Interview - Peter Chiykowski - RockPaperCynic - Story Engine Deck

Today I talk with the Creator of Webcomics and the Story Engine Deck, Peter Chiykowski. We learn more about the versatile, adaptable, system-agnostic tool for DMs, GMs, Keepers, Storytellers and Creative Writers. Peter has also worked on Emberwind RPG which we discuss briefly.

You can find RockPaperCynic and the Story Engine Deck via the links below.

Website:
https://storyenginedeck.myshopify.com/
https://www.rockpapercynic.com/

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/rockpapercynic
https://twitter.com/storyenginedeck

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/storyenginedeck/
https://www.instagram.com/rockpapercynic/

YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmDDQZMjhcJfx-4GlMpCeuw
https://www.youtube.com/user/rockpapercynic

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Yours Sincerely,

Adam 'Cosy' Powell

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CAST & CREW

Host: Adam Powell

Guest: Peter Chiykowski

Sound Design: Adam Powell

Music: Epidemic Sound

Cover Art: www.Wix.com

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Transcript

Snyder’s Return : 0:28

Hello, and welcome to Snyder's return a tabletop role playing podcast. Today I get to speak with someone who not only wants to entertain you with a webcomic but also asks you to not only play the hand you're dealt, but also to create amazing adventure hooks mpcs and so much more. My guest today is Rock Paper cynic. Peter Tchaikovsky. Peter, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. It's an absolute pleasure Peter. Before we get into the story, engine deck and and everything else you do, would you like to give us a A bit of background about yourself and how you got into tabletop role playing games, please.

Peter Chiykowski : 1:04

Yeah, of course. Um, so I mean, I've been I've been playing tabletop role playing games since Well, before I started creating anything as a creator. I remember I think I was in grade three. And I don't know how that translates to yours or forms in the UK. But in Canada, we call it grade three. And I think that was the age where some friends and I started basically improvising. This, we had one dissects that we would roll around the playground, just like straight up on the on the concrete and we would make up the rules for this. Sword and sorcery. Kind of mostly improvised tabletop game that I cannot remember a single rule to. But we had a tonne of fun. And eventually, I found out that there's actually like a thing for this called Dungeons and Dragons that was much better structured, and was not also just purely about the joy of like flinging a six sided die across the playground to see how far it would go before you get to land on a number. And I got really into d&d, and for me, the first set that I played on was a garage sale. So me keep in mind like this was it was an old box and I got it but I went to a garage sale I saw the hardcover, a d&d book from like the 70s. And then the keep on the Borderlands, and I feel like it was I'll dread or I'll have magic, but basically scenario boxes, the pink and the blue box, and they were on sale for like $2 Canadian. Which, you know, even I think I was in grade five at that time, and that was that was within my, my, like, allowance budget. So I bought these and I started playing like faco 1970s 1980s d&d in the playground. And this was in like the late 90s. So there was like better d&d Oh, by then origins a better but there was like an updated DMD with cleaner rules and you know, Dorf, an elf weren't a class anymore, but I was I had, I was slowly coming around to the fact that Oh, like there's actually a full there's a whole game behind this and there's a whole community that plays it. But over time, I finally got up to date in like three, d&d three and three, five. And by the time I got to college, I started a, like a multi campus gaming society in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the east coast of Canada, and we got around to playing like a living style campaign running across three different campuses. And that's when I really got into seeing like how, how big and innovative of a d&d community there was like how much really cool fan made content there was, and how like, for me, my favourite parts of the game are the parts that that would happen when you leave behind purely the stuff in the book and you start to go out in the limb and create your own stories, or your own like prestige classes or come up with your own spells or monsters or characters. And it was just so much fun. And having like a really good rule support base for that that you can expand Have an improvised alpha was a tonne of fun. And around that time I started writing my first short stories and poems as a writer. And then as a cartoonist, I started an online webcomic around the time that I was really getting into gaming. And so, you know, because I write about what I'm living, a lot of writing went to fantasy and a lot of my comics ended up being about, you know, what it's like to be a gamer what it's like to gather around the gaming table and go off on these really weird adventures and stories and tangents. And eventually, kind of start to make a name for myself through the webcomic Rock Paper Cintiq and started going to more and more conventions and eventually got to like Gen Con, and I just kept seeing how big and weird and amazing the tabletop gaming world is. And yeah, and just having a tonne of fun with that and trying to reflect the strange joys of being a gamer in my comics and Because I spend so much time at conventions I started doing more and more tabletop themed merch I was doing like these cool collapsible dice towers that I would do my like jokes or designs or drawings on to be these really funny tabletop themes, dice towers. I started writing for a tabletop RPG called Ember wind, getting to write campaigns and stories, which is an had been like a dream of mine pretty much since I started putting together the fact that I could be a writer and a gamer that there was some kind of future and doing both of these together. And, and, and then that eventually led me to coming up with the story engine, which was like a deck of story prompts for storytellers in games are for writers who are looking for an idea for a short story or a new character. And kind of finally brought together all these things that I loved about the gaming community about like people who are creative and come up with their own content for the game and you can go off the beaten path with the story and invent your own stuff. And I also loved as a writer, about being able to like facilitate the creative process, so it kind of brought together Everything that I love about all the different disciplines that I work in and turned into this weird cool projects that vastly grew what I thought it was going to be. And this turned into its own kind of like, community thing. And like literally up until five minutes before hopping on the call with you, I was I was unboxing the first like full proper production copy to come directly from the factory. It was my first time sitting which I'm still buzzing with excitement. It's my first time seeing this, this, this long path come to fruition. And it's so cool, and I'm really excited to talk about it. So again, thank you for having me on. And I literally gave you my life stories. I apologise if that was more than you're asking for.

