Interview - Daniel D. Fox - Zweihander RPG

Today I talk with Daniel D. Fox creator of Zweihander RPG, a Grim and Perilous world where your adventures will test the best of mind and muscle, where the monsters are of our own making.

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Transcript

Snyder’s Return : 0:28

Hello, and welcome to Snyder's return a tabletop role playing podcast. Join me as we enter a world of tough choices, a world where we could lose a limb, or our sanity, or both. You grab this opportunity with both hands as we enter the grim and perilous world was Zweihander with its creator, Daniel D Fox. Welcome. Hi, Adam. How are you today? I'm very well thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks for coming on the show first and foremost, to give a better context.

Daniel D. Fox : 1:00

Dry handling all the things we're going to come on to, in a short time. Would you like to give us a bit of background about yourself and your introduction into tabletop role playing games, please? Sure. Yeah. So obviously, thank you for having me on. It's it's always really strange to do interviews. Because, well, I'm gonna say it's strange. It's just, it's always fun to do things then an opportunity to talk to people in the broader tabletop RPG gaming community, including yourself, Adam, so thank you for for having me. A little about myself. So I'm a 43 year old rack and tour. I've been a storyteller my entire life. They get started. When I was younger, my grandpa would always get onto page that constantly telling stories all the time, or making noise or doing whatever else you know, his children ought to do. This eventually laddered up into starting role playing games when I was around. I think 11 years old, I think I was playing Dungeons and Dragons. Like many young children of the age individually Over time, you know, through a long winding career in digital marketing and advertising, it eventually led to me writing my first RPG. And since then, about three years ago, it eventually turned into a full time gig. I left my old executive job behind in advertising and I'm a creative executive director at Andrews mcmeel. And making RPGs. Full time and that's it. Interview over we're good.

Snyder’s Return : 2:33

All right. Well, it's lovely to have you on the show.

Daniel D. Fox : 2:36

Now, yeah, so that's, I mean, just just kind of that's kind of my, my, my start from RPG to kind of where I'm at today. And that's what eventually led to the creation of Zvi hander, which we'll go into now. So would you mind telling us a bit more about the the grim and perilous world is by hand, I know you've got a lot more in the pipeline.

Snyder’s Return : 3:00

It seems that we can touch on it a bit, but just an introduction to the game itself, please. Yeah, so so via hander, and I'll frame this from their perspective of myself as a role playing gamer. I feel what for somebody who played for many years of Dungeons and Dragons.

Daniel D. Fox : 3:18

The thing that was always missing for me was a game that one leaned heavily on skill use two was less high fantasy and three had a broad base of different classes. You could be there are some gives certainly touched on that gurps I think, to some degree Warhammer Fantasy roleplay. But a lot of those games developed at the time that they were, were a bit obtuse, they weren't elegant to play. They had some really weird, wonky rules. And certainly, you know, I certainly enjoy and appreciate the way those games were created and what for what they are but when I thought about what I wanted to do as why hunger I wanted to replicates the flexibility of a dark fantasy game with a lot of componentized design that allows players to really create mature stories. And I think that and when I say mature, I mean human stories like, you know, like the the sort of the strife that's going on around us out in the greater world, like, how can we channel some of that real world challenges through the lens of a role playing game as a form of catharsis and that's kind of what became the bedrock for is via Anders development. The idea of a grim and perilous RPG was a dark fantasy because dark fantasy comes with its own sort of baggage grew and perilous was the idea that you can tell mature stories like the stories from the wire, or even David mulches deadwater you know, mature storytelling through the framework of runs on style role playing, and using some familiar, elegant game mechanics that are present in other games. that that kind of is what is why hendre is about it's you can you can use it to build your own worlds. You can use it to replicate stories that you may see say and Song of Ice and Fire or Game of Thrones is done on television stories such as The Witcher, black company, these are sort of the black the dark fantasy genres that come for but I think about it but I also think about like the Italian Renaissance like the politicking in Milan I think about the interesting stories in you know, the fog Latin streets of London even though we know London doesn't have fog in the streets. But it's a way for you to essentially tell mature intriguing mystery filled stories that do away with Well, it's killed some works and that's the story is dead. It's about why are we killing these works, what's going on, you know, like, what's the real story behind it, you know, real human stories that we see in television and film in a novels, and how we realise that through a a fantasy roleplay lens. And that's that's really that's really what's why hander is to me. And we see people use it for many different things obviously. Some people use it to replicate Warhammer Fantasy roleplay Some people use it to replicate their own game world. Some people use it to replicate Game of Thrones, darkest dungeons, I mean, the the anime verserk. There's a lot of different ways that it's used. But I think it really speaks to its kind of core principle, which is to build a modular, dark fantasy system that allows you to layer on your story on top of it as opposed to being married to a background or a campaign world. I think in fact, we won't we're calling a world agnostic. In the same way Dungeons and Dragons is I haven't really defined game world campaign world so to speak. So I understand it the same way so you can create your own dark fantasy and grim parallel stories and layered on the mechanics and the way you go. So many options and influences there that you've mentioned. It certainly sparks the imagination and I'm sure it has

