Hello and welcome to size return a tabletop role playing podcast interview enjoy investigation style gaming. Then you follow the right clues to find my guest today. He's a game system creator, any award winning content creator podcaster and writer, the warmest of welcomes to Mr. Robin D laws. Robin. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me How you doing? I'm very well. It's a bit hot and humid at time of recording but I'm doing very well.
Robin D. Laws :yourself. I'm doing Well and I gather by by the time this comes out it will be people were able to think about how hot and humid it is while we're recording and they'll be able to feel it a nice beautiful return to summer because I understand this will be dropping somewhat later. So everyone just enjoy how hot and humid we are. Because now you're in some other climatic condition that you don't want to be.
Snyder’s Return :Definitely, definitely. Well before we move on to learn more about you and the various facets of your sort of multiple outputs of your of your lifetime your career How did you get into tabletop role playing games, initially,
Robin D. Laws :sort of by accident. I was a I discovered role playing in what here in Canada called late grade school and then played it some more in high school and university. And I always wanted to be a writer but I wasn't in a role playing as an outlet. For my work, I just thought of it as a hobby. But I got involved with a fanzine called alarms and excursions. And through that, I met other people who were also getting started in gaming. And from then on, made wound up making contact sort of the early days of the internet with the other potential clients and some sort of by accident fell into full time game design.
Snyder’s Return :All right, well, let's let's talk about the the sort of game system design. Would you like to tell us a bit more about gumshoe how it all came into existence and and how much being used by thousands, maybe 10s of thousands of or maybe more people playing tabletop role playing games today, please. So gumshoe was a commission from Simon Rogers and then publisher of pelgrane press is still co owner of pelgrane but has a step back from the day to day at the moment. But anyway, about
Robin D. Laws :Well, if years ago, I want to say now, he came to me and said that he wanted a game that would solve the classic problem investigation role playing where if you have an ability where you roll for a clue and you don't get the clue, it stops the mystery scenario dead because the it's like, you know, a dungeon where you can't open any of the doors, you can't do anything if you can't get information. And so the basic idea behind gumshoe is that it's never interesting to fail to get information, it just stops the story. In practice, what a lot of gems did in with games that were you did have to roll to find clues is that they would then go now there's going to be some other way where you have to find out that you need to go to the Old Mill, let me spend 20 minutes improvising some other way for the character to make the role and then they would make that role and he had to really, really hope that they did it. Because if they didn't, then you'd have to improvise another 20 minutes well gumshoe when it comes to information gathering abilities doesn't do that. It just says if you are in the right place, with the right ability, describe yourself doing Whatever it is scouring the library for the book, using your forensic kit to look for fingerprints, whatever it is, you just automatically find the information that leads you into other opportunities to move the story forward. And ideally, you're not being led from clue to clue. But rather you've got a whole range of options that you can pursue, you know, do I go to the oatmeal? Do I go talk to the forensic scientist, whatever it is, but the key is, you in the point where you normally roll in an older game system, you just don't roll. And that allows us to give you not only that piece of information, but all sorts of other bits of information that you're gathering all sorts of other investigative abilities and it becomes less about being led from point A to point B to synthesising all the information you have and figuring out what's important, what's really going on. Now, there are other abilities, where it is still interesting to fail as it is another game so when you're trying to run away from The Goonies or repair the plane in midair after it's sold out. Or these are all things where if you fail, it's horrible, but it's still interesting. So move the story forward. And so for that card part of the game, there are general abilities, you have a pool of points, and you can apply. You can spend points to increase your die roll, your rolling a D six, and generally you're trying to get four more, but it might be higher for other things. And so with the mixture of those two skills, that's basically the essence of gumshoe, and it is applied to a whole bunch of different settings from the original Super agents versus the occult of the terrorists to the ordinary people in horror movie situations and fear itself. The one a lot of people became familiar with gumshoe through his trail of Cthulhu, which is kind of heights adaptation of the classic game Call of Cthulhu. To gumshoe, we have other games as well from ash and star My Space offer game time will hatch which is Kevin copes time travel game nights black agents, which is kind of hide again, that's a spy thriller action where you're being pursued by vampires. And so there's all sorts of different iterations and the most recent one of them being the yellow King role playing game, which is my massive and ambitious game of reality horror, inspired by the yellow King cycle of stories by Robert chambers. So could you expand on because the yellow King available on Drive Thru RPG and I'm sure very various other outlets that we can touch on a minute. So
