Hello, and welcome to Snyder’s return a tabletop roleplay podcast. My guest today is a progenitor of a world known and loved by so many in the TTRPG community. His creation has brought so many together for gaming that he has a studio named after that very principle. When he's not helping to walk forge a path through the more lines of DM analysis paralysis, he can be found bringing a different adventure zone to the table. Having had some incredible talent bring more of this world to life, it's not surprising that his name is known from the shadow marches all the way to the more our holds, and everywhere in between. So grab your light rail ticket to Shawn, and it's an absolute pleasure to welcome everyone creator, blogger, world builder, and game designer, Mr. Keith Baker. Keith, welcome to the show.
Keith Baker:Thank you so much for having me.
Snyder’s Return:It's an absolute pleasure. Before we get into some of the things I alluded to there in the introduction, would you mind letting us know how you got into tabletop role playing games, please.
Keith Baker:So I got into tabletop role playing games when I was around eight or nine. And my parents gave me a copy of the white box for d&d, and hardcover, a d&d books. And at the time, I was a little too young, you know, none of my other friends had ever heard of any of this. And so it was some years before I actually started to play but I loved like the monster manual, like the monster manual was just this, this book full of monsters with descriptions, and it was just, you know, a wonderful thing. I think I have my old a d&d monster manual that I hand coloured in some of the beautiful pictures, which I'm not necessarily I not an artist, but so it was around probably fifth grade that I actually started running games for people. And going forward, you know, it all went from there, I would say about 90 95% of the time, I ended up being the DM because I love making stories. And probably late high school was when I basically realised this is a job. You know, someone wrote these books that I am holding, like, that is a job people do. And that's what I want to do. Now, I'm old enough that back then that wasn't really a concept, you know, there was no clear path to get there. You certainly didn't have like game design majors at school or anything like that. So when I got out of college, I ended up in the computer game industry for about eight years. And it was sort of through that, that both I started doing sort of freelance open calls, things like that. And I ended up finally deciding to quit my day job and take a stab at it writing full time, after one of my latest projects was about to be cancelled. And that was the year that Wizards of the Coast announced the fantasy setting search that ended up producing everyone. So it was very, very fortuitous timing for me.
Snyder’s Return:Yeah, absolutely. So sort of having taken this creative journey. What was it like putting pen to paper and drafting and then creating this this world that that many of us in who are potentially new to d&d, or at least the fifth edition of the game as it as it sounds at the moment called Oberon? Sort of what was the first seed and where did that grow? For the thing that's
Keith Baker:interesting about it is for anyone who doesn't know the story, in I think it was 2002. Wizards, the coasts basically, you know, did this thing called the fantasy setting search, which was an open call for a new world. And they basically said, Anyone who wants to send in a one page description of a world. And the thing about Ebron is that it wasn't a world I'd been using before. It draws on a couple of pieces of various campaigns I've run but it was just something I'd actually at the computer game company I've been working on. I've been working on a pulp based MMO RPG. So I sort of been living in a world where I've been thinking a lot about Raiders, the Lost Ark about sort of over the top of venture, and Ebron sort of emerged from this combination of Okay, what if you took that mood? Plus, of course, things like film noir, which I love. What if you took those moods and put them onto the end? And then come bind that with a thing that has always been an interest of mine, which is that, especially in third edition, magic behaves arcane magic behaves in such a scientific fashion. That why doesn't it feel like a science? Why isn't it used and like a science and evolve with the world and with cultures, and so everyone's remarried those two concepts, the idea of this sort of both the noir aspects of shades of grey things not always been so simple, the pope aspects of the heroes as over the top of venture, you know, you know, heroes with the idea of a world sort of shaped by arcane magic. And so the thing about it is that it started literally as a one page description of me just pitching this idea. And I think the very first top of it was literally I just wrote a paragraph of a story. There was like Mickey redblade, was sharpening his dagger when she walked in, she was three feet of trouble, the most beautiful half lien he'd ever seen. You know, anybody could see it in her eyes, she was in danger. And so part of it was just, I was just like, I haven't thought this all through, you know, as I said, it was one page, but I'm like, I like this idea. And when Wizards of the Coast actually came and said, We like this idea to tell us more. There was a part of me that was just like, wow, really? Okay. And so it went from there to then having to turn that one patient to 10 pages and really start thinking like, Okay, how does this world actually work? From there, when it went further forward, it was turning 10 pages into 100 pages. And when they liked that it was going to Seattle and working with people that wizards the coast and turning that 100 pages into what we now know as the 3.5 Ebron campaign setting. But it was definitely every step of the way. It was this kind of wondrous experience of, as I said, having this core idea, but really building it all in the moment. As I said, there are certain elements that I can absolutely say, Well, that was that was part of the campaign I ran in high school or things like that. But overall, it was about sort of building this world from the ground up. And it was a very exciting experience.
