Snyder’s Return: 0:27

Hello and welcome to Snyder’s return ayto Pathak roleplay podcast. My guest today is 1/3 of the most unusual recruitment agency offering his quest heists. Or that one last job you just can't walk away from. Here at the heart of it all, you may feel hollow, like something is missing something to aspire to. Well, rest assured as my guest brings us only the best, the best drivers, the best vacations and the best value for our TTRPG money. Here to discuss current releases and future projects is Game Designer TTRPG content creator podcaster and community Legend of Rowan, Rook and Decard. Mr. Grant Howitt Grant Welcome to the show.

Grant Howitt: 1:05

Round of applause for that intro that was delightful. I personally, I don't like pagans, but I feel I feel venerated. I feel celebrated. You looked at you went on our website looked at the games we've published. I'm very, very impressed. Hello,

Snyder’s Return: 1:18

hello. Thank you. I won't because you put out so many fantastic works, I'm able to draw such a punt sort of pun filled. Introduction. Yeah,

Grant Howitt: 1:27

we operate a kind of scattergun approach. Yeah. Yeah. We just keep going.

Snyder’s Return: 1:34

Well, we will, we'll get to that shortly. But before we do, let's maybe rewind to the beginning of grant, how did you get into tabletop role playing games, please?

Grant Howitt: 1:43

Well, I think the, the most I read a lot of, I read some fighting fantasy books, when I was younger. And I remember seeing a, a fighting fantasy book, which had in the back half of it was rules for a role playing game. And because it was Fighting Fantasy, they weren't very, they weren't great rules, they were just fine. They did the job. You know, it was the it was the 80s. And so I, I remember reading that and feeling really quite Charmed, or really quite excited at the prospect of being able to tell a story in that way. And then I was I was a Games Day, which is the Old Games Workshop opened, which needs to have a game say 2000. And I used to live in Carlisle and north of England. So we were getting a bus down at 5am to Birmingham, where where the, where the convention was being held. And so everyone slept over. In the Games Workshop. Were in in like, like, I feel there was like, there was some some law was being broken, putting, putting like 20 nose picking teenagers in one pour the fire secured building. But some some older boys were playing Vampire the Masquerade playing a bad game. And they weren't, they were just making it up as they went along. And I was fascinated by this, because the fighting fantasy book had like, here's the adventure and here's three pages of read aloud text and you have to put on the voice of the battle. And these guys were just dicking about and like throwing, throwing old ladies through plate glass windows and bridge and nightclubs. And it was just like I hadn't I hadn't imagined the idea that you could you could create a story ad hoc and then have rules and mechanics to support that to let someone else take part in the story. And that was that really captured my imagination. I thought that was absolutely wonderful. And so the Why didn't have a lot of money. And I after I moved after moved to Colorado we were in the you're in the south of Portugal for a while. And my parents my dad rather than having a job got bought bought property in Portugal when it was cheapest chips back in the early 80s. And so just sort of like desperately tried to sell it illegally for 20 but we we were there and so I didn't have access to a lot of role playing games with just wanting to download and we didn't have a lot of cash so I was just what I could download for free and so I used to get my little dial up internet going and I used to download like Angel Fire websites onto rich text documents and then read them offline so the the the first game I ever ran was called side batsu which is a 2d six system and it is a it's it's charming it's quick it's it the rules don't get in the way and I believe I don't think the Angel Fire website store up for you might be able to track it down. I don't know I don't let's listen veteran wants to copy give me a message. I'll go I'll go back to my parents computer. I'll dig out the rich text file.

Snyder’s Return: 4:46

Yeah, so from Zaibatsu onwards then because that is just a start that is a a marker in the journey of of your creativity.

Grant Howitt: 4:58

I will say half go through my first session. And so but so I decided that I wanted to change the rules and so and so I invented a system called cool points. And what cool points do is you spend them to do cool things, and broadly ignore the rules. And I think that a lot of my design work has just been the cool points with different names. Like supplier has a lot of very specific cool points which ignore the Ignore that already brief rules we put my my desire to hack things often while I'm, while I'm running them, and and also if I wrote them, and then I'll start changing them while I'm running them. I'm never really comfortable with with, with actually having to use rules. But yes, I applied so bad, so I went to university. And in Norwich at UVA, and there I met Chris and Mazda, two other people in Round Rock and Deckard. And we are all busy mates, basically, which is lovely, sorry, best friends. And we were we we ascended to various positions of power within the game society. So Christmas games officer, I was president mass was the pub crawl officer. Between that we managed to pretty much control any like, like the full, official and social sides of the business, we're under a control, which we solely did. This is interesting thing we solely did. So we could run a live action zombie game between the hours of midnight and 6am on university property. But we needed to ascend ascend the ranks of the ghosts to steal away from other people who didn't want us to do that. So we we started that I think the very first thing which the wish the people who would become Rohan Rican Bechard ran was again called Zombie LARP. And this was a it was an old converted sports hall, which was all offices and classrooms, which we've got access to. And so we had this about before Nerf guns worked for this like, like, like you had, you had double barrel shotguns with ejecting shells, which didn't work. There was the Maverick, which was a six shot revolver, which kind of did work, but they were expensive. And there was a Tommy 20, which was a semi automatic drum mag wheel like spin wheel powered gun, which it had 20 shots, if you got five out you were lucky. And it's very loud, even when it wasn't firing. It was just it was but like, but we gave we gave people these terrible guns, we put 30 Zombies in this building, we had teams of five, let it go. And they ran around and died. And it was it was just it was some of the most exhilarating stuff I've ever done because you don't have to pretend to be scared. If you're in a dark room full of zombies, and zombie makeup is as easy as getting like some some red food colouring and syrup and discussion on someone's face whilst letting them apply it carefully to their own face. And it's like that, that really that the idea of of zombies. And what we learned through that and how we iterated the game out from something which was very simple into something more complex. We have like a spell system at one point and like it like a campaign tree, and NPCs and backstory and then we realised that actually, the fun bit was running away from the zombies. And so we kept pairing everything down. And Dan Dan, the rules got simpler and simpler and simpler to the point where we were able to run it in a it was a shopping mall and reading was shut down in the early 2000s called Friars Walk and it was rented by an airsoft company and they hide it out for events and stuff and so like like the least did film shoots there and things like that and obviously to do paintball or Airsoft, but we hired out for for a few games a zombie lump. And it was it was unparalleled. It was wonderful having 150 shambling corpses coming towards you as you run down and actual mall and the fact that every in a shopping mall I didn't know this. Every single building is connected by a series of concrete tunnels. Yes, beneath beneath the thing. And so like they put up red lights and flooded the corridors with smoke. And we're running Oh, it was it was it was wonderful and exciting. And it taught us about like, like you have to if if the good bit of a lump if the good bit of silica last weekend is like a really cool 20 minutes. Why don't you just give people the 20 minutes. And it doesn't work all the time. It's not it's not easy. It's not guaranteed. But the idea of skipping to the end of the idea of like well how can we get there quickly? Yeah. became one of our one of our driving. What's the word? tenets and design

Snyder’s Return: 9:40

and moving from zombie like which sounds incredible and a lot of fun. To be fair, moving from terrorising paying customers with a zombie experience. When did you then take that into the full TTRPG creation game design sort of

