Interview - Theo Thourson - Gallant Goblin - TTRPG Minis

Join me to "Order some drinks, Take a seat by the fire and join us to make New Friends" as I discuss Miniatures, Dungeon Tiles and T-Shirts with half of the Gallant Goblin team, Mr Theo Thourson.

*The Wizkids set of D&D minis Fangs and Claws was misnamed in the interview and is actually Fangs and Talons.

Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) 5e rules, including the Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden Module referenced are properties of Wizards of the Coast (WotC)

Pathfinder and Starfinder are properties of Paizo

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Host: Adam Powell

Guest: Theo Thourson

Sound Design: Adam Powell

Music: Epidemic Sound

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Transcript

Snyder’s Return : 0:29

Hello, and welcome to Snyder's return a tabletop role playing podcast or some drinks, take a seat by the fire and join us to make new friends as I interview one part of the Golden golden team, Mr. Theo's Awesome. Thank you for joining me here.

Theo Thourson : 0:44

Hey Adam, how are you doing? I'm doing well. The music that you play to introduce the show just makes me feel so relaxed and have like a cognac in my hand and just sit by the fire here. It's just very relaxing.

Snyder’s Return : 0:59

scraping Praise thank you very much for Would you like to tell us a bit more about yourself and the golden Goblin how it all got started, please.

Theo Thourson : 1:09

Wow. Yeah, that's a bit of a long story. But yeah, I'm Theo Thorson. I live out in Bakersfield California and work my day job as a school psychologist, public schools hoping to help telling you kiddos have a need for special education that had disabilities. But in my spare time, we kind of took our two hobbies of dungeons and dragons and kind of video making and put them together to form a little YouTube channel about things like 2017. When we got started, it's been a bit more than two years now. And we just decided that we were into the hobby we're looking to find miniatures and terrain and things like that to make our game a little bit more fun and tact and tactile, you know, moving the pieces around on the table is kind of fun. And we're looking on YouTube to see if there were any good review sites out there. We could get a good look at these minis before we bought them because there are kind of expensive, and all the unboxings and reviews were just, I don't know, they weren't very informative. It was all like 20 minutes of somebody going through packaging and trying to pull some things out of hard plastic and then trying to get their webcam on their MacBook to focus on on the thing as they held up to the camera and it just wasn't very great. So we decided that maybe we just try to do something ourselves and we put together the Gallic Goblin, which is over on YouTube and has kind of grown gradually and since then, and now we it keeps us really busy as our second job and we've expanded out into making our own creative content of Run DMC guild with some adventures and metal website. We have a merch store now and we're just kind of trying to enjoy it and you know, hasn't fun still trying to get some sleep every now and again.

Snyder’s Return : 2:49

I'm sure you mentioned we who else makes up the Goblin Goblin team with yourself?

Theo Thourson : 2:53

Yes, me and my boyfriend Grady Grady Wong, and he's the one with all the technical expertise. He's an editor. Near all the video making brilliant so he can put together so he's why the channel actually looks as good as it does. I'm just the one who sits in front of the camera and just reads off the prompter and tries to look pretty. So he's the one who's really the magic behind the scenes.

Snyder’s Return : 3:17

You go to great set up and your presentation seems seems flawless to me every time. So what have you got going on at the moment? What, what minis and setups are you excited about and would like to maybe bring some focus to

Theo Thourson : 3:32

Wow. So right now we're hip deep in the whiz kids Warlock tiles for one. These are coming out in July from whiz kids and I'll say we do a lot of stuff for wiskus but we're not affiliated with whiz kids. We're not affiliated with Wizards of the Coast or pies or anybody we're our own little deal. But whisk is makes a lot of the products for d&d and Pathfinder star finder so we end up reviewing a lot of their stuff. And there are Warlock tiles are a more affordable dungeon terrain system for folks Compared to something like Dwarven Forge, which is amazing, but can be really expensive and kind of hard to get your hands on to the sword out all the time. And so whiz kids just send us all their little starting sets of the warlock tiles. And we're kind of going through them one by one and seeing how they are, see how they fit together, see what we can do with them and try to share that with you all. So you can see if this is something that works for your table. And so we're looking at those, we just also got the new premium figures and from whiz kids. And if you're not familiar with these, these are individually packed like hero miniatures that you can use, the players can use. And they're the top quality paint job, the whiz kids dots, and so they're beautiful. They're about eight bucks apiece unless you find them on sale for a little bit less. And we just got most of those end for their wave two of those. So we're looking through those as well too. And those things are keeping us busy right now.

