Interview - Raising The Game - Camp Slaughter TTRPG / Charity Support

Today I talk with TTRPG Game Designers and Streamers Raising The Game.

We discuss Camp Slaughter's creation, inclusivity and gameplay along with TTRPG Calibration/Safety Tools and much more.

You can find Raising The Game and all of the things they're associated content via the links below.

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/RaisingTh3Game
https://twitter.com/SingularityJosh
https://twitter.com/richardstampdev

Website:
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/404293/Camp-Slaughter?affiliate_id=1643000

Other:
https://www.twitch.tv/raisingthegame

Please leave reviews on ITunes to help us to learn and grow as a Podcast

Yours Sincerely,

Adam 'Cosy' Powell

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CAST & CREW

Host: Adam Powell

Guest: Raising The Game - Josh / Minty / Richard (Stampy)

Sound Design: Adam Powell

Edited by: Adam Powell

Music: Epidemic Sound

Cover Art: Tim Cunningham - www.Wix.com

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http://snydersreturn.squarespace.com
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Email - snydersreturn@gmail.com

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Transcript

Snyder’s Return: 0:26

Hello and welcome to Snyder’s return a tabletop roleplay podcast. My guests today invite us to explore the wilderness, wildness and weirdness. Whilst having a killer time with our TTRPG group. They offer us the chance to repeatedly play different archetypes, rather than a singular experience. Bringing us wise counsel and charitable generosity, it is time to throw some supplies in a Bergen and set your compass bearing and prepare for the overwhelming success of this monster venture. It is an absolute pleasure to welcome TTRPG creators, streamers, LGBTQ to SIA nerds and all our fantastic human beings. Josh, minty and Richard from Raising The Game. Welcome all of you to the show.

RtG - Josh: 1:09

Hello. Pleasure to be

RtG - Minty: 1:11

here. I'm echoing the Whoo.

Snyder’s Return: 1:15

Echo in the woofer. Sure. Okay. So before we get into some of the things I've alluded to there in the introduction, Josh, why don't you tell us how you first got into TT RPGs, please. Oh,

RtG - Josh: 1:25

gosh. So I first got into TT RPGs when I was at university, I ended up like as part of the gaming society and then through there kind of played traveller, the old sci fi RPG. And then C 3.5 and Pathfinder got into LARP, which was a whole different sidetrack. And then a couple of years ago, kind of as like the DND fivey Renaissance was starting to happen, like my friends sort of got together. And then from there, I've sort of built out and I've got like a pretty expansive library of TTRPG knowledge now. So it's cool, like being out in the world and discovering all different game systems and what each thing is brings to the table. So yeah, that's kind of how I got to TT RPGs.

Snyder’s Return: 2:15

Alright, sounds pretty exciting. And and some questions to follow. I'm sure. Many What about yourself.

RtG - Minty: 2:23

I got into tabletop, when probably early teens, bunch of geeky friends just kind of got involved in that one then slowly transitioned into LARP. And then more TT RPGs. And then I met these two weirdos and played some games with them. Yeah, it's just the the general run of the mill. Met geeks play game.

Snyder’s Return: 2:45

Geeks play game. Love it. Love it and yourself. Richard, how did you form the third part of this trio?

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 2:51

Oh, my God, I started playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons second edition, the most user friendly game in existence at about the age of 11 or 12, with a bunch of family friends. And then kind of a bit of a Glock for a few years got into 3.5 with a bunch of school friends that went to explore it again, kind of another gap, and then fifth edition. And then kind of in between, I've just been collecting weird RPGs that I see like book fairs and things like that, like the Army of Darkness. I've got the book Rogers role playing games somewhere. It's just like a collection of weird stuff I'll never play. But these days, I fall into kind of much more rules like narrative, heavy kind of games, things like that, which I'm constantly kind of browbeating these two about playing with me sometime.

Snyder’s Return: 3:39

Yeah, sounds good. So you mentioned the sort of the rules light side of stuff. And that that's a nice way to bring us on to the sort of the reason that I've invited the three of you, or the collective as you are onto the show today. So having gone through sort of your own progression to get to where you are today to form, raising the game, and put out this product. What has it been like developing camp slaughter, completely wild?

RtG - Josh: 4:10

Absolutely, completely the strangest and weirdest experience of my life. So it kind of came around when I saw it. Like, I've had a couple of conversations with a couple of like my RPG friends, like people that are kind of involved in role for good, which is like a big new EU charity initiative. And they were like, oh, you know, I'm designing this and I'm designing that and will you play test this for me and whatever. And I was like, oh, you know, I thought about maybe writing a game one day but never sort of got around to it. And then I saw this thing pop up on Drive Thru where it was like, here's a game jam, you've got two months to write a game. And having never written anything of the like, ever before never even attempted it to sort of go from Ground Zero to what we ended up with. With much with much love and much help from the other team to sort of Shepherd me through the experience. Yeah, I'm really proud of what we've written. But it's just been like, it's just been a completely unique and strange experience.

