Interview - Matt Forbeck - Shotguns and Sorcery TTRPG

Today I discuss the Fantasy-Noir styled Tabletop Roleplaying Game 'Shotguns & Sorcery' by multi-award winning author Matt Forbeck. We learn of the world and it's primary location of Dragon City, the Cypher Game System and tools available to the DM/GM/MC who chooses to run this great game for their group.

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Website: http://www.forbeck.com/

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Transcript

Snyder’s Return : 0:28

Hello, and welcome to Snyder's return a tabletop role playing podcast. Today we enter dragon city where venture is shorter find you. So grab a one, a shotgun and hold on to your flying carpet because there's going to be a bumpy ride as I interview shotgun and sorceries creator, Matt fallback, Matt, welcome to the show.

Matt Forbeck : 0:48

Hi, I'm thanks for having me on.

Snyder’s Return : 0:50

It's a pleasure. Matt, before we go into the the role playing game that you've created, why don't you give us a little bit of background about yourself, and how you got into tabletop role. Playing and how you tend to create sorcery, shotgun, shotguns and sorcery.

Matt Forbeck : 1:06

Sure, that's a lot of questions, but I'll try to trim them down to something I can. it's manageable. Any one of those will probably be its own story on itself. But I started out getting into tabletop role playing game when I was a young kid was about 12 years old. And guy across the street, his mother had gotten them Dungeons and Dragons on a blue light, specially Kmart for Christmas. And his parents and my parents were always kind of looking for a way for us to have an excuse to do something together. So they kind of threw together the game. And it took off for us. We played it endlessly for years after that all the way through high school. I ended up going into college, getting my degree in creative writing, and then doing some freelance game design while I was doing that I was a little gaming Xen, when I was in high school called quilling scroll. We had our own booth at Gen Con last year I turned 17. And I've been good Gen Con ever since I was a kid since about 1982, I guess I must be the first year I've missed ever. And that's only because there's no Gen Con this year, of course. I wouldn't work Games Workshop for six months on a student work visa, which is a whole long story by itself, came back started working as a freelance game designer. From there I went. And after a few years of doing that, founded a company with Shane Hensley called Pinnacle Entertainment Group, where we did a bunch of games that were award winning and best selling games like deadlands and brave new world, bunches of other stuff. I left that company back in 2000 or so 1999. And I came back to Wisconsin because we had started having kids. And it seemed like a good thing to do is to go someplace for a free babysitting from people I trusted implicitly. And we did that for a few years then. My wife became pregnant with quadruplets about 18 years ago and they were born in June. 2002 and they're all very healthy kids going off to college next year, which is crazy. But you know, time flies, chocolates and sorcery actually was something I come up with for the Wizards of the Coast did a world search they did back in 2001. In the winter that was a friend of mine, Keith Baker, designed something called ever on, which became one of the big world settings for dungeons and raids. I was actually I kind of coach Keith into doing how to become a freelancer because he had been a full time developer for video games up to that point. And then he went ahead and won this amazing prize and you know, got published doing this stuff, which is fantastic. And then they brought me on to write a trilogy of novels forever. For Wizards of the Coast after doing that, oh, sorry, back up second. While I was I can hear my kids yelling downstairs. You can hear them I'm sure I can hear them echoing layers. So it's just a wee bit distracting. That's what it's like having five kids at home during panda. But the so I came up with this idea of this the setting that I want to use, and it didn't when the setting contest, so I turned around and sold it to mongoose publishing, which was a big, deep 20 publisher back in the day. And then as I after I'd sent a contract, somebody was going well, I'm starting work on it. My wife became pregnant with quadruplets. And that threw everything out the window because I didn't have time for anything else for at least a few years there. And I kind of Sheldon didn't pay attention to it for years. And then Robin laws was doing something Robins a fantastic game designer himself. And he was doing something where he had come up with this idea for the iconic here. He said the most people when they most writers, when they do stories, people expect to have a hero that has your traditional heroic development are where they learn something about themselves and change right. But he also had noticed that a lot of heroes don't have that or like Batman, Sherlock Holmes or basically any kind of superhero, anybody in a periodical type of format, something where you see them week after week or month after month, they generally don't develop like that. There's a reason his theory was that iconic Heroes for people that didn't change, but that changed the world around them by being true to who they were. So he had challenged a bunch of us to come up with stories for that, for his Anthology, the new hero, which was being published through stoneskin Press, which was a subsidiary of Calvary. pilgrims a big RPG publisher these days it was and so I came up with a story for this, I really was setting the shotguns and sorcery world, and I really liked it. So I ended up writing a couple other short stories in there. And then in 2012, I did this crazy thing called 12 412, where I wanted to challenge myself for a dozen novels a year 12 novels a year 2012 We're short novels something about 50,000 words each. And I ran for Kickstarter for them. I broke them up into four Ctrl G's ran a Kickstarter for each. And the second of those trilogies was for shotguns and sorcery. So that went very well I got the novels written out the door, people enjoyed them. And there was an artist who had been involved in some other stuff I've been working on called Jeremy Moeller. He said, Matt, I would really like to do a role playing game based on these I said, well, it's a great coincidence because this was originally intended to be a role playing game setting. And you could certainly do that. So he ran a Kickstarter back in 2014 2015. For the game and then unfortunately, he ended up having a number of personal issues in his life that prevented it from coming out very quickly, and the game just finally released in 2020, believe it or not, and the rights of the game have reverted to me since it unfortunately took so long. And Jeremy had plenty of other things on his plate. Nothing Guess Outland and his company, wonderful people there, they did a great job developing it, Jeremy, that's amazing. But at that point, I felt it was just better for me to soldier on ahead without them. Coincidentally, over that period of time, my eldest son has gone off to college and come back. And now I have a minion that I can actually say, Marty, I need you to write this stuff or set up these packages, whatever. And that's worked out pretty well. So he's working for me. And hopefully, that's a lot of stuff in a nutshell. So does that answer any of your questions helps,

