Hello, and welcome to Snyder's return a tabletop role playing podcast. Today I have the pleasure of being joined by Eugene of Acarnist Press, and we discuss who we are, what makes us and what goes into redefining character creation for dungeons and dragons and other tabletop role playing games. Eugene, would you like to give us an introduction as to how you got into tabletop role playing game and then how you formed icon is press please.
Eugene Marshall :Absolutely. So very briefly, I got introduced to role playing games because my parents recognised I was interested in fantasy. My father was a Tolkien fan himself. They bought me the basic red box in 1982 or three. And you know that plus the cartoon at the same time hooked me. I played until I went to grad school in about 2000 stepped away for a good 10 years 15 years, and came back with fifth edition when a friend invited me to play on role 20. I played for quite a few years playing that and returning to my other 90s favourite of Vampire the Masquerade and ended up being invited by somebody I was playing with in one of those games to write a little bit for his company. And him as Aaron Isa Vito was sigil entertainment. I ended up writing a little bit and then more and then more for him until it became clear that I this was something I could do if I wanted on the side for fun. And then, when I started wanting to put out my own content, my spouse and I Amy launched arcanist press in February of 2000. And that began with our first title, which is the ancestry and culture on alternative to race and fifth edition, which began as a Xen quest Kickstarter in February and then was released on Drive Thru in June, and has since become a success. And so we're now releasing, we've released 123 more titles related to that, as well as three titles on DMS Guild, which are just standalone things. I'm happy to talk about any of those, if you like.
Snyder’s Return :Yeah, we'll concentrate on the ancestry and culture side of things first, and then Yes, please. We'll talk on more about your future releases.
Eugene Marshall :Excellent. So ancestry in culture. An alternative to race in fifth edition, really is a indebted to the work of other writers and game designers who identified a problem in fantasy Gaming. I nk jemisin has a great article essay on her website about the unbearable baggage of working I think is the title. James Mendez Hodes has done great work identifying ways in which racial or biological essentialism is rife in fantasy gaming. And just to make it clear what that means. That is the idea that things like ability scores, alignment tendencies to violence are ascribed, not just to individuals or their individual genetics or biology, but to whole races of people. That's not based. In the real world, real world doesn't races, you know, ethnic groups don't work that way. Genetics don't work that way. So it's it's not exactly scientifically accurate. But you might say, Well, I mean, heck, these are orcs and elves. It doesn't have to be and I agree. However, the problem is that that sort of idea underlies or Real World racist ideologies like white supremacy. And so if you're a person in the real world who has been harmed by racism, you might recognise racial essentialism, when you see it, and it might remind you, even in fiction and play an artificial worlds with elves and dwarves have the experiences you have in the real world. And so that might make it less fun to play a game that's built in part around that. Just as if you are a victim of another kind of violence, say sexual violence, you might not want to play a game, where sexual violence is a required component for making your character. You might think that that's not very fun. So it doesn't mean that the designers of Dungeons and Dragons are those who play it by the book are racist, but what it does mean is that it sets up an extra kind of, let's call it an obstacle for enjoyment for a lot of people. And so these people that the authors I mentioned like Jemison and James Mendez. Host GRAEME Barber, Kristin Tarwater, other people have pointed this out in articles that I read in the past few years. And so I was kind of aware of this as a standing problem. Last fall, I decided to see if I couldn't come up with a way to solve it. But there are already some solutions out there like grass Alexis guide to ancestry, which is a great work on diems Guild. However, I, myself and for my personal preferences, didn't find that to be what I would want because it felt not like Dungeons and Dragons. To me it felt like a different system. You know, it's a buying your racial traits off of a menu for point costs. It's it's complicated, and it just doesn't, I think you lose a lot of the rich narrative lore, like an oral an alpha dwarf has certain characteristics, and we want to play a game where we can feel that we know those groups and traits. So the solution I came up with, I hope, addresses this problem that these other authors have identified and does it in a way that's Feels like d&d, it feels true to the spirit of the lore and the worlds. So that's what kind of led me to create it. I put it out on Kickstarter in February as a Xen quest gene. And it ended up being coming much more successful than I expected. And so then we released it to Well, two backers first and then eventually on Drive Thru in June, and it again, exceeded our expectations. And since then, we've put out three more titles that are related to it to kind of expand upon it. And we're doing things like launching a Patreon and setting up a Discord server and all kinds of exciting things because of the success of this title.