Snyder’s Return : 6:41

Actually, that was everything I was asking for, to be honest. Go mooseheads On a side note. Yeah. So where you've mentioned the web comics you've you've thought we've touched on there the story engine deck Where can we find you in your content? Let's Let's help people find you out on the social media platforms in the

Peter Chiykowski : 7:00

Yeah, so if you want some, like unfiltered Peter and like whatever he's doing today, like my Twitter is a good spot for that. I mean, my my handle for me personally on all social media is Rock Paper cynic. And that used to be more heavily tied to my webcomic. But now more and more, it's becoming kind of the the meeting place for all the different creative things that I work on. And my main website where like most of my projects live is, look, it's Peter calm. That's kind of like a hub where you can kind of basically see like, here are the really random series of projects that have ended up working on and because my, my career has been a bit of a like, when I think about the the murder house that hh Holmes set up or the murder hotel, he was a serial killer in Chicago who like there was no one worker who worked on building his hotel that he used to murder people, but there's no one person that worked on it knew the whole floorplan so there's all these weird rooms and hidden passages and no one knows where everything is except for him. I feel like my career turned out like Chicago and murder house and that like things were added very ad hoc and jumped on different creative opportunities or worked on what felt really interesting in the moment. And I've ended up with a really weird CV and career path as a result of it. And so, all that to say look at Peter look@sphere.com is a good place to see all my projects listed in a row. But story engine.com is where the story engine lives right now. And it's where most of my time and attention is going at the moment.

Snyder’s Return : 8:35

Yeah, that's fair enough and I hope you didn't have to gas people in their sleep just to sort of build up this eclectics CV you've acquired

Peter Chiykowski : 8:42

No, no, but I do have some some shoots to drop the bodies down.

Snyder’s Return : 8:47

Well, that's good to know. So to create the story engine deck, and it's what is the story engine that we've we've mentioned it you you've told us that you've unboxed it, and there's Kickstarter Everybody's really excited about getting a lot of attention. It's being championed by podcasts like Dungeons and Dragons. So, what is the story engine deck?