Snyder’s Return : 4:51

All right, what you've reviewed many of the sets that have been released for the various adventures and sort of catch ups, the monster Menagerie and various things. What has been What's been your favourite so far?

Theo Thourson : 5:02

As far as minis go, I really love me a good paint job. That's the thing that because I've tried painting my own unpainted miniatures, and it's hard work, it's hard to get your little hand to stay still enough to get those little belt buckles and eyes and mouths. And so I appreciate when somebody does that for me. And so I really like these premium figures from whiz kids. I also like they have a line for Pathfinder, called their iconic heroes series. And they've had, I think, eight of those, and they're just gorgeous minis for their ikonics. And if you're not familiar with the kind of iconic system for every class in Pathfinder, they have one kind of stereotypical monastery archetypal character that represent that class. And they use it in their art and their stories and things like that. And so they released many sweets of those, you can download the character sheets, if you want to start a game of Pathfinder and be one of those characters. That's a great way to jump in without having to come up with a whole backstory. yourself. And those minis are gorgeous too. So I, I really love those. And to tell you the truth, though my two favourite minis in the world are minis of me and Grady a couple of years ago, if you've ever heard of a board game called tokaido if you're into board gaming out there, a

Snyder’s Return : 6:20

bits and pieces but that that title is not familiar to me. So please expand.

Theo Thourson : 6:24

Yeah, tokaido is a really beautiful. It's a game from a French company, that's whose name is eluding me at the moment. But it's based on the come to Cato trail in Japan. And just a very simple board game about walking on this trail and having a good time enjoying the hotsprings taking good pictures of this does. And they did a Kickstarter, where they were kind of giving up a collector's edition of the game. And one of the little stretch goals on the Kickstarter was to get your own character drawn in the style of the game and get a little mini made of you. And so we have two little minis of me and Grady and like a samurai style Japanese outfit and they're super pretty and they're sitting up on my bookcase. And those are my two favourite minis in the world.

Snyder’s Return : 7:09

Oh, that's that's a nice touch a nice story. So wonderful. You mentioned a couple of times the you Wizkid you're not affiliated How did your relationship was could start where they would be sending you these blister packs, the bricks and all the rest of it.

Theo Thourson : 7:25

Well, there's a wonderful website out there called minis gallery calm, which was really it predates us by a long time. And it was the best place to get information about minis and to have conversations and their discussion forums about upcoming sets and old sets and all the minutiae of minis. And once we start our channel, they were some of the first ones to really take notice of us, I think, and some of the nice folks there were in contact with his kids. And they said, Patrick O'Hagan is the person over there who's fairly new to the company. He's in charge there. RPG line. And they got in touch with him and other social whiz kids and said, hey, these gallant Goblin people are, they're kind of doing a service for us. They're, you know, making some good video quality, good quality video content. So we can really get a good look at these miniatures. Maybe you can send them some stuff, so they don't have to go and buy all of it themselves. And maybe they can do more for you, then you know what they're able to do just out of their own pockets, and they got in touch with us and start sending us a preview set of some of the upcoming releases. And we would get boxes just randomly they at the beginning, they weren't that great at communication, necessarily. So we wouldn't know what was coming in the box. We wouldn't know when boxes were coming. They would just be get a UPS notification a couple days ahead of time, and it would tell us how much the box weighed, and we would just do our best guess on what was on it and try to get scripts ready. And we decided that hey, well, let's just do some unboxing videos because we don't know what's in these boxes and maybe be fun for everybody to kind of see along with us what's inside. And that's kind of how we got started with them. And we just Just had a conversation with them yesterday, actually, we had a little zoom meeting with Patrick over there, and kind of expanded our relationship with them a little bit. Apparently, Patrick went to the head of whiz kids over there and kind of showed him some of our videos, and they've decided that they're just going to apparently descend us everything now. So all the DND Pathfinder and star finder stuff that they're coming out with, they're just gonna send our way. And we're gonna make videos of everything. So we're gonna keep us busy. And so that's really exciting for us. And hopefully, we'll be able to cover a lot of the content for you all because they have so many plans of upcoming materials for this year. Next, Patrick's really expanded what they're working on out there. So there's a lot of exciting things coming down the pike.