Snyder’s Return : 7:00

And those that, that listen to this and those that find my hand. So what's the looking at a game mechanic point of view? How does how does one play the game? Well, it like like many other RPGs it's traditionally played around a table or a digital table now that we're kind of living in the wake of COVID-19 across the world. So it'll have some familiar trappings. You have your your key storyteller, your game master, you have your characters who are played by players. So it's, it's traditional in that sense, but it's played using percentile based system. So d 101. of the things that I think is really intriguing about percentile based systems is that you always know what your chances for success are. There's no like hidden numbers. There's no having to like crunch numbers in the back of your head. I think that's the question. myself as a gamer, I'm always asking myself on a relative 20 I'm like, Well, what is my real chance for success? Like I know it, I know like 15 out of 20 is like a pretty good chance of winning.

Daniel D. Fox : 8:00

That mean mathematically, when I think about usability around the game table, I think about very simple terms. A few those simple design terms are, don't use division at the table, and be very clear and to understand exactly what your chances to succeed and action may be. percentile based systems lend the ability for the player to understand discreetly what their chance to succeed at any given action is. So, as opposed to being driven by d 20, like a lot of other games are it's driven by percentile dice, but it also uses a bounded accuracy model. This is a little bit kind of how the sausage is made, so to speak. But from a game mechanics perspective, if we look at fourth edition Dungeons and Dragons, there was a design concept introduced by Mike murrells called bounded accuracy. I think it was named bounded accuracy after it was created, but essentially it says, no matter what level you are never your level one and level 20 your character will always have some chance of failure Why hinders design the same way around the principal percentile based system, we bound our numbers to specific ranges. So even though you may be in basic tier with your first profession, there will still be things that are challenging in advanced here and your last profession. So you quote, won't out level the game, you'll always have some chance of failure. And the way the math is padded from a Numerix perspective, you'll see that experience across the entirety of the game so I think most people's take away from that like well must be really dangerous game The answer is not really. It's it's certainly grim and perilous for sure. You know, of course use unlike d&d, you do suffer lasting injuries to your character. We oftentimes say that naps don't heal stab wounds, why hinder? That is absolutely true. But I think that the really the real big difference between of I hander and other RPGs is that there's kind of a baked in morality, the morality system, and oftentimes alignment systems really don't have any sort of consequence if you act against that is why hander you have personality traits are kind of drawn between your belief and like meaning the thing you aspire to become, in your critical flaw, the thing that will always ruin you in the worst of situations, and characters in vi hinder are constantly dealing with the aftermath of the choices they made. Because oftentimes, like in real life, we make choices that are morally ambiguous and aren't necessarily always quote good or bad. And vi hinder really carries that forward through the game mechanics to to create a system that allows players only just to tell your stories, but also to see how their actions impact their characters because ns vi hinder you know, it's not really about characters changing the world. It's kind of quite like zero to hero. It's more zero to one meaning how will the world change characters? How will the characters evolve? With the choices they made and how they live with it, it's the it's the age old like, man does the is the beast, right? Like that whole thing. We we recognise that our said, we realise that through game mechanics, through what we kind of call our corruption system that allows a player to explore what it means to be an adventure, like in the sense that it's not just about you know, paid wet work, like a lot of RPGs boil down to unfortunately, and I hate to keep drawing. Uh, yeah, yeah. I'm kind of drawing a parallel here to d&d, but it's only because I think d&d is kind of our lingua franca of all role playing games. So it's hard to compare the two even though I love Dungeons and Dragons dearly, but yeah, it you know, it's a game where the outcomes are meaningful. In the end, it's much more than just collecting treasure and killing stuff and explore flooring. It's about dealing with that aftermath. It's about telling stories about politics. It's about telling stories about ethnic tension. It's about telling stories about, you know, what it means to have something at stake. That's much more than just losing your stuff. It's about losing your family. It's about losing your friends about losing yourself for that matter, as you kind of go further and further down the spiral. So that's, I guess, the long winded way of saying that it's a percentile based game, and it will have some familiar trappings as other RPGs. But it does do things differently in that and that's by design, and people seem they seem to enjoy it. I certainly enjoyed writing it. We certainly still enjoy playing around my game table, but people seem to appreciate that.

Snyder’s Return : 12:49

Yeah, absolutely. And we'll get onto to what is required or the books or the support through, say desk and things like that. But one thing you did mention, which pricked my ears up and is different to other role playing games is your professions. And you mentioned it in your description there. Could you go into how the professionals sort of tailor and change a character? Yeah, certainly. So, you know, so Dungeons and Dragons oftentimes will utilise classes so your your fighter magic user cleric, the major depending on what edition you're playing those names mean very different things.