Snyder’s Return : 7:29

pretty much answers all the questions in a perfectly encapsulated and rather heartwarming story if truth be told. So, I mean, that's a journey. And you're I agree with your point about iconic heroes, they're sort of timeless in their portrayal but need to be so that everyone can identify with them. But that's, that's also another conversation for another time. So you, you have released through yourself and you want minion shotguns and sorcery. So tell us about the system and the game and the what that's about for questions again, sure at game world and then maybe the game mechanics after that

Matt Forbeck : 8:14

pleasure The game uses with the Cypher system which is a role playing game that was created by money cook, and friends over money cook games. For the for Newman narrow, which was first game, they came up with a verse new company. Monti, who you might know is one of the developers of third edition dungeons dragons. And they went on to do a lot of amazing other wonderful creative things over the years. Mandy also happen to be one of my early editors when I started out doing freelance and one of my first books I had done entirely on my own, you know, when you start on freelance and they say can you write an article here, you write a chapter and if you prove yourself and they say, Can you write a book, right because nobody wants to take a chance on somebody who's never turned books or any kind of work your way up to so the first Pull book I've actually written on my own was Western hero for iron crown enterprises. And that was for their champions system for the hero system, which was based upon or champions was part of that, which was a superhero. And the original editor was guy named Rob King when I was serving in the Virginia covenant, common state of the Commonwealth of Virginia Congress, whatever the actual name for that is, but he's one of the representatives or, and the guy took over for him was Monte cook, who had actually just taken on a full time job with iron crown enterprises back in like 91 or 92. Somebody and I have known each other for many, many years, and been friends for the person that he's been part of a writers group with me as well. And so when we were looking for a system to do with game, at that time, fifth edition wasn't open to the public, so we could have done fourth edition, third edition, but we looked at the Cypher system and Monty cut us a nice deal on As a licensee, and we knew we're going to be under the ground floor as one of the early licensees for the product, and we thought it was gonna be fun. And now although I've done a lot of game design in my life, I was mostly concentrating, writing and didn't have time to do the actual game design for that product. So what we did is we hired a guy named Rob Schwab, who's a fantastic designer, an old friend of mine as well. And Rob is a guy who has done tonnes of stuff with third edition fourth edition fifth edition for dungeon dragons. And also has a game called shadow the Demon Lord is a new one coming out called punk apocalyptic, much many other things. He's an amazing creative talent and a wonderful designer. And he did all the mechanics for the game based upon the original Cypher system rules and Monte and Bruce Cordell and Shanna Jermaine and etc, come up with refined over the years. So the basic premise of the game is are the setting essentially is that it's set in dragons city, which is a mountain, out on the edge of nowhere that is surrounded by Well, to back up a little bit, it was basically in a standard bog standard fantasy type world, except that at one point, this person called the rulers of the dead, unleashed an undead horde upon the entire continent and wiped out everything in it. And as this was happening to people got heard further and further toward the east, and they converged upon a mountain in which a dragon went and they cut a deal with the dragon saying, look, Dragon if you'll come out here and you know, keep the zombies from eating us for long enough we'll build a wall around the mountain then it'll all be safe here within the wall. And if you do that, then will the dragon says Sure, I'll do that. As