Hello, and welcome to Snyder’s return I tabletop roleplay podcast. My guest today returns to this haven having crossed the great part, the Gilead system and the broken world to bring us news of hope, and necromantic city and new alien threats. She knows her way around a ball game and tabletop roleplay game. It is an absolute pleasure to welcome game designer TTRPG content creator, warden of Digisprite and sage of cubicle seven. Elaine Lithgow. Elaine, welcome back to the show.
Elaine Lithgow:My gosh, what an introduction. I wasn't quite expecting that much fanfare, but I will take it. Thank you. I'm glad to be back.
Snyder’s Return:And rightly so. Your work is stunning. And what I've alluded to there in the introduction we'll touch on very shortly but Elaine, for those that maybe haven't listened to our previous in interview, would you like to give us a short background on yourself and how you got into tabletop role playing games, please.
Elaine Lithgow:You have? Absolutely. So I'm Elaine Lithgow, as mentioned, and very, very quick summary of a long and storied and wolfelt career. Not that full of well. But yeah, I studied video games design originally at university. And I got rocketed out during the great big financial downturn for a hot minute there subsequent fun, worked in video games for a God better part of a decade just over working on some weird bits and pieces over the years Angry Birds nonsense like that. Lots of mobile games. And then I got into making board games on the site. With our small three person team did you spray and we did three games so far. First one was devastate bots. Then we did adventure Mar, and then we did familiar alchemy. So that's been our fun little creative board game outlet. And then Gosh, it must have been about three or four years ago now I started doing some freelance tabletop role playing game writing for cubicle seven. And that was just around the time that soulbound and wrath and glory, the two new Warhammer licences with cubicle seven at the time were being published. So I got in on the core books for those starter sets, etc. And then I did freelance writing for them for about 18 months, which was great fun, learned a lot very quickly. And then I got her on full time as a writer. And then over the course of the subsequent year and a half I went writer, developer, and producer. So I've been in the producer role for a year now as well, actually. And yeah, worked on a whole a whole bunch of bits and pieces now and article seven. And that sort of takes us up to where we are today a very abridged history of as mentioned, I think we went into more detail in our previous talks. I don't want to wax lyrical about it all over again.
Snyder’s Return:Well, to save us retreading old ground in that respect. And as you mentioned, we spoke about it in in more detail previously. But moving from where you have been to where we are and where we're going next. One of the exciting things that you're a part of at the moment is a ongoing Kickstarter for cubicle seven with respect to the broken weave. Would you like to tell us a bit more about that, please?
Elaine Lithgow:Absolutely. It's where my head is fully submerged at the moment. So broken weave, it is our new post apocalyptic tragic fantasy role playing game. And that is compatible with Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition, but also forward compatible with our own new D 20. system, which is it's currently codenamed C7 D20. So which is going to use like the foundational rules of d&d fivey but then build upon it with our own sort of various mechanics systems, streamlines in some places, so yeah, broken weave is our our big Kickstarter at the moment we launched. Actually, you've caught us now. Not too long after we've hit the 24 hour mark. And response has been overwhelming. And I think we funded in less than an hour, which was amazing. And we were already, I think over four or 500% funded at this point. And we're knocking stretch goals down a lot faster than I anticipated. So there's been some degree of panic, like, oh, gosh, we need more stretch goals, like now. And we've been scrambling away and getting them all ready. And I've been doing nothing but writing updates and answering questions and comments for the last 24 hours. So it's been quite a wild ride that you've caught me at the very beginning of
Snyder’s Return:Yeah, absolutely. And a time of recording you are fractions of pounds or dollars, depending on currency of use under the the 40,000 pounds per funded mark, pushing on and sort of, as you say, releasing updates. So if someone was to go on back this post, post apocalyptic, fivey based broken weave game and setting this broken world setting, what would they get for backing, sort of each of the tiers?