Snyder’s Return :And that is all very positive stuff. We'll touch on your future or the three extra releases. You mentioned just they're both focusing on the ancestry and culture release that you've put out that's been so widely and gratefully received by the community. You've All across the social media platforms I've seen, you've had nothing but support for this release, which has been amazing to see. What else is is in the book How How have you sort of separated out the issues that were highlighted by others and and now sort of presented in this new way by yourself?
Eugene Marshall :Well, I think, at the root, the issue that a lot of people had with the way fantasy races work, and not just Dungeons and Dragons, but many games is that they ascribe things that really aren't biological to people's race. Like if you play a Dungeons and Dragons game and you pick up the player's Handbook, and you decide you're going to be an elf. Apparently, simply in virtue of being having elven parents, you have particular weapon training, and you know the language and language. And if you are born of an orc parent, you automatically attack savagely. So those that's the kind of thing that often reminds people of real world Talk Oh, because you have apparent from this part of the world, you must be savage or you must be extra smart or you must be, right, this sort of thing, very skilled in that or whatever. But those are just inaccurate because how one might fight or what languages one speaks or what skills one has are quite clearly taught by a culture not anything to do with race, or ethnicity or parentage. So I thought, Well, why don't we just separate these out because some of them clearly are part of your upbringing or your parentage, like whether you have dark vision or what your average age is, humans lived to be 100 years elves live to be quite a bit longer. Having elven parents means you know, regardless of where you live, even if you're an adoptee. If you're an elf adopted by humans, you'll still live a lot longer than humans, that's biological. So for each of the races, in the player's Handbook, I just separated out those traits that are heritable inherited by from your parents, and those that are taught or cultural those that represent belief systems. That you would pick up by being in an environment or training or skills like language. And then I realised Oh, if you want to play an elf, that's just a vanilla just like in the player's handbook elf, you choose elf ancestry elf culture, and then it is literally identical to the elf in the player's handbook. But if you want to have an elf culture on alpha ancestry, dwarf culture, then you would be born with the Elven let's say, dark vision age, fe ancestry, ancestral trait, but then the dwarf language and the dwarf weapon training and the dwarf you know. I don't know any other streets depending on what kind of Dorian pick, and that seemed to make just kind of clicked as kind of a common sense solution to the problem. And I realised that that would allow you to just trust that the content or rather the lore of the dungeons and dragons world is coherent and can sustain this quite seemingly simple just extra step is splitting race into two To allow you a little more flexibility. But the nice part about that, in addition to allowing you to create the Aragorn if you if character, if you will, a human raised by elves, you could, you can also create a character of mixed ancestry. So you could pick one trait from the elephant, one crate from the drawers, dwarf ancestries. And then you've got a character of with one orphan parent, one album parent. And then by separating that, quite clearly cultural traits, which for me, I include alignment and skills, but also ability scores, which is a little controversial for some people. But again, I wanted to remove that reminder of real world racism from the way the the game treats ancestry. So I put ability score increases in culture, because I thought, well, the way you're brought up is going to determine whether you're strong or smart. Yeah, absolutely. And so that allows you to remove the big reminder of racial essentialism. That bothers some people. And it allows you all this flexibility to do new and more interesting characters, but it still feels like Dungeons and Dragons to me at least. Because an elf born in an elf community is just a DND elf it's just a no elf there's nothing different there. And so but if you haven't elf raised in a dwarf culture, you can see the elf in it in that character. They still have the fan century they still live 1000 years, they still have dark vision. But they're they're picking up a they know thing that you know, their proficiency with smithing tools, not the Elven longbow, which is exactly what you'd expect, right? Yeah, so that's the gist of the kind of, that's the thrust of the of the text.
Snyder’s Return :Along with the text. There's some and you mentioned potentially outside of the chat, but the artwork in the book as well. Some of it is amazing. There's a piece on page I'm looking at right now page 54 that's evocative, a feminine form with a wooden staff. It looks incredible to me. No art critic, but it appeals to my, my style of art and fires my imagination. So there's some amazing artwork in the book. And there's there's also an adventure or a couple of events or adventure hooks in the back. Is that correct?