Snyder’s Return : 9:46

Is there anything you can give us a clue into Obviously, we've just had icewind Dale, venture announced from d&d and I'm sure Pathfinder and star finder have things sort of in the pipeline, is there anything you're able to give us a preview of.

Theo Thourson : 10:01

Yeah, absolutely. There's so much we've covered just been a lot of kind of conversations on the side. I don't know how much your listeners kind of dive into the deep web of the mini news out there. But there's a lot of exciting stuff coming down the line for Dungeons and Dragons. The next big set coming out as the mythic Odysseys of Pharaohs, which is a set that'll top out at the large size creatures, which is the ones on the three by three bases. But there's a lot of exciting stuff for the Magic the Gathering fans out there who love the pharaohs setting. After that is the icewind Dale rhyme of the frost maiden set, which will have huge creatures, and that one's looking really exciting. I mean, grab my notes here, I can tell you when that's coming out, because I think you do, where's my Yeah, icewind Dale should be coming out in September, I believe, while therosis aim for August, so they're really the end of the year is going to be full. And then after that there were rumours of another set coming that nobody really knew a lot about. And it looked like a set that maybe they had cobbled together a little bit because they weren't sure with COVID-19 if they would be able to get the icewind Dale so set out on time if they'd be able to get theros out on time. So they kind of put together something else is sort of on the back burner just in case they needed it. And it looks like they are decided to release it anyway. And that's going to be another huge set that hasn't been announced yet. We're going to talk about it. We're gonna have a little news video coming out, either tonight or tomorrow, depending on when you release this episode here. But as I can tell you it's gonna be called fangs and Claus. And it's going to be another set that really focuses on monster creatures and it's also going to have huge creatures inside of it. We got a peek at some of them there's a really cool frog. Sorry, fire giant skeleton in it. That looks super cool. You give us a peek at that one. There's an abolitionist and a couple of other really cool creatures and all Just some things that you might just use in your everyday games like a mule. And you're like, you know, maybe thinking it's not very exciting, but there's nothing that can build tension as much in a d&d game, as you know, letting your party buy themselves a cart and a couple of mules to pull it and then you get them to give the mule a name and give it a personality. And then you make sure that that little mule hasn't mini on the battlefield when they had that random encounter when they're out in the road. And if that large adult Black Dragon is coming down to attack, and your pet mule, Timmy is in the way, your party's going to be scared and they're going to want to protect their little mule. So that little mule can have a lot of emotional investment in it. So, you know, don't overlook the power of the little mule and your storytelling. So we've got all sorts of fun stuff like that coming out in this fangs and claws set which should be coming out I believe in November. And of course, all these dates are a little bit you know, they could waver from here to there because of COVID-19 And distribution and things like that. So don't hold with kids or us to these dates, but it's aiming for November.

Snyder’s Return : 13:07

All right, well, thank you for that. That's That's amazing. And definitely I'm encourage people to go and find the the golden Goblin on on YouTube to sort of check out. Theo and Grady's work, it's it's second to none, in my opinion. But that's not the only thing. You've got a you have. You've got your own t shirts and other merchandise if you'd like to mention that.