Daniel D. Fox : 13:31

In vai hander, we assume that the character is an average person or something extraordinary has happened to them so they've lived their life at that point in that profession. And it could be anything from ranging from you could have been a peasant you could have been a camp follower. You could have been a bailiff, you could have been a Reeve, you could have been a prostitute you could have been a thief. You it's basically characters from all walks of life or at least all walks of life as we may be. Be able to believe in our minds that would be exist in a restaurant Renaissance style setting. So that basically means that there's roughly 72 starting professions, which is a lot. But the system essentially says you start out in this profession and as as time goes on in the story, you're telling character will evolve into new professions because much like our own lives, our lives evolve and change and take, you know, do we take forks in the road and sometimes that road leads us right back where we started. It's the same thing is Virender y hander says that you know, much like in the Joseph Campbell like the three story arc, we say ns via hiner. There's three major professions you'll make your way through and even to the first profession you're in is completely randomised. The professions you choose later on in intermediate and advanced here will be choices the player makes based on the story and the outcome of what they've wrought with their characters. So you may start out as say, I don't know A stevedore like a Lego, like a labour on docks, but you may end up in assassin or you may end up a politician or you may end up as like a black Magister, you know, following, you know, following the darker side of humanity. There's many different paths to take. And a lot of those are interwoven, really with the choice that players make in the story. And that's what the profession system represents is, I think about my own career like, I think about where I started, like when I was 19, working in Kentucky Fried Chicken, and then somehow ending up in after the.com bust working in internet and digital advertising and then eventually landing in a large agency and now working in game design. I think a lot of people can, can identify it that that our lives oftentimes take different paths and what we intended, and we try to replicate that with the profession system so that we can ground people in some semi ephemeral reality, I guess, in the game, so it's a little easier to, you know, easier pill to swallow and a lot of suspension of disbelief required there if you're playing a normal everyday person who gets caught up in a lot of unusual things, and oftentimes is role playing games do a lot of fun stuff happens, right? You make choices and things happen and you'd expect it to not only just from like, the dynamics of people getting together and making choices in character, but also just the way the dice roll. So professions are kind of that that behaviour realised mechanically at the game table. Well, I mean, as you say, there's some who want in the corner and speaking with the core rulebook, want to play his or gems need to sort of pick up and start playing spy hand if they see you're on, say, drive thru RPG or if they buy a hard cover? Yeah, so I think that, you know, if, if, if you're a Game Master, you know, the revised core rulebook is kind of the omnibus and in fact, it was the it was the book to get to When you were a player or a game master beforehand, it's a huge book. I mean, the first thing, anybody who sees it's gonna be 667 pages. It's massive. But the reality is, is that it's full of options. It's a fully baked player's Handbook, game, Master guide, monster, manual and adventure built into it. The reality is, and Zion really need to know 15 pages of rules at best. And those rules boil down to how do I roll my dice? What does my character do and how do I fight in combat when the chips are down? So from a from a player perspective, we typically recommend you picking up the player's handbook. The player's handbook is actually just the first 10 chapters is why hander revised core rulebook broken out. You know, we heard a lot from players like we want something smarter, we can carry around, you know, between between sessions because why hinder ways and this is this is true fact it's 5.12 pounds. Because it's a big book and it's in it's super high quality. We make everything in collector's grade quality. Everything we do, because we want to be a coffee table book as well, but players can pick up the player's Handbook, game masters, you could pick up the revised core rulebook. And ultimately, if you just have one book to buy for your group because by revised core rulebook because it has everything you possibly would need inside of it, in fact, the player's handbook and the revised core rulebook the contents pretty much the same, say for some new artwork and a new cover.

Snyder’s Return : 18:22

Alright, so that's two books available. Have you got anything out? that supports that main core rulebook, either for the players or for the sort of the games master to introduce?

