Interview - Graeme Davis - TTRPG Content Creator - Vaesen Mythic Britain and Ireland

Today I talk with TTRPG Content Creator, YouTuber and Games Designer - Graeme Davis.

We discuss Vaesen Mythic Britain and Ireland, Rookery Publishing, GM tips and much more.

You can find Graeme, Rookery Publishing and all of the things they're associated content via the links below.

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/GraemeJDavis
https://twitter.com/RookeryP
https://twitter.com/FreeLeaguePub

Website:
https://graemedavis.wordpress.com/

Other:
https://www.patreon.com/InsideTheRookery
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheRookery
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/19635/Rookery-Publications?term=rookery&affiliate_id=1643000
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?keywords=vaesen&cPath=27806_34133&x=0&y=0&author=&artist=&pfrom=&pto=&affiliate_id=1643000
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: Graeme Davis - Rookery Publishing

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
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIoZ8iiYCp919UHXUYGghbw
https://www.redbubble.com/shop/?query=Roscoe%27s%20Chimkin&ref=search_box

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Are you on DISCORD? Come hang out in our server! https://discord.gg/QgU5UNf Join us in the Snyder’s Return Facebook Group!

Visit https://www.patreon.com/snyders_return?fan_landing=true

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Transcript

Snyder’s Return: 0:26

Hello, and welcome to Snyder’s return a tabletop roleplay podcast. My guest today is involved with a murder. I can't say that it's an unkindness. Anyway. While I wait for that to go through Parliament, I tried to recall some long forgotten law. Luckily, my guess knows of such things lost to antiquity shrouded in myth or cemented as legends, from Scandinavia to Britannia to Lusitania and the Peloponnesian War, my guess knows what has inspired and frightened generations, even stepping into fantasy, which has steeped in mystery, adventure and horror. Here to discuss frigging publishings vests and mythic Britain and Ireland, and so much more is TTRPG content creator, game writer, blogger, YouTuber, and unrepentant monster geek, Graeme Davis graeme. Welcome to the show.

Graeme Davis: 1:16

Hello, and thanks for having me.

Snyder’s Return: 1:18

It's an absolute pleasure, Graeme. Before we get into some of the things I alluded to there in the introduction, how did you get into tabletop role playing games, please?

Graeme Davis: 1:26

Well, we have to go back into the very mists of time when dice were carved for Flint, but I, between high school and college I worked in a bank in London, for which I was tragically temperamentally unsuited, and I tried to maintain my sanity by getting into local amateur dramatics as a hobby. While I was there, a couple of recent graduates joined the company. And they were talking about a game they'd picked up in college called Dungeons and Dragons, which, according to them was 50% Miniatures war game and 50% improvised theatre. And I could not make sense of these two things in my mind, completely unable to reconcile them. So I thought the only way is to go along and see for myself, and that's how I played my first game of d&d circa 1978. I had two characters, both thieves both killed within the first 20 minutes by a minotaur. But this game had Minotaurs and it had all sorts of other things that had fascinated me ever since. At the tender age of six, I'd seen Ray Harryhausen, Jason and the Argonauts on my parents black and white television. So I got hooked. And then when I went to college, I spent far too much time playing d&d when I should have been studying. White Dwarf magazine at the time was a general Games magazine with an accent on role playing. And they put out an appeal for more writers, which was a red rag to a bull. I sent them a few articles, they sent me some small checks, which actually went quite a long way in a student bar. And the rest as they say, is history. By the time I graduated, I was offered a job at games workshop to help develop Warhammer Fantasy roleplay and I've been in the industry ever since.

Snyder’s Return: 3:21

Wow. Wow. So having sort of, I'll unpack some of that in a minute, but having sort of gotten to the door through wide often into Games Workshop and Warhammer Fantasy roleplay Where Where are you now in your TTRPG journey let's let's fill in that gap before we then start dissecting, bisecting it as we go back.