Elaine Lithgow:Oh, my gosh, well, we do have quite a few tiers. And our most basic entry level is obviously you can back and to get like the PDF of the book itself, you can get a hardback version of the book. And then we also have a collector's edition, which is lovely, full leather heat treated embossed with like our big broken moon and everything on there. It's very beautiful Collector's Edition, anyone who has seen the soul band collector's editions is going to be quite similar in that regard, really beautiful feeling things. So we've got those. And then after that, there's just we've got a lot of really fun add ons to go on to it. So there's a beautiful GM screen, which is going to be getting all that's going to be all done with observe like information and cheat sheets, and everything on the back. We've got our deck of broken things, which is my personal favourite. And so one of the big concepts with broken weave is this idea that magic is broken, and the gods are dead. And that kind of caused an apocalyptic event where time and space no longer makes sense, because it's kind of like magic is like a fundamental pillar of reality akin to physics. So everything goes a bit weird and wonky. And you can encounter landscapes that are twisted and non Euclidean or don't adhere to the natural flow of time and space. And you encounter creatures that have been affected by decay that have been twisted and changed and corrupted in Uncanny and tragic ways. So the deck of broken things is this little 20 Euro deck of 52 plink card sized cards, and as a GM at the table, you can essentially take any FFIV compatible creature or monster or whatever, and take a snap block and then very quickly draw 123 however many you like modifiers to it to make it like a broken weave monster. So a basic deer might you know have a like mournful cry, that it's in whatnot or you could take some great dragon or women and its skin will be iridescent gemstones and you know, it might, you know, weep just constantly or whatever, trying to get those sort of in really dark fantasy tragic vibes for everything which if you've played any of like the sort of Dark Souls Elden ring and sort of games it's that fight that we go for with all the monsters and the decay and everything. And then the same goes for environments as well the the cards can be used to twist and change environments to make them into surreal landscapes where you know, you might see glimpses of future selves, our gravity might no longer be 100% all there and changes up the battlefield and whatnot. So I do I do love the tech of broken things. It's a good little add on. What other add ons have we got? We've got custom dice, which are like nice metal dice, dice trees, and we've got working with all rolled up again, which we did on our previous Kickstarter, Uncharted journeys, and that's a sort of, it's like a it's like a dice bag, taken to the extremes where it rolls up into sort of like bed roll type thing and there's space for dice, pens, tokens, markers, everything you can imagine. And, and gosh, I think that's everything. I think that's all off the top of my head. But definitely check out the Kickstarter, we have a bunch of different tiers. And you know, if you really want to, if you feel like you want to drop$1,000, you can get a custom character or monster in there. We've, you know, we've had we've had one person take that so far, there's always at least a couple.
Snyder’s Return:Yeah. Now that's amazing. There definitely be a link to the Kickstarter, in the description below this podcast. So please scroll down. We'll put a few more links in there in a moment. But you mentioned, you mentioned a few things I really want to touch on the Kickstarter. The introduction video, is very thematic, it's beautifully made and narrated. And it has this nightmare. Is that the correct description of the the decayed owl owl bear type? Creature? Yes. So what is it been like sort of fleshing out this world that sort of seeping into this decay? You mentioned Dark Souls and Elden ring and sort of touchstones for this this sort of environment. And placed are, what has it been, like sort of fleshing out that world, and sort of trying to balance that with the hope and the decay?
Elaine Lithgow:Yeah, so we took a really different approach to developing broken weave than we would normally. And normally with most sort of TTRPG projects, you tend to find that it's the writers and the designers that sit down, and they conceptualise ideas, they write ideas down, and then they bring on artists to depict, you know, their visuals. So they'll say, Okay, this idea for this monster, this character or this environment, and then they'll describe to the artists with broken we, we wanted to try and really have an art led project. So we set out we had this original concept, and Emmett burn or creative director had this concept of what if you took a high fantasy world so it could be any of these kind of fancy worlds you're used to it could be Pharaoh on it could be a Middle Earth, it could be any of these sort of, you know, there's elves, dwarves, humans and whatnot. There's magic spells, and sorcerers and Dark Lords and everything. But what happens to that world if all the gods die and magic breaks, and the world goes very strange. And that was just what we handed to all our artists are in house artists, and we said, Go have fun. And they entered a very intense, like few weeks of concepting. And if you you can see, on our website, we have a, we've been putting up developer diaries, blogs, where we've been sharing a lot of the images from this concept stage. And even then that's a fracture of what they created, they went wild with their creativity, reimagining creatures and monsters and environments and, and all these sorts of things. Like, I believe even the concept, you know, we came up with the original idea of the gods are dead. But it took one of the artists drawing a giant, dead corpse of a god on the horizon for us to go. That's, that's great. So we went through this intense period of visual creativity, and letting the artists sort of explore aesthetics and fives and whatnot. And then we refine that down. It was only then that we started bringing in, like, sort of the writing team. So the artists would have this really tragic, wonderful looking creature. And then it was the writers who are like, Okay, time to make a story for this character, what is this character and working with the artists in that way? So it's led to a really visually distinctive, I feel setting. And that set sort of really just just run through with all the artists creativities and interpretations. And yeah, so you make good fun.