Daniel D. Fox : 18:36

Believe on, you've got it mean? goosh Yeah, yeah. So what one is so we do have another book had Mangesh or in Missouri, here in the Midwest because we are a little bit of hex we call mine gash. Because we mispronounce everything in fact, we call it the Y hander as opposed to vi hinda, which is the German pronunciation but but my But Mongo is a settlement that is intended for players and game masters one. One area, I think just really is from a creative perspective and a sales perspective, the thing that I think about as a collector of games and I know we're doing something via podcast, but behind me like many other gamers, I have this shelves and shelves full of books. And those books are typically divided in three different ways. There's a core book, and there's some splat books for players, some splat books for game masters and some adventures. I spent a lot of money on RPGs over the years, and I understand you know, the economic pressures of having to like if you only got like 50 bucks in your pocket, or $50, or in this case, maybe 3030 pounds sterling, you may just want to spend like by one thing. So I'm always a bit of big believer from a creative perspective, like how can I provide the most content to everybody at the table in one book, and mangos much like in the same way, the revised core rulebook is intended for players and game masters so it has More professions, mostly darker professions, we call it main gauche, which means in French left hand, the left handed path, it has more darker magic in it darker options. So we have new styles of magic, new styles of rituals, we have new styles of gameplay, we have vehicle combat, we have like 48 new professions because you know, 72 wasn't enough. But we all and we also include a 35 page adventure in the back, because I'm also a big believer in like, don't provide rules unless you provide the context in which to use those rules in so mangoes also includes an adventure the back so it's included, so it's created for the game master and the players to use. So not everybody has to like by just their player only book or their game master only books. I think that what's also important to remember about gaming is that we want players to become game masters. With that in I say that in the sense that that's how you basically are able to To sell books, more people running the game means more books sold. Because the game master will always be the best cheerleader of your game. And the more we can empower players to make that transition between player to Game Master, the easier it is. So every book we release includes both player and Game Master options so that they can make that transition easy without having to spend more money. Because, I mean, let's face it, not only just the situation in the world, but I mean, I think that, you know, economically, it makes much more sense to provide more bang for your buck, but it needs to be quality content. So we're not just talking about stuffing a bunch of extra things in there that hasn't played tested, but we're putting things that are cogent, that are succinct, that make sense together. So MongoDB is a themed book because a themed book about the darker path with a left handed path. So the name of the book was an tensional. And the same is meant to be held with one hand and the left hand on this case, which because Weiner is intended to be held with two hands Southern You know, our clever creative side of ourselves, we're like, yeah, that's what we get to do. So that's the that's the main kind of like the main three books for Zvi hinder right now, but there is also in it for those of you who are familiar with the diems Guild. We work for drive thru RPG to have a community content library called the grim and perilous library. And I think there's like 182 products in there currently that are made by people. And that includes print on demand PDF, adventures, stories, characters, I mean, the whole nine yards. So the same sort of content you would find in the dungeon Master's Guild. You'll find also in the growing parallels library on Drive Thru RPG so we continue to expand horizontally as opposed to creating more splat bugs we can have, say, hey here, fans, take this stuff, make your own thing, monetize it if you want. We'll help support your demand efforts. You own the things that you create. And it's led to this groundswell. By hand over the past two years, that's been, frankly, it's been very, very surprising how quickly it's grown and how large the fan base is for it.

Snyder’s Return : 23:11

Yeah, I was just having a look at it there. And you saw as you say, you've laid out how to monetize and all the support you can