Graeme Davis: 3:46

Okay, well, where I am now is I've been freelance writing for video games, as well as for tabletop games for quite a while a couple of years ago, with some of the folks I met working on Warhammer Fantasy roleplay fourth edition and the enemy within Director's Cut. We decided to get together and form our own in the TTRPG studio. It's called rockery publications, as well as me there's Andy law who used to run with root for cubicle seven and before that, wrote an incredible amount of stuff for what for a second edition and has also done just about everything you can do in this industry from running a managing your Games Workshop store to developing entire product lines. And along with him, we've got the great artist, Mark Gibbons, who as well as Warford did a lot of work on World of Warcraft and other video games. And a couple more Edinburgh based writers Andy Leask and Linz The law. And so yeah, we finally decided that we we'd like to do our own thing and do things that we think is cool rather than writing for other people.

Snyder’s Return: 5:11

So doing these things that you think is cool and and for yourselves, what is it that the rookery does? Football? I'll rephrase that. So where can people find your good self, the rookery and and everything you sort of doing as a individual and collective please grab

Graeme Davis: 5:29

them? Certainly. While we're on Facebook as rookery publications were on Troy, Twitter as at rookery P. And we also have a Discord server, which is where most of our we're building a really good enthusiastic community for what we do, which is twofold sort of a thing. First is that between us we've got something like a century in the industry, which means we, between us we know an awful lot of people. And we've managed to stay on good terms with enough of them that we've had some fantastic guests for our weekly live stream, which we call inside the rockery. Last week, for example, we had been are on a vigil on talking about resin rivers of London and the forthcoming role playing game. For that he I didn't know he was a huge Call of Cthulhu fan from way back. And, you know, we've had Matt fall back on talking about his new Marvel superhero role playing game. And so we've got that which is funded by our Patreon, and everything you can find on our YouTube channel, which is also rookery publications. But what we're really supposed to be doing when we're not having too much fun just chatting with people is doing a set of system agnostic. That's very important, system agnostic setting and campaign in a dark fantasy sort of vein. It will be modular, it will be in instalments. But it will build up to a complete city, which you can either use as is or just rip bits out and drop them into your own campaign as you please. And multipart campaign. We've both we've all worked on the enemy within Director's Cut, Andy, and I think a couple of the others also worked on the reboot of masks of nylon Hotep for Call of Cthulhu. So we've you could say we've had some experience with role playing campaigns. And we're going to be releasing that in instalments. And again, the adventures are specially designed, specifically designed so that they can be used in a modular fashion. You can run the whole campaign, you know the way we imagined it, and that's great. Or you can pick out, you can shuffle the order, you can pick out episodes and stuff to drop into your own campaign. Our attitude is you've given us the money, it's yours and do whatever you like with it.

Snyder’s Return: 8:10

Absolutely. And you mentioned those, it's modular and coming out in instalments and stuff. So when are people able to get their hands either in PDF format or however you are publishing this content? when or where can people pick up this content?

Graeme Davis: 8:24

Well, we have a couple of short products on Drive Thru at the moment again, under rookery publications. Our first full length product is approaching. It's in the final stages of development I would say in layout. But we haven't fixed a date for release yet. So all I can say is watch our social media and as soon as we are confident of a date we'll let you know the one thing we want to avoid doing is the sort of thing that games publishers do a lot is say coming soon and then three years later nothing's happened. We want to we want to be confident when we announce a thing you

Snyder’s Return: 9:04

absolutely can totally respect that approach 100% So I will put links to the sofa as you mentioned the products the ones on Drive Thru RPG and of course when when things are released through your socials and so on and so forth. I will go back and add them to the links down the description below this podcast so please scroll down support ground support the recovery publishing team over on YouTube as well by following those links below. Now with the sort of the rookery I was gonna say put to bed that that's a very strange turn of phrase in this instance. With us having sort of covered that sort of stuff just for a moment and we can definitely come back to it because I have so many more questions but we'll come back to that. You yourself have worked very recently on a on a successful Kickstarter with freely publishing. And I always play with the wording of the pronounciation wising face But vessel vessel. Thank you. Yeah. On the mythic Britain and Ireland supplement release, how is it you came to become involved with that and what was it like to work on that as a project?