Snyder’s Return:And you mentioned the characters, and the book provides a five classes for survivors. I don't know if Ventures is the right word, but survivors in this world to sort of embody, ranging from the sage, the warden, the maker, the seeker and the speaker, seeker speaker. Yes. So how did they sort of fit in with the the narrative of the game and where, where can our player characters go to sort of have a home base within this world somewhere of sanctuary? Yeah, so
Elaine Lithgow:And at the heart of every broken weave game, and you have a haven, essentially, this is a post apocalyptic world where there's this arcane entropy called the K that eats away everything. It's weird time. It's weird space. It's where your memories eat sweat, your literal body cursing you and twisting you into strange and monstrous forms. And the only way that people have discovered to fend this off is to build hope. Capital H hope is a physical, an arcane force that can be generated when people come together and build community and memories and everything. So people have been together and build havens, which are small settlements, they rarely get above more than like a couple of 100 to 1000 people even at their largest, this is still very post apocalyptic. But they come together into these havens. And one of the big selling points of the game is that the Haven is a character unto itself. We recommend normally that you all sit down and generate your haven before you even make your characters. Because the Haven is like the legacy. It's the it's the main character of the game, almost. It's as involved as making a character you begin by rolling Okay, well, why was the settlement founded? What was our founders ideas? What were the legacies they left behind? And, you know, what sort of biome? Are we in what scarcities and abundances do we have? What strange and unusual features of the landscape? Can we see as our settlement built near the corpse of a dead guard or a top ancient tomb or these sorts of things? And you go all the way through to Okay, well, what's, what kind of notable fashion? Do the people in our Haven have? Do we have distinctive food? What kind of things do we eat and harvest? And then you also create a number of like, initial threats that the settlements facing it might be monsters or a famine or whatnot. And and then from there, once you have this really grounded place in the world, do you build your characters, and it's this really great collaborative engagement process where everybody at the table sits down and gets involved in it. And so it gives everyone this really hefty anchor in the world. And everything about broken weave is all about protecting that haven. As your haven like grows, and you develop over time at January's hope, which is this resource, so when your survivors go out into the world to like, deal with a crisis, like well, there's a monster approaching, we'd find a way to divert it or there's a famine and we hear rumours, there's an artefact that could cure or whatever. The gather up people from the havens, so they're not strictly you know, they're not career adventurers. They are your average Haven, sort of people, they get together and they carry the hope of the settlement with them. And And in a world where there's no magic around magic is a corrupting horrible influence. And the gods aren't coming to save you because they're all dead. Hope is about the only thing you can rely on. It's a resource that you can burn when times are dire to overcome, like insane odds or cheat death or stand back up when you should file and all that sort of stuff. So it's it's really thematically powerful to use. And it means that even when you're out in the middle of crazy, prog rock album covered twisted landscapes facing a deer with 10 eyes that screams the cries of 1000 Dead worlds, you're still thinking of your little home, that you're doing all to protect you stuff. It is yeah, it's great. It's everything about us got this air of tragedy about and even like when you generate your characters, we've got this new system called The Life Path systems, you generate your haven. And then you go and you generate your characters. And it says, you run through essentially the key experiences of your characters. So maybe you recovered from like a plague or an illness when you were young. So you get plus one Constitution are you managed to broker a peace deal between two like rival families plus one charisma or like, like proficiency and persuasion and things like that, and your character sort of organically is below this and then you pick your class to go with that. And, and, you know, you can randomly generate all this stuff, or you can pick it you know, it's all it's all in there. And yeah, with each of these key experiences, you also generate a memoria which is a small trinket, it's something because decay eats and memories people know they have to protect them. And the best way to protect a memory from decay is to remember it and have something physical, like so people, you know, if you if you look at the art for our characters, they're all covered and trinkets medallions, and like ribbons and all this sort of stuff. And these are all memoria. So you have all your key experiences, and you collect this little, like handful of memoria. And then whenever you go into the big scary world, if decay starts to eat away at you, the GM can point to one of your memorial and say you no longer remember what that represents. And your your characters memories erode, and you still have the bonuses from it. So for example, if you had a mentor back home, who taught you how to whittle, wood, so you have like, you know, wood makers, tool proficiency, it's like, you can still use the tools, but you no longer remember who taught you that you no longer remember your mentors face. And it's this great sort of Hope versus decay narrative that's happening with everyone at the table all the time. As you go, and you're, you know, anytime you leave the Haven, you're doing it in this almost self sacrificial way where you might never return or you might you probably definitely not return the same. And what does that do to characters over the long run is just such incredible roleplay fodder? Yeah. Yeah.
Snyder’s Return:Yeah. And you mentioned sort of going out into this post apocalyptic world leaving hope leaving the Haven. And you've, within the book have brought across the travel mechanics from Uncharted journeys. So how does how is that sort of amplified and I wouldn't say improve the experience, but I'm going to use it now. I've said improve the experience of travel from Uncharted journeys into broken weave.