Snyder’s Return :could you expand on on that a little bit more? Give us almost a sales pitch on on what people would expect if they picked up this this new game that you've released. Alright, so this is a game that takes your characters through a series of refracted realities. The idea is that there's this book. It's a
Robin D. Laws :A plane that has never been performed called the king in yellow. And it still originates in the 1890s and is quickly banned, but it keeps finding a way to reassert itself in history. And people who read it either their their consciousness is altered or perhaps reality itself is shattered or both. But it turns out that there's some sort of weird supernatural entities including the self titled king in yellow, who are launching an assault on unreality in history in people's minds. And your characters go through a series of iterations over four different settings. The first one is Paris in 1895, in the Bella POC, so there's sort of historical horror against one of the most interesting and colourful periods of European history and in in Paris. The next iteration is the wars which is a strange alternate reality war that in which you are fighting the Continental war in Europe in 1947. The battlefield is full of strange walking tanks and a dragon fly like Gyrocopters. And, again, there's a you're fighting a war, but at the same time, you're beginning to realise that it's all a big supernatural manipulation and the soldier characters who have some sort of connection to the previous set of characters from generation and a half ago, are slowly figuring that out over time. The next one is called Aftermath which takes place in the present day, but in an alternate reality, 100 years after the sinister yellowcake backed castine regime has been overthrown in America. And you are one of the XX surgeons who took out the corrupt regime and you're a non police trying to go put your regular lives figuring out what sort of country you want to rebuild, but also still, there are remnants of supernatural Minister in the corners, and whether you like it or not, you're the ones best equipped to deal with them. And then finally, in the fourth setting, this is normal. Now you play the same characters, but in our ordinary non threatening, not going crazy at all reality or insert. And so each of these columns is a separate book within the full set of the game. And they're all wrapped up together in a beautiful magnetic slip case that also functions as a pair of GM reference screens. So it's a beautiful physical production. And it's a big ambitious game that takes you over multiple realities and times, you can dip your toe in and just play a one shot and one of the settings you can confine your game to say Paris or perhaps just to Aftermath whatever your favourite is, or you can run a big epic version that takes the players through all of them, which is what I did for my group and a game that ran for about a year and a half.
Snyder’s Return :Oh, wow, wow, how did that turn out in the end? It was great. I don't want to give away what happened because it's a one of the best possible endings that you might also go through a few wind up playing it. But it ended on a beautiful note of circularity, with the modern day characters going back and interacting in a somewhat sinister fashion with the characters from the original Paris game. Yeah, that's that sounds like an amazing adventure. And I don't want to sort of rob people from from the the future and their own outcome. So definitely not sort of spoil the content too much for people. But what have you been working on recently and and sort of in a recent history, should we say you won the ending the war?
Robin D. Laws :What I'm working on right now I'm going back and forth between two contrasting projects, both set and Greg Stafford's classic fantasy world of glorantha I'm working on the second chapter of the six ages mobile game for a shark. If you're not familiar with that, that's a combination resource management and storytelling game set, where you're managing the affairs of a cattle based rating clan, in the extremely rich, imagined world of glorantha. So the first chapter of that is already out, it's a sequel to a previous game called king of Dragon pass. So it's a very interesting and challenging form of storytelling, which is sort of half quasi coding and half narrative on my end at any rate, and the other thing I'm working on is the big rebel and Pappas box set from the new version of request. And if your request fan, you know, that is sort of a big classic quasi dungeon ruins sandbox campaign. With the city settlement next door to it. And so we're looking at ways to try and update in particular sand sandbox play, and make things really work in a way that you wanted them to back in the day where if you're a rune quest fan, you remember that first marks that finally All right, well, I'm sure there's there's definitely room quest fans out there that will sort of be eyeing the shelves and
Snyder’s Return :say drive thru and wherever else wherever else it is, is released. Released gleefully, definitely, I'll just touch on, on that, where can people find you and get in contact with you and your content.