Snyder’s Return:So as you built this, and you mentioned there touching back on, on the influences you had from games you ran in sort of high school and early on, you're sort of DMing Korea. What piece of the world of Oberon has stayed with you, the longest is closest to your heart in that respect.
Keith Baker:So it's, it's very hard because this is definitely one of those who's your favourite child sort of questions. And one of my basic approaches to world building is with any piece of it, I want to say, how is this cool? How is this going to make a good story? And you'll see that a lot of my blog of people ask me things like where do Flumps fit into Hebron? And I've never used Flumps, in Hebron. But to answer that question, I stopped and think why would I want to use Flumps? in Hebron, like what would be the most interesting story I can imagine with a flump and I tried to do that with everything I try to say, with every country. What's gonna be cool about running an adventure in thrain. So each country, each place, you know, has something that I really enjoy about it. If I had to pick one, just as a sort of personal if I'm running a story tomorrow, you know, where am I going to put it, I would probably actually say the nation of DRO M, which is the nation that's been formed by, you know, sort of monsters brought together by the daughters of Surah Kel, who are three legendary hags. And part of what I like about drove him is that especially at the time, it really sort of challenged the idea of what monsters are, and essentially said, If core there in general, the five nations are built on the principle of arcane magic is our foundation and our tool DRO M is built on the idea of, okay, but what if the abilities of monsters war are tools, one of the tiny details is the fact that how they feed a largely carnivorous population and maintain large population centres is by basically using troll sausage, that they, you know, trolls regenerate and so they have essentially, you know, sausage factories that grind up troll. And it's that kind of point of saying, okay, trolls regenerate, you can cut a limb off and they'll grow it back. Why are we eating them? And of course, you know, that raises questions of oh, probably, it's incredibly poisonous and things like that. And that's what we've said for Joanne is, oh, that's the key, the daughters of Surah Kela have secret herbs and spices that make it possible to intro but it's exactly that sort of point of as I said, taking the Creatures that we've always just thought of as these are things for adventurers to kill and get loot out of, and thinking about what kind of society would they create? What are the unique tools that they possess? And what could they do with them. Um, my Patreon game right now, which is tied to a book I'm writing is set in threshold, which is on the border of DRO. M and Greenland. And part of the point of that is, even though it's technically in Greenland, you get a lot of commerce and interaction with Jo M. And so it sort of gets a chance to see all of that, even though it is actually a brainless town.
Snyder’s Return:Yeah, I was, as you were sort of recounting. So within, and I highly recommend people to, there is a whole bookshelf of books that I would recommend for people to pick up. But clearly, everyone rising from the last war takes the elements of drawing, as you've mentioned, and puts agents into the, the city of Shan and across Corvair and I love the way that that usefulness of the coach monstrous races Yes, being turned into trade and craft and used
Keith Baker:and I agree with that completely. That's part of the house the rush is also that they are sort of acting as brokers for the people of DRO AM. And so the idea of you do in cities like Sharon see harpy messengers and ogre, you know, labourers? Because why wouldn't you? You know, I mean, that is a valuable resource for them. I'll also point out for people who are interested, at this point, I think they're only available electronically. But my novel, The Queen of stone, is actually set largely in DRO. M. And part of it is because that does give me an opportunity to explore some of that flavour of the nation in a way that you know, you don't get to in just a source book.