Grant Howitt: 10:00

I think one of my first experiments was actually wrote some tabletop games quite a bit you had, you've had hate fear, or hate and fear, we are to stats, and it didn't work. And then I decided, so the I was experimenting and doing playtesting. And doing like little games just didn't really get anywhere. I didn't have any sort of means to release them for money, I just put up a blog called luck robot and I put them up on that. But I, my partner, mas who was business partner and a romantic partner, a spouse as the word we moved to Australia for for Masters job. They were working working in The Guardian at the time and establishing in the office over that. And I didn't have much I was I was a freelance games journalist at that point, which is not, it's not the least glamorous job, like I did, I did get I did, I did get invited to parties that Nintendo put on to try and sell them. We use so like that was, I certainly, I like to think that it cost Nintendo more money than I made. But I packed it in and we moved into we moved to Australia. And thankfully, like we were bringing enough money in that I want didn't have to work and to couldn't really legally work. So I became a devoted husband. And then two weeks after that got boring. I started writing role playing games. Well, I wrote a novel on an iPad, don't do that terrible plan. I wrote, I started writing role playing games. And we did goblin quest. So me and Matt has put that out really, mass mass is the brains of the operation, I do the words. And we put that on Kickstarter. And this was back in the sort of the potato salad days of Kickstarter, you could do anything you wanted. And so when when I sort of just scrubbed up to kickstart and was oh there I've never done any games before God, goblins people people did, you could just get away with it. And we got I think we got we got about 25 grand out of it, which was, which was amazing, which is like, I think I think like the goal was to grant and a lot of money came a lot of people picked up on it was really exciting. And like, I think like I did, I did a little contest where if you if you recorded yourself saying cupboard on a video, I'd give you a free upgrade your pledge to a special edition for free. He's just like I agreed to write the book by hand three times don't do that terrible plan. Awful plan. didn't charge enough money for it didn't think anyone would go for it. My own mother made me who she's not even read it. And so we did that. And that was that was that was pretty successful. And it was fun. And it was it was something I was interested in pursuing. And then Chris, the the, the other member of Roma, condeco. Deckard of us. Oh, by the way, the name is just character names, which we picked because I thought we knocked around different names for game companies for a while, but they also have a draft and we realised that we were involved, which sounded kinda like a law firm. Yeah, Rowan, Rowan Rican Deckard Attorneys at Law. So we went for it. It's not maybe not the best idea. But their idea we hoped we had was like backdoor games or something, which sounds a bit yeah. But at that point, massive job moved us around the world again. So we went to New York, Chris crashed out of his retail job. And he was in he was in the south of England somewhere and he and I were both dreadfully depressed and we decided that we would start writing a game together just because we'd finished most of the missions on Grand Theft Auto Five and like we did some experiments with streaming for a while there's like there's a few recordings of us playing Resident Evil six online with like no no production quality whatsoever apps like zip I was recording Chris on through a Mac through a laptop mic from a laptop speakers. Oh, nice tracking stuff. But we did that and we were um bound together and unbound was our was the first thing which Chris and I'd done together in a long time. And we we got to the point where we're actually we could actually even do this we can make this happen this is interesting. And we put up on Kickstarter and went okay, we did well and then we kind of realised that we that we had this that we could do this that like MEZEs business acumen Chris's mechanical intuition and my writing expertise we can come together and build something build a company which would which would work and then and then we started on SPIRE and that's really but that was really the the first proper thing which we did the first proper role playing game. So which we did and things everything got up what's wrong? Yeah.

Snyder’s Return: 14:55

To the top of the spiral and down into the heart of many gamer goblin quest is that was going on so my that was gonna go very, very strange very quickly does I guess. Goblin quest great game I managed to play on the beholder to know on podcast loved it. So

Grant Howitt: 15:16

it's tremendously easy and fun. Yes, I like there's something there's something immediately graspable about goblins, and the fact that they don't quite use, whatever whatever game goblins are in, they don't use the same laws of reality as anyone else. They have like cartoon physics or astrophysics. And it's just, it just gives you such a tremendous freedom. And that is horrible little monkey buggers. And it's funny when they die. And it's funny when they live. They're great. I love them.

Snyder’s Return: 15:43

So, Spire, it's, it is available as a Kickstarter. Sorry, no, it's not. It's available with a quickstart. Link is on your Twitter profile, we'll get to where we can find you shortly. A free quick stir. I know what it's pay what you'd like I paid the suggestive five English pounds. But oh, that's because that's, that's because I want to support you. And I thought, well, I know how much work you put into it, because I've looked through the rest of your site to see how much work has gone into this. So supporting is just a sport. Well, we want to slightly where can we find you, and Rome. And all the things you're associated with. Just

Grant Howitt: 16:21

don't worry about having to spell row and brick and Decker all you got to do is type in our D games.com. And I'll get a website that will say it's bit tricky to actually find the store page. We're not we're not we're not perfect on that yet, but you can track and you can find the games there. We've got a spire and hardener front page, we've got most if not all of my one page games on there as well. And a bunch of stuff from me and Chris and and Matt and also meaning Minerva maganda joined up with us so that we incorporated UFO press last year, you have a press did legacy and obviously the one Vojta symphony, but a bunch of really neat stuff. And so we bought Amina is a full time designer, as on the company. And so we sell her stuff as well. But you can go to the website, you can see all the stuff. One thing I would recommend is going on the blog on that website I recommended and scrolling back about five years. Because Chris and I did this really cool. There's really cool blog posts called glimmers and remnants, which is an attempt to build a fantasy setting and an urban horror setting only through detailed tables. Oh, wow. And, and it was really fun. And it was really hard. So we packed in after a while. But just in terms of like, I find some I find there's something really the potential in a good in a good detailed table or a DEA table I find very exciting. So yeah, I like it also means that there's no room to hide on a dose table, every result has to be good. And often they have to play well with other results. I think like one of the one of the best things that a an up and coming designer can learn or certainly went up and coming and established designer is how to write two good tables that hang out with each other. And so like if you ever see more than one table on a page in a game I've written I've knew if they interact, I've sat down and I've rolled on that table for at least an hour while making sure that all the results sound funny together. It's it's a it's daft,

Snyder’s Return: 18:31

crazy synergies going on. Yeah, yeah. So I will put links to Round Rock and deck on Twitter and web page and everywhere else we can find you along with yourself. Grant down in the description below. So please scroll down and support where they are. Following Sound Support, please. There is a Kickstarter coming. But we'll get to that shortly. If not clean up kickstarting the hollows.

Grant Howitt: 18:57

Oh god. Oh god. Yeah, probably but I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, we will do I don't know when. Whenever you hear this, there will be a Kickstarter within four months. We don't know what it will be for but probably Yeah.

Snyder’s Return: 19:12

So just support row record deck. General. Yeah. So yeah, cool.

Grant Howitt: 19:19

Send some money directly to our address the like the addresses is in the books, just put this put loose pound notes, or whatever in an envelope and send it and we'll get it. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah,

Snyder’s Return: 19:29

why not? We will need a bit of help these days. So spire starting I started with other games and then spire which has grown into this Colossus, as it were of its own the city the spire itself, obviously the tallest structure in the world in which it inhabits. But there's also supplements and additional content that we can pick up for spiral What was it like to create that world? And what excites you most about it?

Grant Howitt: 20:03

I will say, I really wish that we'd come up with a name for that world because we haven't. Like, there's spire and there's heart. There's the sort of the system book, and then a bunch of a bunch of other ideas for stuff that we've had. But we don't have any sort of overarching name. I think the closest someone came to was fat, which is, which

Snyder’s Return: 20:23

has its problems. It's a working title.