Theo Thourson : 13:34

Sure. So we've kind of gotten Grady is very creative. He loves to write. He's written short stories. He's submitted a lot of things online. And we've both kind of gotten into writing little adventures for d&d. I wrote a little one last year for the RPG writer workshop with Ashley Warren, which is a great thing that's just started. By the way, if your listeners want to try writing their own first adventures, I really recommend In looking at the RPG writer workshop, they over the course of a month they give you lessons on how to brainstorm craft, like technically write, proofread, play, test and publish your adventures. Everything from setting up your mood board to like which application you should use to write your adventure so that people who are using the the readers if they're visually impaired, so they'll be able to read it to there's all sorts of amazing information. And she really walks you through how to get your first adventure published. And that's what I did last year to write my first adventure which is called I am your world, which is a I think, a fun little adventure. That's a kind of plays with your memory a little bit. It's you find yourself waking up in a strange little village that's ruled by a mind flayer mayor who seems to have complete reverence from all the people in the town and you have to figure out what's the mystery of this little town and where are you really because every time you try to walk into the Forest you, you come across like an invisible force field you can't get out. So where are you? And it's fun little venture and I got that to the RPG read workshop and so we're kind of expanding into that we're getting into. We've gotten a lot of art recently for some cute little Cobalts. We quite like cool balls that come in a variety of colours and they're industrious. And I think they're overlooked a lot in d&d lore, and I think they're pretty awesome. Your playable characters you can make your own cobalt is a playable race if you want to and your adventures. And so we thought it was art for some really cool Cobalts and I'm writing a little adventure now about cobalt lore. That's going to be a lot of fun. It's gonna be a short little encounter, maybe at one session to at max. So I'm writing that and so we have on our little merch store over at gallon Goblin red bubble comm all our cute little cobalt art, and we got all the little colours of the rainbow for the cobalt and put them together as a pride celebration as a pride fundraiser. You can look for our pride adventurers. I think it's pride adventures or pride. cobalt adventures collection there and it's all the little Cobalts lined up and there's one for every class pretty much got a ranger and you got a warlock and you got a sorcerer doing their own little thing. And all the proceeds from our sell of that line is going to go to glisten, which is the gay lesbian straight Education Network. And they used to be the head of the Houston chapter actually. And they work with public schools in order to help LGBTQ plus kiddos K through 12 be safe in school, protect them from bullying, and it's a great little organisation. So we're doing a little pride fundraiser for the month of June to raise money for them through our little merch store with those little cobalt shirts and you get my sharps and bath mats and all sorts of really neat little things. We have a little coffee mug you'll see in our next video that I think is super cool. So yeah, that's our little merchant we're getting into and some of our little adventures that we're writing. Grady just came out with a magic item guide for the missed mythic Odysseys of theros adventure. Cuz he's really into the magic, the gathering lore, so he knows all about it. So he dug deep into the lore and all the old cards and all the old Magic the Gathering sets, and came up with all these amazing magical items that you can put in your adventures, whether you're in theros or not, but it really works in theros, because that's where he pulled all the lore from, and it's super cold. It's over on DNS guild calm to. So we have having a lot of fun with that too. I don't know when we sleep anymore. So

Snyder’s Return : 17:28

much. Absolutely. So you are my as you've mentioned, you are my world and the grey merchant of us Fidel and I double checked it before we before we started this are available on the DMS guild with the grey merchant of Astrodome currently at the electrum level and I'm sure it'll only continue on through their metallic rankings as we go. Taking aside what you do and looking at it from a different perspective with the transition to more So online gaming, due in part to sort of the pandemic and and things like that is, is miniatures becoming more of a collector's thing? Or do you think once we're able to get to the table, and round the table with our friends is going to reignite for the for the dungeon masters and the players out there?

Theo Thourson : 18:16

That's an interesting question. Because if I was counting the number of times I've used minis and my personal games over the past year, it was once I've used minis once we before because we just moved to California as well. So we don't really have a gaming group out here yet. We made one friend who's a d&d nerd like we are and so we've had him over a couple of times. So we played the star finder beginners box with him. And we had some of our nice star finder minis that we busted up for that Oh, and give you some star finder news in a minute if you're interested. But so don't let me forget that but we play the star finder beginners box and we use our minis from that. And I haven't used a new mini since then. And we have you know, boxes and boxes full of minis over Hear. So I do, but it doesn't seem like the sales of them are dwindling at all talking to whisk is they're just expanding and expanding and expanding. So clearly, people are still picking them up. I don't know if they're able to use them in their games. I know, for a while when I was playing remotely, I would just set up a little camera over my gaming table, and keep the minis out there and just let people kind of tell me where they wanted to move theirs. And it was a little awkward. And I don't know if it worked very well. You know, roll 20 Fantasy grounds maybe work a little bit better. But I think that people are just itching to get back to the table. I think there's there must be buying all these minis because I know that sets are still selling out. It's still so hard to find things. So they might just be gathering them. They'd be planning their stories, writing their adventures and just itching to get people back to the tables to play and I know, man, some people are already back at the tables maybe a little earlier than I would like them to be so there's that going on as well. But personally, yeah, I'm totally getting ready to go out here in Bakersfield, California, where I live. make some new friends and try to get some of these minis to the table Finally, but there aren't like a lot of collectors out there. When I was looking at minis gallery calm before I got started, I was surprised by the number of there who have never played Dungeons and Dragons or any RPG, they just like the figures. So there is certainly a group of folks out there who just like collecting the figures for I'm not entirely sure why, just as the collecting idea, or maybe inspiration for their own creative processes. But yeah, that is a segment of them out there. And you know, that's awesome, too.

