Hello and welcome to snows return a tabletop role playing podcast. afterlife wandering souls presents the following scenario for us to consider your muscle stiff your necks or your body has been pulled through a whirlwind and spat upon the damp boards of a Longboat. You know you've died, though. You can't remember how desperately you grab it inky memories would slip and fall into the dark waters stretching all around you. Joining me today to collect the fragments of our soul is the award winning creator Elizabeth chambers.
Liz Chaipraditkul :Kuhn to discuss what it means to discover oneself in the realm of tenebrous. Elizabeth, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. I know it's an absolute pleasure. When I saw this pop up on Drive Thru, I knew it was something that I had to reach out to you and invite you on really is in the theme of things you're a fan of, or it's something something that I'm looking to explore my sort of tabletop role playing experience is quite limited. So I've been trying to sort of learn from you know, fantastic, new and diverse games such as yours that we're going to talk about shortly, but before we move on to afterlife, wandering songs, would you like to sort of tell us a bit more about yourselves yourself and how you got into tabletop role playing games and creation content creation? Yeah, of course. Um, so Hi, my name is Liz. And I'm the owner of angry hamster publishing. We made for life wondering full which one Just one indie groundbreaker world's best setting. I've also created which faded souls and familiar Terra along with a couple of other things for my company. I'm also a freelancer in the industry. You might have seen my work with seven second edition, I was lead developer for the crescent Empire in the heroes and villains book. I also wrote the book of war for magpie games. I freelance for companies like modiphius, publishing Third Eye games at night games and a bunch of others on scrapbook path publishing. And yeah, I like I'm into gaming Well, I was always a video gamer. I shouldn't say always. But you know, my dad, my dad got me into video games. And that slowly itself. I actually got into because my best friend who was one of my players at the time and university, she knew someone who wrote for the Forgotten Realms for Wizards of the Coast and she said, Hey, Liz, I like the stories you tell you want to write for Wizards of the Coast. I know somebody and I said, Sure. That sounds awesome. And all of that kind of slowly balled into me wanting to write my own system and my own company
Snyder’s Return :Well, that's quite a journey. So how did angry hamster what how did the name which which I love to be fair, but how did angry angry angry hamster publishing come into being and sort of what else have you got out that we can sort of find on? On angry hamster?
Liz Chaipraditkul :Well, angry publishing came into be so I had done a couple freelance thing for the Forgotten Realms in fourth edition And at one point, though, it was point where I really want to write something, right, like every roleplay system didn't really fit the boxes of what I wanted to play. So I had written which faded souls. And I thought, you know what, I'm going to put it on Kickstarter. And I'm just going to see if anyone gives me money. I'm fully assuming that like, it would be my mom, and a couple of my friends who would just like, throw some money at me to get this book published. And that would be it. But it ended up that there was a lot of people who are really enthusiastic about the idea and the first Kickstarter was very successful. So that I thought, like, why not? Like why don't I start a company and see, and that that kind of led me there's a lot of stuff on Drive Thru RPG you can find from angry hamster. And I also do a Patreon with my friend Steffi, where we create really indie kind of micro games. So everything that's a little I won't say less professional because what is professional in this industry but like anything that's a little more out there than the more mainstream stuff angry hamster does. That's what I do with Effie.
Snyder’s Return :Alright, well, that sounds sounds like a lot of fun. And yeah, you're right. You know, what, what is professional when anybody can create content? And that's something I'll ask you about later. And so, we've mentioned a couple of places there. Where can people find you angry hamster your content on that sort of stuff. Give us a sort of rundown of where we can go and find you. There'll be links below of course. We of course, so
Liz Chaipraditkul :Go to our website angry hamster publishing calm and you can also find us on Twitter at angry hamster rpv and we're on Facebook as well and that's just angry hamster publishing if you fill that in you should be able to find it there
Snyder’s Return :all right well moving on that atmospheric or I'm just going for atmospheric the the reading from from the intro was taken directly from the afterlife wandering souls page on your website. Could you explain what wandering sorry what afterlife wandering souls is and and take us through this mechanic that the game uses?