Peter Chiykowski : 9:10

Yeah, the story engine deck is I describe it as a deck of endless storytelling prompts. And the endless part is, if not literally true, it's as true as a human lifespan will make it matter for because the essence a deck with five different types of cards. And when you combine these five different types of cards, you can create a custom prompt for a story hook for an idea for a campaign. You can set up a conflict between two characters, you can create a concept for a new character, you can create a magic item, you can create an interesting setting that's going to have an impact on characters. But basically, it combines these five different card types that represent five really essential elements to what makes a story work mechanically, and it lets you remix them and combine them and find really interesting combinations to prompt your own crews. work, I use it as a launching point. So it doesn't tell stories for you, but it gives you a creative space for for building a customised prompts that will help you tell a story quickly. And so when I say endless, what I mean is that just the basic format of prompts where you have a character and motivation for them, something that they want from that motivation connects to a conflict or an obstacle to getting that goal. And then one additional card which I call an aspect card, which just adds like a narrative detail or descriptive detail to an existing card on the table. Just that basic spread of five cards gives you 30 billion different potential combinations in just the base deck that doesn't include the expansions or the booster sets. So really, like you could use this deck for an entire lifetime creating one new prompt at a time, and you'd never in a lifetime get through all the potential prompts and that's just the main deck. So I what I wanted to do is create something that you know, because there were there are different writing prompt communities out there and there's different There are decks that have like, here's a creative challenge for you for today kind of writing prompts. But there's none that lets you create your own prompt. And there's none that lets you customise those prompts or reshape them or restructure it. And so the fact that this thing is like modular lets you really create what you want with it, I think really makes it stand out and makes it something that, you know, you're not going to do one of each card and then you've gone through all 52 prompts, and you're done. There are 180 cards, and together they create. Well, they don't create anything you create a lot though, you can creatively come up with all sorts of things. And you can use it not just for prompts the for story mapping, you can you know, go through the cards and select cards that represent a story you have on the go and then look for opportunities to expand it. Look for ways that characters can be added to put some images other characters for an interesting conflict. Or let's imagine you've hit a point in your story where it stalled. You could try representing that story and then removing a card adding a new card in and seeing what happens if your character gets a new motivation or if they transfer their existing motivation to a new object of their goal. So it really is meant to be like Really multifaceted creative tool that works really well and quickly and intuitively as a story prompt generator but there's so many more ways you can use it and one of the things I'm really excited about once once it's in the hands of the Kickstarter backers is to see what they use it for. Because you know people are using are already coming up with ways that they want to use it that I wouldn't have anticipated and that I'm really excited to see come to fruition and I'm excited to see all the different creative applications of it.

Snyder’s Return : 12:29

I mean, yeah, me minds firing on all cylinders, just dive I've looked it up online and heard about it and I'm excited to see how people use it to develop their games but there isn't just the main deck is that there's a number of expansions and boosters that support the main deck. So what are the possible themes are coming out and what was your favourite to work on and create?