Elaine Lithgow:Well, Uncharted journeys, and by extension, broken, we've, they are starting to build up this language that we are going to be cementing with SC seven, D 20. When it comes out later on the year, these are the branches that we're starting to build upon the pillars of our traditional sort of d&d FFIV adventures that have been previously neglected or do with like streamlining and just modernising. So the travel rules as they are in broken weave are very, very similar to those found in uncharted journeys. And the whole goal with those people who weren't, you know, tapped into that particular Kickstarter book was to make the journey just as important as the destination it was, you know, it was originally made in adventures in Middle Earth, which obviously, anyone who knows all the Tolkien Lord of the Rings, the journey is the adventure there. That's. So these journey rules are all about creating these really exciting adventures, where travel is like such an important aspect and the encounters along the way and everything. So we refine them in uncharted journeys. And then they're modified slightly for broken, we've just because time and space are strange and surreal. So an uncharted journey is normally one of the key aspects is you would dictate the time it would take you to get to your destination, and then you to set out on your adventure. And that dictates how many encounters you have and all these sorts of things and how tiring the journey is. But with decay, messing with that, then time can stretch or shortened depending on how bad decay is. So if anyone has picked up the friendships in Middle Earth or in charge journeys, you kind of know what you're getting in for. It's just more of that and then again, once we get into like the core 7020 rules, that's one of those areas that will be like a big selling point for as it's looking at these other things. So we've got like the in the travel rules for Uncharted journeys, we have life path and everything from broken we've it's like a really big thing, which we're looking to build up again, this language. And we're also looking at like, Victoria. Fifth Edition is another it's like our next big sci fi setting. And that's very investigation heavy that steampunk Victorian era stuff and that's very, almost Sherlock Holmes style. So you can expect similar we're going to be really looking at this investigation pillar of fifth edition, which is normally resolved with like role perception. You know, things like that and really like fleshing out how that works. And we did a similar thing with doctors and Daleks, which was our doctor who fifth edition version, and everyone said it couldn't be done. We said you can't make a game about non violence in a game that's primarily about about hitting things with swords, but we did it like nonviolent and conflict resolution in Dr Who was like a huge thing that we built up and it works really well. So that's another thing that we'll be looking to refine and integrate into C seven D 20. So it's you know, it's just like I say it's just all building up this language, this tool set of enhancements and advancements and everything so that your d&d games are no longer just about going into dungeons and hitting goblins until they spit up XP and gold
Snyder’s Return:which is fair and certainly something that I myself have been looking to sort of shift away from the sort of the, the XP bags of nondescript enemies and things like that and try and bring a true experience to players and groups that I run for which is fantastic, and I'm really looking forward to it. Before we step into other forthcoming releases and current lines that that you yourself have worked on for cubicle seven, where can we find yourself and cubicle seven online and other social media sites?
Elaine Lithgow:Yeah, so cubicle seven is fairly easy to find you look for cubicle seven, you will find us on Instagram. You'll find us on Twitter, you'll find this we've got our website obviously cubicle seven games.com And obviously we have the big broken weed Kickstarter right now. Search for Brooklyn we've Kickstarter you know on Kickstarter on Google or wherever you will find us on only day one of 22 as of recordings so hopefully by the time this goes out and everything you will still be able to hop on check out the Kickstarter if you're interested or want to see more check out the behind the scenes blogs if you're really wanting to deep dive in and see all these extra bits and pieces we could sit and talk about rockin we even have it's wonderful tragic dark fantasy goodness for hours on end I'll save you that and so yeah if you're looking for myself specifically you can just find me I'm very imaginatively just add Li and lift go on Twitter is probably the best place to locate me as much as that site continues to slowly but surely crumble apart and I'll be I'll still be hanging on to the railings as the Titanic slowly goes sinks under so we'll we'll see what happens so that's a good place to find me for now.
Snyder’s Return:I will make sure there are links to yourself cubicle seven digit sprite which we'll touch back on a little bit. The Kickstarter and all the sort of the good things that yourself and cubicle seven and Digi byte working on down the description below. Anything else we mentioned during the course of this interview that sort of flags up is some really nice link. But cubicle seven seem to have so many things running through the middle. It's it's an impressive production setup. Broken we've the Kickstarter, we've spoken so much about you mentioned wrath and glory and soulbound both with forthcoming releases. So what's it been like to work within the Warhammer umbrella before we sort of zero down on on the respective IPs?