Graeme Davis: 10:13

Well, ever since I first started playing d&d, I was always looking for new and surprising monsters to throw at my players, which meant that I, I ransacked my local libraries folklore section. And then in my university library, and along the way, although it wasn't my original intention, I became quite interested in, in folklore in general. And so this is something I've wanted for a long time to do a folklore inflected mystery solving role playing game that really did full justice to the folklore because, you know, the way some creatures from folklore are treated in some fantasy games did not satisfy me. Now back in 2003, I had the opportunity to write GURPS fairy for Steve Jackson Games. And that was a lot of fun, but it still didn't go as far as I wanted to. And then a couple of years ago, while probably more than that now, pre pandemic, I saw this and when it first came out, and this was the game that I've been thinking of doing for so many years, it was astonishing in every particular reports. But it was set in Scandinavia, and they hadn't touched Britain and Ireland yet. So almost immediately, I sent an email to free League and introduced myself and that's the one. Also that great cover in the internal art by Johann Aycock grants, is as much a part of the game as the writing is, in my opinion, it really sets a beautiful tone. Anyhow, so I sent them a sort of half bragging half pleading email, I'm really good at doing role playing stuff. And please, please let me do Britain and Ireland for this and, and they, they agreed, put me in touch with Johann we had a lot of really interesting conversations about monsters, and I got to write mythic Britain and Ireland.

Snyder’s Return: 12:17

Yeah, so you are the lead writer on the project. There are some other I've got the PDF open on my the screen or the there are a few other sort of additional writers but but you are the lead writer. So drawing from such a broad area, and an expanse a collage, almost of, of myth, law, legend, folklore and all that sort of stuff that makes up Britain and Ireland's sort of heritage, for want of a better description. What was what was your favourite thing to bring to the book and what was one of the largest challenges of bringing the book together?

Graeme Davis: 12:58

Well, my favourite thing to bring to the book was the monsters because I've always been a monster fan. And that's what got me into folklore in the first place and the ability, you know, the opportunity to, to take a selection of monsters from British and Irish folklore and create them as I felt they should be treated. That was my favourite part of the book. Having said that, though, I got to write three adventures or mysteries, as they're called invest in Parliament's which was also quite fun. And yeah, I think that's that's pretty much it. The way that the mythic North was presented in the core rulebook gave me a really good framework for laying out the the information or chapters on geography, society, politics, or the rest of that, and left me quite free to focus on my favourite bits, which was the monsters and the adventures, which after all, is the point of the game.

Snyder’s Return: 13:57

Absolutely. Absolutely. So of the monsters you were able to bring together and put into the book. Which one of those is your favourite? And are there any of you uncovered or research that didn't make it into the book?

Graeme Davis: 14:10

Oh, yes. I initially submitted a shortlist of more than 20 creatures. And that had to be whittled down we managed to with the Kickstarter being as successful as it was. We were able to expand out a few back in but yes, and I have been taking advantage of the freely workshop their community content programme to to publish a few more monsters via drive thru. But my favourite of them all, I think has to be the knuckle RV, which is demonic Centaur. Like being from walking. Which has plague breath, and in some versions, it's a centaur like creature in altos it's a it's a horse and rider fused into a single form as a single creature. Its its appearance is utterly horrific. It has no skin as black blood flowing beneath yellow membranes, it's almost Lovecraftian in the descriptions I've seen of it the sort of same sort of visuals but yeah, so that was just so bizarre and horrific that I thoroughly enjoyed that another favourite of mine is the ever popular hags. They're around every part of Britain has a legendary hag or winch. And they vary from goddesses of winter to just sort of minor local nuisances. But particularly as a sort of an indicator of how to put this in mediaeval and later times the hag was almost a sort of an example of what a woman should not be according to the dictates of society and looking at that through a sort of a feminist and a post me to kind of lens is can be really fascinating.

Snyder’s Return: 16:14

Yeah, absolutely. Just going back to the knuckle of the egg just for a moment, I have the dry bite your hand up and sort of the striking pose, the the arms that the claws that just about, sort of scrape just above it, what don't scrape it just above the surface of the ground in the artwork, it's so evocative. It's a beautiful redrawn piece. But what I love about Veselin that I don't really see another TTRPG is, is that not only do you get examples of how to use or how to frame the creatures, the monsters that the what they belong to in folklore that they have the secrets. So what was it like unpicking things like the secrets out of out of the folklore that you've investigated?