Eugene Marshall :Yeah, so, um, the first the art. So the original budget was $300. And I was Whoa, I was spending almost all of that just for a single cover piece. But the Kickstarter exploded, got up to 7500 917 backers, which was I was quite pleased with which allowed me to pay for a lot more art, which is what most of that extra money that in a professional editor, which was really helpful. So yeah, what I wanted to create was art that was evocative of the themes of the text, right. So a lot of the art represents characters of mixed ancestry or characters have one ancestry quite clearly raised in another culture so you get a dwarf character. For example, who's wearing elven clothes with his hair and an elven style with an elven longbow. So that's like, well, that's what a dwarf would look like or who was raised by elves. Or you've got another character that's quite clearly half orc, half halfling. Right. And so she's got she's got the short she's short with the hairy feet, but she's got like the orcas tasks a little bit, you know? And, right, so that really kind of illustrated the form. It also allowed us an opportunity to institute to uphold another value that we kind of espouse, which is, you know, representing more diversity. So we tried to create characters of colour, we have a character, disability who has an AMP isn't MPT ylim MPT. There's a couple of non binary characters as well. So I mean, that allowed us to kind of explore and represent those themes a little bit more as well. And I just love I mean, my probably My all time my favourite part of this new kind of second career we've launched is writing up an art order out of my imagination. and sending it off to a really great artist and then seeing it realised, it's so fun to get that art back. I feel like a little kid every time I do. So that's wonderful in the book. So just so as part of the stretch goals, because originally this was going to be like a 32 page just here the rules, no art. But the stretch goals allowed us to expand it all the way to 70 pages and add all this great art. And so we expanded it by adding two adventures. They're both written as one shots, one of them could be stretched to a two shot, I guess. And they're both written for all ages. So they are intentionally designed to be good to run with kids and families. Of course, you can darken it up if you like. But that's the you know, add a little scary and elements or something but, and again, those adventures also explore the theme. So they're about communities, diverse communities coming together to help each other out or that the solution is only reached by drawing from two different cultures. You know that sort of thing. So we hope that they illustrate the values of the text and people say they like them as well. So that's that's how it developed into the full product it is now.
Snyder’s Return :Yeah, you your editor, or the editor you pay for was rose electorates.
Eugene Marshall :It is. Yeah, she was magnificent. So she's done. I contacted her because I admired her work on some official d&d products. I think she did the the wild mount book their critical role official d&d book. She did. She's done work on Yeah, on several of the d&d official books. She's She's like, Wizards of the Coast Freelancer officially, she's a guild adapt so that she publishes stuff on DMS guild with the kind of other guild adepts which are the kind of ones that Wizards of the Coast and the DMS guild have acknowledged as kind of prior. The kind of, I don't know, top tier You're creators. And so she liked the work and agreed with the kind of principles and made it into the beautiful thing it is today. So I am indebted to her. For sure. And she's was super to work with. It's it's a, that was one of those things I could pay for. Yeah, once the Kickstarter was so successful.