Elaine Lithgow:Yeah, it's been great. Like I was always a huge fan of Warhammer and everything actually, my first role playing game was like the old Inquisitor skirmish game I technically still count as a role playing game and then going into dark heresy and at least sort of things. So when that was when I was young. Which is funny because we do have some writers in our in house team who worked on the original Dark heresy and I you know, I every now and then I'll be like, Oh man, I remember playing these when I was young and they're just like all make me feel old. Why don't you? I'm sorry. So yeah, it was always one of these things where it was always like big into Warhammer and all of those role playing games and the big one for the skirmish games. I love me a good Warhammer as he used to be called specialist games. Well, your Necromunda has more time will forever live in my heart for the number of great memories I have in that curtsy. And all these other wonderful games over the years. Athlete Gothic. Oh my gosh, I'm waxing lyrical and fading off into those nearest stairs. This game is long, fast. And so finally, like you know, eventually, just finding myself working with Kubrick's seven working on those licences was very surreal for a time. I remember I think the one that hit me the most was when I was writing champions of ardour, which was a character options expansion for age of Sigmar soul band. And I found myself I I was writing one of these chapters, and it was a chapter about the origins of the soul bound order and how they came to be. And they're intrinsically tied to the gods of that system, which is a very for those who aren't aware Greek pantheon type scenario where you have named character for gods who have machinations and relationships and interactions, all sort of stuff. And I found myself sitting down and writing how these characters were interacting in the context of the soul band. And where you know, Sigmar said this and went to this God, and then this, God rebuked them, and they did this. And then this one agreed, but then did a sneaky thing over here and everything. And it was probably the most scary thing I've written to date, because it's the equivalent of playing with, like, Superman, or whatever it is these multimillion dollar IP characters, and you're, you're writing about them, you're writing canonical things that they did. And events that transpired and everything and it's very scary, and a big a big sort of wake up call of oh, oh, this is actually a thing that's happening. And oh my gosh, if I was to go back in time, and tell my younger self, okay, you're gonna get to write, like, lower, and all that sort of stuff for the settings, I'd be like. So very humbling, I would say, and also just sort of being able to put things out in the world. For these, like beloved franchises, and have the community really support and love them. And everything is just like, it's great. You know, it's so humbling. Yeah, yeah. Just really, really good. Really great. I'm just gonna keep saying yeah,
Snyder’s Return:it is. I mean, with respect to will zero in on Warhammer age of Sigmar soulbound for a few minutes, there's so many each of the releases, which I have purchased. And I really should learn to sort of control myself. But from the start to set, the core rulebook, there is the order of the order of champions of order. There is the champions of death, champions of destruction, there's campaign books, I've got it open, just over my shoulder shadows in the midst of blackened Earth is the newest one. And lots of there's a couple of there's crash and burn, which is a free PDF available from the cubicle seven website, and there's a few others. So please go and check it out. It is. It's a fantastic system. That's what's part of what's drawn me across is the game mechanics behind the system. But the law, the love that is clearly pointing to each of these releases. Is is amazing. And for anyone that is not aware, it's a sort of de six dice pool system. I think there's the first way of describing both soulbound and wrath and glory, they have their own respective mechanics, but effectively, they are decent sized.
Elaine Lithgow:there with them, both soulbound and wrath and glory. There's that sort of idea solar, and especially, often this really high power, how do you do high power level play while keeping combat and everything really slick, and really, like fast and streamlined. Because it's something that myself and a bunch of other people on the dev team and everything we love, big dramatic tactical battles, but we don't want them to take five hours. So that was like one of the big design goals and everything going in with soulbound was, you know, you want to be able to have your storm cast eternal or whatever, charge into a swarm of Skaven and, you know, take care of like, you know, 567 of them paratek Because that's the heavy metal sort of high power, levelled fantasy of Age of Sigmar soulbound. And the same goes for wrath and glory where you know, you're you're playing this like Space Marines in action movie type scenarios and everything. It's trying to give these like really nice, like streamlined experiences. And I think that's always it definitely one of the things I think that's resonated a lot with the players of soulbound especially, and we always hear people saying that they pick up and they're like, the system is so good the combat system and the resolution it's you make, you know, one one dice pool roll. And that takes care of of most of everything. And, and we use zones to simplify distance and movement and everything. And swarms are great. I love swarms. I love it. I love a good Skaven swarm and rolling in and rolling your dice and just like ideal 10 damage okay, you take you killed 10 Skaven Okay, great and then use GET TO narratively describe land and a big superhero pose lightning fires out there then you're like swinging You're sorry. And I always go back to like the like your Marvel Superheroes style power level of these are your your big your big damn heroes doing big damn or heroic things. So I saw that and then that wrath and glory are great fun to write for because you get to really embody that power of fantasy and just give people these great big set pieces and great encounters and you see the games being played. And I've run a huge amount at this point for conventions and play testers and everything and everyone's always like just leaving with giant grins on their faces just because of how liberating and kind of like fun it is to be able to just swing and be big and powerful and then you know your MO through like 2030 Boys and then oh, here comes the boss, your comes the mini boss and then that gives you some trouble and then you overcome that and it's so much fun. Honestly,
Snyder’s Return:it's yeah, I'm smiling and I know people can't see me smiling but I'm smiling because I've really fallen for it and everything you've described there just nails the experience perfectly. And you know, it's available in hard copy in PDF, it's certain books are available for both franchises are both IPS on foundry. So you can play it online, you can share that with your gaming group and really get into that experience. It is phenomenal and a soulbound stay on that line has a coincidental almost sort of product in the works with respect to often can make sure I've said that yet often can wear it is the city on the edge of death so very post apocalyptic which mirrors but it's not the same as broken. We've just saw a touchdown back to that. So what's it been like bringing such a desolate place within the world of soul bound to the players and the GM is out there.