Graeme Davis: 17:02

It was enormous fun. In some cases, because as you know, Britain and Ireland are so diverse, but there is a there are some creatures that appear with variations across the whole territory. And accounting for those variations was always I didn't want to leave anything out but sometimes I needed to sort of work to an average to create the creature cross referencing stories from different places. And that are those we had a lot more differentiation and one of the things I did add to the standard first and Monster format was a section on variants of a particular creature that was needed but yes, it was enormous fun picking those out and putting them in the in the secret section for for investigators to find out perhaps the hard way or perhaps

Snyder’s Return: 17:59

not. Another thing I found that within this book I was gonna say PDF but it's it's a physical hardcopy being pushed out to backers shoe now,

Graeme Davis: 18:10

Kickstarter backers have pretty much received theirs. Now, pre orders are open for the physical book, which I believe is due in early October, the 11th sticks in my mind, but don't quote me on that. But if you preorder the physical book, you get the PDF right away. Or if you just ordered the PDF, you get that right away is my understanding.

Snyder’s Return: 18:34

But one thing in here that helps spark the imagination and blend the real and the fantasy is the inclusion of of short descriptions on NPCs you may interact with during your games in your time. Examples just looking at the page I have opened, Sherlock Holmes, Florence Nightingale, one very fictional one very real, though some may query that either way. And Jack the Ripper, Jekyll and Hyde Ada Lovelace these these characters of the period who are, as I say, both fictional and real what how was sewing these characters of of novel and fact into one cohesive story for a better description? What was that process?

Graeme Davis: 19:26

Like? It was very natural. It was something I really felt I couldn't not do because, you know, Victorian Britain is almost its iconic, and it's the way is seen in most people's minds from books, food, films, television, whatever. It all meshes into one on fact and fiction merge. And you know, I could No, no more do. Cover Victorian London without mentioning Sherlock Holmes. Songs that could fail to mention St. Paul's Cathedral, it's just an the whole thing is just greater than the sum of its parts for having this, this mesh of fact and fiction. And, you know, who wouldn't want to meet any of those people during the course of a campaign, the,

Snyder’s Return: 20:19

the one that always catches me out is Reverend Charles Lutwidge. Dodgson, because I actually know who that is. So reading that in the book, and for those that are not aware, that is the real name of the pseudonym. And I've got that the right way around Lewis Carroll. So, Alice in Wonderland and the various other stories, so having that real and fantasy within the real and the fantasy, sort of, it's almost fourth wall breaking, but allows you to tie as you've mentioned, Victorian Britain in in such a way that it just sets this perfect fantasy and yet Real Scene.

Graeme Davis: 21:00

Well, thank you very much. That was absolutely what I intended to do to create the best possible setting from fact and fantasy and fiction and everything.

Snyder’s Return: 21:11

Well, I'm, I love I haven't been unfortunate I've not been able to run a full sort of game of investing yet but it's definitely on the cards. It's sort of looks at me off my shelf and and calls to me every so often, which I think is a strange thing I might need to get sort of checked out if it's calling to me. But anyway, so but it is definitely something I'm gonna work on in the future. You mentioned some monsters that you've yourself released through drive thru, would you mind going into them? Because I'll make sure there's a link to those as well.

Graeme Davis: 21:43

Yes. I found a bunch of months. Well, as I say I suggested a lot of monsters and there wasn't room for them in the book. I've put up maybe six or eight now I've lost count maybe a couple that are from Scandinavia, and then a lot that were taken from my initial shortlist for mythic Britain and Ireland. There's the one legged one armed forehand from Scotland, the Leanne and she sort of deadly fairy Muse from well known across Ireland, the Isle of Man and Scotland. First and David's Day this year, I bought her put out a creature called the water leaper, or, excuse me, Welsh speakers, Clem, in Lamborghini outdoor, I believe it's pronounced which is a lake dwelling creature and yeah, just a few little things fairy hounds trying to remember what else but anyway they're all there on Drive Thru RPG if you search for Graham Davis plus fests and you'll probably find them

Snyder’s Return: 22:57

as I said, there will be a link to that in the description below this podcast. So please scroll down and follow those links add those wonderful creatures to your on monsters creatures to your to your game today. Why not? Thank you. So rewinding the clock a little bit and and going back to Warhammer Fantasy roleplay. You were heavily involved in writing that and are now working with others who have been heavily involved with that project. What was it like to bring such iconic IPS as a warhammer roleplaying game to life? Many people are familiar with the tabletop war game, but the roleplay fantasy game, maybe not so much. So what was it like sort of bringing that through and and bringing that to prominence.