Snyder’s Return :It's such a good collaboration and the product, the finished product that has been produced, I highly recommend all groups really go and pick it up this there's definitely something in here for everyone be at the adventures or be this new take on ancestry and culture. Your website mentions that you're going to release this across a range of systems. So this is for d&d, five E. What other systems are you looking to sort of venture into
Eugene Marshall :So to be clear, I'm not sure that the specific ancestry and culture rules will transport well to other systems. So the other systems that so for example, just to acknowledge Pathfinder second edition makes some progress towards addressing the issues that we are addressing here in d&d, they have Institute the idea of ancestry, but they still do have quite a lot of the traits that we have separated out into culture. Some of them are still in ancestry in Pathfinder. So I think Pathfinder does a great job of being at the forefront, Second Edition of making those changes. But I'd like to think we take it a little farther. But that means that what we've done here wouldn't map cleanly onto what Pathfinder already has. I'm gonna look into it and see if we can work something out. But Pathfinder is not all admit in my wheelhouse. So the other systems were looking to expand into or rather to produce more content for our systems that just don't have the problem that DND does with a race like Cypher system. If you play numenera you don't pick a race like You're doing d&d. So you don't have to worry about the racial essentialism, so much. So what I would like to do, though, is produced some of these adventures, and some of the, you know, like, kind of new kinds of character options that you that are in our secondary titles for other systems, as well. And we also might just produce some content that's entirely new for those systems. I've got a work in progress that is called eldritch. High, where you play it uses a very simple system called lasers and feelings. And you are a teenager who is slowly transforming into a lovecraftian horror. Your body is changing, and it's strange and alien to you. But you live in a kind of conservative environment society, so you don't feel comfortable sharing, talking to anybody about how your body is changing. And so quite clearly, this is a metaphor for going through puberty and it feeling like you're turning into a lovecraftian monster. So the two traits are you. So the way lasers and feelings works is you have two stats that are kind of on a continuum. And when one goes up, the other one kind of goes down. And so the two ends of the spectrum are transform or conform. And so this is a little game that we're going to put out that allows people to kind of play around with teenage angst and do so in a fun kind of quasi horror environment. So that's quite clearly something entirely unrelated. Right? But those are the types of things we were talking about. When we talk about expanding into some other systems Seifer savage worlds we have some stuff with and then into some more independent systems like lasers and feelings are powered by the apocalypse.
Snyder’s Return :Okay, well, that was mentioned that one of your releases, or what else you're looking to sort of publish that we can consume and go and purchase purchase from you.
Eugene Marshall :Well, right now, the summer at least, we're working on kind of building the ancestry and culture world. So we've got two more titles one that On this morning, one is called custom ancestries and cultures. And the second one that came up today is called more ancestors and cultures. And together they give you 126 new ancestry and culture options. So the core book has only the five that are, I'm sorry, these eight that are in the player's handbook and that are released into the system reference document that the under the open gaming licence, you know, elf, dwarf, halfling, gnome, Dragon born human, that sort of thing. But these 126 include every version of every other d&d Fantasy race, as well as a whole bunch from mythology and then a whole bunch of original ones for fun, like the one this morning that came out has on its cover and albear playable albear character race, or if rather ancestry and culture. Inside it, you can also play Tasker, which is an ancestry of humanoids that helped kill it or ask in the distant past, but when they killed it, it's blood poured out and and you mutated some of the soldiers that were fighting the Trask and so they have these, like they look kind of ASCII, right? And have some tarrasque like abilities and it's just another. It's just playing a kind of fun, interesting different kind of character using these ancestry and culture rules. So that's what we're working on right now. Next up the next big thing, however, I'd like to tell you about is going it's probably the fall and it's called Excelsior. And Excelsior is a superhero game that uses the O GL the fifth edition rules, but creates an entirely new system. So if you know dungeons dragons, you'll be able to pick this up and play it almost immediately. But it is just feels entirely distinct. It's you can you can create a superhero character of any sort. There's 27 different kinds of power that you can choose from, and each hero gets two or three depending on what kind of origin you choose. So instead of choosing a class You choose an origin whether you get your power from like a mutation or from an experiment us you know, like a technology or your you