Elaine Lithgow:Often crane has been great fun. For those who are in tune with the like the Warhammer age of Sigmar the Warhammer games in general. There was the board game the the Warhammer quest cursed city, which was the sort of narrative board game set in this city in the realm of death called often carne and it's been ruled by a vampire lord called Ratnakar. The Beast Ratnakar the wolf depending on your particular time period, and it's the city that has essentially been locked down and its inhabitants are just used to feed the vampiric overlords. It's policed by skeletal minions and zombies and giant werewolf bats and all this sort of good stuff. And it's it's deliciously Gothic and good fun. And if you're a big fan of oh my gosh, Bloodborne Castlevania, these sorts of like surf thematic touchstones are all there. And and so it's with OpenCart we're still using the soulbound engines so the combat is still really fast and immediate. But the character power level is just lower. So normally with a soulbound character you build them with say 35 XP, maybe 40 If you're a storm cast eternal and, but with are often carne as we call them grim and perilous characters, you build them with 2025 XP, they are much sort of weaker, they have to think and play a lot more tactical because suddenly you cannot run into the swarm of 20 skeleton warriors are charging towards you one off them is actually dangerous. Because you're no longer God's chosen like divine magic confused demigod heroes, you are a guy with a gun who has a beef with practicar and you're trying to save the day or save some people or even just escape the city and, you know, so that has been so much fun. It's one of maybe my favourite ways now of paying playing like low powered heroes because again, combat is just so immediate. It's almost even more immediate than core soulbound just because the numbers are all lower. It's a lot of the time I feel like it really encourages people to play with like stealth, because it's like whoever it gets hit versus going down in the hallway sometimes. Like if you sneak up on like an orphan watch like a guard or whatever if you don't get the drop on them they can turn around and stab you and that's half your health gone. And you're like oh do and and you don't have Soulfire No cheating and calling on the power within to get back up. It's It's great fun how I think we did one play test where it was a the group, we're trying to essentially Kindle an uprising to gather people to rise up against Ratnakar. And then I had a couple of orphaned watch and the single low ranking vampire walk into the scene. And only one person one player five left that scene alive. And it was it was all took place in the big opera house. It was very dramatic. It was great fun. And yeah, so it can be very, very, very deadly, but still very, very quick. Fast paced. So yeah, it's really, really good fun to play around with.
Snyder’s Return:What if those listening wants to get a basically an early trial of this sort of grim, grim and dark grim dark approach? You can go on to connect plug it because I've downloaded it and I think it's a great one. I'm looking forward to run it probably for Halloween. You can download Voss, Himes holdouts, which is the precursor to the events in orphan con. It reads beautifully, I can't wait to run it for a group for probably Halloween or something around that sort of spooky season. And sort of really dive into that, because that sets up, the one immediately follows the other effectively, if not,
Elaine Lithgow:boss names holdouts was so much fun to write it was myself and Sam Taylor, we just got let loose on that it was our Halloween adventure for last year. And, yeah, it's set during the period, the the night where Ratnakar rises up and takes over the city, during an event known as the neck real quick, which was this massive big necromantic ritual that caused all the dead to rise up and attack the living and whatnot. And obviously, in a city in the land of the dead, that's very bad. So you play a handful of town guard, who are caught in the middle of all this and you have the promise that if you can just hold out until morning, there's a boat coming to save you. And it's you're holed out, essentially your boss seems hauled out and you have to try and survive the night during mourn holds as it was originally known as Morin hold before it became often carne their worst night. And it's a wonderful in a lot of ways. Oh my gosh, to John Romero at Night of the Living Dead. And all those sorts of great like zombie horror movies, where people have to like barricade themselves up and just try and survive the night. And yes, it has an almost complete example of the grim and perilous rules that you can expect for the fool from current release. And obviously often carne has a lot more advanced character creation options to let you create all these different classes and everything. But yeah, if you want a good sneak peek and a self contained, little adventure, which can lead on, you know, if your characters survive for sames holdouts, maybe they can go on to play in a full, often current campaign. Or maybe if you're playing an open current campaign, you can just come up on the undead corpses of those characters you played in that one shot that time.
Snyder’s Return:I mean, if if you want to play the flip side of that, and I've grabbed it off the stack, because the soulbound hardcopy books with the detailing on from the artwork, and the reliefs are so beautiful. I'm so glad I picked these up. If you want to play the flip side of this, then pick up champions of death. And you could potentially play this from the opposite side. But that's not an option for you in your GM to discuss.
Elaine Lithgow:Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely something we have thought about a lot, because champions of death is already out in hardback and everything. And that gives you options for playing as vampires or whites, which are like sentient skeletons or even ghosts and whatnot. And yeah, the idea of letting people take because often current is largely a city guide. It's really, really in depth if people know any of our books from wolf rope, Warhammer Fantasy, role playing game, like mitten, Haim and whatnot. And it's a really, really in depth city guide, with lots of locations. And we also have a bunch of big dungeon locations in there. So like the app and Citadel, which is Ratnakar sea of power, which is this big mega dungeon, and all these other places, so there's lots of character options in there and talents and everything. But if you want you could still turn around and say, Well, we have champions of death. Let's play as the vampires are, you know, you know, everyone knows that vampires love to backstab maybe you could be some vampires who want to Oh, worth Ratnakar or maybe your characters in the course of playing an orphan card make it turned into vampires or die in turn into skeletons, you know, who knows the the options are near endless. And we think about that a lot when when we're writing it. And so it's really great fun. I'm honestly looking forward to ocean currents so much.