Grant Howitt: 20:27

The spire started off actually, I had been a fan of games workshop, and 40k in particular, for a long time. That was, that was how I got into like, nerd stuff. I was being I was I was I was 11 years old. And I made a mine showed me Gorka. Morka. And I was like, Ah, okay, I did have too much pocket money, right? I can burn it on this. And, you know, that was 25 years ago now. And I've still got shelves and shelves for the stuff I still, you know, I make models and I've got a tank, I've got a tank in pieces on my desk. Now you can hear it listening. I'm building it. I'm building the inside of a tank, which is which is very sensible. That's, that's the bit everyone wants to look at. So I very much got into 40k. And when I was at uni, and a little bit after I ran a dark heresy campaign. And I can't say that I really enjoy the system for dark heresy very much it was okay. But it was, it was warmer fantasy roleplay, which is a, you know, grim and dangerous and pathetic. And then it paired grim and dangerous and pathetic with and your agents of the mighty Inquisition. And so it was it had this weird clash where you were consistently doing things above your paygrade, which was kind of fun. But mechanically, it was quite tricky to manage. So I ran that for a while. And I was in Australia at the time, and I was like, I'd love to make a game which does spy stuff, like the idea of, I always get excited when, when in in a spy film, when someone goes loud, and like, like, start shooting, or like, throws off their cover and goes crazy. I really like the idea of like, the idea of spycraft is like this person is an asset to be exploited. What does that say about me? What does it say about my relationship with them? How could I like strain relationship or burn a relationship even. And like the idea of burning agents for tactical game, I find like fascinating. It's the it's a really interesting idea. And so I watched a lot of spy movies and started mashing and started mashing together my own dark heresy hack. Because I really wanted to have something more than just an entirely new system using dark heresy using what you can. And then I realised I couldn't publish that because I know Peter. So I just I sort of like, at the last minute, overarm threw in a game where you played the Dark Elves, and you were like sanctioned execution as for a higher government, and you were like you were you were like, a special sort of class of persons set aside who were like, loathed and respected and feared. And I thought it'd be really cool and started and started mashing together a system and did these things. And then I was written called spindle as well, which I'm really glad we chose that. But then, then I bought Christen. And we started messing around with it. And we started having, like, we started getting down the ideas what we want to do with our idea of fantasy, and I've, I've, I'm a huge I wouldn't say font disciple of Terry Pratchett. I'd say, in that I find, I find like the way in which he understood fantasy, and the way he used it to look at our our world and to poke fun, and the lightness, but also the heaviness and the irony. I found absolutely intoxicating. Like, even when I didn't know, that's what he was doing, I thought it was it was amazing. And so I very much like tried to take after practice in that way. And also try to move well, in terms of here is a massive city, and it's not very nice. I'm going to tell you everything about it. That's kind of cool. We do on mobile as well. And it was I think it was it was more espionage focused. It was more of a spy game. And then I bought and Chris, we went through a few drafts of the rules and he was like, There's no end game here. This doesn't, there's nothing happening. You do some espionage, but then nothing actually changes. And so we pivoted, I think it was in the fourth draft of the game to to revolution. And so the idea was, and this was also this is about 2016. So we're just at the Brexit of the Brexit vote, and Trump had just been elected in in America, and I shaved off all my hair and was feeling very difficult.

Snyder’s Return: 24:57

It's a dark times

Grant Howitt: 24:59

it was it was a dull So and it's in a way it feels like it's been a while, sorry, it was 2016 for four years. And now, now we're entering the third year of 2020. It really feels like time has gone a bit wrong. But we, we shifted over to the idea of revolution, the idea of like, we are trying to overthrow the government, and what does that mean? And this is a game about overthrowing the government in which you won't like the the mechanics are not there for you to depose the council, the mechanics are there for you to get shot in the street. And so there's that I think it's, there was something quite, there was something cathartic about the idea of what if, like, what if I can shoot my problems? Because I'm not, I'm not gonna go out and shoot my problems? You know, I'm not gonna go out and shoot politicians. That's not a cool thing to do. Genuinely. Genuinely, yeah. Yeah, at least at least frowned upon. But it's very frustrating. And like, it's especially like with the, with the level of control and the level of data which is collected on people and the level of, you know, overall power in the world, it's harder than ever to make a change, I think in a meaningful way. Because the systems are so massive. And so I thought, well, what if what if you could set your problems on fire? Wouldn't that be would that be exciting and have it work with it? So spire was that it's a cathartic experiment. And I think like there's, in a way, it's playing revolution, in a way it's playing, actually doing something. And in a way, it's distracting from the real problems we have in the world. But also, I think it's fun. And we got to do a story, we got to talk about a about the world of SPIRE, which was grim, but in a funny way. And I think like, there's something like, obviously, you know, talking about Warhammer before, Warhammer is grim, but it has a lot of bombast to it. It has a lot of, I think, grandeur. I think the the guiding principle for my, for my thought of Fantasy has been it's not high fantasy. It's not low fantasy. It's Wi Fi Fantasy was a bit shit. There's the sweat. There you go. That's what I'm having. And it's like, yeah, yeah, there are wizards somewhere. And yeah, there is a magic sword, but you can't have it. And the idea that like, high fantasy is happening somewhere. That's the thing. And that's, you know, that's, that's closer to the Warhammer Fantasy, than the you know, the neither of the current products at the moment. But it's just, it's really neat to like to take a fantasy idea, and then make a bit rubbish. And one of the, I always think that's one of my favourite things about writing games about writing. NPCs is my default NPC, someone who's just smart enough to have gotten in over their head. And they have far too many responsibilities. They don't know what they're doing, they can maybe survive for a while, but the players turn on and off, thank God, you're here, I really need your help. Because if you make competent NPCs, you know, the PCs at that point as a villain. And so I really like having people who are just out of their depth and struggling, I think that's an like, in my experience as a human and speaking to every other human is that we are all just pretending we are all pretending to know what's going on. No one's really comfortable in this. And then you take the idea of like, like, oh, yeah, there's a there's a there's a wizard. And also, the wizard doesn't know what he's doing. And he's trying his best, but the spell isn't working and like, and he owes money to people for children's teeth. And like, great, brilliant. And just just to sort of drag it down a bit. It's like fantasy with a hangover. I think it's probably the

Snyder’s Return: 28:40

fantasy with the polish and the the sort of sharp edges left on. Yes, yes. Yeah.

Grant Howitt: 28:47

So we, we did, we did Spire, and that went that went well. And we, we've done a few source books. And then we wanted to do something like the decision to do heart came from primarily a monetary point of view, because we were running out of money. And we needed a new product. We've done Stratta, and we needed something new, we wanted to add one monetary to or so we wanted to want to stretch our legs a little bit and try something exciting. The I think it was either we were going to do a collector's edition of honey heist, which would be a like I think, I think it was a 75 page coffee table book with like ads and like contributions from different authors and a lot of graphic design work or we were going to do hook and we decided that we decided that the honey house coffees a little bit would be too expensive to make. So we went for her. I'm glad we did a very good, you know, I mean, I'm not ruling out the idea of a 75 page humming house hack but heart was it started off as initially as an experiment to take the idea of the resistance system the thing which powers Spire, which broadly you can broadly describe as like, what's the worst possible day you could have? It mechanised as that so it's like it makes players it It makes plays earn their own misfortune. And it's it's tremendously fun and like it has like, I think of, because of the way in which we mechanise consequences. It does a really lovely thing of something's gone wrong. And then two other things have gone wrong. And then what we're trying to solve the third thing, someone's died over there. Like everything, everything stacks up and up and up. And it's fun. It's important. I think that's great. We were trying to use those rules, which we wrote primarily as a kind of espionage, social, quite like brutal, tight combat and gambits, we don't want to take that and make it into more of a dungeon crawling survival game to explore the heart, that dungeon is underneath Spire. And initially, we were just going to stick it in a dungeon anywhere. And then Chris was like, but we can put it in the Huck's people already like that. So we put it in there. And we started developing, you know, we, we wrote it out. And again, like, the standard way in which Chris and I make games is that we have an idea for a game, and then we ignore it for four months and come back to it. And then we do a second draft of the game, and then a third draft of the game. But then then during the third draft of the game, we realised we haven't done defence properly. And is always the third and the fourth draft, we come back and we'll fix it now. It's perfect. Let's take a look at this. And there's some fundamental flaw. And that triggers about a month of depression. Then after that, we come back with version six. And basically we hit generally, we want about 10 drafts of something before it comes out spies, spies, 1616, drafts, heart is eight. And Hallows is I think, on its 11th At the moment, and it is not an efficient way of making, like Chris and I call each other up for about an hour a day and talk to each other and like throw rules at each other and have ideas and say, Oh, well, I really liked this model. Oh, that's cool. And we're just talking about models for a while. miniatures. People who wear clothes for a living, and we throw a game together. And generally we won't, we won't get to play test for like that and work and work. And so we'll start cutting bits out. And what happens is over that process to get very long, expensive process Can't recommend it, you aggregate build up to the shape of the game. So heart has shaped spire has a shape policy has a shape, which you can sort of Intuit and slot rules into. And the because there's two of us, and because we're both collaborating on it, a great deal of the creative process is us both coming, coming to a compromise and an understanding of what of what this is of what we're making. And then by the time you hit draft eight, or what have you. We've ripped up the rules so many times, but the the the classes are still there, the locations are still there, the power, like the ability names are still there. And so by taking that we can understand what we want, what we want the game to do. And then how we want to do it is a is a long winded process. But I mean, it results in quite good books. So I'm happy about that. And like we don't put anything which we're ashamed of, we don't put out anything half assed, we we absolutely try our best and we have a I have a perfectionist streak, especially when it comes to like naming something, Chris now spend three, four hours on the name of something and it's again, again, not not recommended, but if you've got the time, it's nice to have the opportunity.