Peter Chiykowski : 12:53

Yeah, so my Yeah, my favourite was definitely the eldritch horror booster set. Yeah, so just For a bit of context, originally, I was planning just to release the core deck, no expansions, no boosters, that was what the Kickstarter was for. I thought I really would like to do a fantasy expansion. Because the main deck is genre agnostic. All of the prompts and pieces of it can be interpreted in pretty much any kind of genre or aesthetic world. So you could be writing, you know, a cyberpunk romance novel. And these prompts would still get at the core things that motivated character and will still give you character types that would be relevant in that world, you know, or, like a mundane, everyday modern day world story, or superhero story. I really wanted the main deck to genre agnostic, but then the Kickstarter took off just a lot faster than I had ever expected. And I'd had all the notes in place and a lot of the central cards that I would use for expansions, I had them plotted out but I just thought something I'll release one or two years down the line. And I ended up finding out from the backers that that was the thing they were most excited for was like let's make the expansions and boosters happen now So we ended up with three expansion sets and six boosters. The expansions are science fiction, fantasy and horror. And then the boosters are more like sub genre focused. This is 18 cards a pack and they're eldritch horror, steampunk cyberpunk mythology post apocalyptic and dystopian. Although the post apocalyptic and dystopian are rapidly looking like what the modern world is about and looking less and less far flung, but that's a story for another time. And, but the avatar was my favourite I've always loved. I've always loved eldritch horror, one of my favourite Twitter accounts in the world is at hottest singles, Jordan Shively, his account. And it's just these kind of eldritch lovecraftian messages of inspiration or pieces of micro fiction or like parodies of meme culture and like Hot singles in your area, but rather than it being Hot singles, it's, you know, an unceasing whale that cuts through the night like a knife and children To your bone. And it's just this really weird account I love that's just a great example of like, a lot of the really fun. tropes from avatar like turns 90 degrees in a really interesting way. But one of the things that I wanted to be careful with with eldritch horror was so much of it right now is just like repackaging Lovecraft and I love the concept of Cthulhu. And I love a lot of the concepts and themes that Lovecraft added to the literary universe, but he was such a problematic and I'm just going to write say, like racist ahead of his time racist person, that it's, I think it's burdening to attach so much of the legacy of eldritch horror to to just him as a writer. So originally, I've been calling this a lovecraftian booster and and the more and more I thought about it, the more I wanted to like know, you know what, like avatar is becoming something that's outgrowing just Lovecraft and that's outgrowing just the the aesthetics of his work and people have been building on it. And I decided to go with the more inclusive term LD charter, rather than Lovecraft, and I guess to celebrate the fact that this deck could be used to tell stories that he would probably find personally important, but that do build on and take the aesthetic University created into, you know, into a new world and into a new generation of storytellers. And so that was really fun working on the overtures that was definitely my favourite the visuals I think, are the ones that came out the coolest. And some of the, the engines and the conflict cards are the motivations that characters have and then the conflicts of the obstacles they face and getting in fulfilling those motivations. And, and I think some of the, the engines the motivations from that deck I thought were really really cool and fun and dark. And so I'm really excited to see where people run with that. The other challenge with the deck was I wanted the main deck to be appropriate for classrooms. You know, like grade six and up are so yeah, it was really important to me that this could be a valuable educational tool and I and that it brings A curriculum developer on board to do a review of the decks and the materials and the instructions to make sure that they'd be classroom friendly. And then I also had her come up with some lesson plans, especially when when COVID-19 put everyone to quarantine, I had her come up with some lesson plans that we could give it for free to parents who were homeschooling for the first time so that they could have this a I gave it free printed home copies of the deck so that anyone who is in quarantine who needed homeschooling who needed an activity that would let them stay creative, they could just have it and and really have something that it wouldn't matter most to them. And then being able to get the most out of it through different lesson plans, I thought would be a cool addition. And keeping the deck classroom friendly for the main deck was possible. But once we got into the sub genre stuff, like it's really hard to do eldritch horror and how to fit in in an elementary school classroom or primary school classroom. You know, sacrifices to awaken the great old ones just don't tend to play well with with primary teachers. So that's where I got to also remove the kid safety gloves and go, you know, full into some of the fun horror splash. And then the heart attack as well. And so that was kind of fun too, because I'm not used to always focusing on younger readers and younger audiences like I like involving them as much as I can. But this is my first time really making a concentrated effort to make this thing approachable for them. So having a space in the same projects where I could, like, go go full dark was with a lot of fun as well.

Snyder’s Return : 18:26

I love it. I think that's, that's brilliant, only as inspiring as an educational tool. But, as you say, having the ability to serve a whole spectrum as it were of tastes. To play the game, or to use your story engine deck. You mentioned something about turning 90 degrees and the story engine that uses rotation to further sort of provide available inspiration for DMS gems, fiction writers. You know, could kids at home sort of looking to get creative and that routine sort of helps it stand apart from say, the Tarot deck or a terracotta deck is the curse of strahd players may be familiar with what combination of you put down five cards that has inspired you the most or excited you the most?