Snyder’s Return:Well, I will put a link to that in the description below his pocket. Speaking of links, actually, Keith, where can people go and find you and everything you're associated with, please.
Keith Baker:So I'm all over the place, I would say the two main places that you're going to find sort of the work that I do are my website, which is Keith hyphen, baker.com. And that mostly at the moment, I'm posting everyone material, but I do also sometimes have more general, you know, sort of advice articles or things like that. And then professionally together studios.com, and that's together with a W two, gather is my company. And that's where we're producing all of our games and things like that. So those are sort of two places where you can find what I do. I'm also here at Hotel Keith, on Twitter. And on most of the other socials, you can find us either as to gather studio or together studios. So just, you know, check that out. It's, I think, the other together studios out there is a Indian wedding photography company. So you'll probably be able to figure out pretty quickly which one of those you're looking at. And yeah, the final thing I'm gonna just pitch while we're talking about it is I do have a patreon. It's just Keith Baker. And first of all that supports my website, and is where I get the topics for the articles I write, people get to ask questions every month. But what I've been doing for the past year now, and I really like is I'm running a game set in threshold, my town and on the edge of Jerome and Breeland. And basically, it's an ongoing story, we're just up to the 14th session every month I run a game. But all of the patrons have a chance to play that basically, the characters remain the same. It's using these 12 characters that we've developed as a group, and everybody gets to sort of vote on elements of the story and things like that. But the actual players in the session change each time. So it's been given that what I really love is creating stories collaboratively. It's been this great experience to work with for more people than I could ingest a single session. And I'm, I'm very happy with sort of how that's turned out. You know, I wasn't at all sure when I started if it would really work with this changing players, but it's actually gone very well. So check that out.
Snyder’s Return:Yeah, definitely. I mean, we've over 500 patrons, that's a lot of rotation of players and gaming styles. You mentioned the characters there are these the characters we've seen consistently across the releases of books on the DMS guild available through drive thru RPG and
Keith Baker:so those characters that you're if you're speaking of the sort of iconic adventurers that you see In the artwork on all of the KB presents books, we call them the Badgers. And they do all have stories. We even have some minis that the Hero Forge people made for us of the Badgers. But that's sort of the thing is they have their own story. And there are definitely adventurers who go across the world. When I started the Patreon, what I actually did was a series of polls to the players saying, Okay, we need the muscle, you know, is it going to be the town sheriff? It's going to be the town blacksmith, is it going to be retired Sentinel martial, you know, sort of would give these here's five possible characters pick to them with each of those. Do you think the blacksmith should be a barbarian? Do you think she should be a fighter, you know, and so we sort of built the characters together. And that's part of the point of it is, even though at the end of the day I made these characters, the whole community sort of had a voice in shaping them. And so it does mean even when the players are dropping in and out, people know who these characters are. And we put up, I have a campaign website with bios, and all sorts of, you know, recaps and things like that. But as I said, it's kind of neat, because they're not just my characters. They're they're the patrons characters.
Snyder’s Return:Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned exploring, and we'll move on to exploring in a minute. But look, my train of thought has gone to a lightning rail of that. Yeah, exactly. And it took a deviation. I looked at out of the corner of my eye, and there was an image and I was like, I'll go in there. So we go in there. So you mentioned about exploring the rider world. And so if someone has, say, picked up one of the adventures, leads, books, or one of the DMS go to book or even everyone writes into the last war, what if they want to expand what, what releases do you have to open everyone out into, into maybe different planes or different locations of interest?