Liz Chaipraditkul :Yes, the basically an afterlife wondering souls is the people who die, but don't end up where they're meant to go. You don't end up in nothing. If you're an atheist, you don't end up in heaven. Hell, you're not reincarnated. Instead, you take the long boat ride, and after that boat ride, you end up on the shores. And when you finally recover all those pieces of of your past life, you're able to move on to whatever the beyond has in store for you.
Snyder’s Return :That sounds it sounds intriguing and definitely a new take the tone. It's wrong to call it character creation because of the way afterlife wondering source works. How do characters develop From if you were to print out a character sheet, for example,
Liz Chaipraditkul :where do we build from there? So basically, you do character creation in game. And you do it with the other players on the boat, on the boat ride from the land of the living to the land of the dead, and you do it through speaking to a character called the Batman. So what's your going to do in the game? All kind of lead in character wise, is the Batman asks you a series of questions and you answer them. And you also do a couple of dice rolls. So for example, the first you the GM will basically ask you to roll like, at one point, the roll to D six, and then there'll be a question like, you were in a terrible accident, what type of accident was it? And then you can answer like it was my own fault, or it was the fault of someone else or I have no idea And each of those, each of those times that you answer a question from the GM, it starts building up your, the briefest like kind of fragments your character has of their memory. And then when you go into game and you find a memory of your past life, when you're actually playing the game, you pick one of those memories to go into and your character has a flashback where you actually get a out the scene and you have no idea what it is beforehand. And that scene you and the GM build together as you're kind of uncovering who your character once was.
Snyder’s Return :Sounds very, I make sure I use the right term very cathartic, it's almost therapeutic. If that may not be the way you were taking it, but the way you sort of build yourself back up, seems maybe in tune with with the way some people may be handling the situation. We are in sort of
Liz Chaipraditkul :in the world right now, so I think this game definitely could resonate with, with certain people in that respect. Well, yeah, I mean, I think there's definitely an aspect of afterlife, which is that, uh, you know, because it's not really discuss about discovering whether or not either a good or bad person, right because in the end, it doesn't really matter. It's more about just kind of accepting your past for what your past was. So I get I get what you're saying by that, like, I can definitely draw that connection as well. I mean, of course, every person is going to get what they want out of the game. You know, everyone kind of goes into a game for a different reason. But I think there is an afterlife itself, there is kind of this this theme of self acceptance, because there's also possibilities for your character to kind of turn away from their past memories, and kind of struggle with the person you were before or maybe not actually want to know. And that can lead to some problem as you succumb to a thing called stagnation, where you're actually in Not trying to drive yourself forward anymore. You're kind of running away from your past and therefore not able to move on.
Snyder’s Return :It has me intrigued and certainly something that I'm definitely going to look into more. So with afterlife wandering souls in which fated souls that obviously a couple of similarities with respect to the keywords, is there a common theme that you sort of bring to angry hamster? Is this a theme you're going to carry forward? Or is it just that these two games seem to sort of draw on that sort of soul link?
Liz Chaipraditkul :For me, when I create a role playing game, and I think a lot of creators would say this, at least I hope they would. For me, my games are very about it very much about a character driven narrative. So anytime that I create a game, I really want it to have the players at the centre of it right. So after that, Wandering souls, no matter what epic plot is going to be happening in the tenebrous. That's the setting. In the end, the the main story is about characters individual journey, each each one of your characters are kind of like, like the star of the TV series, right? Um, and it's the same thing with which faded souls which faded souls, your character sells their soul to a demon power. And the whole point of you amassing more power, as the wick is the ability to break free eventually from your demon. And there's various ways you can do that. But again, the character story takes precedence. That's what's important. That's where the drama comes from. You know, even if we have an epic world ending scenario, in the end, your characters are going to be highlighted. So that's definitely a theme that runs through Ingraham games, and that's definitely something I want to continue because as a player and as a GM, that's the type of story I like to play,
Snyder’s Return :which actually leads on to my Next question, which sort of two questions in once? In once? What is it that inspires you as you're creating these games? Where is it you draw your inspiration from? And was there a specific sort of inspiration or event in your life that led to the creation of afterlife wandering souls?