Snyder’s Return: 5:18

So having this the six minutes from your perspective, Josh, how have the jobs, how have the each of you sort of contributed minty? What was your sort of bring to into this situation where you're just safeguarding Josh here, or we're sort of piling in your own inspirations and bringing something else to the game creation,

RtG - Minty: 5:40

honestly, just kind of showed up, was pretty much there, they've done the work, I just turned up and say, Hey, I'm here as your mole support. Kind of mostly joke, my knowledge base, and when it comes to horror, and that sort of stuff, I love a bit of horror films. And the bonus of having all three of us in this is that we all think, in very different ways. So we've managed to put together something I'm quite proud of that we've managed to make. Get out there to the public, just from three very different viewpoints. So Josh would bring in one idea, then I'd take a look at and say, how about this particular angle? And then some people like Yeah, like that, but also this. As a result, we just came up with something that was very, very cool, in my opinion.

Snyder’s Return: 6:28

So stamp you, Richard, you mentioned there by minty sort of having a different perspective to the other two, with your sort of background with your TTRPG experience with how have you found sort of linking with the other two and bringing your ideas into the games creation? Well, first

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 6:46

thing, I think, I think these these two have completely undersold themselves, which is very, very typical for the three of us. So my background is actually, so I'm a games designer, which needs to mock me endlessly for No, I think it's pure jealousy. But yeah, so I've sort of got a degree in games design, I tend to focus on sort of very player centric experience. And then that kind of rolls into this kind of the story is more important than the rules, which goes back to like, the kids the same rules that the LARP that minty and I met at, you know, the story is always more important. The rules. If the story is cool, the rules don't count, you know, and that's, and that's kind of what it came to. So So Josh turned up and was like, I really want to write this. I don't know where to start. So I basically posed a whole bunch of questions. Josh's encyclopaedic knowledge of all these different TTRPG systems turned into was cherry picking things we liked and wanting to play with them. Mentees natural aptitude towards, you know, the experience that he wants, and how to get from a situation that he didn't like to one that was working for him. And then accurately predicting, like player chaos. And like, this is great, but what if someone does this because he's a very abstract thinker when it comes to things like that. And then I just kind of, I kind of wandered along behind like tightening nuts and bolts and giving it a bit of spit and polish and, and, you know, a third round of have we considered this, and very much accurate. The other two, like incredibly proud of what we've put together, we've all run multiple play tests before we even really announced it was happening. And we always finished and sat there and when, guys, I think we've got something really special here.

Snyder’s Return: 8:25

So amazing. So you know, we've mentioned each of your contributions into the, the whole sort of the it's greater than the sum of its parts and all those sort of great metaphors or analogies or whatever. My English language isn't brilliant. However, we haven't actually described what the game is when you'd like to give us a nice sales pitch of what capsulotomy isn't where we can find it where we can pick it up.

RtG - Josh: 8:50

I got to let Richard field this one because Richards really good at this.

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 8:53

Okay, so camp slaughter is a short form, investigative horror roleplaying game that's built on a very rules life narrative heavy system, which encourages a group of unlucky campers and one kind of aspiring horror director that we call the camp counsellor. Through a short form experience one to three sessions. It's not designed for player progression. It's designed for an open and shut memorable story. It's available on Drive Thru RPG as of right now, it's on the front page, who knows how long that will last but it's on Drive Thru RPG. It's called Camp slaughter. It's an asking price of $12. But half of that is actually going to charitable causes, which I know we'll, we'll cover later. But that's very much the essence of what raising the game is. We are a charitable, you know, sort of fundraising group who have built an incredible rules light system. I think the real strength of the system is that the rules are light enough that it will suit your table. Like absolutely it will suit your table. If your table wants to play Scooby Doo, you can do that. But if you're into a more of a kind of strange Just things great or if you just want to go off and recreate, you know, Friday the 13th or Halloween but without all those problematic 80s 90s tropes, we've got you there to like, that's the whole point of the game. We've built inclusivity and we've removed these kinds of problematic tropes, which huge on representation and inclusivity in fact, drive thru RPG emailed us back straightaway going, Hey, your player characters are depicted with visible disabilities. This is incredible, like, absolutely fantastic. So yeah, I think we're making noise for all the right reasons.

RtG - Josh: 10:35

Can I also just take a moment here just a shout out Beth are incredible is to absolutely smashed the the likes of the six archetypes in the game, which are kind of as kind of rigid, alluded to the sort of typical horror movie sort of like the athlete, the nerd, the, you know, the loaner or whatever. Yeah. And basically, like, we were just like, here's the prefer what, like, here's the archetypes do with what you want. We'd love to see some, like, some representation for like, queer characters for people of colour for people with disabilities, whatever and best just absolutely smashed every single picture that that they did out of the park. Like, there was not a moment where they pasted something, and we were just like, Nope, I hate this. Like, it was just like, it was perfect from the get go. And all of the images ended up in the book, like, literally as we got them basically, first time

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 11:30

the athlete was the athletes. absolutely my favourite. So we mentioned the six archetypes The reason they're there. The reason it works so well is these are the six archetypes. And each of those has three kinds of classes attached to it. And they're all started out. There's no step rolling, anything like that the characters are all pre gender ready to go. And all you need to do is put your personality on them. So our athlete archetype image is our basketball, the basketball ace, except it's best this fantastic wheelchair basketball player, it's the first one you've seen in the book, it's incredibly well drawn, and it still kind of oozes that kind of athletic confidence. Like this, the whole pose, it's powerful. It's you know, it's I'm here, I'm doing my doing what I want to do, and nothing's gonna stop me doing it. And yeah, like 100% mirroring the shout out for Beth, she was incredible.

