading marks let's go right before I came onto this but the show is about perspectives ava I think there's a trend in online RPG discourse that is kind of indicative of oh how do I like there's like literally no way for me to say this without sounding like pretentious as hell but like kind of like a bourgeois mentality in which we're looking at all of the problems besieging us under late capitalism of like the starvation wage is most of us live under and and and the struggle to like find meaning and make things real and our response to that and and the response that I'm seeing in a lot of RPG spaces is this idea of like professionalization of like being like you know you know what you should do you should charge money for your work and you should like set your rates like higher and you should like pay all these people you work with and and like these are all like good like I'm obviously not against like paying people who you work with and and and and charging for your stuff but I feel like it is this like kind of like response of like of like of like like of like neoliberal capital like inching its way into every part of our lives even to this like corner of of our hobby space and the response to that is just like cool like lean in like accept the market you know what I mean and and like let's set like professional standards let's treat each other like professionals I'm seeing folks that are being like you know they're putting out SRDs and they're saying like yeah in my SRD I'm saying like you know if you're a first time designer or whatever like sort of like and you read this and you make stuff like charge for your work like you did labor that's important and it is important but I think what it is reflective of is like a sort of failure of imagination of thinking of forms of community and organization that aren't dictated by the logics of the market and I think I think about like this idea to that like if you say this you're saying that like oh poor people don't deserve to like make games or or you know you're saying that like we should starve because you know we should charge for our games and then And that's like, absolutely not what I'm saying. I think like one of the things that I've realized doing over the summer where I haven't been working my day jobs a lot, and I've been doing like some like contract RPG work, is that it's like so much harder to do this stuff and to be creative about your hobby when you're relying on it as your soul or one of your main sources of income. And I think that like, I think that like this idea that we have to like confront each other as like these sort of like market professional artisans, producers and consumers of goods, is like one that's kind of like hurt our community long-term, especially like people coming into it, people coming into the space and like making things of their own for the first time, and they put it up on an itch page and they charge money for it, and suddenly like nobody buys it or nobody reads it or nobody comments on it, and you're kind of like iced out of productive feedback or discussion that could like help you long-term. And I think that just Ian talks about RPG communities in collective action, he points to like dissident whispers which was like an entire volunteer project that came together in such a short amount of time and did such an incredible amount of like high quality work that I think like really speaks to power to the creative potential of people in communities and the ability to be motivated by things that aren't, you know, money, especially when you have people in there that are like supporting you tangibly, where you know, everyone's like, we all have these skills, how can we put them together, how can we come together to help each other create in different ways? And money is obviously like a big part of that and I don't think that can be, that should be ignored, but I think that there's better ways to meet the needs of people in our communities that need that than trying to be like by my PDFs. Like I'm in a community like this and I have been for a while and it's like the main reason Aaron got made is because all the people in here are like, yeah, we're gonna help you make your thing and I help them make their things and we have like a mutual aid fund that we just like all donate into and when people need help and when people need money, you just get it from there. You don't have to worry about like being like, oh, pay me for this job or buy this thing from me and I think that does like a lot more collective good, honestly and again, this is not to say, I think paying for games is bad or paying your contributors is bad or any of that stuff, but I just think that there is, I think that there needs to be an awareness of like the drive towards like, I don't know like market logics and market solutions and to try to think of like alternatives around that alternative space on like community and mutual aid and support and skill sharing. I think that is like a much healthier thing long term. - Yeah, I was, it's interesting that you bring this up for a little while I've been thinking about doing a sort of, what would be the word that I use here? Firm or agency I guess where I find a couple of my best gal pals in design and we, I've recently discovered that I like design like lore and monsters and GM stuff and I'm not good at like systems, I'm not good at like doing dice math or card math or anything like that. And so I was thinking about pairing up with different individuals who have different specific skill sets so that we can each help to create or fully realize our dream pieces of content. For instance, I helped Spencer Campbell with Nova, Spencer didn't really like, couldn't really wrap his head around like making up lore, just it felt like a little bit of a slog to him. So it's like, hey, I'll help you with like lore and creatures and GM stuff and he has a full-ass system. Vidita Valetti is the same way, loves making systems does not like writing content around those systems. And so I was thinking to myself, like what if, you know, if I could just get like one systems designer and myself and then like an artist or illustrator and like kind of bring that stuff together, would that be more powerful and kind of more resonant community-wide than if I were to keep trying to just like make my own stuff solo all the time? Is it, I just wanna, are we on the same page here in terms of like what we're discussing here today or am I missing something? I'd love to eat my own foot. - No, we're definitely like, I just like, I'm thinking of like going, like I think the cooperation and stuff is like the fundamental aspect of it, but I also like want to think about it or bring it into a space that is serving as like, that's creating spaces for people