long as you make me your Emperor I get to rule overall you and be in charge of the city that we're in and not having a whole lot of choices at that point they agreed to that. Dragon city is now 1000 years old, and it's stratified pretty strongly so that the dragon sits on the top of the mountain the elves live the Elven tree Just below that the dwarves live in the stronghold below that, then there's the gnomes, the halflings, the humans. And then below that down near the wall, we have the orcs and the goblins and kobolds and ogres and the other so called monsters races that that, obviously have now be brought in, within the wall. They're part of the community as well. As part of the game you play one of the people who has been trapped inside of this, you have the option of having adventures within the city, which are many and vary, but you can also go outside of the city and have your standard dungeon delving adventures in these places that have been untouched for many, many generations and have hopefully lots of treasures, they're very free to find.

Snyder’s Return : 12:47

Alright, so but you saw the lay of the land as it were. And it's, as you say, there's many different cultures across this sort of mountainous settlements. City as it as it is, kind of adventures Can someone that picks up this this role playing game? What kind of adventures can they have within the city?

Matt Forbeck : 13:10

Well, there's all sorts of things you could do. One of the things I didn't mention is that over the course of the thousand years since this city has been established, Technology and Society has evolved to the point where it's kind of in the state of the 20s or 30s in our world, right. So while they don't have electricity or such, they do have they use magic as a substitute for a lot of these things. So you walk into a room you tap a glow glow globe and it lights up like a light spray. If you're looking for a ride from one area of the city to another, you stick on your hand and a flying carpet comes down and picks you up and the taxi driver basically hauls you off to another section of city. So it has this very Norrish feel to it right. The people in the lower halves of the city are downtrodden, they're oppressed by the the wealthy, aristocratic people have upper person to say the stories tend to have this very dark Marsh people. To them, and you can recreate that as you like with the adventures. The first adventure we have for the game actually is up every created and one of the stories that was published very recently in the shotguns and sorcery, Omnibus, which came out back in March or April, which features the four published short stories and three published novels all into one cover. But the story there is, you know, you're sitting in the in the quill, which is a bar. And as you're sitting there, zombies crawl through into the basement. And not only do you have to go kill the zombies, and then figure out how they get in here. What is the reason they're here and becomes more of an investigation and detective type story as opposed to a dungeon delving type story, although certainly certainly a lot of opportunities for getting into the under earth beneath the mountain, and fighting zombies and all sorts of other chaotic creatures as well. It tends to be a bit more grey as far as the You know, we don't i don't really we don't want you to alignment. We don't acute to good and evil or anything like that. So when you go into the, into this adventure, you're not you don't say oh that's an orc kill it you say these are the orcs. They live in this part of the city. They have reasons for being here. They come from a tough part of town, sometimes it's a violent part of town, you might treat them differently because of that than you were treated else but those elves also have their own aristocratic secrets that they don't want anybody to know that are often dark and decrepit as well that have been built up over centuries. The stories tend to be less about kicking down doors and killing and killing things and taking your stuff than they are about investigations and discoveries about whether the true nature of the city and the people live within.