Snyder’s Return: 12:19

Absolutely, I've got the image up here, and those that really should follow the links down and just show from below. And I'll add some more in a second because I'll get your personal information as well not personal information, your social information, personal information, as we scroll down through the book, or go through the book, if you've managed to sort of printed out a copy the image of the athlete with the basketball held aloft over the head looking at a powerful pose. And again, as you mentioned, a few of the other archetypes have such amazing artwork. The survivor questionably standing next to a bear trap is is also great for sort of telling his own story. So with all this in place, or this fantastic artwork done by Beth, as you mentioned the what are each of your favourite sections in the book, realise as a whole product you're incredibly proud of why it's something that you feel that is in the book that just sort of resonated with you. As a creator,

RtG - Minty: 13:13

can I grab this one? Oh, gosh. Yeah. The monsters, the cryptids the descriptions of the monsters there, you've got those archetypes there of, you can play this sort of thing. This is an idea of how it might work. However, it is entirely up to you. And you've got these different ones on there. You've got like the without using some of the actual official names or legal Mothman. And then you got the Slender Man type, and you've got all that sort of stuff. Obviously, they're not there. They're completely different. But the same sort of archetype for and I love the fact that we were sitting down making this game and we were going well, I love this thing from this slasher movie. But also like this one is oh, let's come up with a list. And we just did we just came up with a list of different things on there. And I love looking at that list and thinking what can I scare the crap out of my players with today? That's my favourite part.

Snyder’s Return: 14:09

Love it. Love it. What about you, Joshua, are you Richard Hall.

RtG - Josh: 14:14

So I really the section that I really liked that kind of it was basically the last thing that me and Richard did in like, fever dream state two days before submission, but it actually worked out quite nicely I thought was We nailed in all of like, the camp and how to play the monster stuff like quite late. We had it all. You know, we had a Google Doc that we were kind of all working from because obviously when you're on a Google doc you can all sort of share and write at the same time and stuff. And quite often we just like branch out into different sections of the book and then just knock knock parts out. But yeah, like said like the stuff about the camp I thought I've really really enjoyed it because it was like, in a similar way to where minty was like, oh, you know, well, if you take Mothman, or the candy guy or a werewolf and like how do I, how do I slot these like various monster archetypes into these kind of pre existing boxes with like descriptions for like, what they do and how they do it? The camp itself is kind of cool, because it was kind of a fun exercise to go, well, you're going to a summer camp, presumably at one point, it was an overrun by monsters. What, what made it a summer camp. So it was like, one of the ways one of the one of the victory conditions is the games, one of the better conditions for the game is that you, you can build an escape vehicle. So we had to make sure that every camp had a motor pool, we had to make sure that every camp had somewhere that people could sleep every summer that people could eat somewhere like a campfire, a communal space, like activities and stuff. And I found that when I wrote my play test, which I'm hoping because we all wrote a play test, when we do an expanded version of the book, we can, we can include, like the three sample adventures that we all wrote, as kind of like part of this, like expanded book. It was really fun to follow that framework down as I was like, making my tampon dungeon draft. And being like, here's this, tick that off, here's this, tick that off. And then I've run that adventure twice for two different groups, and had it play both like, like, kill the monster and escape from the monster and, and it still kind of all worked together and worked out really nicely. So I was really, really proud of that, like that part of the book. Yeah, definitely.

Snyder’s Return: 16:41

Looking through it at the moment, as you mentioned a few like the multiple the metal records and things like that. Were you in your any view in your use into camping? Are you still into camping? Does this sort of play with some of the memories of of recent or past experiences that sort of gets the imagination going as well?

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 17:02

Not Not me, I just ticked off the cliches. Okay. I think with this.

RtG - Minty: 17:06

Yeah. So because we go Laughing.

RtG - Josh: 17:09

Yeah, that's true. And very often lops out that Scout camps as well. So you kind of get like, you get a feel for for those kinds of things as well. And obviously, some of this is sort of like romantically Americanized. The idea of having like, a tool shop or a farm or whatever on your cat, like, it's a very, it's like a very American ideal of summer camp. Because if in a British summer camp, it's like you've got an abseiling tower, if you're lucky, I guess. Maybe there's an archery range,

Snyder’s Return: 17:38

maybe if they remember to maintain it. Yeah. So moving with with the sort of American theme, and no, not with the American thing, moving with the LARPing. And looking at the the safety towards the TTRPG tools you have in the book, how is it how important is it to you as creators to ensure that player and group safety are sort of part of the integral experience of playing capsule otter, or any TTRPG really,