Snyder’s Return : 20:29

Absolutely. I mean, there's something for everybody in this hobby in the scope of tabletop role playing games and things like that. You did allude to some star finder news. So I'd love to sort of steer us on to that if if you'd be willing to share.

Theo Thourson : 20:43

Yeah, of course. Thank you for asking me because yeah, I love Star Finder. We as soon as we got into star finder, not that long ago because that star finders came out in 2017. I don't know if your audience is super familiar with it or not. It spun off the Pathfinder in 2017 and takes place in the same universe as Pathfinder, but just set in the future some kind of an undisclosed time in the future. And we haven't seen a lot of mini story yet. There was a Kickstarter from ninja division that got a bunch of mini started for Star Finder. But the company has some trouble fulfilling their orders, they got bought out by our icon studios. And so our icons been fulfilling some of those orders for Star finder minis. And we've been in touch with our icon a little bit to try to get our hands on some of those minis they're putting out because they're based in Poland and so it's a little bit difficult to kind of get our hands on those. We don't have any yet. They did say that they're gonna try to send us what they've released so far to us so we can show them on the channel. They're unpainted, they're on sprues. A little bit more work than most of the ones that we review on the channel but man, I'll take whatever star finder stuff I get. But whiz kids announced last year that they were working on their own mind the star finder, Star finder minis because they have their Pathfinder battle series and they're going to get started with a star Find your battle series and just in the next week or two here, we should be getting our first set of them, there's gonna be a little heroes pack and a little monster pack. And that's all we're going to get for a while. But in January 2021, we'll be getting our first full set of booster boxes for the star finder battle set, it's going to be a little bit smaller in scope than what we get for d&d and Pathfinder. Usually, there's about 44 figures give or take in the modern icons of the realms line for d&d, or the Pathfinder battle series. This is gonna have 40, so just a little bit less. And I think they're only planning to do maybe one of these a year. So it's gonna start off a little slow. I think we get about two a year for Pathfinder, full booster sets. And we usually get about four per year these days of d&d. So that's kind of where we're starting. But we should be getting that full set of booster series of 49 miniatures for Star finder coming in January. That's the news for that.

Snyder’s Return : 22:58

Wow. Thank you, folks. For sure. Oh, one

Theo Thourson : 23:01

more thing, but for for I forgot. They also have there's a Pathfinder deep cuts line of unpainted miniatures. And they're going to be doing the star finder equivalent of that. So we'd also get some star finder, unpainted minis. I don't know when those are coming out necessarily, but that's the other one that almost forgot. Yeah, that's coming on the pike too.

Snyder’s Return : 23:18

So you can paint your own if you have the patience.

Theo Thourson : 23:20

Amen. Yes.

Snyder’s Return : 23:23

All right. Well, you mentioned there the icons are the ramps. So using say that the DND releases a template, what's the sort of different grades of miniature we can purchase? Say, for Dungeons and Dragons?