Graeme Davis: 23:44

It was a lot of fun. We didn't realise at the time Warhammer was not that iconic. When we started working on why fantasy roleplay first edition, the battle game was in its second Redbox edition. And the whole of the setting on world law was very fragmentary. There were little sort of mentions here and there in a magazine article here on the back of a miniatures box there, just throw away stuff. So the first task was to knit all that together, and then see where the gaps were and fill in the world from there. And that's largely what we did with Warhammer Fantasy roleplay first edition, and mainly we developed the Empire because it was centrally placed in the old world. So we decided that was a good place to start off because from there you could get anywhere you could go east and find orcs you could go north and find chaos. You could go south or west and encounter other human nations but so that's that's really the only reason why this this Germanic nation became so iconic and so, so Central PA not intended to the whole Warhammer world And it just stuck from there. And then, you know, it became successful we had subsequent editions of Warhammer started to be based on the the world setting that we developed and grown for the role playing game. And right up until they killed it off to replace it with age of Sigmar. The whole of the Warhammer franchise was based on on essentially work we'd done back in the late 80s not even thinking that it would last five years, you know, it's quite surprising. And then second, third and fourth editions of the role playing game came out. It was popular beyond all our expectations. So to answer your question, it was it was quite fun at the time. Because as far as we knew, the stakes were quite low, we probably would have acted very differently. Had we know what he was going to grow into? Maybe a little, we would have been a little more careful with the jokes and stuff like that. But at the time, we were just a bunch of kids straight out of college having the time of our lives.

Snyder’s Return: 26:11

And I can imagine and you can correct me if I'm wrong, I believe we'll have this fantasy role plays on its fourth edition now available

Graeme Davis: 26:18

from cubicle seven. That's right, yes, the fourth edition from cubicle seven. Immediately before I started work on the verse mistake Britain and Ireland broke I wrapped up what they call in the director's cut of the enemy within campaign which is the campaign from first edition which did more than anything to establish Warhammer Fantasy roleplay and its its tone and themes. And I did a huge 10 Volume series five parts plus each with a companion of extra optional material, additional adventures, bits and pieces. And I believe parts one to four are currently available and Part Five is coming in physical form but available in PDF.

Snyder’s Return: 27:08

I often see our releases with a now you've said they've said that that name rings true of releases I've seen on on Drive thru and Twitter and other social medias. So Warhammer Fantasy roleplay is a specific game mechanic and specific world and veteran is very much different. And they both toy with with fantasy and mythology and things like that. And you as part of rookery publishing are doing system agnostic. So what's it been like moving through different game systems? Have you picked up much from sort of switching out from different game systems? Has it helped you grow as a content creator?

Graeme Davis: 28:01

I think it has Yes. It certainly informed my approach to everything which is story first and figure out the mechanics later. You know, there are other designers who like to really get into a system and figure out how its how its particular mechanics can be used in a story to to create something different and interesting. But I'm I'm very much story first. And that sort of made it inevitable, I think that I'd be interested in a more system agnostic kind of approach. Where also, of course, you know, as a small, independent publisher, we don't want to limit ourselves to one system, we want to make sure we want to remove every barrier every reason for people not to get our stuff. The early adventures that we've been playtesting with our we have a really great play test community already. And the same adventure, which was written as a fantasy adventure has been tested and successfully with everything from d&d and Wolfer up through Call of Cthulhu even to traveller with people just adapting it at their tables and, and having a lot of fun with the basic story and characters.