Snyder’s Return : 15:48

Alright, well it's, it sounds very inviting as a setting to getting into the investigation and uncovering what's behind the facade of of these other cultures or as you say, in the field where where the zombies may have come from and all that sort of good stuff, but in the in the RPG is there to aid and assist the the characters as they conduct these investigations or adventures for want of a better word, right?

Matt Forbeck : 16:20

Yeah, it's a neat game. If you play the Cypher system at all in any other sense, you already know how to play the game, right? If you haven't played the Cypher system, it has very some similarities to the 25th edition. So because obviously money has been a lot of work on this, but he did a lot of work on trying to make it so that the players always have something to do, and so that it's easy on the Game Master to set up and run things right. So for instance, all roles are done by the players, right, the game master never asked for wolf or anything. They described the situation to you to describe the outcomes, the rules and how things happen. And that, but it's more of a cooperative storytelling game than it is a competitive selling game of Dungeons and Dragons. There's never a lot of fantasy role playing is generally not meant to be competitive games, but a lot of people will play them that way, whether they are or not because the system tends to encourage them. But with a Cypher system, it says the players are really in control here, we want to see the kind of stories that you're going to come up with, given the situations that the game master will present you with. So you know, you have your, your your various statistics and your skills and you're trying to really get a target number with a game master will just describe how things happen depending on how you want to control the action, which I always thought was a wonderful way to go about it. So it's, it feels like as a character, you have much more control over what's happening much more power over the direction of the story, which I think is refreshing.

Snyder’s Return : 17:44

It is but there is something mentioned in your role playing game to do with what the game master can introduce not the correct terminology. I'll let you explain that more about how the the scenario can be more fluid and dynamic.

Matt Forbeck : 18:00

Sure, definitely, in the Cypher system, they have this thing called intrusion. So when players do certain things, sometimes it's a bad role. Sometimes it's using other points of use whatever, the game master will get an intrusion, which says, Oh, hey, this would be a great point for you to do something dramatic, essentially, right? So there's actually a mechanic in the game that encourages the game master not to just sit there and be a passive observer of what the players are doing. But to be an active participant coming up with their own ideas for how they could make things worse for the players, right? By worse, I don't mean like, you know, we're just going to stick them in a corner or beat them up or anything. But stories are more exciting when bad things are happening to the protagonists. And the Cypher system really does capitalise on that by by saying, you know, this is what's going on and you think everything's going swimmingly until you make this rule. And then suddenly, we now have a reason for us to come up with something terrible, right? And then you have to incorporate into the story the players have to react to it. The Game Master gets to react to it, and it leads to a lot of fun because of it. Like any of these games, they're definitely built for improvisational storytelling. But because they have mechanics like this, it makes it a little bit easier for you to know when you should try to pull the levers to make things happen, as opposed to just trying to guess your way along. And I think that's part of the genius of the system money and

Snyder’s Return : 19:20

it certainly piqued my interest reading through the copy that you sent to me and that tweaked a couple of flags in my mind for use in various scenarios. We've mentioned the word Cypher with respect to the Cypher system but they are your shotguns and sorceries. Has shotguns and has sorceries. What about cyphers which are mentioned in the game and I a tool as it were in the game?