Robin D. Laws :Um, so for any of the gumshoe stuff, you want to go to pelgrane Press calm. The and I'm on Twitter, which is probably the best way to find my stuff, and it's just simply at Robin D laws. I also do a weekly podcast with my colleague Kenneth height. It's called cannon Robin talking about stuff. If you search for Ken Robin talk about stuff in your podcast app of choice that will come up or you can look for that kinda Robin talk about stuff calm, or you can look for our Patreon and search for us on there.
Snyder’s Return :All right, well, links to all that will be in the description below the podcast, sort of touched back on, gumshoe there. Is there an alternate gumshoe system that's maybe for a younger audience or a more youthful adventure?
Robin D. Laws :There is a kid's gumshoe in the works. Garth Ryder Hanrahan is working on that. But it is not yet the closest to sort of a younger themed simpler version for that is a game that has actually published by evil hat called bubblegum shoe. gumshoe is available through an open licence. So if you want to publish gumshoe stuff yourself anybody listening to this, you can do so. And evil hat took advantage of that in order to publish something that's sort of the teen detective space. So it's like Veronica Mars, Nancy Drew that sort of thing? Is it there's even a possibility of doing one where you have a quasi intelligent quasi talking dog with you as you look for mass real estate developers, but it's an IT HAS A all the gumshoe games find a different way to sort of approach the system and do something interesting. And that one has sort of a cool kind of social combat system that makes the emotional relationships between the various team characters as important as anything else in the game.
Snyder’s Return :Right, well, as you say, that's that's open source, the gumshoe, but you tweeted, I think it was a treat a little while ago now for quite a while ago at a time of release, but time of recording
Robin D. Laws :was a short while ago about hillfolk and a drama system, our role playing game, which was about resolving riveting personal conflict. What's where where do you stand on on that today? So hillfolk is also available from pelgrane Press, we'd launched that with a Kickstarter a good while ago and it's sort of ticking along in the background, something I would love for people to focus on a bit more of one thing I think, would be perfect fodder for a twitch game if anybody's looking for a plat a game system that really enables character interaction. And so basically the idea with hillfolk which is one of the many settings that come with that game, is that you are creating a game dynamic that feels like a extended cable Series Drama over time. And so think about the sopranos are getting A Game of Thrones or Mad Men or Breaking Bad. In any show like that succession you can do with a drama system. And basically, there is a GM but everybody else has a character that they play. And you initially start out by creating your own character in relationship everybody else, you're setting up your dramatic poles, internal contradiction that you ping pong back and forth between and also what you want from all of the other major characters. And then they specify why they are not prepared to give that to you. And so you go around in the course of an evening, each player calling a new scene specifying Who else has characters in that sometimes there can be supporting characters played by the GM. And you basically, in any dramatic scene in any traditional media, there's a structure to it. There is a character who wants something, which in this game is called the petitioner and there's a character who may or may not grant that petition the grantor and so you play up the scene just improvising dialogue. And after a while, it sort of reaches a natural conclusion. And at that point, either it becomes apparent that the grantor has said yes to the petition that they've moved emotionally in some degree toward the other character. In that case, the grantor gets the main currency in the game, they get a drama token. But if the grantor says no, if they refuse the request, then the request or the petitioner gets the drama token. And as you move through the game, accumulating drama tokens, you can then use them. If you have two of them. You can spend them to require the other character, your scene partner to make an emotional concession toward you. They then get those tokens gaining currency within the game. They don't have to agree 100% everything that you want the way that you want it because it doesn't work like that, but they have to come toward you in some way. However, if you have three drama tokens and someone tries to force you you can spend those to resist The force. And so basically you just go around the table building a story and a continuity, from scene to scene to scene as you go along. It's a very simple structure, very easy to play. It's no numbers involved. And but by the end of the process, you have a story that it's has a complex emotional structure to it that derives from the way that our characters interact in fiction. And in fact, the way that we interact with one another with people we care about in real life because traditionally in role playing when there's two player characters, who are butting heads, there's no way to resolve that. And basically both players usually dig in. Right The classic early example a lot of people learn to roleplay with is the thief wants to do something in the d&d Party and the Paladin doesn't want them to the thief says I want to do this Elon says you can't be says what I really want to Paladin says but I really don't want you to and there's nowhere to go from there. But in real life, when people care about each other, they do occasionally give in to each other at least half the time. And that's what the basic dynamic of drama system rewards so you can find that under the name hillfolk. Again from pelgrane programme press calm or as used to just drive through.