Keith Baker:Well, I mean, the main one for that is exploring Everon, which I released a couple of years now it was it was the first thing I worked on when everyone was unlocked for the Diems guild. And the thing about that is Ebron is the intellectual property of Wizards of the Coast. And for the longest time, it wasn't possible for anyone, not part of wizards, even me to actually create new Abra material. And once they unlocked it for the DMS guild, that was an opportunity for me to basically write about parts of the world that I always wanted to write about. But that never made it into any official book. So two key examples of that one is the planes from the very beginning, everyone had a unique planar cosmology, that wasn't just the great wheel. And yet, young, we had cool ideas about what made this different and interesting. But it was none of the planes were ever explored in more than a paragraph. And so exploring everyone was my first chance to really dig into that and really get into sort of what makes the planes of Ebron different and unique and give people materials to work with. So I was very happy with that. Another was the oceans that in the original design, I did have Ebron way back in the day. Part of that was that I actually outlined civilizations in the oceans with the idea that if you have merfolk, lacasa Swag in that, if you've got creatures in the oceans that are as intelligent or in many cases more intelligent than humans, they should have nations they should have, you know, and how do they interact with the surface world, and it's something that's largely ignored, because underwater adventures are problematic in lots of ways. And so it only ends up covering one of the oceans. But exploring Abraham was that chance to take the thunder Sea, which is the sort of most commonly trafficked by adventurers and say, Well, what is going on under the water? And how does that relate to people? So I will certainly say that in terms of my creations, exploring Ebron is the largest and the deepest, I've done a couple of other sort of smaller projects of the DMS guild, that you can, you know, delve into that, that help in different ways. And I'm working right now on two different new books for the DMS guild. But also, of course, you know, part of the nice thing about the DMS guild is that anybody can create Ebron material. So there's all kinds of things out there. I think there's like 1000 Ebron products on the DMS guild. And so there's definitely a lot to check out and to look into.
Snyder’s Return:Yeah, absolutely. With all this material, there's examples of things like encounters in Shawn being one of them that that is a great GM or DM resource. and sort of linking bit, I've remembered the point I was gonna or the question I was going to ask linking back with all this fantastic material with the source book books, the the supplements available through the DMS guild, your blog mentions your newest blog at this time recording session zero and all that sort of stuff. How have you found and people, I highly recommend going and reading the blog post itself. But would you mind give us a precis of how you conduct a session zero just to help new new Diems.
Keith Baker:So I mean, part of it to me is sort of the classic d&d adventure is five strangers meet in a tavern and someone offers the money to go, you know, beat up the bandits or something like that these people have no connection. I in the traditional sense, you know, what's your character? Well, I'm a dwarf fighter, that is my character. And that's all fine. You know, if that's, you know, you just want to roll some dice and beat up some orcs. But you can have sort of what is so wonderful about tabletop role playing games, is that we can create these stories together. And then we can build things that are deeper and larger. And so I like with session zero, which is basically just taking a little time before the first actual charge into a dungeon, to bring the players together. And to talk about both. The first thing I will always do is to talk to the players about the story. And the way I like to think of it is it's like, if you're going to sit down and watch a television series together, I'm not just going to invite you over to a room and put something on the TV, I'm going to say, Oh, I'm watching this mystery series, which you'd like to join me are we're going to watch Game of Thrones. And that's the thing to me is the first step is to make sure the players know what kind of story we're telling, and that they're excited about it that everyone can cover so much. Is this more like Indiana Jones? Or is it more like the Maltese Falcon? You know, is it high adventure or gritty street drama? And is it something very specific, I want you to be newspaper reporters, like being sent into, you know, war zones, or something like that. So the first thing is to pitch the story to the players. And the second is to talk about basically what character idea you have, and how does it fit into that? You know, basically, again, if I was casting a movie, if this is a war story, I'm going to say, Oh, well, your pacifist character who really wants to get into politics doesn't quite fit with this unless that's exactly what you want. And you really want to be like, Oh, I'm I'm fighting against tight constantly, you know, well, okay, but let's make sure we all know that's what that story is going to be. And the main thing to me is getting everybody to come with their basic idea. And then just to ask questions. So for me one of like, the most basic ones with Everon. Is that the last war on the end of two years ago, and the question is, what did you do during the war? Did you fight? If you fought, who'd you fight for? If you didn't fight? Why didn't you fight? If you are, for example, a fighter? You know, why weren't you fighting in the war? And what were you doing instead? And basically, that just gets from that point of, instead of saying, I am a fighter, it stops and says, Why are you a fighter? What