Matt Forbeck : 19:48

Yeah, cyphers are an interesting thing because that wasn't something I baked into the setting originally we kind of took with money come up with and working into the game and in the background pretty well I think, but a Cypher Essentially money realise that a lot of these gangsters, there's several different types of economies, right? Sometimes experience points, but sometimes it's gold, right? Gold jewels, whatever. And a lot of times, it's magical items and magic items or these cool things that you can do things with, right. And in d&d, and a lot of these other games, you get something and then you get to use it forever. And, you know, if it's your plus five, holy Avenger, whatever it happens to be for your bag holding on, he said, we can make this into something that's actually more dynamic and more interesting to people by creating these cyphers, which are often one off things that you get to use, maybe they work a few different times, maybe you can have several, right. But the idea is that they're not just these precious little things that you have to treasure because you're never going to come across something like this. Again, they're they're embedded as part of the fabric of the of the universe so that when you get one of these things, you say, Okay, I'm going to use this just the same as you would use $1 bill in your pocket right or your family. Or whatever you have charger use it. If you don't have any more batteries, you go get a new battery and for whatever function you need this to produce. And, again, I think it's a neat thing because it has the sense of discovery every time you do something in the game where, okay, I achieve this. I do. Maybe I do get to take the treasure hunter, what's in the treasure? What's exciting about that? What's unique about that? And how can I use that in the game as opposed to having it just be a tally mark on my character sheet or add it to the number of my gold pieces, wherever. And I think that that helps create a lot of excitement into the game as far as making people excited for the year. This is one of these incentives that game masters used to get people excited about the game to keep them playing and keep them in the campaigns is to have these academies, but to make it more integral into the into the world into the setting end of the game. I think it was kind of innovative.

Snyder’s Return : 21:53

Yeah, it's it's definitely a way to sort of fuel them and as you say, making them single use Potentially simple use but more accessible rather than this sort of one time, you must go through a 20 levels of play to find magic it max definitely means that players should should engage with them and game masters, I would encourage you to definitely use them all right,

Matt Forbeck : 22:22

and also encourage you to use them, right? They'll give you situations that are like, oh, suddenly, this is you really should be using this now, right? Or, because again, you don't want this to be these precious things that are like putting trophy cases, right? These are things you should be using all the time. And actually, with things like shotguns and sorcery, it makes a lot of sense, because, you know, there's guns in the game. There's ammunition, you have all sorts of different types of funky ammunition. One offs you can use for different things. It's almost like every player has their own little bag of tricks that they get to carry with them that they can bust out in innovative, exciting waves. And honestly, that's one of the great things is a game that you give a player something and you're like, I have no idea how you're going uses but I'm sure you'll come up with a way that was surprised and astonished and hopefully delighted as well.

Snyder’s Return : 23:06

Absolutely. He mentioned that this game can be used for investigations and like a normal type feel but what kind of creatures and maybe monsters could they face if they did decide that? You know, they've they've done it they've solved a case in the city as it were, and they wanted to venture out with the walls what, what sort of thing could they come up against there that would spark the imagination?

Matt Forbeck : 23:35

Well, there's all sorts of different creatures you can come up with. I mean, there's, there's we come up with a number that we put in the main book that are some of them are, are dark and gritty little things that basically came from my imagination, rockfalls imagination, and Rob is a dark and funny guy. There's some interesting stuff there. We also have a new book coming out, that we're working on right now called monsters and main streets, which was a A book that was promised as a stretchable Kickstarter, which is essentially like 60, some different monsters, new creatures game. And that's something we're you know, we're not just taking stuff from the stories and saying, Okay, this is interesting. We're saying, Oh, geez, now what if we have a world like this? And this is the kind of things happening, what kind of new stuff can we come up with for this, right? And there's some pretty amazing illustrations that go along with this, the chairman Muller's team came up with as well. And I don't want to ruin any surprises for people because sometimes these are things that the Game Master is spraying on you. But one of the ones that Rob came up with that we ended up using in the in the first venture were these things called diggers, which were basically giant, you know, giant, semi intelligent, naked mole rats that live underneath the city. And they're always getting into things and you know, the dwarves think they're a nuisance, but just because you think they're a nuisance, and maybe unimportant doesn't mean they actually are and it also doesn't mean that they can't cause problems for you at various points, just like any other goods as well. And they're kind of, you know, wild things that, you know, they crawl, they dig into different areas, and then they can disappear into a crack just like a mouse can slip into a hole and get away from you. Right? So you'd be chasing them adults and boom, they're gone. They don't really want to hurt anybody. But that doesn't mean that they don't make life very interesting for you the process. And some of the things are darker and gory or, and Messier, and, and nastier, there's demons. There's others, there are actually angels. There's all sorts of wacky stuff. There's all sorts of different types of undead. We give stats with a ruler of the undead of the ruler of the dead. And the dragon and one of the main, there was all sorts of different organisations within the city to like there's the the orphan mafia, essentially it runs to the city. There's the Imperial dragons guard, which are the jackbooted elven thugs, that are the law within the city as well. So there's lots of ways for you to run up against trouble and you Sometimes twist that trouble to hopefully help you out. Huh?