Snyder’s Return :Not sounds good. I love the way that sounds that the even the way you describe it, the ebb and flow that sort of commit and concession between parties. I love it. And so we you mentioned a little earlier that you indeed have a podcast with fellow creator Kenneth hight and you talk about stuff. So who are you? What have been some of the favourite things that you've discussed during your time together during the podcast? Well, of course, because we were role playing game designers that we always talk about role playing games. The first segment is
Robin D. Laws :almost invariably What we call the gaming hot or sometimes we have another gaming segment that we label in a different way. And we talk about design, we talk about GM tips, we discuss our projects and progress and how we're taking our different theories and approaches to design and applying them to those products. But we also often will discuss the occult conspiracies, the strange paranormal things from UFOs to cryptids, and so forth. We have a segment on history, we do something called Ken's Time Machine, where I can of course who has a time machine he describes his travels back into history, and the alternate time streams that are developed and why those were good or bad. We talked about movies and television and narrative, sometimes architecture and culture and all sorts of things. weirdly though, one of our most popular segments is the food hot, which we would never have thought to include in the show. But as a payment of a favour from john Kovalchuk, who drew our original graphics, he got to as a sponsor, Mr. Rita's request a segment and he wanted us to talk about food. And so every so often we talk about food. And that's, much to my surprise, one of the most popular segments on the show. So we try to have quite a varied series of topics that we address and basically anything that we one of us knows about, the two of us can wind up
Snyder’s Return :well at time of recording, your most recent episode includes TP K's, crystals, the Mandalorian and a few other topics. So definitely worth going to check that out. You mentioned there about giving dm and GMT. hips and and, and that kind of stuff. So if you could offer advice to someone looking to play the one of the gumshoe systems or any kind of
Robin D. Laws :tabletop role playing game out there What? What advice not stealing your segment from your podcast, but just offering out as a general advice? What advice would you give to people looking to get into tabletop role playing games, I'm the one. This is not my first piece of advice I usually give but it's one that I wish that I had heard early on, which is as a GM, don't be afraid to gently nudge the players toward help Don't let them flail around when they're trying to decide what it is that they're going to do, and help them sort of moderate their discussions with each other. So if they forget an important clue, or remind them of that, remember that their characters can experience and sense much more about the world than the players can from your simple verbal description of it and may be confused or may have forgotten things. So don't be afraid to remind them of stuff. When the players, often the players will make a list of possible things they can do and immediately reject as impossible the main obvious thing that you expect them to do. And so when they can't decide where to go forward, I will often now say, Well, okay, so, so far, you've thought about going to the Old Mill, you've wondered about possibly talking to the guy in the forensics lab. Oh, and don't forget a seasoned investigators, you know that the newspaper editor who you talked to seemed kind of shifty, and you didn't go back and figure out what was going on with him. So you might want to remember that one as well. And so by being willing to sort of be their facilitator and help them move toward a direction, I think that that will, is a much better approach than the sort of more standard kind of old time It's like, Oh, well, it's up to them if they, if they screw it up, or, you know, if they're stuck, they're stuck because they're, it's their, you know, they haven't worked their way out of that. And they're really, that's not what we're shooting for at all. You want people to have fun at the table. So don't be afraid to break the fourth wall to make something fun happen. A lot of gyms will say, Oh, well, if they're stuck, you should have somebody come through the door with a gun. And sometimes that works. But often that just actually over complicates things and is often sometimes punitive. So don't be afraid to do the simpler thing of just shaping discussion.
Snyder’s Return :I think that's great advice. Something I'll definitely be taken away to my table and with my place, centre. Let them flail a bit too long and and maybe I should help more. So that's something I'll definitely take away from this discussion. So you are a writer, a content creator, a podcast To you are, you know incredibly busy? What is it that you do for downtime?