Snyder’s Return: 33:35

So what is one of the names that that comes to mind that you have taken the greatest satisfaction using?

Grant Howitt: 33:44

Well, the hardest one to pick was drunk mage from heart one of our classes the drunk mage is a kind of magic junkie. And we had them as gutter mage, we had them as I think like cobble which for a while, and we went back and forth for hours and hours trying to work out because at that point, once we put the name that then start defining the rest of the class and that was hugely, hugely difficult but we got there in the end and they're quite popular now. But my favourite the best known which were put in a role playing games Drac hack Smash. Drag X masters from unbound and one of my favourite things about unbound was that we had these little bits of setting which we dropped it we tried to cut out as much setting as we could to make it up because it's a generic game. It's emulates pulp Broadway. And so we wanted people to have the their own opportunity to make their own stuff up. But we had little bits as examples and drag hack Smash is the only man who's ever destroyed the moon to build a parking lot. He is he's he runs and then an intergalactic mining conglomerate and building firm and he's just a real a real bad piece of work. And so yeah, draconic Smash. I believe he eats his cigars that sort of there was something so immediately after corrective about the idea of man who would destroy moon a thing which moves to put to put a park you can even build a parking lot on the moon but but then not like answering any more questions it's gonna he did this fight him. And that's yeah that's thought I think the other one is cacophony Grendel or cacophony Grendel. He's one of our NPCs from, from the from a conspiracy kit whose is this beautiful, slightly older woman who's desperate to try and sleep her way through the revolution because she finds it exciting. And went croffer which is Chris's Chris is bound, but went croffer Ah, oh, you could relax and that you can base your feet in that name. It's delightful. It's got teeth,

Snyder’s Return: 35:44

probably feet and if it's got teeth, but yes.

Grant Howitt: 35:46

Oh, my feet massaging teeth. Like this little fish. Yeah.

Snyder’s Return: 35:54

Your creativity does not stop. On the website, there is 140 separate articles. Some of them are bundles of yours that we can purchase. But there is a high 70 140 140 items, separate items, as some of them have bundles for spider heart. But some of them are our games. One last job honey heist. Goblin quest crush pandas. Jason Statham speak vacation. I'm rattling these all off? Because they're fantastic. And I know people that even I've played with them, or they have run them for people. I know. It's a bit of a weird, sort of sentence that one but

Grant Howitt: 36:33

I understand what you mean.

Snyder’s Return: 36:36

You're it just doesn't stop your creativity. You put more stuff up on Twitter recently as well. What where, where do these ideas come from?

Grant Howitt: 36:45

While you say I I've I've answered this question before. And I'll do it exactly the same way I have a magic button on the internet. When I push it 2000 pounds falls out. It is pretty nice. Yeah. If I don't push that button, sorry, to push that button, I have to write again, I'm gonna have to be a page but it has to be good. And when I press that button, 2000 pounds falls out. And that means that the business gets get some money. And it's it's significantly changed. Because like, back in the day, it was a way of it was a way of keeping my hand there was a way of doing some stuff with Masters idea to go one page, actually because one last job and have it brigade and warrior poets are they were the first the first few games that I put out, I think one of the steps 40 pages now on it. But it's 40 pages. And it's just like quite a complex game with a lot of moving parts and a lot of playtesting. And I think because I was in Australia at that time, I ended up spending more on postage, to post out the physical copies than I did earn from the Kickstarter. And so Mesmers very cleverly, was like, Well, how about you just do one page and tell people up front, it's gonna be one page. So cancel your pledge, if you want, that's fine. It's only gonna be one page. But this meant that I was able to have these ideas and put through stuff. And then it was it was an interesting constraint. Because because I don't, I've broken the rules a few times and had two pages. But most of the time I tried to get down to one page, there's something fun about that. And people, people like it, people like supporting it. And that means that I can give it away for free. And that means that I can distribute these things like Twitter has been a fantastic tool for that. Just being able to say, right, here's the whole game, and it's attached to this tweet. And people can have fun with it, or they can just read it and like and like imagine it, which can be fun. And now that we've got a full company running with us, and we've got we've got a few people who work for us, there's there's a responsibility to actually I've got to make sure that they can pay their bills and actually I've got to make sure that like the mortgage is ticking along. And so there's an element of like, well, I'm not inspired, but one 2000 pounds is quite inspiring. And to I'll sit down and so I you know this thing I'm publishing, hopefully today or tomorrow school stag party. I started out I wanted to write again called picket a wedding. For a Yeah, yeah, great name right. For James de Matos. One shot role playing game book was published a few years ago, and I incorrectly thought that the rights had run out on that. So I was furiously looking through the contracts because I've got no idea as to gender I can just print this one. But as it turns out, I still got another two years to wait, thanks, Simon and Schuster. But I was like pig pig it away. What if you like to marry the same giant pig? And, and just sort of like, keep, keep going from that? And I will say none of my ideas are, you know, they're not. They're not changing the world. But I hope that hope that I'm making things which are immediately graspable and entertaining, and much like I was saying earlier about how like everyone knows what a goblin is, everyone knows what an orc is in that way, and you can sort of line up together on the system and tell a story together. I think that my More popular games are the ones where it's like it's a bit daft and it's a bit it's big and it's chaotic. But here's the pitch isn't as interesting about two hours ago. I think like, if people are really upset they give you about the money they've paid, which is basically nothing most of the time. So

Snyder’s Return: 40:18

one of the ideas from one of the tweets you parked I'd love Firstly, I'd love for you to push through a dame walked into my office, which has a Dead men don't wear plaid that Steve Martin film sort of vibe to it. I think you've mentioned standing in the rain pointlessly for three hours and all that sort of stuff smoking the same cigarette three times in the shadows and all that sort of stuff.

Grant Howitt: 40:40

I you know what, you know what, the reason why that was only a couple of sentences is because I wrote it and I was like, I can't think of enough. No. I'm not sure I can make this funny. And I published that we did a did in war game with Alex Roberts. I'll be this time last year, I think as we put out, called death was the only road out of town, which is a I'm oversleep, Alex Roberts is, I believe a genuine genius she is. She's done three games, and they're all absolute bangers. And now she's like, I'm out. I'm actually just trying to because she's a licenced therapist. Now she's just, she's backed out of this whole stupid industry and like hats off to her. But also hats on to her because I want him to keep making games. But I was lucky enough to work with her on a game called Death recently, right out of town. And it's a dream like Noir. I put this if paranoia is an exploration to Dom sub relationships, this is an exploration into switch relationships that it has the GM is absolutely horrible to the players all the time. And the players of cryptocurrency, which they can spend to be horrible to the GM. And it's a it's an it's about, it's about the power dynamic. One of my favourite things in like an improv show, is when someone makes a really difficult suggestion, and the other person has to do it. I think that's hilarious. I think that's very funny. And so I wanted to make a game which explored that and Alex was, luckily she agreed to it. And point being. Yeah, I don't know enough about Anwar. But I think there's, like there's, there's there's something there's, there's definitely something attractive about the way that and while looks and the way and like and like the idea of getting the tar beaten out of you to, to learn what's going on. And the fact that everyone's corrupt. And unlike, like, a pattern like power is not authority is never revered. Within that. And I like that. I think that's a that's a fun stance to take.