Snyder’s Return: 29:22

Yeah, would you mind giving us just a little teaser as to what that is? So when they scroll down or follow that link they can they know what they're looking for and know what to sort of expect almost

Graeme Davis: 29:36

all right, well, what we have out at the moment are two small pieces. One is called the well of bones which is a location with big backstory a couple of surprises. It's it's inspired in part by those ossuaries that you see photos Oh Have in Central Europe where all the or the Paris catacombs, you know. And we've just as we do gone with it and run with it, we've got a whole sort of set of NPCs, which could also be like a prestige Class D 20, prestige class or a Cold War from Korea or something who are associated with this particular OS. You worry, there's a deadly secret at the bottom of it. We've got some internal politics, we've got a couple of more than a couple actually have story seeds associated with the location. Plus some really nice maps and illustrations from Mark Gibbons. And then the second thing is called Mother hoarfrost, which is a fairly short thing that we did as a little Christmas present to our Patreon backers that we're now making more widely available. And this is very, very much folklore inspired from the the winter hags of Scotland and Ireland that I mentioned before who basically degraded goddesses have winter. And so we've got her mother for mother hoarfrost herself who is this sort of folkloric bogey winter spirit character. We have her wicked brood, the frost Ling's sort of mischievous and deadly by turns as behoves small folklore creatures. We've got a bunch of folklore surrounding how the local communities cope with the reality of having such a spirit wandering around in winter, how she's placated, the do's and don'ts the, again another little potential NPC class or PC skill set there. And as always a bunch of adventure hooks and ideas for actually using her in your game whether you're playing Wolfram in the north of Kislev for d&d somewhere else or Call of Cthulhu in in northern Scandinavia or this country.

Snyder’s Return: 32:15

So much between those two, two releases you mentioned down so on, down on Drive Thru RPG scroll down and follow the links below, please. There's so much for GMs DMS storytellers MCs, whatever sis, Volk keepers, I'm trying to think, who runs calleth cathedra. Keep it bookkeepers keepers.

Graeme Davis: 32:37

Keepers of law, I think is

Snyder’s Return: 32:42

for Call of Cthulhu. So with all of this information available, plus other games we've mentioned with vessel and d&d as an I hope you don't mind me using the term veteran game runner player now, or not now but content creator, game writer, what advice would you give to sort of GMs to say game runners, so I don't have to spell the list off again, what advice would give to game runners for using inspirations like like your content or others to help run games?

Graeme Davis: 33:17

First, and always make your own you know, what your group likes? You know, how you run your tabletop, you know what works in your games? Anything that's published, no matter what it is a source book an adventure, anything is no more than a starting point for you. It's not complete game until the players get involved with it. And so yeah, don't be too precious about cannon or keeping it as written. If it works for you, you're doing it right. I

Snyder’s Return: 33:51

cannot disagree with that and support that but sentiment wholeheartedly. So as you and I and and the many game runners out there are well aware, games can take a lot of time, a lot of prep, depending on on systems and personal choices and things like that. You yourself between republishing YouTube, content creation, and blogging and all these other things. Do you get a chance to sort of relax and decompress and and sort of get some time for you? Or is it sort of work? Work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work work?

Graeme Davis: 34:33

Well, quite honestly, this is the time for me, this is what I enjoy doing. And you know, there's not a tremendous amount of pressure attached to it. I'm fairly free with my my spare time. Just nobody breathing down my shoulder. You know, my day job in a video game studio. There are deadlines that have to be met, there aren't budgets that have to be respected. Whereas working on the tabletop stuff, particularly leave for the rookery since we all get along so well, and we're all determined that it's going to be ready when it's ready. You know, there's there isn't that pressure so we can just have fun and play and hopefully have something at the end of it that people will like.

Snyder’s Return: 35:15

Absolutely. 100%. And it's, it's good to have that team around you, as well as having that space for yourself. Certainly. Yeah. You mentioned their computer games. And you've done a few I've written a few down. So you did a Knights Templar kingdoms of Camelot Spartan tote warrior, and there are others. And you're obviously continuing to work in the field. Are you still working on? Shall we say, combat and sort of historical based games, or have you diversified into other game areas,

Graeme Davis: 35:58

and it runs the gamut really. My my current job and the project before that were both fairly high fantasy. I can't talk about the current one. But the ones before was called Selassie, the crown of the Magister it's from a Paris based studio called Tactical adventures. And it's the first video game to use the FFIV ruleset in a deliberate attempt to recreate the tabletop experience. We've been working with Wizards of the Coast on that even though it's not an official DND product, and we're not a subsidiary of Wizards of the Coast or anything. And that's been a lot of fun. I'm these days with in video games, I started as a game designer, when I started in the early 90s was just one job title. Now as a discipline with many, many facets, and I've progressively specialised into what's called narrative design, which is basically world building and storytelling. So I stay away from the technical stuff as much as I can. If you've had an unfortunate experience with Fortran, as an undergraduate, any programmes of a certain age will, we'll know what I mean by that.