Theo Thourson : 23:37

That's a really good question, because, and there's something kind of close to my heart. I know. I have a lot of friends who play d&d who have all kind of budget levels right on what they can spend on their game. And I always try to say when we cover something expensive, like the beetle and Graham's premium sets that you know, almost everywhere, everything we talked about on our channel, none of it is necessary to have an amazing game of d&d. Like all All you need for that is at least one friend, and a couple of dice, and a book or a PDF in front of you just to tell a story, right? That's all you really need for the core of d&d and everything else is just extra imagination, fuel, you know, just to have a little extra fun. You don't need meteorite, dice or minis are, you know, extravagant handouts or, you know, TVs embedded into your gaming tables in order to have fun. Those are just little extras. And I've been happy to see that there's a lot of budget levels covered by the companies these days. And Wizkid is really expanding their reach into those markets, too. So if you look online, there's a couple of companies that have just papercraft materials that you can get to set up whole towns on your table with just cardboard. You just slot it together and there's like an amazing little village or sci fi setting. We have a set being sent to us real soon. I'm sorry, I forget the name of the company off the top my head, but they're sending us a set. You'll see that on our channel soon. That has a really cool little video. with dogs in the ocean or lake, and they have a whole kind of sci fi setting to it looks like a kind of futuristic airport in a way or maybe a spaceport, and Wizkid is getting into that line too. We're gonna see a lot of papercraft stuff from them. One of the exciting things coming up for that line is they're making under if you're familiar with the town of Sandlin. Have you heard of that one?

Snyder’s Return : 25:22

Yes. Yeah. The the original starter set for five years and other adventures tie into that as well. Yeah,

Theo Thourson : 25:29

yes, it's in the the essentials box as well. They revisited mandolin and even the acquisitions incorporated book DND bow that came out a couple months last year. I think they have a nice section of that book said and vanderlin my adventure started and Fanjul and two of my adventures started in Fantasyland. One of my characters has their home there are a couple of the characters are hanging out there right now in my home game. And so one of the things are going to come out with I forget the date. It'll be in our video coming out the next day or two is a fan Dylan papercraft set so you can set up a whole tonne of fan Dylan 3d on your table from Probably not a lot of money, because it's all kind of papercraft. And it'd be a gorgeous thing to have, especially when you're doing a starter game with the starter set or with a Central's kit. And you can have the town out on the table, like how cool is that. So that's coming out there also have a new line called idols of the realms, which will be the acrylic 2d minis. And there's a company out there who make the dungeon and box sets and and if you've seen this, they do like a subscription service, you can get like little adventures and kits and things like that. And they have what they call their thin minis. And that's kind of similar to this too. So a little acrylic, full colour, 2d miniatures that are, you know, slot into a little base you can have on your table. They're really cool because they're all full colour and they look really nice, but there's so much less expensive to buy. And there's so much easier to store because you can store them flat. And so we'll be seeing those from whiz kids coming out soon to they're going to start actually on that line this fall. So creating a set to support the essentials kit. So you got the papercraft fan Dylan and you'll have these acrylic minis that you can use with monsters and people from the Central's kitten fan, Dylan. And they'll be doing another set of that after that for icewind Dale around the frost maiden to support that adventure. And going forward, they're going to try to keep doing these little acrylic minis. And these are going to cost like $15 for the set. And it's going to be like 15 acrylic minis. So cheap as far as minis go, right. And there I see them. There's pre orders out there right now in some stores, we get them as low as $12. And so what they're going to do coming forward is with each of their big sets of d&d minis they're going to have about three months later, the acrylic version, it may not be the exact same set of creatures, but it'll be like, you know, a good set of them and then might have a couple of sets for each, like icewind Dale might have more than one little set available. But yeah, those should be coming out. After each main sets, you have the option of which one you want to do. It's much more affordable and much more more accessible and easy to store, they won't be doing the same thing for piezo. Because piezo, if you're familiar, they have their little pawns, which are pretty similar. It's the cardboard equivalent, right? So it's not acrylic, this cardboard, but they have their pawns, which are awesome because you get a whole box of them to support the entire adventure pads for Star finder and Pathfinder. And they look gorgeous on the table because they have all that gorgeous art on them. And so it's another really accessible way for people who might be on a more limited budget to have little 3d minis on their tables. So there's a lot of options all the way up to beetle and grammes if you're familiar with them, with their massive Platinum sets and gold sets. We have a couple of good friends who work at Beadle and grooms and they've been really kind to us and supporting us as well. They send us their little sets to review by faces on their on their homepage, if you go there, which is really disconcerting to go there and see my face. They're really nice folks over there. But that's another way if you if money is no option to have all this beautiful hardware and the Custom made dm screens and handouts. And as custom siren scape sets that you can use in your adventures and if you really want to up your game and have all these kind of amazing blank, allow your players man that's at the high end. So you got everything from the things made of cardboard and paper all the way up to these full metal coins and everything fancy stuff that you can have in your table. So I like that there's options for all those budget levels.