Peter Chiykowski : 19:16

Yeah, so I would say the the one that I was most inspired by was the one that I ended up drawing for. I held a microfiction contest a couple months ago, and we revealed the results maybe two or three weeks ago. But it was another thing where quirky was drawing on it that I was having trouble staying creative. And I also knew that the decks Were going to be longer than I would like to arrive. It was the first time where it was really looking like COVID-19 was going to affect the project fulfilling on its original timeline. So I wanted to have something that would be really fun and cool and interesting that people could do while they were waiting for the decks but also that didn't require people to have a deck. I wanted it to be open to anyone anywhere, not just customers. So I ended up drawing a prompt from the deck. And for this one, I cheated a little bit. Normally the core, the core prompts, you just draw one of each card and you work with those. In this case, I drew three of each card. And I kind of picked the ones that were talking the most to me, or that I thought would be the easiest for a new user to be able to read in the prompts. And I drew a prompt that I ended up receiving, I think, was 172 story submissions. And the rule was the story had to be less than 100 words. And it had to reflect each element of the prompt in some way. Not necessarily literally. You could be metaphorical about it, or creative about how you're interpreting it, but it had to include each element to the prompt. And so I want to get it exactly right. So I'm just going to quickly open story engine deck blog, where I drew the prompt so I can get the phrasing right. Because it was just fascinating to see 172 completely different takes on the same set of words. And something that it was the first time that I really got to I got hit full force with The number of ways that even like not just the ways that the deck could be used, but the way that the same prompt from the deck literally the exact same wording can be interpreted and reinterpreted and could lead to all these different stories. So the set that I drew was an archivist wants to regain irreplaceable book, but a terrible secret will come out. So the archivist was the agent card that I drew and agent cards have for what I call queues on them. So queues are the fragments of text on the card and you choose one of a set of them that are available to you and you rotate the card to basically lock in which cue you want to use. So the archivist card had an archivist, an archaeologist, a librarian and a witness. These are generally speaking the the cues on any one card are meant to be related thematically. So these are also as different forms of like record keeping. A witness might be more of like an oral or eyewitness account versus archivist to my potential historical account versus an archaeologist who might be uncovering an account to recreate one versus a librarian who's kind of a keeper for a bunch of different stories. So I chose archivists because I thought it was the broadest prompt and would give people the most creative freedom for that. And I'm glad I did because some people interpreted the archivist as an archaeologist, some people interpreted it as a librarian. There's a couple of ones that definitely fall into the area of witness. And then the engine cards, these are the motivation cards. This one had two cues on it that I could have chosen from I chose wants to regain the opposite side wants to get rid of and with the engine cards, there's often an opposition of themes so they'll be opposite goals. So on one side, it's regain one side it's get rid of. And then the anchors that are kind of hard and these are objects, locations, settings and events that are basically fixed points in the world of your story, that characters motivations can revolve around so in this case, the archivist wants to Reading, I chose a book. But on the same card, you could have chosen a library a word or a riddle. A conflict card is like the obstacles they face or the consequence that they'll face if they do choose to pursue their goal. So in this case, it was a terrible secret will come out, but I could have also chosen on the opposite side there was, but they will have to keep a terrible secret, which is another interesting take. And I was also really tempted to choose that one. I'm curious to see what kind of stories you would have had if I switch that over. And then the aspect cards, which I mentioned earlier, are they're just adjectives that you tuck underneath another card to describe that card and give it a bit more character or flavour. So I ended up drawing a card that had irreplaceable on it. And I touch that under a book because I thought it'd be really interesting if the book was one of a kind and seeing if people would interpret that. And people ran in all sorts of different directions with it. Sometimes it was a diary, sometimes it was birth records. There were people who had like enchanted books that were books that were contained, like actual songs, so not just The musical notation but like an actual song would be trapped in the book. There was a really interesting story that had the book be a piece of evidence in an evidence locker and lock up and the serial killer was like a member of the law enforcement that was they kept going back to to add to this because they were actually the killer and they had access to all the evidence and twist they get to they go to check their familiar spot and someone's removed to the book and they don't know who. So there are all these different ways that people can interpret even just the word book. And so that to me, like really spoke a lot about what the the value of the decades which is that it creates a space to see and interpret stories, and just jumpstarts past that process of like, what do I want to write about and it gives you a starting point. Again, like 172 very different stories came out of the same set of words. It was a humbling to see honestly.

Snyder’s Return : 24:56

Now that that sounds really good out that last example you gave sounds Sort of other sort of the Dexter theme. Yeah, the inside law enforcement, but know that they each sounds like they could have been sort of taken further if if that was the sort of the goal of the exercise. So taking stories further and playing, are you actively sort of playing a particular tabletop role playing game yourself? What do you do with your downtime away from the webcomic and the story engine deck.

Peter Chiykowski : 25:33

So right now most of my role playing energy is going into working on Ember wind to the RPG. So I've been working with the Ember wind team for I think, two years now. And so like occasionally doing play tests there and playing there, but otherwise I don't really have a game going right now. It's something that once the story engine, Kickstarter, Imperial We're all fulfilled. I think it'd be really fun to get back into the game because I haven't I haven't gained for a while. But usually I'm, I really enjoy d&d. And I enjoy like, you know, I was a fan of fourth Ed and and I won't die on that hill. But I will say that like, it was the best system that I'd seen for running a living style campaign and making it really easy for casual players to just sort of jump in and not feel like they're being totally outperformed by men like min max, like fourth that was so simple that you couldn't break it. So it made it hard to min max. And while that was really frustrating for like, getting to come up with really interesting character combinations, it did make the game really easy for new players who didn't want to feel left behind. So it was really good for that purpose. But I've enjoyed fifth that I've enjoyed fourth that I've enjoyed three and three, five, I enjoyed Falco. So I'm I'm very d&d all the way through I have a friend who's putting together a major D awakening game that I might dip my toes into for a bit. It played a little bit Manage and and some some vampire as well, I think they'd be cool. And but otherwise I'm very bad at relaxing. I'm very bad at taking downtime and playing games. So I'm kind of I probably should spend some more time getting into getting into some games and redrawing in the role of inspiration. But for now getting to make them is kind of scratching that itch for me. Oh,