Liz Chaipraditkul :I get a lot of inspiration from a lot of different places I think generally brawn have in front of inspiration that I have comes from my best friends who I play with now. I've been jamming for for over a decade in various games. Maybe not so much in the stories that we tell but in the way in which they approach store stories. Sorry, like, yeah, so not not in the like, you know, the plotlines and like whatever, whatever random mediaeval fantasy or modern fantasy game we're playing is, but just the way in which they interact with NPCs and what they find in Didn't, you know if I see one of my friends Her name is Renee, you know, she always keeps going back to you know, falling in love or another friend keeps going back to like one of her characters having children. I always try to delve a little bit into that and think, you know, like, what if that makes the game so fun for them to play. And that deeply inspires my work in the way that they're always so creative in the way they approach things. And I want to try to bring that out. When I create a game, myself, and afterlife wondering schools, a lot of inspiration of a lot of different places. In general, just like C mackley, I wanted to make a game about the dead, I find it for lack of a better kind of idea. Like I find the idea of death romantic, of course not of people dying, that's very tragic. But the idea of living in death, I find an interesting concept. Um, so then I wanted to build a game around that and I wanted to make something meaningful. So After, like, on several different iterations before we came to the form that it has today, but I'm really happy with it.
Snyder’s Return :Yeah, absolutely. So you should be so you should be you definitely solve. It sounds a bit out of tone, but hit the nail on the head, coffin nails that wasn't an intended pump. And so so that's where you draw your inspiration from. And so as a writer, content creator, what is what is your process? How do you sit down at your desk or your laptop, computer, tablet, whatever it is that you use to sort of place those ideas down into something tangible. What is your process for moving through the writing process?
Liz Chaipraditkul :Do you want to how do they say it like you want to know how the sausage is made? I mean, for me like this, I'm probably the worst person to ask. As for because my process is just to sit down and write as many words as I possibly can, totally acknowledging that, like 95% of it is absolute rubbish, and I'm going to throw it away. I am not a person who is afraid to delete, like whole word documents if I hate it. Um, so I just sit down and I keep writing. And then after I've gotten everything out, you know, because you kind of have like this Muse and this inspiration that takes you, I normally give it a day or two, or if I really just like think back on it and cringe about everything I've made, maybe I'll even give it like a week or a month. And then I go back and I just remove everything I don't like until I have something that I think is workable enough for a game. I mean, before that, of course, there's a lot of like, I do a lot of journaling and a lot of writing down ideas and kind of just dreaming if I can but the actual process of Writing is so sloppy and messy like I am the most disorganised writer and the way that I just verbally vomit onto the page. And hope something's good.
Snyder’s Return :Writing like painting, like many other forms of art have, everyone's got their own style. I've spoken to two other creators who use moodles Ashley Warren is one example or James hake. For d&d beyond he uses a structured writing process, he will never sit down with a blank piece of paper because that could introduce price. So So having your own system and and working through that, whatever works for you is, well, it's it's released this amazing game and your other content, so it must be working for you.
Liz Chaipraditkul :Yeah, I mean, I think I definitely think that like I have a boon in the fact that I'm not afraid to delete things right into Edit. I think that I If my if I was afraid to self edit and method would not work for me because I would not release, like I'm very proud of like, personally and I don't think that life would have been what it was if I if I left it at its first draft. It's it's very, very different than than it was when it first when I first began.
Snyder’s Return :Yeah and with that, you know, as you mentioned earlier and I was mentioned earlier, congratulations on your Indian groundbreaker award this year so, you know clearly other people can see just how talented and how well constructed your work is no matter if the first 10 drafts ended up going through the shredder or on the floor or however you dealt with with those. Which sort of leads me on to what was you What would you offer as advice for other content run not necessarily just content creators, but writers in general, your process works for you, but If you were to speak to someone in a cafe or a library, wherever it is in a social event, a convention and they said, this, I'm thinking of starting writing or content creation. What advice would you give them?