know, you trained really hard you're actually not you don't have superpowers, you're just a highly trained, normal human, etc. And then you choose your power profiles, which are from that 27. And then after that it plays very much like Dungeons and Dragons, except to you instead of having spells, you've got these superpowers, and you can level up just like you can in d&d. But if you don't want to start from level one, maybe you want to make a superhero who's already super heroic. You we built it so that you can start play at street level, which if you know your superheroes, we'd be like playing Jessica Jones or the young first year as a superhero Miles Morales sort of spider man. Or you can play city level which would be like Teen Titans or a group of heroes coming together say like, you know, late teens, early 20s spider man so can come together to protect a city. Or you can play global right level. So which is going to be, you know, your Avengers, at least normally x men, or you can play cosmic level. So that's, you know you're going to get your Guardians of the Galaxy or Avengers late late era Avengers, fantastic for things like that. And so you can just plug and play we got these quickstart rules where you can just say I wanna let's make a hero that's got powers, whatever fire and flight and is a cosmic level hero. And so then it's basically like creating a d&d character out of the box at 17th level who has fire and flight spells if you will, at their disposal, but their superpowers. So for d&d players, that should be a real easy port. And we're going to try and employ the same sorts of principles. So this is going to be the characters are going to be you know, super inclusive and diverse. And it should allow you to play the characters you want to make. Of course, we're starting on the assumption that most people are going to want to be human. But we do have rules for allowing people to have different ancestries and cultures, of course. So if you want to have an ancestry as an Atlantean, or a Martian, or an alien from a distant planet that's blown up and you were sent here as a baby, say, for example, like Superman, yep, we got rules for that, choose that ancestry and choose the human culture or whatever. So that's, that's the next thing. And that's going to be we're really hoping to start big with that we're going to try and get some really serious comic book artists involved, you know, like names that comic book people will recognise as, as I you know, well regarded cover artists to do the art for this thing. Because we want it to be not only cool and fun for d&d type players, but just for comic book people as well to pick up so that's the goal. And, you know, we were I would have said early fall, if you'd asked me this question in March, but thanks to certain events in the world, It's probably going to be put off till maybe late fall, early winter. Everything got delayed, as you I'm sure you understand. But that's that's on that's on
Snyder’s Return :deck, I have to say I like the sound of that. And that sort of leads to its own line of questioning which is of this new system itself. So you're the sort of superhero take on Dungeons and Dragons using that system. Who is your sort of superhero? icons, maybe the wrong word, role model doesn't fit but who is the sort of the superhero you you'd like the most use of? identify with maybes the best reason?
Eugene Marshall :Well, I will admit I have, I have a couple faves. And I grew up in the 80s and 90s and 2000s, collecting some comic books and when I was young, I was definitely kind of an x men person, but since then I've developed into a little bit broader But if I have to choose a Marvel character spider man's my favourite, because I think he has so much heart and I really admire that kind of you know if with great power comes great responsibility sort of principle, but as a person who in my day job is a professor and philosophy and I studied kind of stuff 16th 17th 18th century kind of Byzantine weird old systems of thought so I kind of really like Dr. Strange a lot too. So those are probably my two favourite mainstream care characters, but I also read quite a bit of you know, some of the smaller run some of the smaller presses like oni press and a few others that have some good stuff so but yeah, if you have to if you're if we're talking mainstream spider man's probably my favourite.
Snyder’s Return :All right, well, having just heard some more of your background, I'd like to learn more about you. That that was quite a description of your of your job and your, of your learning. That's it I'm sure that's a discussion potentially for another time, but
Eugene Marshall :right? Well, I did mention that I stepped away from role playing games for a while to go to grad school and have a family. And yeah, that's what I went to grad school for philosophy. I got a PhD it I'm a college professor now. And my the stuff I like to write on and read is weird. I'll admit that and I'm happy to talk about it at length to anybody who's interested. But you could probably find some I have three books out in that area as well. So if people want to go look at that stuff, I'd invite them to do so. But I'll warn you, it's written for academics.
Snyder’s Return :I'm sure there's someone out there that will tie the two together. So using your professional life and your short foray into now. You're in the way of being archivist press. How does that how does that play into your d&d experiences and how you run things at the table?