Snyder’s Return : 27:29

yeah, that's fair enough. You know, relaxing is important, but maybe not letting the the buzz of creativity sort of die off is is also vital since you know, it's probably the success with with the story engine death as a content creator, system agnostic, so any tabletop role playing game as such, what advice would you give to people looking out there to maybe get into content creation? Maybe look The story engine deck as a, as a sort of inspirational tool or just coming in on a different project.

Peter Chiykowski : 28:11

Yeah, I mean, my first successes came from like basically tricking myself into creating a big project by creating a lot of small projects that added up together. You know, so my first book was an anthology of my webcomic. And I never thought when I started my webcomic, I would have enough to make a book. But I tricked myself into making a book by basically drawing a comic a week for a few years, and then having enough for a book. So setting yourself like small, approachable goals that let you ladder up to big goals is a really great way of creating something that feels bigger and more tangible, like a complete project and taking it in small bites. It also means that you have a smaller, a smaller space or like a more friendly playground to, to experiment to fail to figure out what works and what doesn't. And, and realise what you enjoy. You know if if your first project is a seven book giant fantasy series and you get to book three and realise you don't actually like writing novels, that's you know, that's, that's a hard way to learn that lesson we're getting to play around with short stories or play around with weekly comics are playing around with poems for a while, and but make sure that you're making progress that you're trying to do one a week and hold yourself accountable to that through whatever helps whether it's having like a writing accountability friend, who you check in with every week to see if you've done some writing or it's having an audience that you post to. And that's a great way to build those muscles where you can create regularly and comfortably and you know, what works for you or doesn't work for you and to sort of discover your process. And the other thing that I found helpful is a lot of people like just they won't make time for the writing or they won't, they won't prioritise the writing something about it never seems more important than, you know answering the emails that came in last night or or just Jumping on the thing that you feel like you have to get done this morning. So investing in the rituals that help you feel creative and help you value your creativity and your creative time, I think there's something really important. Like the story engine is an idea that I'd had for a while that I've been, I've been kicking around in my head. And I ended up buying, I should buy my wife bought it for me and because she was like, I think this would help you and now I will be sticking with this thing and buying my own but something called self journal, which is like a journaling system. It started on Kickstarter actually, for that's really good for planning like a 1313 week projects, and keeping yourself on track for weekly goals and daily goals and having that ladder up to a bigger goal. So I had this journal that I was doing the same kind of work every day, but it helped me organise but also just invest in the mindset of like, my time is valuable, it is worth time blocking and it is worth knowing what I'm going to spend it on and it is worth moving forward on these goals. And so I use those weeks to create the story. Having this structured creative tool that kept me on track that kept me thinking and that also made the time that I spent planning, feel valuable and worthwhile, and was really helpful for getting a project done. And I think, consciously or unconsciously, the story engine deck kind of provides a similar thing. You know, maybe you don't feel like you're going to produce any great writing this time, you're not feeling particularly inspired. Or maybe you just feels like it takes too much energy to try and set aside an hour in the morning, when there's other demands for your time, but having this deck that you know, looks really cool that has you excited to try it out and try the mechanics that looks beautiful or that just gets you past that initial fear phase of what am I going to write about? Or that that panic phase or anxiety phase of, you know, how could I possibly start something that gets you to invest in your creative time that gets you excited about being creative and kind of connects you with whatever it is that makes you want to show up at your writing desk or your writing Nook or or if you don't have a place to write that lets you show Throughout the world for half an hour or an hour and get something written down, it's meant to connect you with that. And the the deck only has it has a guidebook of eight pages that have lots of different spreads and combinations that you can have chip card types that you can use to create different things. But there's only two actual rules in it I'm gonna grab the freshly printed still smells like ink rulebook for a second so I can read them properly. Yeah, so the two rules of the story engine book, sorry engine guide book are, don't put the deck away until you create something that can be a word in a notebook or an idea in your head. And the second rule is ignore any card rule or guideline that doesn't help you create. So the goal of the deck is not to like take up your creative time. It's not to tell you how to write it's it's really just to get you started and to get you past whatever blocks there are. From like just sitting down and starting something Giving yourself that time. Yeah, so it doesn't have to be the story engine deck that I would give to people as advice on how to write. I think there are other things that can serve a similar function. But find something some ritual that gets you excited for writing and if it's not a story engine deck or if you're not someone who works with with story prompts, you know, maybe it's a cup of tea, maybe having to wait for the kettle to boil is a good way to for you to make the mindset shift to I'm gonna give myself half an hour to create, I was going to spend half an hour with my to spend half an hour with my tea independent a piece of paper. But I think that these rituals that help us value that time and value that creative energy are really, really important for writers because until they have, you know, until maybe you have validation from an audience that tells you your writing is worthwhile and it is worth your time or unless you have a cheerleader in your life who's like really excited to read your writing or just really excited to encourage you with your writing. You're your own cheerleader, and that's really hard. So finding things that give you the you know, the juice to write is really, really important too. Seeking them out is important because you might not have them brought to you.