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 18:11

incredibly sorry, I jumped in because I know this, this is Josh's specialist subject, and he'd have been all over this. Incredibly, here's, here's the thing like to really push out, you have to be in a position of trust, okay. By establishing certain lines or certain taboos before a game begins, it allows you to push that area rather than a DM going, Oh, I don't know if I should do this. Actually, this is a bit close to the bone. The best example of it was I went to an international lab called Witcher school. And at the start of the game, they sat there and went, Hey, so just so you're aware, the original Witcher game, if you slept with someone, you've got like a collectible card, right? And the Witcher, The Witcher universe is about two things. It's about killing monsters and The Witcher going around and sleeping with everything on two legs. And we want to give you the whole experience. So here's the thing, if you flirt with an NPC, and they react positively, they'll whisk you away somewhere. And you will get one of these cards. Like it's slightly risky. Certainly not explicit, full frontal, but you'll get like a little like, you know what, me and you had a moment off in the corner somewhere. And that's, that's, it seemed like a really unusual thing to start with, like, you know, why would you feel the need to explain that. And then as you start playing, you realise that you're dealing with, like, 110 strangers in a castle in Poland. And suddenly that kind of flirty aspect, you know, like, I'm gonna play my character really flirty with with someone else's. And rather than me constantly being like, oh my god, am I am I like, is this is this not reciprocated? Am I reading the signs wrong? The fact is, there's rules in place to cover that so if I flirt with them way too much, and they're like we have an economy do a thing great or the you know, they say they're not interested or whatever. But the fact is, it, rather than making that whole area like taboo, let's not touch it, it freed up a lot of the player base, that it basically gave them permission to explore it. And and a set of tabletop rules by sitting here going and having your players go, I'm comfortable with this as long as we don't, you know, I don't want saw levels of door like described explicitly. But like, if you want to cut an arm off, like, I'm like, I'm not going to cry about that. Or do you know what, like, in real life? I have a crippling fear of this. If we could avoid this, this would be great. Can we just not mention this at all? Or, you know, can we treat this as a fade to black moment? It gives the DM an incredible amount of freedom to explore those things to find what makes your players nervous or excited or afraid. Because with clear boundaries, you can they actually gives you more space to explore than kind of imagining boundaries on yourself. And getting to the end of the game and someone going, oh, man, that whole bit with the guy with the hook hand. Like I really wish you to push that harder. That was awesome. And you're like, Do you know what I felt like people around the table? Were getting too much of it. So yeah, I think rules, both from a safeguarding the experience, but also enhancing the experience are incredibly important. And I'm really glad Josh really pressured me to put them in the book, we were on a, we were on a really tight page count. And it was only by a font change at the last minute that we freed up like a page and a half worth of space. And Josh was like, so do your rules. And we sat down and we got all the safety rules in and I think they've been great. It's been a massive, powerful addition to the book that frees up the players in the DM to actually explore themes of you know, psychological horror.

Snyder’s Return: 21:41

Josh, do you want to add anything more to that?

RtG - Josh: 21:43

Yeah, sure. I will. So yeah, like we had, like us stomping mentioned, we had like a really, really tight page count. And we always knew that safety tools, were gonna make it into the book. But I'm really glad that we had that. That page to do it with rather than just like, here's a paragraph explaining that you should go Google lines of vials and x cards. And please don't be a dick. But part of you know, as part of the question, I think that like, things that are like, safety tools are I inclusive, because obviously they, you know, they help you better manage everybody's expectations to start with. So we mentioned earlier, like, you can play Scooby Doo Stranger Things for the 13th, right? If you come and sit down at the table, and your counsellor has prepared Friday, the 13th, but you really wanted to play Scooby Doo, everyone's going to be sad, because none of the experiences then mesh, right. And then also, it gives it gives people that have, you know, you know, things like anxiety like I do, or like other other mental health conditions that kind of need certain topics like avoided, they give you the room to know what your boundaries are. But it also gives you as a GM, it also kind of gives you the room to turn the screws a little bit. Because if you definitely know something doesn't bother a play in terms of their safety, you can really drive the nail home again, I think, with this, while everybody remains kind of safe at the table. But they also get that really like authentic, like crapping their pants, like horror, tension building moment. And the other thing I will say as well, and this is kind of not necessarily on safety tools, but kind of generally on the sort of, like, inclusivity of the way that we've approached the book, as well as that, like, we're all will, you know, we're, we're a bunch of like, you know, late 20s, early 30s, like, Guys, or whatever, we like a laugh and a joke, but we're ultimately, like, something that's really important to us is that, like, we, that you get better every day, right? Because something, something that you said, six months ago might not be okay to say now. And we correct each of that as we go as as things become like, you know, not necessarily politically correct to science, stuff like that. And it was really, really important that kind of, we sort of tried to champion as much of that like inclusivity as possible in the book, to give people that, like may have, you know, things like disabilities, like with the last thing that we want is a person with like a disability or whatever it's like readable can just be like, cool. Well, if I'm here, I guess I'm just dead because there's, you know, all of the all of the campsites have stairs and there's no wheelchair access, or whatever, you know, and it was really important to make sure that everybody can have their fun and everybody could have the same experience. And then it shouldn't make, you know, it shouldn't make a difference kind of as to who the person is, but it should never, it should never be a barrier to entry, right?

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 24:56

That's actually a line that's actually a line in the book that I'm very proud of it that, you know what if you want to play a character with disabilities if you want to play a character in a wheelchair if that's how you want to represent 100% We're behind you. And if you say my character is a wheelchair athlete, then guess what your camp is disabled accessible and there's no two ways around it like I'm sorry DM live with it like, like there is no there is no point where it impacts the rules you will never be penalised for doing it is explicit in the rules. And I'd like to say probably with the full blessing of raising the game, that if you have someone in your game that wants to play, you know a disability representative character, and the game experience punish them for that we wholeheartedly condemn you

RtG - Josh: 25:44

don't play our game and we don't condemn you for wanting to play the disc.