Eugene Marshall :Well, um, you know, over the past six or seven years when I got back into role playing games, you know, I started back with Dungeons and Dragons. But after about a year, I really got sucked into the whole culture of tabletop role playing games, and I went out of my way. And I'd recommend anyone who's loves games to do this to try and play as many different kinds of game as possible different systems. So I really got deep into power by the apocalypse games. You know, I play a lot of Apocalypse world. I played a lot of the gumshoe system Cypher system, all kinds of different things. And I found that I learned something about gaming in general from each of them. I mean, just the principles. There's a text a section of the apocalypse world text called principles is really mind blowing. And the way in which, you know, a game like dungeon world uses fronts. And apocalypse world uses these principles. What kind of made me get this whole new picture of what gaming is, and I think traditionally I played d&d. This kind of storyteller mode where you expect the dungeon master to come to the table with a story that they're going to tell. And we get to kind of like play along with it. Like they're the playwright or the actor. But playing those other games, gives me the picture of the, you know, they don't even call it a game master dungeon master in apocalypse world, they call it an MC. So that's the person that facilitates the story. And so those sorts of games really made me change the way I think about creating content. And then running my own game, I realised that I was having the most fun. And I think everyone at the table was having the most fun when I was more like a DJ remixing what they were giving me than a composer. Right? So I would my job as the person at the table running the game was just to create conditions where we all could have fun. That doesn't mean telling the story, that doesn't mean deciding what happens. It means creating a space for other people to do that too. And so my interests in design have come floating Actually out of that I want to create the conditions for other people to make their own fun. I so if you look at the kinds of things we've been putting out, yes, there are two adventures in the core book ancestry and culture. But a lot of the stuff we're making are intended to be tools that gems can use, or players can use to have their own fun, I'm not proud, I do not expect anytime soon to create a setting book. It's actually one of the things that differentiates I think me from a lot of other people who might talk to that like to say, Oh, I want to create role playing game content. Most of them want to sit down and create a world, they tell you, they want to tell you about their pantheon of gods or the wars that's going on in the world. And that's super awesome. And I love hearing those stories. And I respect and admire those people. That's just not me. I don't want that to me. If I wanted to do that I'd go be a novelist. I don't want to be a novelist. I want to play games and help other people play games. And for me, that means creating a space for people to have their own fun. So that's the kind of design principles I bring To all of the things I work on, and I really learned those from playing those other games, playing not countries of dragons and looking at how people run of these other sorts of games and these other systems.
Snyder’s Return :It's, it's a noble endeavour to bring these tools to the DMZ, the GM, whoever it is that the MCs as you mentioned. So for building on what you were saying about some people want to world build effectively and some want to provide tools and things What advice would you give to new content creators because you know, you you and your wife side I can't express from from nothing and have had some success or what from your experiences would you give as advice to those who may be looking to get into the industry?
Eugene Marshall :So I answer this question first by a little weird, autobiographical anecdote, which is one of the reasons I did not get into this earlier. Was that I didn't like the idea of commodifying and making it into a business because I had this unfair, you know, maybe it's because I went to school and became a philosopher. So I studied in the humanities and I just had this kind of attitude that like self starting, promoting hustling side gig, small business people, people that's like a way of really, I don't know, I felt like I was a salesperson in a way that was distasteful to me. Um, you know, I felt like it was smarmy, like I was trying to trick people almost, you know. And so I had this bad idea. I couldn't bring myself to think of myself as somebody who would go on social media and boost my own product. It felt gross. But what happened is I just got so excited about ideas and game stuff that I just wanted to share it with people. And this enthusiasm naturally led me to create content content I was excited about. And then because I was so jazzed about it, it made it easy to talk to other people about it, and it made it fun to share it with people. And so I think one thing that I would advise content creators to do is to find what brings them joy. Because you'll just automatically create better content, it'll be easier to promote, and other people that to joy is contagious. Other people will get excited about it just because you're authentically excited about it. So that's one side of the answer, the second side of the answer, and I hope you'll see how these are, can be intention but don't have to be is identify a need in the market, which I know I said earlier, I don't like talking this way. But I've learned to accept that this is a way that's okay to talk and still be an authentic human being. That was my problem, not anything to do with the actual world of marketing or whatever. But, you know, I think one of the reasons ancestry and culture was so successful is because there's a there was a need for it. I'm not sure there's another need. There's a need right now for somebody at least like me, to create a setting because my ideas aren't particularly novel with regards to world building. So there's nothing In need for yet another setting from somebody like me. But I did have I was able to identify a need that I could address. And so I did. And so my next design, pro programmes are going to be to do that too. Like with Excelsior. The goal here is I'm super excited about it because I like superheroes as much as anybody else. And I'm excited about creating a system that would be easy for people to pick up. Because they know dungeons dragons. And so and a simple and just evil easy to play, but still feels like a superhero game, right? So just you know, so it's this kind of sweet spot because there are some superhero games out there and they're great, but a lot of them are either very complex, which because they want you to be able to customise every single possible power and feet. Or they are really just fundamentally different systems from Dungeons and Dragons. And so you have to learn a whole new system. I mean, two of my favourites are mutants and masterminds and masks, units and masterminds feels a lot more to me like 3.5 to end Although it's a great design, and the creators are wonderful, it's super good product, it's stills it's crunchy. Whereas masks is the opposite of that. It's, it's very powered by the apocalypse narrative. There's really a game that feels like that happy medium, which d&d fits in the fantasy world. So that's a neat I thought identified and I'm super excited about it. So it works. Right. So those are the two kind of sides of the coin I'd recommend creators is find what you're enthusiastic about that also happens to be something that can can fill a need in the market.