Snyder’s Return : 29:26

Absolutely, it's definitely as we've said a number of times now there's something for everybody and and this tabletop role playing environment is for everybody. Whether as you said it's a pen and a piece of paper a couple of dice and and some imagination or if you've got the full works. He was saying Grady's more into the Magic the Gathering or the stuffed dove into the law. Where would you like to see say d&d or Pathfinder or star finder? Where would you like the next adventure set

Theo Thourson : 29:59

that's a good one. Question. So I was telling somebody recently to you know, I have my ongoing campaigns. I'm currently at Burning a storm kings Thunder games. I've been running for three years now. It's the very first thing I ever started running. And we're still not done with it because of course, that's how d&d works, right. But right now my store kings Thunder game is in burrow via and they're trying to kill strawed. So, you know, sometimes things just go off the rails, and you never know where you're gonna end up. And I have a star finder game going on right now with dead sons, the very first adventure path for Star finder, and we're doing a humble wood game also right now. And I'm really eager to get into Pathfinder, Second Edition. And I think I'll start with the follow up like stone. I'm trying to figure out what adventure path to do after that. But for d&d in the future, like it's hard to think about new creative areas and stories to tell because I have so many stories I'm already telling. I'm kind of interested more and like getting more tools to use in my ongoing games than new stories. But if they weren't going to do something new, what I would be excited about that I feel like hasn't been done enough. And fifth addition. And I, by the way, I'm new to the hobby, right? Like I started in 2017. I'm one of those folks who came in with like, critical role and Harmon quest. And that's how I got into the hobby. So I didn't. Oh, that's great. Yeah, there's a lot of us right? So I don't have that deep lore of playing a d&d, you know, like the Stranger Things kids. So I'm kind of new to all this. I know a lot this area's been covered before, but for me that additions where it's at. And so what I would love to see and this will kind of what I thought we were going to go next. I don't know why I thought this but instead of icewind Dale, I thought our next adventure was gonna be extra planar. I want to see them explore like the elemental realms of fire and ice and earth. And I want to see them go to the Fei wild and the shadow fell and mechanist and Elysium and Limbo and pandemonium, you know, I want to see adventures with Primus and the Sealy court with no to Deanna and Oberon and I want to see the slot lords and I just want to go all these other planes that looks so creative. I just want to jump around them, and see what kind of adventures we can tell these fantastical other worlds. And so I don't know if that's going to be anything coming down the line. We don't get told much in the way of what's coming up in some of these adventures. We're pretty good friends of setting Phoenix and she sometimes will subtly hint at things to us, but you know, it's all a little tongue in cheek and you know, it's gonna keep your mouth closed. But I feel like we could probably get more out of our free trial, but we don't want to try because we don't want get in trouble. But I hope that we'll get some more extra planar stuff. That's why I want to see it go.

Snyder’s Return : 32:36

It's strange that you say that because you're not the first person I've spoken to recently that has voiced a similar interest in extra planar activity. And I know there's there's bits and pieces in some of the source books but to have something to a guide, maybe a bit like the ghosts of salt marsh was or something that opens out into that extra planar space which would be desirable from myself, my own profession. as well.

Theo Thourson : 33:01

Yeah, I think it's just a great opportunity to tell some really different kinds of stories. And we have a lot of minis out there for fake creatures for shadow creatures, even the mod drum, you know, we got some of that stuff already. So and you know, it's just a creative area that I would love to see explored. Oh,

Snyder’s Return : 33:19

we've we've covered quite a lot. Is there anything extra you would like to mention any advice you would like to give you've given sort of hints and tips already about how accessible The game can be and how you can sort of go from very sensible to very wild with your spending? Is there any tips or advice you'd like to give DMS and players out there maybe getting into the hobby? Quite news as we are?