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 25:47

We wholeheartedly condemn the DLC like that's that's that's a that's entirely you know, I know some people say like, Oh, we don't know if it's against the author's or wishes or not. It is deal with it.

RtG - Minty: 25:59

Be inclusive or don't play our game.

Snyder’s Return: 26:02

Yeah, there you go. See? That's a great takeaway to be inclusive in each of your social medias if you wish to promote where can we find with so we know where we can find counsellor to drive through RPG and hopefully in a numerous other places but drive through RPG the moment where can we find each of you on social media? Can we find each of you on social media?

RtG - Josh: 26:22

You can find me specifically at Singularity Josh, I'm missing out Josh over on the internet everywhere that will have our outracing the game Twitter, which is relatively new is at raising the game. The the E in the other is a three because somebody nicked our handle. The only other way you can have it is with with an underscore and somebody nicked that one as well. So

Snyder’s Return: 26:49

Bear.

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 26:50

Yeah, it's not that we were late. Yeah,

Snyder’s Return: 26:53

fair enough. Minty, where can we find you,

RtG - Minty: 26:55

if you wish to place you will find me is on raising the game. Which, by the way, is a fantastic small group of people only say because it's sat there otherwise I'd be like, I can't stand him. But he is on there means pop on over.

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 27:11

Actually, I'm gonna lean in there and go, you can find raising the game on Twitter. But you can also find us on Twitch where we have a channel that's where racing the game was born as a charitable fundraising channel, because we each of us have streamed in the past. And we saw a lot of people that were raising money. And we realised that what happens if you didn't get that visibility and where the money was going, somebody's going if you give me 10 subs, I'll give it to charity. And like there's no accountability. So we actually built the channel separate to our own social media so that, you know, we would only fundraise through authorised links and things like that. And we wanted to keep that transparency. And that's how that started. So you can always find minty there. If we're streaming he's involved whether he likes it or not. And I'm on I'm on Twitter I'm at. Yeah, exactly. I'm on Twitter. I'm at Richard stamp Dev, which is I started that while I was in university because I realised that the only way to get in the games industry is good branding. I also have a Twitch channel under the same name, but I've not streamed for about a year because my internet here is terrible. But who knows, maybe eventually.

Snyder’s Return: 28:18

All right, well, I will ensure that links not only to counsellor, but also your Twitter, both individuals and raising the game yourself and your Twitter down in the description below. So please scroll down. Follow those links support the creators support the project support the chat. So you mentioned they're giving to charities what which Charities is raising the game supporting at the moment given time of recording

RtG - Josh: 28:46

the for come slaughter, we are raising money for the Centre for reproductive rights. We have previously raised money for calm campaign against living miserably. And that's kind of all we've done so far we are in negotiations to sort of get our next round of annex charity stream kind of up and running. But with minty being a dad again for the second time. And you know, other general scheduling bits and pieces. Because we tend we because we're like a marathon group. It could be interesting as to how to how that all pans out.

RtG - Minty: 29:27

So the last one was 24 hours straight through. Well,

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 29:30

yeah, sorry. I'm gonna jump in here. Josh has been incredibly Maurice modest. So Josh is one of the people that sort of came to us with this idea initially. Josh, how much money have you raised for charity now?

RtG - Josh: 29:41

Like so including being involved with RA for good? I used to I used to help run RA for good as a coordinator. I think it's our last call. So about 15,000 pounds over the last 10 years or so.

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 29:58

Yeah. So what Josh's Joshua is kind of our driving moral compass here. And I wanted to give that a shout out because it's an actual joy to know that, you know, Josh does it meant he has also raised a lot of money for charity as well. No, I was just gonna I'm the I'm the weak link.

RtG - Minty: 30:16

The moral compass Come on. I'm like, totally the moral compass.

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 30:19

Right? Yeah, yeah, I'm kind of the weak link on the charity or fundraising fun. But our first our first live stream Yeah, we raised what nearly 13 1400 pounds for calm, which was absolutely incredible.

Snyder’s Return: 30:32

Definitely. Okay, I will change tack slightly. Not forgetting counsel or anything like that. But as content creators now as game runners, storytellers, MCs, DMS, what advice you have to those either wanting to run capsulotomy or any TTRPG someone looking to step behind the screen as it were for the first time, and your game is so accessible? That it's it's an easy one to recommend. But what advice would you give?

RtG - Josh: 31:01

So as far as running capsule goes? I think a, an easy way to make your game successful for camp slaughter, is to provide enough structure to your players in terms of the flexibility of your clues. So like, if you've only got the one clue that they need to banish the monster, for example, if they only ever repeat, if one piece of the puzzle only ever appears in one place, and you have absolutely no flexibility, there's a very real chance that the players just don't stumble across it at all. So I would say I would say like be flexible, obviously, make sure it makes thematic sense. But I'll give an example of this right? So I ran my adventure, it was an adventure where they were being chased around by like a like a typical like, you know, Jason Vorhees kind of character. And they needed what they needed a spark plug for the engine for the boat. And so I put that in just like a one of the camper cabins like away thinking that like maybe one of the kids had like nicked it from the shop or whatever. But a clue that I'd given them earlier alluded to one of the counsellors that was kind of involved with the repair shop. So they were like, right, we're gonna go to this guy's cabin. Like we have a name we have the we have the name, we have the number of the cabin that you'd be staying in. Let's go and see if we can find it. And so the flexibility of just being able to go Yeah, that makes sense. So you can find those there helps kind of shepherd the adventure along because a lot of horror jamming, generally speaking from quite a lot of horror games, is all in the it's all in the pace, right? If you're too fast, it's it's not scary. If you're too drawn out people kind of grow detached. So yeah, flexibility is kind of my, my big