Snyder’s Return: 37:18

So having worked on the tabletop role playing games, video games, and sort of support content, along with your studies of history and mythology do you have so across era, we're not necessarily focusing down on on one type of content or another, but across it all? Do you have a a favoured period of time, which you'd like to sort of live in terrible freezing? But what do you enjoy the most? I should say?

Graeme Davis: 37:50

Yeah, I would say that where my mind always goes is pretty much where versatile lives which is another reason why it was such a no brainer for me and why I thought I really had to do this particular book is that sort of late 19th, early 20th century dream time for want of a better word, where history and fiction and folklore all kinds of coalesce.

Snyder’s Return: 38:23

That's, I can, looking through the PDF I have in front of me and reading through and and all that sort of a small, not just the small details, the big details for sort of the broad spectrum and down to those narrow or very niche sort of touches within the book. You can really see how much you sort of put into it and and how I'm sure those running games of this or even using this as inspiration for for other systems can really sort of dig in and enjoy the content that's in there. It sounds like a round of applause hearty slap on the back and I guess it is because because I love reading through I had a refresh of it earlier this evening. Earlier today just to sort of remind myself just why I wanted to kickstart be part of the Kickstarter project and get this and, and it sort of really brings that time period to life. So thank you, I guess is what I'm saying

Graeme Davis: 39:27

there. Well, thank you. I'm very glad to hear it's lived up to my hopes and intentions

Snyder’s Return: 39:34

has has for me, and I'm sure it has for others. So, Graham, during the course of this interview, we have covered quite a lot. Is there anything that we haven't touched on so far that you want to go into just towards the end of this interview?

Graeme Davis: 39:51

I don't think so. Thank you. I've my main obviously aside from talking about the vest and book I wanted to make sure to get a plug in for the rookery. And that's all been very nicely achieved. So no, no, I don't think so. You've asked all the questions that that I can think of to answer I hope you've missed out or glossed over. It's all been good

Snyder’s Return: 40:18

enough. Well, then may I ask you to please remind everybody where they can find your good self, the rookery and everything you're associated with? Please.

Graeme Davis: 40:25

Okay. I have an author page on Facebook. Under Graham Davis. I I'm on Twitter as Graham at Graham J. Davis, because another ground divers got their first same address on Instagram, and rookery publications are on Facebook. They're on YouTube, they're on Twitch. They're on Twitter as at rookery P. And also, we have a very active and vibrant community on Discord. So come and find us there are I

Snyder’s Return: 41:05

will, I will make sure that all those links are down in the description below this podcast. So please scroll down, support Graham's partner agree. Find those. Either the extra monsters for facing or the stuff from the publishing of the system agnostic stuff down following the drive thru links. And I would just like to say, Graham, thank you so much. I would love to get you or other members of the recruiting publishing team back on the show in the future when your system agnostic stuff really sort of starts getting released the city, the campaign on all those sorts of things. If you'd be willing to come back, of course. Well, thank

Graeme Davis: 41:40

you so much for having me. And yes, we'd be more than happy to do that. I'll keep your contact information and ping you when the time is right.

Snyder’s Return: 41:48

Sounds perfect. And if there's a chance you are, of course, always welcome back to come on for a one shot beer lesson or another game or project depending on schedules and all those sort of usual conflicting things.

Graeme Davis: 42:03

I'll certainly keep that in mind. Thank you. All right. Thank

Snyder’s Return: 42:06

you, Graham. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you today. Thank you so much.

Graeme Davis: 42:10

And for me, too. Thank you for having me.

Snyder’s Return: 42:13

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 Schneider, you 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