have you done with those skills? Where did they come from? So you know, getting just that little piece can usually pray out a sort of, you know, a lot of different ideas people can play with. And then from that one of the other biggest questions is, what do you want? You know, if you're an adventurer, why are you an adventure? Is it because you just have nothing, literally nothing else to do? You know, one of the common pitches I give, if people don't have a clear idea, is to say, I like to call it the Firefly story. It's saying, You are a group of people who fought for the nation of Syria during the war. And it's blown up. And like you all know each other, you all have have sort of fought together, you know, one another skills, but you have no home, you have nowhere to go, what are you going to do? And so as I said, looking to Firefly as an example, it says, Here's people with a common background with something that brings them together, and with a very specific set of skills, makes sense for them to become adventurers. But it's always that question of, but do you want something like if you're getting treasure, what do you want to do with it? Do you want to have a castle? Do you want to get into politics? You know, where are you in 10 years? And as I said, just those couple of questions. What do you want? What did you do during the war? Do you are you religious? If so, which You know, where are you from? Just a few questions like that can really end up giving people a lot of sort of depths to their character. The last thing I'll say on that, which I also say in the article is also at the same time, don't feel you have to answer every question. Don't feel you need to know everything, you don't need an encyclopaedia about each character at the start of the game. Because you can add it as we go. If you think of a movie, they're gonna give us enough with the main character where we feel like we got the basic idea of who this guy is. But then halfway through the movie, we're gonna have a flashback about how he lost his brother in you know, whatever. And you can do that too. You know, you can always I mentioned in the article, if we establish that you fought for Breeland, you know, and the third session, I can have a guy show up and say, Oh, he's, he's a British veteran. You served with him in the war. What happened? Like, you know, what do you remember about this guy? And let the player establish that connection? So yeah, that's a whole lot of stuff.
Snyder’s Return:No, yeah, I love it. I love the Firefly reference to just making sure all of our lots of useful information for for sessions he wrote, and Jim demson Magic seems to be fair. So thank you for that. Changing it from sort of running the game DMing the game to creating the game you've had so many amazing writers come and work and build on the property that you've just sort of established? What's it been like opening the world up? And I realise it's you mentioned, it's an IP now of Wizards of the Coast, but but it being opened up and having having these new hands come in and craft parts of the world?
Keith Baker:Well, I mean, the thing about it is, that's always been the case, in the sense of, it's always been a property of Wizards of the Coast, you know, and even when I first created it, as I said, it went one page, it went 10 page, it went 100 pages. And then I went to Seattle and worked with, you know, James Wyatt, Bill Slava sec, Chris Perkins. And a big part of that was we spent about a week where we just sort of went over everything and essentially said, how can we make this even cooler? And like one of the key ones I always bring up is halflings, writing dinosaurs. I had the two lenta planes as as pneumatic half lanes in your nomadic halfling culture in the original one, but you know, I think they were just riding dry backs or horses or something. And we were sitting around that room just saying, what could be even cooler? Add someone, we all argue over who it actually was? Who said the idea? I think it was James Wyatt said, Well, what about dinosaurs? And we were all like, yes, dinosaurs halfling on a raptor? Yes. And so that's the point to me is that, from the beginning, everyone was never just mine. And various different writers wrote on, you know, there's quite a few source books that I wasn't involved in at all. And what I have always said, is that I want Canon to be something that players see as a starting point as a source of inspiration, not as a something that closes off stories. You know, I always tell people that the important thing is to figure out what the answer is in your emperor. The biggest example of this is the morning in Aberavon, what ended the great last war was the destruction of the nation of sere by a magical Cataclysm called the morning. And it is a mystery within the world. What caused that? And over 20 years, we have never given the answer for what was the cause of the morning. Because we don't want to we want you to decide what the cause of the morning was, we've given lots of possibilities. But the point is, when I play, I could play an Ebron campaign with you. And I know, I don't know the answer to the morning, because I don't know what you've decided. And so to me all along, that's just been an important part of the world is making it your own. You know, it gives us a common foundation to work with, but make it your own. And so I'm very excited to see so many other people out there doing just that. There are certainly lots of things that I look at, and I say, Well, I'm not going to use that in my app or on you know, but I'm glad that someone is and that someone has the opportunity to
Snyder’s Return:Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So focusing something on something that is yours. Together studios. You put out a couple of games already, Ella Matt, and you've got the adventures zone, sort of ball games coming through how had that sort of become established. And where's that, sort of leading us to in the future.