Daniel D. Fox : 23:20

you can provide and how to share things with the community, which sort of leads on to the sort of the sales pitch, which is where can people buy vai hander and its other books associated titles? Yeah, so I think that most most people are going to end up going to Amazon because there they are stocking Amazon in Amazon, of course, as we will know, you know, prices their own books, so however they want to price it so even though there's 500 revised choral books prices because 65 they you could buy it at Amazon right now for like 27 or something like that. Players handbooks like 18. I think right now, we have a coupon out there, but it's not but i think that you know what's imminent In November is that we're not just talking about online sales I mean granted you know, you can get the PDF for free if you buy the main core book we give it to people for free just because that's what we believe in. Send the digital version for free if they buy the physical book. But we also have placement leads to the United States we have placement everywhere mass market and not just hobby stores but mass market such as Barnes and Noble Walmart target. I mean, you find the book in the craziest places because we've we've you know, the publisher Andrews mcmeel, who I also work for now has 50 years of traditional book publishing so there are reaches incredibly extensive from schools to libraries, to mass markets, that basically means via hander can be found at Barnes and Noble side by side by dungeons and dragons and their critical role book. It's probably one of a handful of RPG that's actually sitting on the same bookshelves. But if you look in the UK and overseas, you find it in Waterstones we find that thread other kind of smaller indie shops and larger shops. as well because once again Andrews mcmeel has really good relationships from a sales and distribution perspective. So it's hard not to throw a stone right now in any hobby store or any online market and not find a copy somewhere. Because we do have that, that extensive reach but at the end of the day, I'm always encouraging people to buy their, their their books from their favourite local gaming store because I think that he knows we can all understand, especially in the wake of COVID. Local gaming stores are probably suffering the most, because they are smaller and are not changing don't have quite the same buying power that Amazon tos. So you know, I always say go to your favourite local gaming store and ask first if you can't find it there, pick it up on Amazon or maybe go to Barnes and Noble if you're in the UK or Waterstones in the UK or Barnes noble in the US. Absolutely. Definitely support the mission is to support friendly local gaming stores, or just local gaming stores if you don't find them particularly friendly but their businesses and local business Absolutely So, so I had to set in a very particular time period are you working on a thing that changes or shifts that focus that is I had a fans could be become excited about. Yeah So one thing we kind of set out to do is by hand or was to establish a game engine you know, we call it pirate visor by hander and what that what that really means is that there's a unified game system a dice system certain design principles, such as professions and action points in combat and uses a magic and ancestries and so such basically in the same way we may think of Dungeons and Dragons as a foundational system if we think about from through the lens of like the late 90s like everything is being developed against the D 20. system they had the GL open and such as why Ender is kind of similar. We have a created a platform to realise different genres of games so I think about my own home game like I'm route in the middle of writing up Pretty big campaign called Queen of embers which takes place in the city of Victorian time with new professions and new classes and new options, which eventually I'll bring the publication but some of the things are more immediate in front of us were our big project right now we're working on is called Project 1776. Which the actual name is not been has not been released yet. But it's basically a how do you take the via hander and realise that through the beginning of the American Revolutionary War? And more importantly, how do you position that? beyond just the simple British and the Americans like lining up with guns and firing and tricorn hats because that's boring. So we're working on Project 1776, which really keys on supernatural horror, as well as secret societies such as the Freemasons, the Inquisition, the Royal University, some really fun stuff around that and We're also developing it alongside a pretty diverse cast of people. We knew because this time period is fraught with a lot of really hard topics. Slavery is an example of indentured servitude, the massacre and genocide of indigenous peoples. So, we are shaping this game with black creators with indigenous voices with sensitivity readers with cultural consultants. We're approaching it from a multicultural perspective from, from men, women, non binary, and everyone in between, because we want to have a fair representation. But alongside that, we also have to stay honest and true to what is the grim and perilous way which is you're going to tell mature stories that take place during this really tough time period, but it's not going to be about fighting slavery or fighting racism or you know, like starting plantations or slaying a bunch of indigenous characters. It's going to be about uncovering secrets. Have the secret societies who are trying to manipulate the American Revolutionary War, and really playing characters who were cultures other than the players own at the own table. We're we're working really hard on that. That's going to be released next year in 21, toward Gen Con. But we're actually going to have a pretty big announcement, I think, here toward Autumn in relation to that. But also in parallel, we have another game we have not announced at all, nobody knows who the team is. We haven't spoken about it online that much have only dropped a few hints in there. It's like a true dark fantasy IP world. It's being created by people. I can't really talk about you because I'm under NDA. But we're going to make some you have to make some announcements about that. But it's a bit but I should mention that both projects 1776 and this other book are not just expansions divine hander. They're all in one books. So in the same way, we may think of the way that White Wolf expanded vampire over time, like all the books were kind of all in one. Same thing for Project 1776 is a it's a game masters guide. It's a player's handbook. It's a dungeon. It's a monster manual, and it's an adventure wrapped into one. Same thing with this other thing we're talking about this other day, a new dark fantasy IP we're working on. It's an all in one book. And that's probably what people can expect in the next two years. We also have we just announced recently, kind of a soft announcement, we actually just signed James intercom. So if you're not familiar with them, he is one of the lead developers Dungeons and Dragons. He's written or been deeply involved in the creation of the last four big campaign stories for d&d. We just signed him on as an author over at Andrews mcmeel universal and he's now working on like a full length campaign story like 400 page plus book. So we continue to expand in different directions. But I think more so than anything else. It really speaks to the flexibility and power of the Power BI is a winder game engine and really our desire for it which is to continue iterating new genres, new stories against it. But anytime we launch a new game that's based in it always has to have the kind of what I call the four pillars of what makes us why hinder game which is it needs to include the player's handbook needs to include the monster aliens include the game master guide in an adventure. So it stays true to those vikander likes. We like producing big meaty, hefty books that are all in one that provide a lot of value to consumers. But we always do that with the best of intentions from a production perspective. So we want collectable grade covers who want to reinforce spines lay flat binding, smiled sown. big thick, chunky ribbons. Nice feeling paper. This is where I think a lot of RPG companies struggle, which is how do we produce a beautiful book that isn't just a glossy paper? Well, we believe usability comes first So we don't do glossy paper, because you can't read glass paper underneath fluorescent lighting. But we always can on like collector's grade quality books. So everything we work on from Project 1776 to those new dark fantasy IP to the new campaign that's coming out in 2022 we have a few things in the hopper for 2023 that we're really close on contracts with now, it really speaks to the fact that we're trying to provide consumers with different ways you can place a vendor in different genres and different stories while building up brand recognition arounds vendor in the same way that DND is a household name it means vendor will probably never be a household name. I mean, to be real, just to be frank. But but we can dream and we know the publisher and I we certainly believe in the fact that's why Andrew has a lot of mileage in it. And that's not just through RPG either. We have other things we're working on right now to see that in different mediums, different media for that matter. So if you're if you're following his Wiener now, don't be surprised to see something that may be none RPG related for is why hander in the next six months announced.

Snyder’s Return : 33:07

Well, there you go, I may have to see what I can tease James the next time I get to interview him.