Snyder’s Return: 42:38

Totally moving from brief tweets, and these fantastic ideas and more praise to Alex, but we'll move on from there to your latest, newest current, because they could there could be new and latest that I don't know about yet. But the newest project hollows.

Grant Howitt: 42:57

I will say we are publishing die. Yes. Karen Gillan is going

Snyder’s Return: 43:02

based on the comic. So yes, basically,

Grant Howitt: 43:05

written by the man who wrote the comic illustrated by the woman who illustrated the comic is a it's a, it's really good. And it's been really hard getting there. We like the way in which we write books is I wrote the book. And then we throw it at editors, and eventually it comes out and that's fine. Or like, oh, like like Chris and I team up and then I do the words. And then we can do that. And that's fine. And then we got we got a massive manuscript through from Karen. And like this, this is, this is wonderful, but you've never written a role playing game before have you. And so like, like, like having to, like saw the back end off where he was just explaining about his own campaign, because it's like, it's all it's all useful stuff, but not for printing on paper. And it was really interesting challenge. And like polishing the system, getting the art in place, getting all the layout in place, and working, like to the highest possible standard, we could do this stuff. And, and, and negotiating rights and having lawyers talk to each other and doing all sorts of grown up stuff with people in LA, horrible business can't recommend it. But it was it's been a really interesting challenge. And I and I absolutely rocks, is I'm so proud of what we've done with it and what unlike and what Karen's put together, so I'm flattered that he that he chose us to go with because like it could have had his pick of publishers, and I genuinely think that we've done the best job that anyone could with this, think that we've treated them like we've treated it with respect and also enough disrespect to make it a better product.

Snyder’s Return: 44:38

So how did that opportunity first arise then?

Grant Howitt: 44:43

I, Karen and I go to the same conventions. And we were I was the first time I met Karen Gillan. I was at a I was at a podcast, run the evening in a pub dressed as A Christmas tree. And carry it was just it was Christmas Christmas themed party, but carried had one costume. And he was a friend of a friend. And I was like, oh, photograph was amazing. And I really liked working with them to vote, I think you're fantastic. He's like, I like your lights and replace with what do you say, you know, but but we ended up at the same cons. And we clearly have, I think we have a lot in common we have, we have a similar kind of cynicism or similar kind of like the thing the things we think are funny are the same. And we caught on and then there are a few a few publishers, which he approached, but we were is mates with them as as well. And we understand each other and respect each other. And I think one of the one of the most interesting things that I've seen about going into business with my, with my spouse and my best friend, which is fraught sometimes, you know, because we're all you know, emotionally invested in this. And it's quite hard to put down in that way. But also it means that fundamentally me and Chris and mez love each other and we're looking out for each other, and we only run a business together. And that means that we can trust each other, in, in, in business in decisions like this. And there's like there's no ulterior motive, there's no and if there is an ulterior motive, it's probably benign, it's fine, you know, and so there's something similar and working with Kieran because we we knew each other and we'd like we'd gotten over that difficult thing we'd already like you've come around my house and got and got drunk and so we can have that opportunity to then take this work and say right well this needs to change and this is perfect and we need more of this and we need less of this and not worry too much about talking to each other in that way. So yeah nepotism

Snyder’s Return: 46:52

if you take one thing away from this interview, never know don't know. So it when is dye available for us to purchase and taken place upon our our game tables in front of

Grant Howitt: 47:05

God, hopefully, April should have been it should have been February. But this bloody cough that's going around. Still, despite everything China is really having having a hard time with things the moment we got, we got a dose done in China by a by level up dos to who pay Australian wages and have Australian they basically have Australian labour standards in China. And you will not believe the level of difficulty we had finding non conflict obsidian to make dos Yeah, yeah. It turns out if you try and buy raw raw precious stones on the open market people like I don't know what's wrong. And so that we had to work really hard to find some responsibly sourced obsidian when we got there we did the dice and unfortunately, because of because of COVID and because of the fact that China is really getting its get its teeth knocked out by the light at the moment, a lot of the trucks which transport things a lot of the things which move things around went to China are now still in China. So everything's slower, unfortunately. So we've we've got some delays unfortunately but we are looking to have that printed and beautiful by April I think it'll be like yeah like late March mid March we'll be sending out stuff to backers and it'll be in shops by polished imagine I cannot recommend it recommend enough that you pick it up it's it's a it's cracking thing. And and and if you're only like me as a writer, I've got a scenario in the back there too. So it's something for you to enjoy

Snyder’s Return: 48:45

full investment for everybody there

Grant Howitt: 48:48

are two and a half 1000 words but yeah, Hallows Hollis is only thing well is is our is our new hotness. And it has been it's been it's been a bit of a challenge. So after we did hot that big cough went around we've published we published the heart digitally in March 2020 which was a really you know, interesting time but we we got there and then heart did heart did really nice that he did really well in terms of sales and picked up some enemies which was really which was really nice to be recognised for that. And we Chris and I decided that what we wanted to do was try and try and do something else. Probably some other games. We want to come away from the world of heart and spire we want to try something weird and different proceed to sort of get our get our hand back and get some experience and I started writing I think I wrote six different cyberpunk games. The the title I heard that there was a bubble gum jungle was was the was the working title and then then ocean basterds and they all sort of came down to my what I wanted to do was have a game where if I if I have an auto pistol, I want to roll up these 12 D six and blow up a wall. I want like I want I want to have a bike I want I want just I want just the Cool Bits of cyberpunk and none of the actual meaning behind it. Which is unfortunate because that doesn't make for a very interesting game. And then I sort of kept going down kept reiterate, I was like, Okay, what's the world's run by AI is and the we worship the AI is like gods. And then we can do miracles by by interrupting like, by messing with beseeching them for programmes or having a payment that is cool. And meanwhile Chris is writing a game called the swamp witches have some subtle Hola, which is a game about shooting shooting a damp witch in the dark with your daddy's revolver. It's like Southern Gothic, grim, trudging out through through the mangroves, and sickness and death and poverty, kinda like the wild west but moist. And we went back and forth on these and like, we were like, we kept coming up with ideas we kept kept with things on it. Chris wanted to play around with the idea of death. And the idea that while like, you don't die in this game, you just wake up in the bar, and you've been trapped here. And then we started messing around with the idea of oh, well, what if? What if we had a game where it was all based around what time of day or night it was, in this some subtle holiday with this wild west game. And then it became rapidly apparent that my Cyberpunk game was fine, but wasn't about anything. And unfortunately, if you write a game with a spine, generally it has to be about something or it's not anything good. Okay. And so I don't I don't feel satisfied writing if it's not about nothing. I don't have to say what it's about up front. But there should be a theme, you know,

Snyder’s Return: 51:46

more of a bubblegum crisis.