Robin D. Laws :I, in normal times, if not in the COVID verse one of my favourite things to do when the weather is nice is just to walk around my beautiful city of Toronto, also a big fan of cinema in an ordinary year. This would be the lead up to Toronto's annual Film Festival, which happens at the beginning of September. This year, there's some sort of virtual thing that's going to happen and we'll see how that goes. But and also as I said before, food I love to cook and experiment with new ingredients and and cuisines and also moderately explore the world of wine and beer and spirits.
Snyder’s Return :moderately I like that. Everything in moderation apparently.
Robin D. Laws :So I actually liked it, like the taste of all of those things, but I don't need to being smashed. So yeah, that's it's part of it's part of dinner or a nice relaxing thing at the end of the day.
Snyder’s Return :Sounds good. Sounds nice. But it sort of drawing on these these influences you've mentioned and stuff you discuss in the podcast. What is it that that influences you most as a writer? Not just for tabletop role playing games, but for the books and novels you publish, what is where do you draw your inspiration from and how do you engage into the sort of the writing process, um, the writing voice, which is something that you discover is sort of a distillation of you plus, everything that you read, particularly everything that you read when you were developing as a writer when you were young. And so there
Robin D. Laws :are little bits and pieces of everything from jack Vance to Dashiell Hammett to Jim Thompson, to Robert stone to Jane Austen, to Shakespeare, and Sam Shepard. And so in my stuff and I think that when you finally look at it, you might or might not recognise any of those things in there. And the point is to of course to have a, a series of influences that meld with you in a way that creates something that is unique to you. And the so read a lot, absorb a lot, have a wide variety of influences. So if you want to write mostly in the science fiction or fantasy space, don't just write words, right? Don't just read those authors, but read literary fiction, read others genre fiction, and also read a lot of nonfiction so that you have knowledge and information to draw upon for inspiration. And then the other part of that is just sit down and write and write a lot. And keep going. If people are interested in the mechanics of writing, actually, I have a couple of books about a fictional structure. If you want one that is addressed to the fictional structured role playing games, that is called Hamlet's hitpoints. If you want one that is just about storytelling, for traditional media, whether that be tiny novels or comic books, or film, television, whatever, whatever. There's another book called beating the story and these are about taking the, rather than the big, broader structural things about narrative which change over time and are different from one genre to the next. It looks at the moment to moment movement of emotional beats within any scene and creates a sort of a system. There's even an online tool that you can use to outline Using the particular narrative beats that this system of beat analysis describes, and you can get those wherever books are sold, including Amazon, and that is from a publisher called game player. All right, well, that's that's a lot of useful information. And then I appreciate you sharing that with me. And I'll definitely put as many links as I can to this
Snyder’s Return :goldmine of information that you're gonna be a lot less now. Sorry, I'll just trim down the description and take out some of my own links so i can i can survive. But, um, so we've spoken about, like hillfolk, and the yellow king and a few others. Does, gumshoe support a more intimate sort of roleplay experience. I've spoken recently with Jeff dahmer the party of one and he plays, single shot dmdm and one other player is is the gumshoe system capable of supporting that
Robin D. Laws :Why you must be talking about gun shy one to one, which is available in a couple of different books. So this is a version of the system that I tuned specifically for one GM and one player. The first book is called Cthulhu confidential and includes and that is basically 30s or 40s Hard Boiled detective genre mixed with a classic lovecraftian horror. I wrote one of the characters is sort of your basic la detective Ruth Tillman did a New York newspaper reporter named David Sinclair and crucify v. Does a wounded war veteran in washington dc in the in the 40s. during wartime and his character Cthulhu is the least of his problems when he has he has to solve crimes as an African American man in Deeply racist society. And so all of those allow, they give the the GM a lot of backup and very specific type scenarios because when you're playing with one player, you don't have time to think up stuff that's going on, you don't get to sit back while the players are spitballing ideas, but rather you have to have characters and situations all ready to go and a mystery that makes airtight sense. And so therefore, the the system is designed for that it's designed to sort of keep the narrative within a manageable container while still providing a rich array of choices and also creates a situation which is really tense. And because the player is on all the time as well and just as the jam is on stage all the time, and it also allows you to feel really alone in the world and a lot of the scenarios Because we'll have moments that you could never do in a multiplayer game because a whole group of players would never get into this situation, but a single character absolutely would. And so there's a newer iteration of that as well, by Gareth Hanrahan that's gurps solo ops which are sorry, let me restate that. There's another newer version by girth rider Hanrahan that's called Knights black agents solo Ops, that takes the Knights black agents vampires vs. Spy game, and it places that within the one player one jam context, that was a bit of a design challenge for car because a modern spy can do many more things as many more options and a 40s detective would. And he's now working on a fantasy, gumshoe one to one iteration as well.