Snyder’s Return : 34:06

I thank you so much for all of that, that that should certainly inspire those looking, looking at themselves wondering if they can do it. And definitely the story engine deck is a tool now available for them to sort of push themselves forward. And speaking of the deck itself, you mentioned that the limited rules and the help to get you using the deck still smelled like ink was the presentation of of the story engine deck, should someone choose to buy the physical copy? Um,

Peter Chiykowski : 34:39

yeah, so I originally conceived of it as this really tight compact cube of cards. But the more the project grew, the more I got away from my initial vision and went with something that was bigger and more fun and that I think is actually going to have more travel utility. So right now it's a box about the size of like a giant, old laptop So, you know, just on the edge of portability, but you know, it's like two or three d&d books stacked together in size, weighs exactly one kilogramme. And you can, basically opens almost like a treasure box lid. So it on hinges, and then the lidless flat, which creates an actual playing surface you can use, you can spend it open on your lap, and download cards onto the open lid and use that as a space for because a mat basically for drawing and creating prompts on the cards are held in five different card wells that hold the five different it's a card, so it's very easy to draw them or put them back they're easy to reach in there. We also size the wells bigger than we needed to so that if someone wanted to combine all the expansions and the boosters together at once the it'll fit the entire set altogether, or you could sweep the cards and it'll still have room for all the sleeve cards. And yes, it's meant to be something that you can open very quickly and easily. And, you know, even if you didn't have room to lay a card, you could literally turn over the top harden each deck in its pot, you'd have a prompt laid out right there ready for you to go. So I really wanted it to be something that was as easy as possible to sort of get up and go with. And yeah, I'm just so happy with how it turned out. Like I still, I was I had so much trouble focusing today until I got to record the unboxing video. Because I was just I, this is the moment I've been waiting for for well over a year, if not years, and, and everything turned out so beautifully. Yeah, and the guidebook is a nice big full colour book with all the diagrams that show you how you can create different prompts because you know, you mentioned the Tarot and that was that was a big inspiration for the design of the deck. I decided there was a moment where I thought it'd be kind of cool with this devil to share tarot deck and then I spoke to Tarot users for advice and most of them were like, there's so much commodification of Tarot and people's take on Tarot and you know, the traditions from which it comes. They don't really they appreciate the the focus of what what the taro is and not trying to turn it into some kind of commodity or product. So that was a thing that I was very happy I was worn away from, but that I was still able to learn a lot from talking to Taro users. And that's, you know, where some of the rotation mechanics first started coming out, was realising like, Oh, you know, tarot cards change their meaning when you invert them. What if all four sides of the card were active and I was a really quick way for you to tap into different meanings or similar related meanings of a card centred around one theme? And was actually the translator who did the Spanish deck for me who translated the deck into Spanish and the rules into Spanish. Since am Quintana, who gave me the advice of like, you know, originally, I only had the one type of prompt in mind I just had this straight prompt of agent engine, anchor conflict and the second aspect and so that would always create a story where there's somebody who wants something And they have trouble getting it. And that's that's kind of the minimum nutritional content required for something to be considered a story in my books. And that's a great, great one. It was his idea to say, Well, what if rather than always having a matter where you had a loop where you have two agents, two characters, and one of them has a motivation pointing to the other one with an obstacle attached to that, and the other one is a separate reciprocal motivation pointing back at the first character, and you create a loop. And so he was the guy who, because he worked with the hero, and he looked at different spreads and combinations and patterns that you could use to create different types of readings, their point of view and of the fact that you could use these these cards in so many different ways. And it wasn't just the one set of spreads that I had in mind. And by the time I was done developing the guidebook and printed the diagrams, I realised that essentially you could use this thing as as a story map, where I almost think of it as like a model train set, where the stations are the characters, the agents, and then the anchors which are like objects and locations. The tracks that connect to these stations are the engines motivations, that you know, connect one character to another that express a relationship or a desire that connects a person to a place or two characters to each other in different ways. And then sometimes those relationships can be asymmetrical sometimes the tracks go one way or the on. The conflict deck ends up being the conflict cards end up almost being like toll booths along the way like these are areas that someone has to pass or obstacles have to get through to reach their goal. And then the aspects that are like little bits of scenery that add, make each route feel distinct and interesting. And that add that extra level of realism and flavour you could create and then there are rules in the guidebook for this for doing improvised storytelling with two players where you take turns, placing cards and expanding the story and adding branches to it and coming up with more of a web than just a storyline. There are rules for multiplayer prompts, where you create prompts together, but you can write different things from the same set of prompts. So the Tarot ended up unlocking a tonne of different creative aspects of the deck that I don't think they would have gotten to if I hadn't gotten to learn from how you know and Tarot is a form of truth telling and storytelling that has been with the same set of cards has felt relevant and managed to be something that provides value and structure to the stories in people's lives for hundreds of years. And I think that was one of the lessons that made the story engine such a modular project was realising that if you give people space to tell their own story, or structures for telling their own stories, that they that will give them so much more mileage than just telling them exactly what to write. But