Grant Howitt: 51:48

Yes, I experienced a bubblegum crisis, certainly. And and so we shelled the cyberpunk games, and we started developing the Wild West game and the deep south care and I felt more and more uncomfortable about writing a game set in America at this time about this region slightly. I'm I'm a white guy in the UK in 2022. or what have you. Beside I'm not really comfortable writing this I don't think this is I want to mess with the setting. But what we got down to eventually was it was about hunting supernatural creatures. We knew we wanted to have a game about hunting supernatural creatures, we love Bloodborne we loved Dark Souls. We are a big fan of Monster Hunter games. Shadow of the Colossus, the idea of like, this is a like a centrepiece fight. And like, the like just how difficult the like I'm so I'm playing Eldon ring at the moment. An absolute masterpiece, really one of the one of the finest things anyone's done with a controller, I think it's amazing. And the way in which the bosses are these sort of big, dramatic, exciting puzzles, and they're beautiful to look at. And they're dangerous. And they're exciting, and they're thrilling. And there's loads of different ways you can approach them. And we want to come up with something like that, we want to come up with a game which had, you know, the, I can't think of a tabletop system that we've played in which fighting a big thing is especially fun. Like Dungeons and Dragons is quite good at simulating a fight against maybe a slightly larger group of weaker enemies. Is great doing goblins is great doing orcs. It's fine at doing an ogre. But once you get to the point where it's a dragon, it has to start breaking its own rules. And if you think of the way that like Dragon's break the action economy, or like they'll have what is it like legendary actions and layer actions, and they'll have ways they can break out of sales and that sort of thing. And so what that amounts to is like the core system is for skirmish, combat, you know, 535, and then anything else is, is effectively sticking plasters and hacks. So what we want to do is come from a system with a system from the ground up where your positioning is important, where your your method of attack is important where your tactics, we can support other people where you can have gambits where you can run away for a bit and come back where you can hold a monster off. But also that isn't, doesn't involve, like measuring sticks, doesn't involve like angles of approach and that something counting squares and put Yeah, yeah, I'm not against counting squares. I'm alright with it. But it's not. It's not what we wanted. And so we ended up with hollows and Chris Chris came, came to me one day, Chris develops all of his best ideas when he's feverish or manic. And he just sort of like, like, I'll get I'll get a get a DM on Discord at 4:30am The most recent one I got, by the way was grunt you know, you know how to play from the dark has clocks. They're just round checkboxes grant. This changes everything. And to be and then like three days later, it came to me with the pitch for a pirate game, which is ingenious. It's very clever with round checkboxes or clocks. Isn't it where he came to us? It came to me with with the idea of the tactical grip, which is really the sort of thing which sits at the heart of Hollows. And I, we were big fans of the way in which the One Ring did the tactical fights, which you have like you have the scrum at the front, and then you have a little bit back, then you have archery, and then you have running away. And you have that on both sides of Battlefield. And so where you are changes what you do, I thought that was really cool. It's also a similar thing and right of Tama. It's freezing doesn't need to be there at all. It's like, it's a game, which has four rules for this umbrella isn't cool. But also, if you want to fight some cat goblins, here's the way to tactical positioning. Yeah, we we came, we had the tactical read. And the deal is that on this tactical grid, because you're only ever fighting one thing, it doesn't move, it stays precisely where it is on the map are all times you've got it printed out the listener if you could see it, I'm sure you'd agree it's genius. But the idea is the monster size where the entity stays where it is, and you move around. Which requires some requires some 40 chests and explaining how terrain works. And things like that. Because terrain is no longer a thing you can enter it's a thing you do. Yeah. And like and written like there's, there's there's different rules for the monster has moved, and you have moved, which is a bit tricky. So it's it's tricky. It's not especially intuitive. We have a weird kind of blackjack de 20 system, which we're using to determine hits, we've got partial successes and a single B 20. Game come at me. And it's it's interesting, and it's challenging. And we've really pushed ourselves to try and make something which is different. And I think like we put out the pipe with POTUS has been open for about two weeks, it's been running for about three. And I think quite a lot of people who are used to you know, honey heist and heart and these games which are mechanics light, fundamentally, but it's coming to something which is jets, and hefty, and there is a wrong way to play hollows. Like it is possible to optimise yourself and you should be optimising us and we tried to present it. So like, you know, there's lots of different options you can do. But you you have to play, you have to play it quite smart. And that's really different from how we play from how we write our games. And so it's been, it's been a challenge to write that it's been a challenge to sell that as well. But I'm really happy with the way it's going. And I want to we've just yesterday, we just rejigged the tutorial to make the fight more dangerous. And the thing more interesting. So we're gonna update the playtests. From there, we're hoping we can have it sort of roll they're gonna update it with player feedback to keep iterating. But it's a the the opportunity to do a sort of Silent Hill cross with Bloodborne where you go into someone else's personal hell, and then kill them kill their demons. There's something quite evocative and exciting about that. And I'm really interested to see where it goes. And I really hope that we can take it where it is now. Because I think this is the this is the 11th draft, I think. And there's going to be another couple of drafts. After this, there's going to be a bit more so we can get it to a point where it's easy, easy to understand, easy to play. At the moment, there's something it's raw and experimental and strange, although it is very polished because Mazar editor has really done a good job on it. But we we don't, we don't understand what we've done yet. And so we need to carry on, we do this playtesting we need to play it more ourselves and understand. So then we can start playing within the system. And it can be as intuitive as writing holes.

Snyder’s Return: 58:39

That's our next challenge. What the artwork is use the work of evocative The artwork is fantastic and was cracking. It's incredible. really sets the tone. And I was reading through before the interview started. And the other day when I've just downloaded it available on the rd website. I will plug that play test link in the description below. Download it have a read through have a play, have a try. Not only is the artwork evocative but the you mentioned the past was partial success. So it's roll under, but then target number so it creates this sort of envelope of perfection, where you have roll under Roll over, roll on the roll over. So you get this it's I love it. I think it's great. This sort of envelope this letterbox of of perfection you need to him and it really plays into that sort of style of game you've mentioned. The Yes, looking at the tactical grid. It takes a bit more mental math, but if you're used to games with zones or trying to think of another you mentioned the One Ring and retirement a few others, but games were zones where you just moved from a to b b to c you can space combat in Alien Coriolan square the whole thing shifts underneath the ships. It has a similar principle, I think

Grant Howitt: 1:00:05

as well like one of the ways which we've not really said it in the game because it breaks K phobe. But one way which I explained in interviews is it's luck on targeting. It's just like, you just start the phone clicking the right stick, and you look onto the monster. And so that's all you're interested in. Yeah, as it were, and you're all locked onto the same monster and you're all running around it. So yeah, it's been it's been interesting to try and a challenge to try and explain this from the ground up to people like, like, assuming hatred never played a role playing game before. Let's go like, what if this was your first? Yeah, yeah. That's why the plates 150 pages. significantly longer than most books.

Snyder’s Return: 1:00:46

It's all good content.

Grant Howitt: 1:00:48

stuff. It's all good stuff spelled correctly as well.

Snyder’s Return: 1:00:51

Magic, the magic in the words. So you mentioned there about optimising characters, character options and things like that? Do you have a lot of influence listeners and future players and purchases and game runners? Do you have a favourite out of all the builds, as well.

Grant Howitt: 1:01:11

So the way that hollows works is there's 11 weapons because we couldn't, because we wrote more and more than we meant to and then now they're done as 11 weapons, one of which is armour, which you can pick out. And you pick two and they give you your abilities. And the other deal is that is the weapon is is is lying to you. The weapon is telling you that you're powerful and incredible and cool. Which is kind of the way that I think everyone feels when they pick up a sword. Everyone was like, oh, yeah, I could I could lead to an army. Or like, like, if, like, if I ever hold a broom, or a sling over one shoulder like a monkey king. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Man, I can do this. Kids. responsible. And so I think my favourite one is the I really like the bludgeon that much is the is the one of the laser weapons that we wrote. And the the idea behind the bludgeon, there's two kinds of damage you can do in hollows as resolved and there's wounds and resolvers like stamina and positioning and endurance and wounds is what you have when you run out of those you die. And when you run out of resolve, you automatically upgrade to wound damage if you hit the creature which means that it's it's like like in like in Dark Souls when you stagger the boss or break them or what have you, then you can you can do some heavy attacks and then they have means of getting back up on their feet. And bludgeon is solely about it's about reducing that result is zero. It's terrible at wounding. It's really not very good at it. It like there is a it actively denies you other options. So like, there's there's definitely definitely one of the bludgeon powers and the plus this means you can no longer take cover. Just it rubs off on you because like you can stand in a building, but you're no longer interested in that. But you're much tougher now. And there's another one which is like, Oh, you can no longer take the defend action that was it. Yes. As a tear to ability. So the guard action restores your resolve. It removes that ability from you, but you when you inflict result damage, you earn back half of it to yourself. Nice. And so there is this like in terms of simulating a lunatic with a hammer, who's going on to try and club a dragon to death. That is, it's really Yeah, like the something Bastille and scary about it. And the way I'm like I got to write all the fluff of the intro and it's like, you're you're the Alpha you're the you're the prime mover, you're a perfect machine, nothing can stop you don't need anything but this hammer. And it was really nice to sort of tap into the the arrogance that we like because holos is us talking about toxic masculinity in a lot of ways. You know, all of our games are us working through something, they're all about something and we want to make a combat game. Then we started off doing that and then I think I played a bit of disco Elysium masterpiece and the way in which that has your brain talk to you and your body talk to you really felt unlike and it's a it's a game with about 20 unreliable narrators all jammed in the same head and just drawing on that and being able to go like well okay, but the weapons aren't going to physically talk to you. But this is what they represent. This is what they feel is telling them and so at the rifle is colonialist and the rifle the rifles like you're better than us you're above this you're calm you're methodical you can you can run this place the great axe is like you are supposed to cut things to bits and unmake them they this world is yours for the taking go and take it and just all those all those horrible things which we believe it was, like sort of play with them and ramp them up and then say okay, well what do you could use this to work? You could use these horrible things to make the world better And it was random at that time. I think that was when I really fell for hollows and was like, Okay, now we've got it now, this is going for a conic weapons. We're going for, like everyone's kind of a hammer wizard, in that you're in that you're casting spells, but the spell is break someone's face. And it's, it's, it's exciting.