Snyder’s Return : 26:05

Yeah, definitely. It's always interesting to see how people use different should we say organisations or factions against each other and sort of help bring the world alive in that respect. And you mentioned there a new release is that is there anything else you you guys are working on that, that you'd like to bring attention to?

Matt Forbeck : 26:28

Well, we have the adventure that I mentioned that my son is actually writing up right now. And then we have monsters of being straights. We're doing some cartoons card decks that go with this Cypher system has been known for having these card decks. So you know, say you're wandering along in a game, you're not exactly sure what you need for an encounter. You can just draw a card and you have exactly what you need right there. Or if you just want them for quick reference during a game so you're not flipping through a rulebook you could put the lay the cards are printed ahead of time, which is kind of nice little tactic as well. This is not meant to be a game Where we're going to be doing lots and lots and lots of releases. I've you know, back when I ran finical we did stuff like that or you know, we had a full line with dozens of books and for this kind of thing I really wanted to put stuff out there have people play with it if there's demand for more we will come up with more, I might end up opening it up to other people develop much as they do with like the DM skilled and vampire does and other games do through drive thru RPG mostly because I don't want to get on this treadmill where I have to just keep coming out with new product in order to sell the old product I just want people to enjoy it for what it is and and then we can all go on to the next thing is this for me, although this is a passion for me and a lot of fun. This is not my day job. I might although I guess in a sense it is i mean i'm i've been a full time Freelancer for 30 some years now. You know, I also do a video game development and I write novels I write articles. I do other game development for other people as well. For instance, I just had a novel come out for Minecraft dungeons, which is big video game that was just shipped by Mojang or mine, which is owned by Microsoft nowadays. And that book just came out on I guess last Tuesday, so it's been out for a week now. It's doing very well so far. But you know, I write novels for Halo I write stuff for Marvel but and then doing this stuff for myself, I put a lot of my own energy and passion into this and I encourage other people to do that as well. But it's also not i'm not betting my my kids college tuition on this right. This is just one other thing that we're doing we're gonna have fun and hopefully other people join along in the fun as well.

Snyder’s Return : 28:42

I'm sure they will and as the the artwork in the I don't want to call it the core rulebook because that, as you say, sounds like there's going to be hundreds of follow on to the new source book. The artwork in there I love I love the aesthetic. They're sort of I don't want to call it cartoon ish. But it's all very vivid and brought to life. It's evocative and brings the, the adventures off the page as it were,

Matt Forbeck : 29:13

yes. More comic book either anything else, right? It's done up as line drawings and then coloured in the same way that you would often call it a comic book. And in fact, one of the stretch goals I didn't mention that we're working on is we're doing a 22 page comic book for those so 32 pages with 22 pages of our story and a cover letter, just like a standard comic. But I've got the script done for it. I've seen breakdowns, and actually pencils. I've seen pencils for almost all the pages. And if we're lucky, we'll have inks by the end of the month, and then we'll go into colours and then we'll have it out there for the public to read and enjoy as well.

Snyder’s Return : 29:48

Well, might as well ask the lead on question where, when it does get released, will people be able to purchase up from

Matt Forbeck : 29:56

that's a good question. That one's gonna go straight out to us. Are our backers obviously. And then I'm not sure I'll probably see if we can get it up through comixology or through drive thru comics calm, probably both. I might see if Image Comics is interested in publishing in one shot. I haven't done anything like that with them for years. But we did do a deadlands one shot comic book with them got way back in like 98 or something like that, right. 9899 I forget. So it's possible to be able to find a publisher who's interested in bringing out a one shot like that, but if not, we'll certainly be able to have electronic editions and we'll do print on demand additions as well.

Snyder’s Return : 30:37

Sounds exciting and something I will definitely be keeping an eye out for. With respect to shotguns and sorcery. If a game master was to pick this up, such as myself or someone else who's been listening to this podcast or send it on Drive Thru RPG, what advice would you give to them or running any tips? The top role playing game for that matter, what advice would you would you offer from your experience?