Liz Chaipraditkul :That's a good question. I think what I would tell them is that to quote Nike that they should just do I think a lot of times we we get in our own head, especially in the roleplay industry, you know, because by now at least speak to experience people everyone go I've seen that before Oh, that's another fantasy heartbreak wrote another vampire game. Oh, that's another Um, and I think that, that that idea that, you know, you're just creating another something. And therefore, what do you have to kind of offer the industry is a trap that a lot People fall in. Um, and I would say don't fall into that right what you love, right? What inspires you, right? The truth of whatever you're feeling. And you know, that has value, right? You know, like, maybe you're going to be like me and you're going to go through 10 different drafts before, it's really the truth of what you want to write. Um, but I think that if you're, if you're writing what's true to you, and, you know, you're putting effort into it like that, that's a worthy cause. And I think, you know, you can always get better at things like making outlines, you can always be get better at things like grammar, and you know, how, how beautifully you write, but, you know, you need to make sure that you actually have words on page and you need to make sure that it's actually something you're passionate about, and you've already accomplished those two things. You're going to be miles ahead of, like 50 other people who want to get into the industry and maybe are the best at mechanics, but just Don't want to create another fantasy game you know?
Snyder’s Return :Yeah, yeah, I can see where you're coming from. It's definitely you know sound advice if you never put pen to paper you're never gonna publish nothing Are you so that's that's fair advice and I'm sure that people are listening to this that do have that creative spark or that inkling to maybe take something on take your words to heart and and get out of their own heads maybe we can only hope. So you mentioned there you freelancing you've got the angry hamster staff you know the promotions for afterlife wandering souls and other projects and things under NDA that we can't discuss but maybe on see what else we're moving on to so you sound incredibly busy. What is it you do for downtime? How do you de stress relax, what is it you do to turn off and just zero back in on yourself?
Liz Chaipraditkul :Well, I think as we were talking about before the show started I am a new parent. So at the moment, relaxing time is just completely zoning out in front of the television hopefully with like a really nice cookie like maybe 30 minutes or so. I enjoy those cookie moments very much i do i mean like when I you know, you know before before my kid and I'm sure things are going to you know, quiet down at 1.1 seems a bit older. But you know, I did a lot of crafting I crochet I knit, a spin yarn, I sew any type of crafty thing I've probably attempted it badly. But yeah, that relaxes me super much. I have a sweet dog and he was laya after the princess or general whatever your flavour of laya ages And I walk her a lot. So she's awesome. She's often there during cookie time, she's not allowed to have a cookie, but she's normally sitting next to me, telling me everything's going to be alright.
Snyder’s Return :It's nice to have that support from someone that doesn't judge or something that doesn't judge in the case of the dog. So well, that's nice. That's nice. So I mentioned it briefly there. So what is next for that you can discuss because obviously, I don't want to get you in trouble. That's totally not the point of this interview. What is it that is coming up in the future for you? Is it more stuff tied to afterlife wandering souls, or more angry hamsters or releases that you can just sort of hint out without sort of giving away too much?
Liz Chaipraditkul :I mean, angry hamster publishing as my company. I haven't have signed a new NDA with myself. But actually, we just, we just finished a supplement properly wandering souls called the will Hundreds died to Limbo Limbo and maracas. And that has tonnes of new setting information and setting things like you know, generators for feeding these strange worlds that people can visit a new care. And that is going to actually head out our Kickstarter backers and going to be available for pre order on our website at the start of September, and we're also working on at angry hamster we're working on which the devil's game so that is based off which faded souls and it's in the same universe and in fact, you play a coven of the faded who are in which faded souls. The only thing is, is what's special about this game is actually going to be a self contained roleplay game in a box. So it is a campaign it has all the mechanics which are based on our doubles deck, which is a tarot deck. And so all the all the checks that you do you actually pull tarot cards for Then I based it basically off the legacy board games. So during the campaign there's a lot of different props that your GM has. That will open for example open this first character dies or open this the first time a spell casts a spell is cast and spells. And all of these different props will help change and kind of the game. And I'm really excited about that and that is coming to Kickstarter hopefully this year maybe the start of next year. It depends on story development, how far we are with that.
Snyder’s Return :I love the sound of that that mechanic that you only get that new reveal information that the change of the game effectively through trigger events. I think that's that's great. One thing I meant to ask a bit earlier was how the dice work in afterlife wandering souls.