Snyder’s Return: 1:05:18

I cast smash teeth.

Grant Howitt: 1:05:19

Precisely. Yes. Yeah, I think I think that's one of the spells that the bludgeon has.

Snyder’s Return: 1:05:27

So looking forward to the downstream of the the all these play tests going out and seeing the complete unfinished artists, as I mentioned before, the artwork is for naught, um, I'm gonna lie just for the artwork, the artwork itself,

Grant Howitt: 1:05:42

are the ones who buy it. Oh,

Snyder’s Return: 1:05:44

well, that's fair. But I'm justifying to myself, why I'm gonna buy it. And then I'll just rope in some people to take on these toxic traits and run a game for it. It'd be great.

Grant Howitt: 1:05:56

Let's call Lucas Utani, who works primarily, I think, does a lot of work in Blender. So like he 3d models the thing, and then likes it and then basically takes a picture and paints on top of that, which is really neat. And he is he is broadly undiscovered. From what I can tell. I haven't seen his work anywhere else. But he's he's absolutely cracking.

Snyder’s Return: 1:06:15

I will. Yeah, if I can find him, I'll put a link to to him somewhere. Because, yeah, I can't praise it high enough. And it goes with the tone of your writing, and the mechanics and everything that you're trying to achieve. From what I can see from the current play test. Obviously, it's developments to follow as, as the playtesting goes on, but definitely looking forward to picking that up. So yeah, thank you for making it basically, is what I'm trying to get to that. You do. You do a lot of work, a lot of creativity. We've mentioned all the games you've already released plus DI plus hollows. Do you have downtime, you mentioned Games Workshop, Warhammer stuff, time fee for you.

Grant Howitt: 1:07:02

I don't work weekends, if I could avoid it. Nice. That's my best. I didn't always used to do that. I used to like, I used to have a really unhealthy relationship with work. And I'd work I've worked late into the night, or I just like, like I also used to, I used to very much struggle with depression as well. I'm only recently I actually I believe I am cured now, which is nice. But for most of my adult life, I was struck with a terrible depression. And thanks to some extensive therapy, and venlafaxine, my brain works kind of now, which is great. So I'm in a much more comfortable working position. But I yeah, I don't work after I tried to work after six. I tried to work before 10. I tried to get lunch in. And also like, because because this isn't just I'm not just writing out, you know, we're running a business as well. And there's different responsibilities that fall to all of us. We all have we all we've all got emails to answer. We've all got, you know, product specs to look at, or things to look over and authorise. And there's various grown up things we have to deal with, I'm just writing a book about imagining what an elf might do. Not even not even writing a book about an elf but telling giving other people prompts for their roles. But there's a, in my experience, when I'm working for myself, when I'm working for someone else, it's different. But when I'm working for myself, probably got about two hours a day of creative work, where I can sit down and actually do decent work. And they probably won't all be at the same time in the same slot. It'll be half an hour here. 45 minutes break for lunch, whatever. But But yeah, I definitely take I definitely take downtime. And I think it's absolutely crucial. Because you can get in your head you can get like you can you can over Polish something you can over overwork something. And I think I probably spend Yeah, I think I'd probably spend a longer interesting on than I do writing. And that's not right, it's time to sit down and do an edit now. But more, I will write something and I'll go back to something that I wrote two pages ago and think, Oh, does that still work? Is that fun? I'll change this word here. I'll change that rule here. I'll do this here. And so it's just this sort of continual rolling thing. And eventually it's about 700 words. It's that there's there's been about 3000 in sales just gone in and come out and changed. But yeah, the Games Workshop for me. I do also I do scratch building and I buy models from other companies it's mainly Games Workshop because they do the best ones honestly. That for me is something which has been absolutely fundamental in my in finding my finding piece, because it's something creative. I don't have to be professionally good at. I don't earn money from an account and when it costs me a stupid amount of money to take part. It's one of the more expensive hobbies you can have. Well, it's not like high end photography, you know, and like I can I can make things out of sticks and blue tack and you can't do that with high end photography, but still It's a I can I can sit down in my room and I can get my model I can, I can make it make up a little story about the guy I've built. And I've got him I've got different pieces from different kits and I built them. It's just like that this is what I'm trying to emulate. I'm trying to I'm trying to tell, like represent a broader slice of this big shared universe, which Warhammer is with this thing and illustrate something through this medium and be playful and have like making weird little guys. I think that's really aggressive. It's hot like guys who are having a horrible time and don't want to be there. But they've got a cup of tea, or like a fish. Nice. As opposed to ARB and mighty Space Marine this I don't want to make a mighty Space Marine. Thank you. I've made a couple of as my time. It's fine, but I want to make some horrible little buggers. So yeah, I find that very common. I go for walks. I live in the countryside now. We moved out of London about six months ago, I've been Sheffield no little village called standing on the outskirts of Sheffield. And there's trees and I can hear it here sheep and look at a horse and my cats are bringing in four or five mice a day. And we're just like we're good life and out here baby. It's wonderful. go for walks make a toy soldier. That's my

Snyder’s Return: 1:11:15

army you've sort of constructing.

Grant Howitt: 1:11:18

Oh, What? What? Bless bless your heart. Well, imagine they're doing a whole army. Ah, oh, no, that's that's not I wish I had the patient's do a whole army. The last whole army I did was a Ted Turner. 28. So 10 to 28 is a game. It's post apocalyptic, Napoleonic warfare, everyone's everyone's stupid. Everyone's useless at their jobs. Everyone's got like turnip roots growing through them. Your boss is an idiot, you can't shoot straight. You're writing a snail. I did a full army for that. Which is like four or five units, I think. But mainly what I do, is I'll make little gangs of about four or five guys who are friends. Right? And I'll do like, I'll do it like, so I have. I've got my I've got my big I've got bits boxes, and I've got a couple of shells bits and boxes on a bit of water. I fancy what I fancy doing today. One of my friends is exploring today. So my current project is I'm doing Imperial Guard. Sorry. What are they called? Now? Astra Militarum. We're doing Astra military, and I've got the death cut with this. This is gonna be very inside baseball. If you don't play for eco folks. I've got the death crops of creek bodies. I've got chordal like Cal's gene stealer cult arms. And so they are like really embittered, dirty religious trench fighters. And I'm trying to make a I said earlier I'm making a tank. I'm trying to make a tank which looks like the inside of a church, but not not an expensive church.

Snyder’s Return: 1:12:50

Ah, so more set dressing than tactical WAR PEACE. Oh,

Grant Howitt: 1:12:55

yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, they've got they've got a mechanical preacher bolted to the wall. Nice. I love I love one of my favourite things about 40k is the incongruity in congregates income weirdness. And the way that like it, like they're not efficient. And I think that's, I think that's very funny. I love playing with that.