Snyder’s Return: 32:47

recommendation. What about yourself Monte anything you'd like to throw in here,

RtG - Minty: 32:54

don't overthink it. It's probably the simplest one I can give you do not overthink it, you want to run a funny horror game, then by all means, watch an episode of Scooby Doo crack on that's great. That works just as well as your worst horror film you could ever possibly watch. So try and keep the basic premise simple. You got the monster, you got the you can eat the bathroom, or you can find your way out there. Find those items, put them somewhere on your map, and be flexible as to where they can go. That's where you got to worry about is making a little bit more suspense if you're trying to go for the horror. A little bit more funny if you're not.

Snyder’s Return: 33:27

And yourself, Richard,

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 33:28

I love this one. Roleplay not rule play. The story, the story comes before the rules. If somebody does something cool, let them do it. It's one of the reasons why I'm most proud of our dice rolling system and kmsauto we use a system where when you roll you will either success or fail. But you will do it with or without consequences. So a you know, a minor success with a consequence. There's a there's a whole example in the book. I mean, I will bring it up and run through it if we want but nothing we need to. But the fact is because it's described as a consequence as opposed to like you do this but then the other person takes damage or things like that. It lets you keep it narratively fresh, it lets you advance the story. Like anything that comes out to drive the story to pull people at the table in is so much more important than any rule written in the book. Every rule written in that book is optional at your table at any given point, if following the rule would impact the experience of the game. That being said it should be it should be treated with a dose of consistency. So you know what is cool in one moment should not punish a player the next moment and that kind of falls back into be flexible. But yeah, yeah. Roleplay over roleplay every day of the week.

Snyder’s Return: 34:49

Yeah. Huntress sort of back that as a as a message and your the way it's stated in the book is true of what you've said there and something that that I like to sort of weave into the games I run when I get the chance to run games. That's a that's actually a question. With everything you're doing with camp slaughter streams work, personalised. Congratulations on becoming a father the second time minty. Do you get much time for yourselves? Do you either run games have downtime work on other projects? How do you deal with things away from TT? RPGs?

RtG - Josh: 35:22

Well, very few things that I do outside kind of don't relate to racing the game in some way, shape, or form. Because if I'm not doing a project with these guys, I'm probably playing something with these guys. So, you know, it's just, yeah, it's just kind of a balance of that, like, you know, these these, these are two of my very, very best friends in the world. And yeah, like we, you know, we try and find time to play together as well as like, as, as well as work together as such. And so that's, that's kind of my answer to that.

Snyder’s Return: 35:57

Myself, me to do much time being. For the second time,

RtG - Minty: 36:03

the little time I do get is usually spent with these two falls. So we play random PC games. Josh runs a mean, tabletop game. Sometimes very mean, sometimes very mean. Not so mean. Sam, he shows up, so it's good. I joke, Sam, he has run a couple of games that I've played. And I love seeing his table. Same as Josh, Josh has run more games than Sammy has for me. And both of them have a very different approach to how they do it. So yeah, I get to sit at the table with him, as well as play some other games, the more bass Stampy

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 36:46

Yeah, so I generally have a couple of if you ever have a couple of one shot games ready to go at any given point. We've literally had evenings where we've all sat down to play a game and go on. I don't know what to play. And I'm like Rolodex Let's go. And like throw them into my rules like Game of choice is called Mark Borg. It's an incredibly dark, messy, like Dark Souls meets Darkest Dungeon kind of vibe. But the rules are incredibly light. And it lets you just literally I mean, I've read one was it last week and I went online and I went dungeon generator storage generator go. And, and they were both just like, glued to it for like four hours.

RtG - Josh: 37:24

That's not hyperbole. I was having a really, really terrible day with like, mental health and depression, and I couldn't, I couldn't concentrate on anything. And Stampy was like, Cool. We're gonna play more Borg. I've rolled your characters for you. I've clicked the dungeon thing. We're gonna go play now. And we did and it was awesome. Yeah, so it was it was literally like, Yeah, we like it was awesome.