Daniel D. Fox : 33:14

Yeah, he's he James is a great person. I and I remember I when I went to PAX as like, I got to talk to James intercaste, though, because he's a he's a brilliant writer. And you know, he's been freelancing at d&d forever, obviously. And I was like, we can land that guy, like, we got a man in the shade. And he signed with us. We're really happy about it. But yeah, he's a he's a very generous person. He shares a lot of the same principles and values that we did Andrews mcmeel, which was a big attractor, it's one thing I always look for when I'm trying to bring on new developers, new writers with the company because we have a very traditional publisher approach as opposed to RPG approach, which is a little different. And he made such a great fit and he's been a great partner and he's incredibly creative and a man and imaginative so yeah, if you can, if you can, I don't know, if you get anything out of a more power to you good luck.

Snyder’s Return : 34:09

I can only ask I can only but you you've mentioned a couple of things going on so where can people go to sort of follow yourself ends by hand on sort of social media or other places in on the web? Yeah, so I'm I'm pretty active on Twitter, I think as most people are just vi hinder RPG, but our community which is really where I think people should go is on discord as why hunter discord is kind of the Nexus for everything. I think we're really 2500 members right now. It's a pretty big Discord. But it's super friendly, which is great. And then we kind of use that as our Nexus for all everything else that's surrounds it. So from our twitch partner channel to our homepage is 100 game, to our partners pages for Patreon through growing parallel studio

Daniel D. Fox : 35:00

goes to our storefront everything kind of starts there in particular because we just recently launched our we'll be launching I should say our organised play programme starting at Gen Con online this year so in two short weeks without right we we can some days right we will have an organised play going on it all and it all kind of centres around discord because we we get the big discord boost and we do TDP video and 60 frames per second super high like super high quality audio so we were launching there but everything centres really around our discord which you can find LinkedIn, my social media or anywhere else.

Snyder’s Return : 35:42

They'll be a link to your social media in this description of this podcast, so don't worry you're not gonna miss me so yeah, just because I'm a member of your discord as well. So there's things like the role 20 chat looking for games, organised play this, sneak bits on

Daniel D. Fox : 36:00

The project 7076. So definitely go and join that if you're interested by my handle. Absolutely. Yeah, we we, you know, I think it when we thought about like, because I was thinking about as a game designer, the thing I always desire as a player, like as a fan of RPGs is like, how can I get close to developers? How can I talk to them engage with them? We take a very high touch relationship with our fans, like, myself and our other developers are super interactive in the discord and we tend to leak things out there a lot. And we also actually, we conscript a lot of our play testers and writers from Discord. It's also where people are creating things for the groom perilous library. So in our dev chat, I mean, we have our developers working alongside people who are creating their own fanmade stuff and relates to kind of drive thru RPG because we try to make ourselves as available as humanly possible ranks. We all have our own responsibilities, obviously. But I'm a big believer in taking a high touch relationship. kinship with with players with people who are fans of things, both the good and the bad, right because you're always gonna hear some bad stuff too but I love critical I love constructive criticism. I thrive off that I think every creator does. So we so I stay pretty interactive in the discord and like you mentioned before our role 20 development is taking place literally in the open there as people may or may not know we released the entirety of the player's handbook completely for free as a role 20 Compendium about a month ago because we wanted to attend to needs for people playing vijender online but we want to do it for free because nobody else is really doing it so we're like yeah, we could do this why not? Let's Let's make an investment and see what happens so yeah, I mean started Discord. That's kind of our that's kind of the the hub everything's via Gander. And you'll certainly cross paths myself and others there daily because we're, we'd like I said, we do a lot of our own development in the open. We just think it's fun to do it that way. gets the community super engaged, especially when it comes to game mechanics questions. We can get a feed off of that and feed information back and forth. And it's really interesting kind of like, life cycle of information shared. I think in the end, it makes our product better. And it certainly makes the fan created stuff better too, because we have both sides kind of weighing in on where we can help, how can we help you know what may or may not be working, etc, etc.

Snyder’s Return : 38:32

Yeah, one of the points you've raised there is the discussion about game mechanics and how that can be queried and constructive criticism. So zooming out a little bit from the discord and to first time Game Master or a gaming group looking to play this for advice would you offer to new players coming into my handle, they've seen it, they love the artwork, they pick the this hefty tome up and they're looking to play it