Liz Chaipraditkul :Yeah, so basically you have you have both. We use the diesel mechanic and you have various pools that you can roll for depending on your actions. So let's say you are attempting to, you know, jump over something, then you may roll a manoeuvre and you roll a number of D sixes. And based on how many successes you have your action is a success or failure. And if you need more successes than you have, we actually have a a linked system. So you have your pool of dice, and then derived from your different pool of dice. You have pools of points that you can spend. So let's say you you're not able to leap over the building in a single bound, then you could spend a couple of points from that linked pool In order to make your action a success, but once you've spent those points, those are gone in like the rest. So it's all about kind of where your doctor decides to put an effort in the game. You know, what do they really want to eat at later and they're willing to risk not succeeding? Sorry, what do they really want to succeed at now that they're willing to not eat in something later. And so, those are the base mechanics of the game and of course, then we have other things which are linked to more character driven stories for example, your character can get points of stagnation. When you lose something called will and will as this mechanic which is basically how motivated your character is. Find the beyond to find their memory and find their points of the sorry to find their memories and find their final rescue. plays and if you end up losing hope in the game, and that can happen through your character dying, for example, you can choose to have your character or not again, but you'll lose all your points of will and you'll gain a point of stagnation. stagnation means it's getting emotionally harder for your character to accept character to accept that they're actually going to find their afterlife. And through this mechanic, basically your character kind of walks a fine line between you know whether or not they're eventually going to be successful and what they've set out to do, which is to you know, get away from this score.
Snyder’s Return :The the way all those mechanics work, you've mentioned that it i like it i the sort of the consequences the potential for losing the wheel in the open and creating the stagnation it it's so engaging Again, clearly a lot of other people think so with your indie groundbreaker award, and that's amazing. And I'd like to, you know, take the opportunity again to, for you to tell people where they can purchase this this game and really sort of engage with your content and, and your Kickstarters.
Liz Chaipraditkul :Yeah, um, first so you can find it on our website in green, publishing calm and find us on Twitter, and we have RPG and we're also on Facebook.
Snyder’s Return :So thank you. Thanks for coming on. It's not quite finished yet. But I feel like I need to say thank you, because you've offered so much. And you've taken us through various parts of yourself and the game and your company and all those sort of really good things. Is there anything that we haven't discussed that you would like to mention anything that's a topic that's on your mind or something to do? Was tabletop role playing that you want to make a comment on or anything? Really?
Liz Chaipraditkul :Oh, thank you so much. First of all, it's very nice to to be so great. Such a gracious host. No, just like definitely if you if you aren't, if you're a fan of kind of weird mini micro games, I would definitely say check out check out my Patreon. We also do a lot of free content there. So actually, a lot of our smaller Patreon games are actually free on angry hamster Publishing's drive thru RPG like we did a full year old. I don't know Adam, are you a fan of Eurovision?
Snyder’s Return :I will watch every so often. I'm not committed to viewer or supporter but I'll watch it if it's on the telly.
Liz Chaipraditkul :I love I actually watched the BBC version of Eurovision because of Graham Norton because he is
Snyder’s Return :he's brilliant. I will agree with you. He is is
Liz Chaipraditkul :he is So good also just like anytime you just guided yeah you just my internal monologue just externalised and I love it. Um, but yeah, so like we have a pacemaker game where you can you and your friends can sit around and crazy Eurovision fun and you basically get to your roll up the Eurovision act randomly and then you have to try to describe what your your vision Act would be and then there's a point scoring system so definitely if you're just interested in kind of like weird quirky game made by me and my partner Steffi like please go check out the free games on our drive thru. Maybe one of them will pique your interest.
Snyder’s Return :I'm sure they will definitely your visual or touch a lot of a lot of or peek a lot of people's interest. Definitely. Liz, I really appreciate you taking the time. I know obviously we have a bit of a timezone difference and and I know you have a family so I don't want to keep you much longer but I Really appreciate you having the time to sort of speak to me today. And if you are willing, I'd love to have you back on on the show at a later date.
Liz Chaipraditkul :Definitely, that sounds like a lot of fun. I'd love to come back and speak with you. Oh, brilliant.
Snyder’s Return :Well, maybe once your Kickstarter is up and running for the next part of the sort of the fated tours, the which, again, you've mentioned on Kickstarter, we could look to discuss that and another projects you're working on. Fantastic. Thank you very much for your time today is it's been fantastic to speak to you. Speak soon. 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 nice return music and sound effects provided for this episode are from epidemic sounds.com Transcribed by https://otter.ai