Snyder’s Return :I think that's very, very sound and sage advice. I mean that that's amazing. We sort of spoken at length, about your upcoming projects, your current releases and things like that. So it's probably a good time to remind everybody where they can find this, where they can find yourselves and where they can find your your content.
Eugene Marshall :So we are just all over the web are Twitter is at arcanist. Press, so is Instagram. So as Facebook, our website is arcanist. Press calm. We are just launching this week a Patreon and a Discord server. Because our customers people that bought our products kept asking, Hey, I'm, I'm using your rules to create stuff. I'd like to share it with other people that are doing that too. Please, can you create a Discord server we've had people asked five or six times. So I said, Okay, I guess we need to do this. So you'll be able to find us in all of those places. And that's where we'll be, you know, announcing our new products and inviting people to join us in whatever we do next.
Snyder’s Return :I sure I will be one of those people because I haven't read your release and the excuse me the products you've mentioned that are coming out. I'm very excited to be on the crest of this wave with you. So that you'll see my name popping up I'm sure it's alright. So You spoken about your releases your social media, is there anything else that you would like to bring to the table? Just off the cuff? Anything you would like to discuss? I don't think so. I mean, I wanted to talk a little bit about what brought me to ancestry and Culture The next products where what we're up to, and why Well, yeah, yeah, just okay. If you if you have anything you want to fill in anything you wanted to mention earlier, please, you can. The floor is yours effectively to sell yourself No matter how smarmy that may feel?
Eugene Marshall :Well, I mean, I'll just say some final words, which is just that I feel very much like we're just standing on the shoulders of giants. So I would invite people that have liked what they've heard here, not only to check out our stuff, of course, yes. But also, like, Look, you can go on Drive Thru RPG right now. And you can visit the page for ancestry and culture. An alternative to race and five eats the number two seller overall on Drive Thru right now. So number one it's been the number one DND seller since release in June 8 tip you know it's hit mid Thrall with its were almost 3000 sales and that's not counting the thousand Kickstarter backers and the 3000 people that bought it through the Black Lives Matter charity bundle because we added added to the charity bundle the day it came out so it's it's all over the place but look great, go go look at it, please join our communities and participate with us, we'd welcome you. But go look at that free preview cuz there's a 30 page preview. It's free. Just go to drive thru and click on the full preview you'll get 30 page PDF downloaded to you can read almost the whole thing. Almost all the rules are there just for you to read make up your own mind. But I would invite you to read the first two or three pages of it which are the introductory essay where I talk about the reasons why I'm created this and like we'll talk a little bit about race and racism and d&d and stuff. And I cite the people I mentioned nk jemisin James Mendez Hodes scream barber and others go read their stuff, right Go read the creators, the black creators that are writing on this stuff right now go look at Gabe James's stuff go look at Tanya to pass on Twitter, go follow Orion black on Twitter. These are the people that I'd like more attention towards frankly, our stuff is great. I want I like sales as much as the next person. But I'm in a very privileged position where I have a day job. I this is not like if our if our chemist press fails, I still have health insurance. But there's a lot of people in our community that are like that, and so support them. Right maybe go download the free preview of my product and follow the free public posts we'll put up on Patreon and look at my Twitter great. Spend some of your money on some of those marginalised creators. That's what I would like to end on.
Snyder’s Return :is a powerful message and knowledge is power. So I hundred percent back that sentiment. Go out In support the smaller creators and those who are putting out this excellent content for our consumption. It's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you today, Eugene. I hope we can speak again in the future once Excelsior becomes a fully realised product. If I if you would be, Yeah, me too. So thank you very much for your time. And I look forward to speaking to you again in the future.
Eugene Marshall :Yeah, me too. Thank you so much.
Snyder’s Return :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 Snyder's return music and sound effects provided for this session. sawed off from epidemic sounds.com Transcribed by https://otter.ai