Theo Thourson : 33:44

Yeah, absolutely. I really, I'll plug again, the RPG writer workshop. we're sponsoring that this year. I not 100% sure if signups are over for that yet. I don't think they are because I think it starts in July. So get there before the end of the month. I'm not sure when you release this episode. But if money is an option, we're sponsoring some scholarships, you can reach out on their website, just google RPG writer workshop, and it'll come up. And it's a great opportunity to explore your storytelling potential. A lot of folks like me, I'd never written anything before. I never thought I was creative. And so it was a real challenge for me to put myself out there like that and try to write something. But I ended up with, you know, talking to some friends and consulting with folks who are creative, like, I found that kind of within me and I was able to come up with something I was proud of. And so anybody can do it. It's a great way just to explore that part of yourself. And if you're just getting started with something like minis and you're looking like where, where should I start? There's so many out there. You know, there's if you're running a particular published adventure, there's certainly icons, the ROM sets to support most of the ventures out there, but they're also coming out with and I mentioned this before, there's a little bit of information out there about it. There's a monster packs coming up, where it's they're nicely painted many's, but they're going to come in a little war bands. So you know, a lot of there's some common creatures that show up a lot with goblins and kobolds and things like that. And so coming out later this year, you can get your little Goblin or Knoll or, or or gronk war band and just like six or seven or eight minis, all of that one kinds, you can have those little war bands ready to go, you know, get your players those little premium figures from whiz kids or nicely painted or send them over to something like hero for elders foundry where they can design their own mini online, including like what they're holding in their hands and what kind of pet they have next to them. You know, you can really get a player invested by this having to make their own money. So those are good places to start. And so yeah, flex your creative muscle, get yours put yourself out there and try those things. If you're starting with minis, I think those are pretty good places to start. Because sometimes just buying random booster boxes, you end up with things that you're not going to use right and a lot of the minis these days are sold in the stores. boxes but now that they had the monster packs from whiz kids and the premium figures, like you can at least know what you're getting. Exactly. And so that might be a good place for folks to get started. It can be a little bit expensive for sure. And for pies over playing Pathfinder star finder, oh, my God, just get their pawns too, because those are awesome. And I use those two. And yeah, come and see us at gallant Goblin calm. We respond to all our comments on the YouTube channel. So the last thing I'll say is we do have gone goblin.com, which is our website. And the the way minis are sold all these booster boxes and bricks and cases is can be really confusing. It was confusing for us to we're trying to get the channel going. And so we have a whole article on there called booster boxes demystified or something along those lines. And so if you go to gmail.com, you can click that and it'll explain how all these menus work and how the random distribution works and how to get what you want and how to just know what sets have what's included. So that's another good resource for people who are trying to Figure out this entire crazy system. So yeah, I guess that would be some of my starting advice.

Snyder’s Return : 37:06

And very, very valuable advice that is, I know that I've caught being caught out myself by, you know, just pumping money into booster boxes and having two or three of the same thing that's never been taken out and put on the table. So very much useful advice for for the new and even experienced dungeon masters. So I appreciate that. Thank you.

Theo Thourson : 37:30

Thank you.

Snyder’s Return : 37:31

I'd like to thank you for your time, Theo, for coming on and sort of taking time out your busy day to speak to us. The future of the Golden Goblin sounds, sounds brighten and wonderful and I look forward to seeing every new video you publish on YouTube.

Theo Thourson : 37:47

I was very kind of you. I love being here today and talking to you about all this. Hopefully you all found it interesting and there's a lot of new stuff coming out. I didn't even get to touch a lot of it. So yeah, having me back anytime if you want to. I'm always around. And it's a pleasure. I'm just sitting in my comfy chair, my cognac and enjoy myself. So I appreciate this. Thank you. It's about pleasure.

Snyder’s Return : 38:07

I will absolutely bring you back once once a few of those releases have come out and hopefully we can discuss more about them. I'd love that. All right. Well, thank you very much of your time. Theo has been an absolute pleasure.

Theo Thourson : 38:20

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Snyder’s Return : 38:35

Thanks for listening. If you want to hear more of us or to get in contact with us, you can find us on Twitter at Return Snyder. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and also if you wish to support the channel on patreon@patreon.com slash nice return. music and sound effects provided for this episode are from epidemic sounds.com Transcribed by https://otter.ai