Snyder’s Return : 40:44

the the train journey, comparison, so I got caught up with that, to be honest, I was I was just along for the ride. That was great. No, I can hear the excitement and anticipation in your voice and So definitely everybody should, should look into getting this for their game and their gaming table or their group or their writing group or whatever it is, however it is they can, can choose to use this. And with that excitement that I can sense coming through the headphones. Would you like to remind people where they can pick up this product? And they can find you?

Peter Chiykowski : 41:21

Yeah, definitely. So, story engine deck comm is where you can pick up the product. Right now I'm transitioning from the free quarantine decks that I was giving away to families and educators to basically having just a free demo that anyone can download at any time, they can print off at home. And so I'm working on that right now. It'll probably be something like you can get a third of the main deck in the full rulebook, or half the robe or something like that and just download it and get started today. I like to thought that people can conserve time and get something out of it. And so that shouldn't be. I'm hoping that'll be available next week, and I'm not sure exactly when the release schedule But today is August. So sometime around the 18th I hope to have that ready. And yeah, you can check it out there, you can try it. The demo will probably also be recording some demos with the deck. Now that I have a copy of my own. to just show how it works, do some sample prompts with people show them how to set up different types of prompts. So if you keep an eye on at story engine deck on Twitter, or Facebook or Instagram, they'll probably be some video content coming to show you what it's all about and showcase some of the cards and prompts.

Snyder’s Return : 42:34

Sounds like exciting times and I hope people really latch on to this and get get involved with it. Just for an example over the course of this interview. For people looking for some inspiration. We've had hh Holmes education eldritch horror and train journeys and if you're excited to write something, I'm not sure what will pay with absolute pleasure having you on the show. Yeah, I've sort of learned so much about you and and the story engine deck and writing process. So I'd love to have you back on the show in the future, maybe with a tabletop role playing game you're involved with, when that comes to fruition. So if you if you're willing, I'd love to have you back.

Peter Chiykowski : 43:14

Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to talk about. Remember when we have a new campaign book that I was the lead writer on, which is about setting a post apocalyptic fantasy world. And you end up being part of the secret science cult, and also trying to solve a murder mystery. It's a lot of fun. And the last teaser I'll leave you with is that you can play the game without a DM You do not need a dungeon master. You can play with only players and it runs itself. But I yeah, I would love to be back to tell you more about that.

Snyder’s Return : 43:48

Absolutely. Thank you very much for your time. Peter.

Peter Chiykowski : 43:50

Thanks so much. Thank you.

Snyder’s Return : 44:02

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