Keith Baker:So that became established actually, for the reasons that we've just talked about, which is that Wizards of the Coast owns ever. And for Intel ver quite recently, I couldn't write Everon material. And so things like exploring Emraan, five years ago, I couldn't write exploring. And so part of it was, the first thing we did with together Studios is a role playing game called phoenix dawn command. And that originally started because I actually started making a new setting. Because I couldn't, you know, work on Ebron. And then a friend of mine, who I was working with Dan Garrison said, Well, what if you had a, a game in which death was how your character levelled up? And I said, that's interesting. And that ended up becoming Phoenix like, originally, I was just creating a setting that would probably have been a d&d setting. But basically, I found this idea so intriguing that we ended up making an entirely new boat setting and system, phoenix dawn command. And together studios sort of formed around that, like, Okay, we're gonna make this and then continue to make other games. It's also the case that I have always had an interest in many different types of games, the same year I released Abra, or Ebron came out, I also made the card game gloom with Atlas games. And so rally together Studios is a company that the main uniting thing is it's things that my wife Jen and I make together. And it's we love storytelling, all sorts of different types of storytelling, whether it's a game like gloom, or in this case, the adventure zone, whether it's tabletop role playing, or in the case of Illa mat. Illa. Mat is a game we made with some friends, you know, the December sort of came to us and said, we've got this this weird thing, could you make a game out of it. And what we liked with alamat is, even though it's in no way, a storytelling game, it's a game that feels like it has a story. Like we wanted to make a game that felt like this could have been around for 100 years, and you've just forgotten it, you know, or just never run into it. Yeah. And so that's sort of what together is about is it's games that we think are interesting, it's games that encourage people to tell part, you know, tell stories. And then we have KB presents as our sort of little, you know, sort of imprint of together studios that specifically works on every raw material for the DMS guild,
Snyder’s Return:that's sort of having these these outflows these these output streams, clearly seems to you I can, I can see people can can probably hear the the excitement and enjoyment Utada derived from these these projects. What's the next big one that's coming to the table for together studios and KB presents,
Keith Baker:it's so KP presents, we have two things in the sort of melt. The next one that's going to come out is thing we're calling chronicle right now. And what that is, is something we sort of put together because I was in a place where I didn't have as much time as I'd like to edit essentially, takes the my favourite articles from my blog, including actually one of them is going to be the session zero article, just because it's a useful thing. And it's basically taking my favourite articles from the blog, expanding and editing and cleaning, you're revising them. Also adding mechanics, because part of the thing of the blog back when I started it, I couldn't actually do ever on mechanics that was sort of part of the whole thing. And so it's taking some of the articles and actually adding mechanical elements to them that they don't have. And so basically, chronicle is this sort of collection of my 30 sort of favourite things that I've written, expanded and brought together. And a few new things, you know, added as well. But the bigger book is frontiers of Ebron threshold, which I started at this point almost two years ago. And basically, we thought it was going to be out last year, but there were some real life issues that I had to deal with that made that impossible. And so I have that about half finished, and it's just waiting for me to complete chronicle to go back and finish that. So we hope chronicle will be out probably third quarter this year. And frontiers of Everon probably early second quarter next Styr frontiers deals with the frontier between drawing and brain land. And part of the thing about it is so many Ebron books focus on a big picture core there, you know, the plains, that this is taking a relatively small region, and going a lot deeper into it. And it's essentially, as with what I'm doing on Patreon, you could run a whole campaign there, you know, we're going into that level of depth, or it's just an interesting place to pass through, as you are, you know, going on other adventures, and it's just nice, as I said, to go that little bit deeper into a region. It also draws on a lot of sort of classic classic Western vibes, you know, with the sort of Frontier element except that of course, we've got one slingers, instead of gunslingers, and all of that.
Snyder’s Return:So with these, these projects in mind, I can ask you, a slightly personal but also professional question, what is your creative process? How do you go from putting the idea in your mind down to say the printed the printed paper? What's, what are your steps for sort of moving through the process?