Snyder’s Return: 1:13:17

I think the it's not supposed to be. It is supposed to be satire, isn't it? The the 40k universes is yeah,

Grant Howitt: 1:13:23

it started. It started. It started off as broadly satirical, but it was more just kind of punk in that grimy, 70s way. And like, unlike the fact that like IP laws were much more relaxed back then. And you could just sort of do and like oh, aliens, and they're going from, you know, from Alien On you go. And it's fine. And it was fine. And they were messing about and it was much less. The the game was much more about the brutality and the coolness of trying to prosper in a horrible universe, rather than I would argue the Space Marines who are doing very well, because what you do now is you buy Space Marines. And they're taller than they used to be, and they're better looking. And they've got cooler guns, and they're bigger. And, like, the Space Marines seem to be going through leaps and bounds in terms of struggle, and everyone else is just sort of scrubbing out of the bottom. No, it's much more bombastic and honestly a bit fashio these days. So I don't go in for the whole I don't go in for that. But I think there's, I think the my, as I was saying before, with like, with like my NPCs I really like I really like stories I really like the idea of of people who are just out of their depth. And 40k is great at doing people who are just out of their depth. They didn't they just shouldn't be here. I like that.

Snyder’s Return: 1:14:44

There's no There's some caveats we're gonna go into there is no wrong way to enjoy your hobby. Well, yeah, that's why I did the caveat. Yeah, yeah, sure.

Grant Howitt: 1:14:53

Yeah. This is this some uniform choices. I think that people got people kicked out of tournaments. But yeah, that's very You wrong ways you can enjoy your hobby.

Snyder’s Return: 1:15:02

As long as you enjoy it. So yes, but grant we have discussed so much. Your games projects the company. Are you still podcasting? Is Hardy dice friends still?

Grant Howitt: 1:15:16

Yeah, you can go and listen to it and never listen to those friends but no, Chris. So me and Chris, my the Deckard from our record academies to record a podcast called Hardy dice friends, which was kind of a role playing games podcast, we just sort of made jokes for about an hour a week. It was It was surprisingly hard to be to be witty and engaging for an hour a week. And Kristen doesn't really enjoy it anymore, unfortunately, and and the process of cutting it together and putting it out and editing out all of my chair noises and the way in which I have put down my tea extra loud. And the way that I love talking over him. And so I think that he just sort of got a bit tired. So no, I am, I am, I'm trying out, I'm trying out for the podcast. Actually, it's a podcast called shag marry cobalt, which we're trying to try to put together, which is we're going through we're playing shag marry kill with the monster manual. Okay, so it's me and a couple of other hosts. And we're currently just trying to get the logistics together. It's quite, it's quite a fun concept. And I learned a lot about myself in what I was willing to make a lot of to, and indeed excited to make love to. That was Yeah, kind of kind of a dating show. But for Dungeons and Dragons, and I'm experimenting with that, because I really love I love podcasting. I love telling jokes. And that sort of the improvised nature of it. And the fact that we're all going to come together and only we can make this thing, it's going to be completely unique to what we do, we're going to bring going to bring little bits to it. And then we're going to show those to each other and present them. And I think that's, I think there's something really, that that for me is now now that I'm cured of the Depression, why I do this, I do this so I can work with people, and we can make something which I couldn't have done myself. And it's fascinating. I love that.

Snyder’s Return: 1:17:07

I look forward to that becoming a reality. We'll see. Strange and twisted. Well, we'd live interesting to I'm not even gonna ponder what your choices have been thus far. So I'll wait for the podcast to come out. So we've spoken about a lot. Is there anything we haven't spoken about that you want to bring up here at the end of the interview?

Grant Howitt: 1:17:29

The final thing we're going to bring us of course, I am i We are going to put out another book Between now and hollows which is not officially announced but kind of announced, which is called eat the right. Which is a game where you play vampire Nazi hunters in in the peak of World War Two. We are we have been illustrated by Well, Kirkby he did. It does stuff fortnight he's done some stuff for critical role. He did a critical role comics, it's got this incredible grimy, like detailed hyper detail stuff. And so much like I did with Borg, which is the MacBook hack I did with Robin curtains, I do the words will does the purchase and layout. We slept on Kickstarter. And we split the profits, half in half. And that means that it's one of the challenges in being a in, in this industry is that when you when you approach an artist, they have to they have to kind of Intuit what, what what you want. And then it's generally like work for hire. Or it'll be like, well, you can do you do five pieces for us. And here's the thing, and you have to give them the brief. And instead of that, we'll get to be there from the start. We get to build this together. And so we get to build up we get to make something together. But also it means that we're both invested in each side of the thing. And it's a it means that you get something which is really exciting and really like art rich and dense in a way that you can't really afford to do in traditional production methods. So yeah, we don't either like it's about it's kind of a pulp game in which you have to drink all of Hitler's blood. We have a bunch of cool vampires who you get to be working for Fang, which is Fang is an acronym and I don't know what it's for working that out. Federal association for nefarious goings on

Snyder’s Return: 1:19:29

like it like it

Grant Howitt: 1:19:31

but that's broadly you can keep abreast like people can keep abreast of what I'm doing my follow me on Twitter I never shut up on there. And we have a pretty good discord I will say if you'd like heart or spire or if you picked up either in the recent bundle of holdings we did we bundle of holding over Christmas and we've shifted quite a few copies come along to our Discord and a lot of discords are not great, but our Discord is brilliant. And I don't say that because of anything that I do. We have a really lovely community. They are welcoming and friendly and cool. And my my moderating style is that if if there's ever more than 10 posts in a row, I turn up and if someone's being weird, I tell them to stop. And if they don't stop, I kick them out. And it's like, there's like, people turn up to discord with the understanding that some sort of public forum like we're in Rome. You're in my living room. Yes. And so we're all gonna be cool here, buddy. And so like, thanks to that laissez faire. hungover replacement teacher moderation. Style actually actually plays out pretty well. We've got some degree of people, there's lots of people like talking about ideas for spire and heart and posting music and pictures and plotlines they've done and characters and it's just a really, it's a really lovely space. And so put put a link in the show notes, please come along and join us.

Snyder’s Return: 1:20:57

Of course course. Well, you mentioned discord. If you'd like to remind everybody where nothing that's probably the third time but where everybody can find you on Twitter and on the internet.

Grant Howitt: 1:21:09

Yeah, sure. On Twitter, I'm at GSHOW i t t. If you don't follow me already, and we haven't we haven't official account, we don't really tweet through it very much. So just follow me a little bit, you'll get all the scoops you find. And then on if you want to go to if you want to get any any of our games that we've published, you can go to Roanoke, undercard.com or rd gains, which is much easier to spell.com and get everything most of its pay what you want. And as as you said earlier, there are over 140 games, which is 140 products, which is dizzying. I didn't know that. Yeah, I think most of them are alright. And most of them are free. So you can't complain.

Snyder’s Return: 1:21:53

Like, there you go. I will make sure there are links to all of that in the description below. So please go down support GranSport, Rowan, Rook and Decard and the whole team there and the current and forthcoming projects. Grant has been such a pleasure to have you on the show. I'd love to get you back in the future. Maybe when holiday is complete and kickstarted proper or future projects, oneshots, anything like that, if you'd be willing to come back and join us for sipping

Grant Howitt: 1:22:16

that Chris on as well. I think it'd be interesting to given how we've spoken about hollows in such depth that it'd be interesting to come back in a year's time or what have you once we've gone through protests and gone to gone to print and how the game can evolve in that way. And what that what that looks like. So we don't, I don't think we get a lot of I didn't get a lot of explanation for how the sausage is made. And I think it's kind of interesting. So I'd like to talk about that.

Snyder’s Return: 1:22:39

Yeah, sure. Absolutely. I'd love to have you back. So thank you very much for joining me.

Grant Howitt: 1:22:44

Bye. Do I say bye?

Snyder’s Return: 1:22:47

I've been doing this for like two or three years I can I still struggle to close out and interview. But yeah, it's good. It's good. Well, 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 Snyder, 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