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 37:46

We found this great. It was like an old tumblr post. And it was like imagine playing a Dungeons and Dragons game where you start off and like, you don't know anything about your character and you're like, I go to pick this up. You're like, oh, it's super easy. Like, oh, I'm I've got lots of strength or like, Oh, yeah. Oh my god. I'm a Dragonborn. And we talked about it and we were like, You know what, it doesn't work for d&d d&d is restricted by the quantity of its rules it would make being a spell caster an absolute nightmare. And then I was like, it would work great for MacBook and that's exactly what happened and I literally threw them in a dungeon complete amnesia. Here's a couple of blank character sheets. I've got your character sheets over here let's go and then like half an hour in someone else joined to the game and they found him sleeping in a corner and everyone has a whole freakout all over again. And yeah, I tend to run very kind of fast and loose not always a lot of prep but again, narrative heavy rules like if it's good for the story, do it

Snyder’s Return: 38:42

yeah, you mentioned mobile. Great system great game I've got the the dungeon creator it's not called dungeon, the dungeon thing and the monster thing on my desktop. freebies seem to be producing publishing whatever some some amazing games for them. What other games would you like to play? Or do you enjoy playing away from obviously, working on and repping as it were camp slaughter

RtG - Josh: 39:09

funnily enough that you talked about free league free League, probably my favourite RPG publisher. I've recently had my Kickstarter for Veselin, mythical Britain and Ireland fulfilled. I know Adam because the very first time Adam and I met he ran me at an RPG for all for good which was awesome. And I went and grabbed a an RPG and the Colonial Marines book and I've run that actually for minty since minty, a big big alien guy.

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 39:41

I own it, never played it.

RtG - Josh: 39:42

It's awesome. We're gonna play that sometime. It's amazing. Remind me and we'll work it out. But actually touching on MacBook and I realised it was head without capsule and stuff, but I just kind of It's a point I really want to hammer home is that I'm dyslexic as hell. That book more cool Walk and Cyborg are a nightmare for people with learning difficulties. And something that we did with capsule o was because I was like, I'm absolutely not writing a book that heart like anybody with a learning difficulty can't read. And that MacBook as much as it was the inspiration for a lot of the stuff that we did with the way that like, with the way that we did it, this sort of like, you know, narrative first rules last kind of approach. We also took it the other end of things on how to not do things as well. But yeah, so, back to the original question, free League, veteran aid and RPG, there's a bunch of games that I have that I am yet to play, I by RPGs, like they're going out of fashion. I want to play more beam sabre. We played one session of that. It's a game I really love but we should play more of that

Snyder’s Return: 40:52

girl makes really brings us around a human. Why do you want to play

RtG - Minty: 40:57

I actually want to play Pathfinder with these lads is one of the games that I really enjoy playing. I've done a few campaigns, I've done some extended campaigns run by a couple of other gyms. And I want to jump into that, because I've pretty much already got a story ready to go to run. So I just need them to make some characters. Nice.

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 41:17

Cool. I can do it after this if you like. Which kind of leaves me as the the bit of the bit of the black sheep really, I don't get to tabletop very often, unless it's with these folks. So creating one is kind of put a fire under me there's a reason I have a whole collection of great RPGs that I have not played and will likely never run. My favourite is on a recent trip to Norway to visit my partner I found a hardcopy version of thirsty sword lesbians, which I think is incredible. The artwork is amazing. Am I ever likely to run it? Probably not. I'm well aware. I'm not the target audience for that game. But that doesn't mean that I don't wholeheartedly and completely, completely support it. You know, I've got I've got the alien RPG which I think is incredible. The Blade Runner RPG is obviously that went through went through or is about to kickstart I'm really keen to get my hands on that when it drops. But like Yeah, huge fan of like that kind of, you know, like future cyberpunk, that kind of stuff. But honestly, I wanted these kind of eternal Diems and I'll play a game three, four sessions, and then it'll never match up. So I watched like, you know, I watched the first episode of, you know, Stranger Things and watch everyone get really excited around a table with some miniatures in classic d&d, and I just sit there and feel really sad that I don't have that. So yeah, I'm kind of the odd one out like I have a lot of I have a lot of time and I spend that making other games like video games games. Just make crap prototypes that never see the light of day constantly. But yeah, TTRPG wise, like I'm always down for something new.

Snyder’s Return: 42:56

All right, well, either between the three of you or between the four of us I'm sure we can organise something.

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 43:02

I will absolutely run a game a capsule of you. I've got a moment's notice probably literally at a moment's notice.

Snyder’s Return: 43:10

We can sort out the details after after I'm sure as we move towards the tail end, where's raising the game going next? Where are the three of you now so you've got this project under your belt your your work in promoting? It's available on Drive Thru RPG links in the description below. I'm going to sell it like mad. But where are the three of you taking this next?

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 43:30

Is it time is it time to go on?

RtG - Josh: 43:34

So in classic ADHD fashion, I went I am halfway through a very intense project with a very real deadline. What else can I do with my time and we had this idea where we played we were playing what's it called shredders Revenge. Revenge Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle shredders revenge, which is like a like a Streets of Rage like side scroller arcade BMX thing, right?

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 44:03

It's amazing.

RtG - Josh: 44:04

It's really, really cool. But we were just like, I was like, wow, what happened? What happened? If we just took like, Saturday morning cartoons? Like I say, I say cartoons the next phrase up my mouth is gonna be like Power Rangers. But you know, like Power Rangers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles biker Mike from by getting Mice from Mars Animorphs. You know, he man, all this stuff and made a sort of rule is that a rule set kind of maybe using borrowing fairly heavily from like beam sabre? Because the way that beam Sabre works is that like you are, you have like your individual character classes. But then you also have a squad playbook, where it's like, so you like you're like, you're like assault specialists or you're a bunch of spies or whatever. And you're set up to kind of your base of operations is set up to sort of I play the different faces of the everlasting war depending on which front you want to fight it. And I was like, Well, what happened? Well, actually, it was stampede to give full credit Stampy was like, Well, what happens if we take that ruleset and then applied that, to that concept of being like, let's see if we can divide up like Power Rangers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Biker Mice from Mars, whatever. How many of those are archetypes and then have like, you know, extra mutated animals? Yeah. Okay, with space power.