Keith Baker:I mean, it's always it's always the hardest part of any, you know, big project, the first 5000 words are always the hardest part, because it is that question of where do you begin? Are you hitting a particular tone, and you know, once you get a certain amount of momentum, it just rolls along? But you know, the initial part is always very difficult. And, you know, one of the biggest things to me is always just that question of, how will this come into a story? Like, if I'm working on whether somebody asked me where Flumps go into whether I'm starting with frontiers of Ebron? You know, whether it's a big thing or a little thing, it's always saying, what are people going to do here? What's a cool story that could happen here? And how do I describe that? It's, it's one reason a lot of the things I work on actually start, like the chapter will start with like a little paragraph of a story. And part of that is because that is me sort of saying, What's the story that's going to happen here? And then using that to sort of Jumpstart? You know, writing about it?
Snyder’s Return:Yeah, yeah, no, that's, that's really helpful. Because I've attempted to write bits and pieces for other bits and pieces, and definitely, building that momentum has certainly been foiled a couple of times. So no, I I appreciate that. That sort of insight. Sorry.
Keith Baker:And one of the things I would definitely add to that is also don't try to get those first 5000 words perfect. You know, part of the point is that you're going to have that voice in your head saying, Oh, no, it's not right. Oh, it's not good enough. And the point is, just keep pushing forward to make something. And you'll have time to go back and make it perfect. You know, in part, it's as you get the momentum, you know, when I'm writing a big book, like frontiers, when I just sit down, I don't necessarily know what it's going to be, by the time I'm 10,000 words into it. Oh, okay. It's going to be more on this area than I thought it was going to be initially, you know, and I'll figure that out. And as I said, I'll probably go back and rewrite that first 10,000 words, but you've got to get that momentum, you know, going just to sort of figure it out. You know, what
Snyder’s Return:you're doing? Good? For sure. And so, sort of mentioned building this momentum, with you working on KB presents, together studios and various other projects. Do you get downtime? Do you get time for Have you sort of sussed out this work life balance thing, everybody's trying to sort of make the best.
Keith Baker:I mean, it's an advantage. It's one of those things of well, it helps if your job is your hobby. So the point to me is Oh, when I'm not working on stuff, that's when I'm answering questions for people on my Patreon or working on the adventure I'm gonna run you know, for the Patreon I am working on so many different things like right now. So I told you, we've got those two books. Every month, I'm doing things for my Patreon. We have four different board and card games in development for together studios right now. The ones that I think we have talked about are that we're doing an expansion for element and an expansion for the adventure zone. And then those are, you know, pretty much done at this point. But still a lot of things going on and I'm actually consulting for video game company. So I am just stupidly busy all the time. And the work life balance is something I do still need to figure out. But again, part of it is like I said, I really like what I do. The main challenge is that it is difficult finding In the creative building that momentum when you're then changing momentum, one of the things I found is a lot of times people will ask me to do a little something for a Kickstarter Oh, can you write a monster for my book? And I always want to, because Sure, why not? It's it's a small thing. It's only 1000 words. And yet, what I always find is okay, but I've got to get my brain around this setting or world or whatever, to really figure out how to make something good for it. And that can end up actually taking a lot more time than just the 1000 words, you know, would be. So it is something I have to be careful with.
Snyder’s Return:can only imagine only imagine. So we've mentioned there about board games, card games and things like that, and downtime and things like that other games out, there could be TTRPG systems or just board games in general that that you'd like, if I've got the time, I would love to just have a session or a game of that.
Keith Baker:I think probably the biggest one of them. I mean, I do play games and such I had for a long time. We're just right now I've been in a game with a couple of the Decemberists, a few other musicians and artists. That was a weekly d&d game for most of the pandemic, that I was playing it. You know, as I said, most of my life, I've been the DM, but I'm just a player in this. And actually, for the last probably four or five months, we actually switched over. And we've been playing Tales from the loop. So that's been a twist. I would love to play more savage worlds. Just because I am constantly hearing good things about it. I only played at once. And I just like to have a better feel for it. You know, it just seems like an interesting system that a lot of people I know love. So that's certainly one on my list of Oh, I'd like to play more of that sometime when I have the time.