Daniel D. Fox : 39:00

What advice Have you got to give? Well, I so that's a great question. Thanks for thanks for posing that, Adam. And I think that the and I get this a lot. They're like, Where, where do I start? And the answer is, don't read the entire book. The only thing you should read is how to play after don't and that's like eight pages when you're done with that, pick up a pair of percentile dice, and I know it's gonna be really hard to do this. But don't create your character. Don't Don't make choices to create your character just randomly roll all the way down. One thing is why hinder because it is has a lot of options, we have to find a way to kind of create guardrails around that otherwise, players end up in analysis paralysis, because they don't have a broader understanding of the way the game works. They're like, well, how can I possibly create a character with 72 professions and 10 ancestries and all these different personality traits and all these different drawbacks? So we say, when you create a character is via hinder. It's completely randomised in the interesting thing about that With the real kind of insight there as it achieves two things, the first thing is achieves is that you can create a character within less than 20 minutes, and you can be ready to rock you write a role, you've created this really interesting, interesting character to it breaks people away from stereotypes now, and I'll talk about what I mean about that. So I think that as role players, we tend to gravitate towards familiar archetypes. In my case, I love to play the sneaky rogue. Doesn't matter what game I'm playing him I try to emulate the sneaky rogue every time in his binder, you can certainly create that. But one thing randomization dozens why hander because there's just a multitude of options, in the same way that traveller used to operate like the old traveller game, you know, instead, you create what I kind of call a mosaic. So what you're gonna end up with is like some things that don't quite make sense when you first roll them. But when you see the character created on the character sheet, it creates a mosaic. If you take two steps back, you're like Okay, see how these things work together. So you end up with some really interesting combinations. And not just like mechanics. I'm talking about character, personality, character type. some really interesting things. I always look back toward the firt. The first character we ever randomly generated and why hander was a half human, half known prostitute who'd been gildan was missing a foot and that character's primary, Alliant their alignment traits were charity and scorn. And it ended up in in end up being this really interesting character like you would never think, to sit down at a game and say, I'm going to create that character. Instead, why hinder says just trust in the dice that it will create something intriguing and interesting to you. In that's the thing I recommend always for a player is like, remove the idea and it's really hard to do. It's like there's this cognitive dissonance when somebody tells you don't choose anything. Instead, it's like just trust the dice rolling all the way down, right? Your character on the character creation seat sheet and see what you come up with. Because I guarantee you're going to create a character that is unlike anything you've played before, with a combination of elements you've probably not thought to pull together and it will you will steer away from the traditional stereotypes that we as players are archetypes rather that we as players tend to gravitate toward and that's the best way to enjoys via hander is just randomly create the character all the way down the line and play the game master certainly has a little bit more responsibility on their shoulders they probably need to know combat. They may need to know a few other a few other mechanics. But one thing we do really well and why hander in particular in the back of the book where the adventure it's a 42 page adventure called a bitter harvest. We actually teach game masters to teach the game to players in the adventure. Like it's a tutorial venture. That's actually it's a probably a two to three session game adventure. It's not like a one shot thing, but it teaches players in game masters how to explore the idea of using mystery and chasing a combat and social entry in wilderness travel. Using all these different tools that existence by Hunter, it teaches a game master teach themselves and the players at the same time. So we, we really lean into the idea of like, how do we make this big 667 page book, easy to consume. And the reality is, is that as a player, just read the first eight pages, go create your character and jump in Game Master, read a little bit more, you're probably you know, about 25 pages of rules. But just like any RPG, you're going to learn together, players and game masters learn together, The Game Master is not the ultimate arbiter of all the rules. It's a joint experience. And that's the beauty of any RPG is that you do learn with your friends and your family, how to play a game and you're not always going to get it right and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that there's no right or wrong way to play RPGs but, you know, the actual level of investment you need to get started is fairly minimal for a player

Snyder’s Return : 44:02

Well, touching on a point you raised way back towards the start this, once the GM has taught the players, hopefully the players then progress to GM and the cycle continues more people come into via hand, and it just expands across gaming tables and communities.

Daniel D. Fox : 44:21

Yeah, that's what we hope for. You know. And I think that also speaks to the fact that we try to want to get that high touch relationship we like with our community, because we anything that we can do not only just to make your game better, but also to Empire to Become A Game Master. That's a winning strategy. As an RPG companies tend to create and they leave their creations out there and let people experiment and play and whatnot. Dungeons and Dragons is a little bit different. There's a couple other publishers a little bit different, but we're trying to kind of follow in the wake of best practices and what we want to see from other publishers which is, let's talk about the game Let's talk about how to run it. Let's talk about how to play as talk about the problems let's talk about how we can improve future design. Because we're not married to only our ideas, but the more we can, we can, you know, help people become game masters. That's how we win because game masters once again, game masters are the ones who sells books at the end of the day. I'm sure Adam, you probably know this too. Like, I as a Game Master, like I want to run a new game I buy the book and be like, Hey guys, we're gonna try this new book, boom, nobody else is gonna buy the book until they've played it. So the game masters like the first touch people generally have with with the game. Traditionally, at least online gameplay a little different. But traditional player on the game tables typically the game master brings a game forward and runs it or its player who buys and wants to Game Master the game so the more we can empower people to be better game masters or to turn players in game masters. That's the winning strategy. Not just from a sales and longevity perspective, but from like a like a one thing that we hyper critically believe like the what we think is really awesome about RPG is is like empowering people. To have the confidence to run games themselves in anytime that a publisher can help somebody do that. I think it's for the better.