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 45:31

Yeah, catch up in there. So it kind of it kind of roughly boils down to, and I'm really good at this. So one of the things you learned very quickly in both production and design, which is my day job, which these guys will rip me about surprise, they haven't on air already. But one of the things that's really important is really boiling it down to its essence. So it's, you get down there and you go, Okay, so from a squad perspective, you know, are you superpower teens? Are you people who have been granted an artefact that gives you power? Are you some kind of anthropomorphic? Are you are you supernatural beings, you know, you know, and then you know, each of those will have its own set of progressions and ways to upgrade it and things like that. And then underneath that, Josh and I had like a 30 minute brainstorming session where we're like, okay, so it's, it's the brains, the moral compass, the wise guy, the the brawler, the Sensei, and then it's like, oh, great, well, those are all your character archetypes straight off the bat. And the funny thing is, you can take that very loose framework, which is very much what we've done with capsule otter, and just kind of, you can overlay that on a on an absolutely shocking amount of like, the Saturday morning TV. So we've we've all kind of, we've not quite committed to like fully sitting down and having meetings and starting to flesh it out yet. But it's, I think we all know, it's where we're going next. We know it's coming. We know it's coming, and it will happen, we'll sit down to play games all night, and I'll go have we considered and it will be a three hour writing session. Because that's exactly how these things tend to go. Because discipline is great. But at the beginning of a project, it's passion that carries you. The hard part and where most projects fail is when passion has to give way to discipline. And we had that we had two weeks in the middle where we didn't touch capsulotomy at all. And then Josh was like, here's a bullet point list of things we need to do. And, you know, the last stretch was a slog, and people say the last 10% takes 90% of the effort. And they're absolutely right. And, yeah, we were waiting for that kind of lightning bolt passion meeting. And then after that, it will become discipline, and it will it will come out. And actually I just I want to close off with the what's next for camp slaughter and raising the game by one of the next things we want to do is maybe give it a week or so to simmer. But I know we were horribly constrained by 20 pages. And what we will be doing is, certainly what I will be doing at the very least is releasing a 3040 page version. without batting an eyelid. It will happen after this month because pocket quest is for the whole of this month. And we don't want to accidentally disqualify ourselves. But there'll be a point where we've released an extended rulebook, and anyone that's picked it up gets that, like, we're not going to we're not going to be the guys listing that for sale twice. But eventually we will we do want to release an expanded version. Like we want to release rules for creating a monster. We want to we wanted to lay the book out better, it's 20 pages of hard text. You know, I want to put in more examples of rules I want to put in, you know, we've said this, but here's actually an example of it in play, you know, you know, example adventures, things like that. The fact

RtG - Josh: 48:38

that it's live spread as well. So exactly the fact that

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 48:41

exactly the fact that it's a the fact that it's a rules like system won't change, we won't be adding more rules. But I think sometimes what a system needs is more examples and more space, it just needs to be more visually friendly.

RtG - Minty: 48:56

Mm hmm.

Snyder’s Return: 48:57

That's, that's, I'm excited for both of these two projects, both the current one you're extending, expanding, and, and this new one, you are awaiting that waiting in the wings, should we say waiting for the right Saturday morning, maybe? So Wow. Thank you, each of you so much for coming on. Is there anything just at this sort of very last part of the interview you want to bring up before we close?

RtG - Josh: 49:24

I would like to say thank you very much for having us on Adam. I really do. I really do. appreciate you giving us the time of day. Thank you very much.

RtG - Minty: 49:32

That's a pleasure. Yeah. And just keep your eyes open for RTG and future streams that will be coming up for various charities that we're going to raise money for.

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 49:41

Yeah, absolutely. I just want to mirror again that I'm absolutely stunned by the response and the reception that capsule has got. And yeah, I'm keen to see where it goes like I want to see this. One of the next things I want to do is is set up it set it up is a printable format on Drive Thru RPG because Josh and I looked at how much it would cost to print, like premium hardcover versions. And I don't care if I only sell three of them. And that's one for each of us. But it's like, I think next for me is getting a copy of that for my shelf,

Snyder’s Return: 50:16

you know, what's coming for Christmas? Yeah. Thank you, each and every one of you, as individuals, and as raising the game for everything you do, and have done both putting out this amazingly accessible rules like game, which is all hinges on that that horror. And it's broad spectrum. There, it can look within and for what you're doing with respect to charity, and the wider TTRPG RPG community. So thank you so much. I'd love to get you back on the show, when this new project starts to come for comes to or has got to fruition or just to have a one shot or whatever else we can arrange between this if you'd be willing to come back.

RtG - Josh: 50:56

Absolutely. Sure. You just need to let me know. And I will, I will happily come back

RtG - Richard (Stampy): 51:01

here in a heartbeat. And like I said, more than happy to run you through the camp.

Snyder’s Return: 51:06

Yeah. may drag some unwilling willing victims, to your council shoes say. But yeah, thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure. We will talk again, thank you 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 Snyder, you have a link tree link in the description of this episode. And if you want to sports 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