Matt Forbeck : 31:06

Well, I generally think that when you play any kind of game like this, you need to make it your own. Right. I mean, there's, you could certainly play through published adventures and we have one for you. There may be more in the future. But you know, read through the book and see what fires in your imagination, right because ever person comes to this game or really any other game is going to find bits of the setting that really trigger them that get them excited to get their juices flowing, as opposed to what might work for somebody else, right. Somebody might think oh, man, the undead are the greatest thing other other people might say, oh, intrigue amongst the Elven reaches. That's that's really where I want to be right. Some people might say flying carpet battles over the top of the mountain. That's really my job, my jam. So figure out what's exciting for you and what you think might be exciting for your players. But if it's exciting for you, then you're going to have that kind of enthusiasm. I think it's going to shine through for your players as well. If you are just going through the numbers and doing it by wrote because you think it's what you're supposed to do, it'll probably fall flat. I mean, that's a good way to learn. If you're just starting out, you really don't know what you're doing. But if you have played a few role playing games before, and you're not just an absolute rookie, I encourage you to find the bits that you love. And then kind of spur off those go at any kind of perpendicular angle you want to, and come up with your own adventures, your characters, your ideas for this kind of stuff. And ideally, if you if you find this stuff is fantastic, for you'll come up with all sorts of amazing stuff that's going to be more vibrant for you and your players than anything that anybody else could have ever written. And I think that's really some of the magic of tabletop role playing games is that you have a game master there who can tailor that adventure for the players at their table in a way that no published adventure, no top down broadcast kind of thing could ever do. It's a really intimate and amazing kind of entertainment.

Snyder’s Return : 32:57

Absolutely, absolutely. I couldn't agree with you more Would you like to remind everybody where they can find yourself and find the content and and anything else you want to highlight?

Matt Forbeck : 33:11

Sure. Well for me you can go to my name is Matt for Becky can go to for back calm. That's fo r b e ck you can find me on Twitter at M for back mF or Bck I'm also on Facebook under for back you can find me on Instagram at RM for buck. And you can always email me at Matt at for back calm. I'm fairly open. Always happy to hear feedback from people love to see reviews of my stuff out there. people enjoying it. Hopefully you'll have a good time. Whatever you're doing, be able to tell me that you're having

Snyder’s Return : 33:48

I'm sure they will I'm sure they will and links to all your social media will be linked in the description below this podcast episode. Is there anything else you would like to bring To the for something you want to highlight in the game or something you've got coming up in the future or any other projects you want to, to let us know about.

Matt Forbeck : 34:09

You know, I always have a dozen things going on. The trouble is that a lot of them are under what we call a nondisclosure agreement, which means I have to talk about them until they're announced by somebody else right? Usually the person who's cutting the check for like, for instance, I'm working I was actually finally allowed to announce that I spent a good chunk of last year working on a game called bio muted that's gonna be coming out for the PC, Xbox and PlayStation by the end of the year so look for that when it comes down right. But if you if you're interested in see what I'm doing and go you get subscribed to my email list at for Beck calm. I honestly only throw things out there like three or four times a year so it's not going to flood you with too much information or bucket too much. And you can follow me on Twitter and I am not shy about talking to people and interacting with friends and family and fans. So you Give me a shot. And if you see me.

Snyder’s Return : 35:02

Absolutely. I'd like to thank you for your time today. It's been an absolute pleasure learning about shotguns and sorceries, and all the things outside of this one particular tabletop role playing game that you do and all the things that are coming up in the future. So I appreciate your time. Thank you very much.

Matt Forbeck : 35:24

Thanks for having me on. Adam was great to talk

Snyder’s Return : 35:26

to you. All right. I hope to speak to you again soon.

Matt Forbeck : 35:30

That would be fantastic.

Snyder’s Return : 35:33

You too, thank you. 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 and patreon.com slash nice return. music and sound effects provided for this episode are from epidemic sounds.com Transcribed by https://otter.ai