Snyder’s Return:Yeah, there are there are a lot of great systems out there. And certainly, savage worlds is one that I'd like to dig into more at some stage, along with the 30 others I've got lined up on the shelf, as I'm sure you probably have
Keith Baker:as well. Yeah, I have to say I wrote my earliest published roleplay material was for the game over the edge, which came out in the 90s. And I love that system in that setting. And I've I've added on the back of my mind, I'm trying to convince the people in my Tales from the loop campaign to sort of push the story forward 10 years and have me run a over the edge game for those characters. But we'll see if that happens.
Snyder’s Return:Oh, good luck with that. Just as we start to get towards the tail end of this interview, take a brief moment. So if you wouldn't mind reminding everybody where they can find yourself and everything you're associated with. That'd be great.
Keith Baker:So my blog is at Keith hyphen baker.com Keith dash Baker. And that's where you'll find a lot of EB raw material. MY PATREON I'm Keith Baker. And that's where you can ask the questions that become articles on the blogs. And together studios that's TW O is where you can find Phoenix elimite, the adventure zone all of those other things, and on socials, most everywhere. It's either together studio or together studios. And you can also find me as hell Keith on Twitter.
Snyder’s Return:Well, as I said, at the start, I'll make sure those links are in the description below along with the link to the Queen of stone your novel. Thank you. So having discussed a lot of topics, both everyone has a setting, game playing game running game designing creation, is there any sort of final thoughts or or advice you would give out to new new DMS players or content creators?
Keith Baker:One of the ones I would give for Game Masters most of all, is ask questions. And this is least to me, part of what I love most I've worked on video games I've worked on I've written novels, you know, I've done all this. And part of what I love most about tabletop role playing games is that it is collaborative. I have an adventure that I've run 60 times. And it has never gone exactly the same way twice, because in part, that's how I designed it. But in part it's because it has that room for players to make interesting decisions and so that every time I run it, it's like getting to watch a favourite TV show, but things turn out differently. And for me, again, the main point is take advantage of that. You know, if you're going into a haunted temple, give a couple of details. There's this altar, there's a statue of where half the face is broken off. But I like to then ask a player Okay, and there's something right In the creepy here, what is it? Or if you run into a mob of zombies, I'll say there are definitely people from this village, you know, you see the butcher and he's missing an arm. Bob, tell me about a zombie that catches your eye and get each player to sort of describe one of the creatures, in part that takes some of the creative workload off you as a Game Master. But more importantly than that, it really draws the players into the story, it gives them now the player is imagining that zombie like they're seeing the scene in a way that they wouldn't be, if I just said, They're zombies, they attack you and hit you for 10 points of damage, you know, so basically, it's both about not having to do everything yourself, but also really trying to find things that give the players a personal connection to the story and make it feel like it's their story to beyond that. I just generally say that's, that's a piece of broader general advice is to remember that these are stories we make together. And that that's part of what makes this such a unique form of entertainment. And don't try and control everything. Don't try and make it about you. You know, it's going to be the best experience when you are working with everyone at the table and remembering that it's not only for everyone at your table, but everyone at every table, you know that this is something we all should feel that we can be a part of.
Snyder’s Return:That's just I'm virtually speechless, speechless, but that would be bad podcasting. i That is such amazing advice. Thank you, Keith. And thank you for taking your time out of your day to sort of come in and speak with me about the wonderful world of Hebron that is a personal favourite of mine. So this has been very special for me. So thank you. Thank you so much.
Keith Baker:You're welcome. And thank you very much for having me.
Snyder’s Return:It's pleasure. If we do get the chance to have have you back on the show, and again, in the future, I will be deeply honoured. So thank you so much. Thanks for listening. If you'd like to learn more about the show, then go to www dot Snyder’s return.squarespace.com. Alternatively, you can find us over on Twitter at return Schneider. We have a link tree link in the description of this episode. And if you want to support us, come and join us over on Patreon and we also have a Discord server. Please leave us a review because we'd love to learn how to improve the channel and provide better content out for for those who are listening until we until we speak again. Thank you