Snyder’s Return :Exciting stuff so that's all the things that are out or potentially coming out soon. So what is next for you now that the sort of the yellow King and the hillfolk, and a few other bits and pieces are running nicely in the background either being released or or kickstarted? Where do you go next? Well, as I said, I'm working on those two different glorantha projects, and they're going to keep me busy for a good while to come. So, Robin, is there anything that you would like to sort of bring to for maybe something that I've not touched on or we've not spoken about something you'd like to bring to prominence at this point of our interview? Well, I think the main thing I would like to just say is is how grateful I am to gamers for keeping the hobby alive and finding new ways to play the game, as the pandemic has basically taken 2020 and throwing it in the trash can and it's been great to see a rally
Robin D. Laws :In building of different gaming communities, whether it's in new discord communities or online or people are shifting to online play, I know I've certainly done that as well. And it's really gratifying to see this form of creativity being because all of the pieces were already there to run games online, people are already doing it. And I think that, you know, anybody who has been involved in running more games and online attending virtual conventions, joining discussion groups, anything that we've been able to use to take our hobby, and to make it as sort of a an emotional and recreational Lifeline, during this trying time, I think deserves the opportunity to pat themselves on the back for that, right a difficult time. And it's going to be difficult for a little while longer, and it's really great to see tabletop gaming be able to unleash people's creativity and the people or distraction During what is a unprecedented time of struggle for people all around the world?
Snyder’s Return :Absolutely. And it's a community that just keeps giving back so long may it continue. Long. May it continue what? Probably Would you like to sort of restate where people can find you and your content? I'd hate to leave the interview and not have people sort of use the links below just to to go into by your amazing products. So you can find
Robin D. Laws :the various gumption games I mentioned, including the silicon roleplaying game, and you can find hillfolk at pelgrane. Press calm. You can find our podcast by searching Ken Robin talked about stuff in your podcast app of choice or typing in Ken and Robin talk about stuff calm in your browser bar. I am on twitter at Robin D laws you can find beating the story and Hamlet's hitpoints Your favourite book purveyor, or from game play, right? dotnet.
Snyder’s Return :Alright, so said I felt the time is now the as many links as I can, I'll be in the description below. So definitely go and check those out. Robin's been an absolute pleasure, sort of stealing some of your time from you today. I'd love to have you back on the show of the future back on the show in the future, if you'd be willing.
Robin D. Laws :Just Just drop me a line. Absolutely. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure having, say having some of your time. So I will let you get back to the rest of your day. As I say when this releases it will be in the fall, but we'll enjoy what's left of the summer heat for now. Okay, well, thank you so much for having me. I'm going to go back to writing a scene in which protoplasm destroys the world. Ah,
Snyder’s Return :Tony, you said that at the start, we might have talked about that more. In I should have time. What's, what's the scene for? That's one of the scenes for the six ages mobile
Robin D. Laws :game so i can i can tell you, I can reveal no spoilers, but maybe I can give you a hint, which is if you're playing the game and the protoplasm starts to show up, you got to take action. You can be zero tolerance for protoplasm infestation. Alright, we will keep that in the back of our mind. Thank you, Robin. I will speak to you again soon, I'm sure. Okay. Take care. Thank you.
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 nice return. music and sound effects provided for this episode are from epidemic sounds.com Transcribed by https://otter.ai