to like make things with like less pressure from this sort of like demands of like, oh God, like I have to like, I have to like, how do I say this? Just like less pressure from like the demands that like we quote unquote like value like everything we do, that like we can't just like do anything for like fun or joy, like everything has to be for an objective and has to like add to our personal value, we need to be like leveling ourselves up or hustling or grinding or making something to sell just about creating spaces where people can, because people wanna make things and people like love to make things. And if you look at the history of like what the internet has done or like, you know, people have come together to create like amazing projects built around volunteer labor, like things like Wikipedia or like crazy Minecraft servers or whatever, that I think like, give that I think like show proof to the fact that like people, regardless of who they are, like if they're like, you know, like, and a lot of these things are not being done by fucking rich people, these are being done by like poor, working class people who want to make stuff. And I think as the pressures of capitalism rise and everything becomes like a gig, it becomes harder and harder to do that kind of stuff on your own without having to feel like or resort to, oh, I can't do this for free, I have to like sell this or turn it into like a professional product or something like that. And I'm thinking about how we can come together to create spaces that take that pressure off of us a little bit of we can make things together and we can do things as a community effort and we can support each other artistically, financially, whatever so that we can just like make things, you know? And that we don't have to be like, here is my brand, here are my products and that is like how we consume and regard each other's creative output, you know what I mean? Through like a storefront. - Yeah, I think that or my feelings are geared towards, fully agreeing with you. I think that you're saying a lot of interesting. I think a lot about like the concept of like just, just sort of giving like having this like sense of altruism essentially, not trying to just, I don't know, make what's marketable, right? I think it's a person like, oh shit, what is their name? They make maps, Dyson, Dyson logos. - Dyson logos? - Yeah, Dyson logos just makes it like here, just have my shit. If you pay for it, cool, whatever, but like just take it, do it, let's build, let's help other people succeed in making their thing if they can't like draw dungeons or draw landscapes, like don't let that stop you from creating what you're going to do, I'll help you do that. Is that sort of like on the lines of what we're talking about here today? - Yeah, fully. I just think that like, I mean, for me, first and foremost, this is like a hobby space and like a hobby community. This is like something that we do because it's fun and we love it, right? And I think we should try. And I think we should try hard to keep the specter of Maman from getting its fingers on it as much as we can in that shell. - I love it. I think that's a really great tip because I think there is this pressure of like, it's like this all the entrepreneurship, like, broy stuff. That's like, you know, you have to capitalize your dollars for the value of your time and like, you have to wake up at 4.30 every morning so that you can succeed in life. - The fucking Ryzen Grind. - Yeah, the Ryzen Grind baby. Don't do it. - It's bad. - It's gonna poison everything you love. - Yeah, yeah. For sure. - I think like, it's like, find a job that like can support you. That's almost impossible. That's almost impossible for a lot of people right now. So instead, let's try to support each other as best as we can. can and let's try to like make art and like let's not try to connect those to in some like weird unholy union, right? Like we can just like we can just all like I don't know like it's just like one of those things or like if we pull our resources we can do a lot more good than if we try to like make it as like individuals I don't know. Yeah I really like the mutual aid thing you mentioned earlier in that like it'd be so interesting if there was like an industry pool of dollars or something like that. Yeah and it's like at a large scale that sort of thing falls apart what you need are like close tight knit communities for that work but it's like go find that go make that go find the people who are interested in doing what you're doing and you know hang out together and make stuff together and and support each other that's that's my tips and tricks. That's my pro-gamer advice. What's up gamers? Far-up brain 9000 here remember to like and subscribe and hit the notification bell so you can get top tips from Ava every Wednesday at 7pm EST. Did I do it? Is that the YouTube? Am I on YouTube now? You you did it you nailed it. It's internalized I'm poisoned with that. We are going to come to the top of the show here Ava it has been an absolute pleasure having you on again with love to have you on a third time and a fourth time. Sorry for everyone who can't hear the first time there's lots of good juice in there. I just got broken up by the internet. Ava once again would you just give a brief outro of who you are where people can reach you where they can support you in any manner if they so choose? For sure I'm Ava I make dragon games and you can you can find me on twitter at young dumb bitch why you in GDUM bitch and from there you can basically find everything else I do. I have a pinned tweet there to preorder errand if you want to do that and also the link to the website where you can basically read almost all the rules for free because because you should be able to do that and and yeah my blog is that is permanent cranial damage permacran dam.blogsbot.com I'm sure that link will be somewhere and and yeah that's that's about it thanks for listening to me ramble. Wasn't ramble was a lecture loved it every second thank you everyone for hanging out with us today I hope that you learned a lot because I certainly did and we will catch you next time say bye to the people Ava bye people bye to foe all right that's a wrap thank you for taking the time to sit down and hang out with Ava and I we really appreciate it you can find links and resources down below in the show notes such as getting in touch with Ava or other episodes in similar topics if you want to be a part of the conversation please come and join the community discord server also make sure to subscribe to the draw your dice patreon where you can get access to early releases of episodes from as soon as we interview thanks again for stopping by and as always that will catch you next time you