Snyder’s Return:Right now I was before but even more so now. And just to sort of pay the balance across to the 40k Your wrath and glory side, there's a new release coming out for that, which is threat assessment, Xena Xenos Xenos. Xena c&c loss. Which are you able to give us a quick precis of what we can expect from from that particular book?
Elaine Lithgow:Yeah, I haven't honestly had a huge, like involvement in threat assessment. Xenos. Actually, there's a there's a great team working on that one. So I'm going to have to refer to you refer you to the blog and whatnot, the website to have a look at that, because I wouldn't want to see anything that hasn't already been announced. And put my foot in my mouth. I can I can see them now glaring at me across the screen mentally, just like Don't you dare say anything. So I'll refer you to that one. But that one's on the way very shortly. I know people have been looking forward to it because more everyone loves the Xenos and part k there are great. So lots of lots more options, anything for that be fantastic.
Snyder’s Return:Again, I'll put a link to the a specific blog post for that so people can then follow it on or backtrack and follow us development from earliest stages. One thing you you are and have been involved with is the new correct me if I'm wrong, do you 100 system Imperium Mueller dictum, which is also blog updates released. So how does that shift the focus within the Warhammer 40k setting that wrath and glory maybe does not cover in that respect.
Elaine Lithgow:So if you think of wrath and glory as a high octane action movie directed by Michael Bay, then Imperial malah dictum is a routine or thriller down in the gutter. In the same way that Warhammer Fantasy role playing game, as people know, is quite popular when we do the fourth edition of it, where you play pig farmers. And you know rat catchers and these sorts of things really grim and perilous, low powered characters. And is it the 100 system that we have? And then soulbound is this high powered demigod type characters kicking ass and taking names. It's the same parallel between wrath and glory and a pure mallet dictum wrath and glory. You're playing a Space Marines you're kicking in doors and being heroes and whatnot. In pure Ramallah dictum is, you are a low ranking member of the Adeptus Minister atom or something who has been roped in by a patron to go investigate some stuff, or cover something up or whatever. And if someone pulls a stub gun on you, you die for cover because you're one you're one bullet away from losing an eye or an arm or whatever. And if someone pulls a bolt kind of on you, then you scream and die for cover really loud because everything's about to get really messy really fast. So it's, yeah, it's definitely it's more investigative, it's more noir and gritty and it really dives deep into the, the machinations of the Imperium, you're less dealing with like, you know, oh, we're gonna go out and fight Terran it's, it's more Oh, well, the, you know, Adeptus Mechanicus and the Adeptus like RBTs or whatever, are are like having some friction intention. And you're trying to navigate these systems without an investigate without getting yourself killed. Because one of the when we were first concepting it one of the big touchstones for myself was I want operating within the Imperium to feel like saying the wrong thing to the wrong person is just as deadly as a bolt pistol to the head. It's very factional, it's very influenced based, you know, you are an agent for a patron and your patron could be a member of the ecclesiarchy. They could be potentially an Inquisitor, they could be even a gang boss, you can play criminals and whatnot where you have like criminal patrons. And it's all about if I say the wrong thing to the wrong person, I'm going to get destroyed. operating within the archaic machinery of the Imperium is a deadly thing. So you're trying to forward the machinations and the plots of your patron without getting yourself killed in the process. So, yeah, it's, it's a very different very dark, very gritty experience. And it's also one I'm incredibly excited to go on obviously as it as I mentioned, my first games were the Inquisitor skirmish game and then going into the Fantasy Flight, dark heresy, and only war and all these sorts of games. And impure malediction is very much a spiritual successor to those the 100 systems. With this sort of taking the offer up for free the 100 system, and then building on that to make it work for the 41st millennium and all its skulls and grim darkness.
Snyder’s Return:Sounds amazing. I'm very intrigued by it. And I was intrigued again, I'm excited for often calm because I love soulbound and I love where where you've taken that setting with that style of characters and all the releases with the big bombastic storm cast eternals. But this deeper, darker noir, the end of my The enemy of my enemy is probably still my enemy. But we might be sort of friendly relations before you shoot me in the back or something I'm not really sure. Within the 40k setting sounds so exciting and so gritty and and I just love it. So I'm really looking forward for that to come out. Do we have a vague release schedule for that particular going to come up?
Elaine Lithgow:I am going to hedge my bets and see soon,
Snyder’s Return:soon. Soon. It's
Elaine Lithgow:expected. Obviously, as with all our cubicle seven games, we release the PDF when the game goes up for preorder. So you can preorder physical copy, and you get the PDF right away and you can start playing and then the books go to print and all that sort of stuff. So PDF should be soon. So keep an eye out on the blog and everything.