Snyder’s Return : 46:13

I agree. Absolutely. Alright, so my final question, but what is it that you do outside of your work and in your downtime playing? So I handle other tabletop games and styles Do you enjoy? Well, you know, I the games that I run are grown parallel, but the games I play in are way different. I enjoy beer and pretzel style games like I love a d&d like a d&d has. I mean, it's my one. It's my it's the seminal game of my my youth. I certainly played regular Dungeons and Dragons, but a dmds where I kind of cut my teeth on becoming a Game Master. I love beer and personal style games. Just because

Daniel D. Fox : 47:00

I think he's a game master and a creator. I'm oftentimes saddled with all the weight of creating stories and making things like you're really grim and perilous and being serious, but the games that I like to run are a little bit different, or I like to play in a little bit different. I've also really started enjoying playing alien, the RPG by free league. That's easily become one of my, I think one of my favourite RPGs of all time. I love the freely game engine. I love the alien game world. I think that they're doing really interesting things. I wasn't too keen on Tales from the loop. I love the artwork. I love the book, but I don't really like the game. But seeing that game engine realised in a in a in a licenced game world that I really enjoyed and film has has made me recognise how interesting and cool that game engine is. So when I'm not playing a D and D, which unfortunately isn't as often as I like, a alien has become kind of my second favourite, and I've only played it a couple times at this point, but like I've really glommed on to it. I think a lot of game creators can probably know exactly where I'm coming from, like our opportunities to play games are fleeting. I'm lucky I get a game a week right now we play every Wednesday. In my we were playing in my basement up until March and we've been playing remote since then, obviously with COVID. But the opportunities to play in games are few and far between. Because there is a I think there's a special pressure for creators if they're running games, that they should be netting out some sort of ideas or work out of it to influence what they're working on during the day. So I don't get the opportunity to play to play as a player that often but it's a Game Master, I run a game every week. But outside of that, I don't really play any evidence do console games, almost that counts, but that's usually when the baby is asleep and the wife's asleep. That's fair enough.

Snyder’s Return : 49:00

The console it's your downtime and time to relax so you know if you have a favourite console game then then that's fair enough. Yeah. And strangely Rudy basso who works alongside Jameson trocar so I when I interviewed him recently he also as picked up and enjoys the alien RPG so it was there seems to be a lot of love for that game from various creative types I own a copy myself so I I know where you're coming from. I'm in the DM struggle of trying to introduce games like I like yours legs by hander and the alien RPG on one shots to my group so I may not have the same work pressures as you do but I understand the struggle of trying to play and an introduced new games. Yeah, without a doubt it I think that's pretty much universal like it's like I remember the first time trying to get players to leave digest

Daniel D. Fox : 50:00

And dragons are on my game table. It's like pulling teeth. Like we've been playing d&d for so long we like what it is like Yeah, but we need to try something new. Um, so yeah, I can identify that too. I mean some I remember when I was younger I played in this with this group they were changing games like every month and I was like, I can't even keep up. I mean, they still play that way. My friend Jason balton him and his group they they're constantly changing games which is great. We've never been named as kind of gamers I've always been like super I'm gonna say brand loyal but loyal to the game mechanics and the rules because learning games is tough you know, it's there's a there's a certain privilege I guess associated to it too because everybody has money to learn a new game and nobody has the mindset learn the game. So more power to you. Adam as your as you as you begin to introduce new games to your players and if I can help you spin up on my hand or in any way any faster, let me know. Well, as I said, I'm already part your discord which is a good time to

Snyder’s Return : 51:00

Just remind people where they can find yourself your products and your community. Yep, just just head does vi hinder game, everything kind of from that URL take you everywhere you need to go. Well, unless you have anything else you want to bring to the table as it were. And anything you want to discuss, no, I mean, just just kind of one one maybe parting thought, obviously, Adam, thank you for setting this up. This is this, like I mentioned before, it's always

Daniel D. Fox : 51:31

you had mentioned before, before we started recording, he said, you probably got thousands of these values. Every time I do an interview, like it's always it's always fun to talk to the person about gaming, not just talking about the vendor, but just talking about gaming in general. It's always it's always an opportunity I enjoy to talk just purely about the game as opposed to marketing, which is I tend to be on a lot of podcasts for so thank you for having me and we're just kind of chatting about games. This is fun.

Snyder’s Return : 51:57

It's been an absolute pleasure and Maybe once 7076 is a bit further down the line or you have something something else new we can we can have another chat further down the line in the future 100%. All right. Well, thank you very much for your time today, Daniel. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you, learning about Spy Hunter and all the things that you've got coming up in the future. Thank you again. I appreciate it. 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@patreon.com slash lies return music and sound effects provided for this episode off from epidemic sounds.com Transcribed by https://otter.ai