Snyder’s Return:Not perfect. We mentioned right at the start. And so we come back to it. Are we expecting anything new from Digi sprite moving forward? You mentioned the three games before we started recording you mentioned going to cons before we expect to see more Did you spray coming up in the future?
Elaine Lithgow:Yeah, did you spray again for those who haven't seen the first episode or whatever, and was our our little three person team. We make our our the old board games we put them up on Kickstarter. And they're they're wonderful little little passion projects. And with their three games so far, we went into a little bit of a hibernation during the lockdown since we primarily made board games. And I think like our biggest thing was we had adventure more on Tabletop Simulator. And that actually did incredibly well far as over the pandemic because the full COVID Tabletop Simulator, like put together a really nice adventure Mart environment you can go into and, and whatnot. So that was really good for us. We went back to our first con which was tabletop, Scotland last year. And that was incredible. It was the first time we had been in front of people again. And we had all our three games because we hit kickstarted familiar alchemy or most recent game during the pandemic. And again, it was the first time we had physical copies to sell to people. And yeah, we did incredibly well during tabletop, Scotland. So that was really encouraging because I think like a lot of really small companies during the pandemic, you know, we kind of, we just we had to go into hibernation for a while we couldn't necessarily keep, like trucking away when when conventions and people weren't buying board games, because obviously people can share like a room with with each other. So that's been really good. We've definitely got other plans. We announced quite a while back now that we were looking at doing the tabletop role playing game version of adventurer mark. Where for those who don't know, adventure more, it's a sort of fun fantasy game where you play as sort of anthropomorphic animals think Animal Crossing, sort of characters running a 711 designed for adventures. So you're selling people magic potions and swords. And it's always said high jinks ensue. So it's sort of a, a sort of almost the TTRPG plays a lot like one of these like animated and like sitcoms and sort of your, your kind of wacky weekend worried sort of stuff where you know, a portal opens up in aisle three and it spits out a bunch of adventurers that are that are fighting a dragon, and they're messing up your display. shelfs in everything and it's really great fun. We're continuing to develop that away to ourselves and will that we'll definitely be looking at trying to get that out at some point in the future. Yeah, so did you sprite content? There's still some life and did you sprint she's still kicking away.
Snyder’s Return:Great to hear. Great to hear. Ellen, we've covered so many fantastic things. And I'm so glad we've been able to sort of get across pretty much all the ones I was hoping to get to. Is there anything that we haven't spoken about in the interview that you want to bring up just here at the end?
Elaine Lithgow:Oh, my gosh, we do sometimes I forget just how much we're working on until we sit down and do like a rundown of everything and I'm like, gosh, we did make a lot of bucks, don't me.
Snyder’s Return:They're all really good.
Elaine Lithgow:Oh, thank you. We put a lot of passion and love into them. Gosh, I can't I can't think of anything off the top of my head honestly, like, you know, I'm sure there's definitely things we're forgetting. We haven't touched on a Warhammer Fantasy role playing game too much. And I'm not I'm not hyper invest. I'm not like hyper involved in those books. And I get a little bit for for one of the books and everything. But I know they've got some big books on the horizon. And people are really excited for those and yeah, we're continuing to support wrath and glory as Imperial malediction comes out and obviously now continuing to ramp up the 7020 side of things. Oh my gosh, there's so much going on. But I do think we've we've covered the lion's share of everything.
Snyder’s Return:What I'd love to get your back when codename C seven D 20. If it remains that as its as its final name or or whatever it develops into I'd love to get your backwards there are there's that core system in place and it's released and we can yourself or me or any of the cubicle 17 Come on and discuss it with me I'd be honoured to
Elaine Lithgow:be fantastic. Sure we'll be singing from the rooftops when it says once that core book is hitting the Kickstarter and everything.
Snyder’s Return:Yeah, absolutely. And again, that'll be something I'll look to back and support and shout out where I can 100% It's been such a pleasure Lane and I'm so glad that you've been able to come back and join me and take me through these amazing releases. Would you like to remind everybody where they can find yourself and cubicle seven and Digi spray on the internet please? Yeah for
Elaine Lithgow:myself you can find me it's mentioned most likely at at Elaine Lithgow on Twitter. The best place to find me cubicle seven you can find them on all the good socials and cubicle seven games on Twitter Instagram. Check out the blog check out the Kickstarter for broken we've as for digital right we are at team did you spray on Twitter and our website and everything is there as well you can go in and and have a look and see what we're up to.
Snyder’s Return:Amazing. I will put links down in the description below. Please scroll down, support them and support the Kickstarter support future projects from cube Lane digital. Thank you because seven. Thank you so much for joining me, I look forward to speaking to you again.
Elaine Lithgow:Always a pleasure.
Snyder’s Return: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. We have a link tree link in the description of this episode. And if you want to support us, come and join us over on Patreon and we also have a Discord server. Please leave us a review because we'd love to learn how to improve the channel and provide better content out for for those who are listening until we until we speak again. Thank you