Interview - Robert J. Schwalb - TTRPG Content Creator/Publisher

Today I talk with the inspirational TTRPG Designer, Publisher and Content Creator Robert J. Schwalb. We discuss Shadow of the Demonlord, Shadow of the Weird Wizard, Punkapocalyptic, and the writing process which he has applied successfully throughout his career.
You can find Rob Schwalb and all of his content via the links below.

Website:
https://schwalbentertainment.com/

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/schwalb_ent
https://twitter.com/rjschwalb

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/schwalb_entertainment/
https://www.instagram.com/robertschwalb/

DriveThruRPG:
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/8782/Schwalb-Entertainment

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Yours Sincerely,

Adam 'Cosy' Powell

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CAST & CREW

Host: Adam Powell

Guest: Rob Schwalb

Sound Design: Adam Powell

Music: Epidemic Sound

Cover Art: Tim Cunningham - www.Wix.com

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Transcript

Snyder’s Return : 0:27

Hello, and welcome to Snyder's return a tabletop role playing podcast. My guest today has been involved in some major projects you may be aware of. He has written a guide for everything and then created his own system to take it all away again. He has stepped out into a godless world where even the weird and the arcane have left us absent, and he has helped others in the wielding of shotguns and sorcery. My guest tonight is the fantastic founder of Schwab entertainment. Mr. Robert J. Swan Rob, welcome to the show.

Rob Schwalb : 1:00

Hey, thank you so much for having me. It's a real pleasure.

Snyder’s Return : 1:03

It's an absolute pleasure to have you on. Before we go into Schwab entertainment and your, your game systems and the projects you've worked on, could you tell us a little bit more about yourself and how you got into tabletop role playing games, please,

Rob Schwalb : 1:16

for sure. I've been working in the business for close to 18 years. I started in the middle of well, toward the early days of the D 20. Boom, third edition had just come out 3.5 had not yet been released. And there was a demand for writers and game designers and that meant that anybody who could put a noun and verb together pretty much were guaranteed some kind of a job. And so some of my early works were for mongoose publishing and green running publishing, ag Fantasy Flight. And I was able to turn that I was able to generate enough work to make a living with In hindsight is pretty it's pretty shocking because the rates haven't changed all that much. But I guess I was able to live off in three to four cents a word by putting out 40 to 60,000 words a month. So that was how I got started shortly after, I guess maybe about a year into the into freelancing. Chris premise of green running publishing, they published all sorts of stuff, most notably mutants and masterminds Song of Ice and Fire and a bunch of other things. I came on board as the line developer for the D 20. imprint. So I managed the masterclass books and races ever known and mythic VISTAs and free porch and all that. All those other things. And part of the reason for that was Chris was turning his attention to designing and developing what would that what was then going to be Warhammer Fantasy roleplay second edition. And then following on the heels of that he was going to do a trilogy of games, the first of which would be our heresy. Once he finished Warhammer, he shifted over to that. And then I added Warhammer Fantasy roleplay to my list of duties, so not only was running d 20, but I was also handling Warhammer. And then eventually, we added in the game of thrones licence on top of that. And meanwhile, while I was doing all of this, I was freelancing for Wizards of the Coast and working on Latter Day 3.5 books, monster manual five, a couple, one of the complete books, the draw the underdark, book, elder evils and exemplars of evil and so on. And that eventually landed me a contractor position with wizards for creating content for fourth edition. And then that wrapped up with my time as a member of the design team for d&d Next, which eventually became fifth edition. And so you can find my fingerprints all across the player's Handbook, dungeon, master's guide and monster manual, which is a great you know, kind of high watermark And then after my contract ran out, I started my own imprint. And here I am a little older, a lot a lot grayer, and my livers a little hardened, but that's about it.

Snyder’s Return : 4:12

Otherwise, we'd like to think, I think so, Robert. I mean, that's an impressive just track record and timeline and back catalogue. Just I think anyone would be privileged to work on any one of those projects or any one of those publishers but to have to have had a hand in so many sort of iconic releases really sort of large sort of source material like the Game of Thrones Song of Ice and Fire and I mean Warhammer roleplay that's on its fourth edition, now incredibly popular. I know a friend that plays dark heresies and I'm sure he'll attorney thank you for your help in bringing that to the table. So that sort of brings us up to a point. Where did you go from there? How did Traub entertainment men come into being from the end of your contract work.

Rob Schwalb : 5:05

When I left to in order for me to take the job at Wizards of the Coast, I had to part ways with green running and publishing. And once the contract with wizards and dead it also meant and the wizards money. And that can be a shock and disastrous turn of events for people who are trying to feed 700 cats and keep their lights on. So I had was faced with getting a job in the pseudo real world, or going back to freelancing or going to another company hadn't had and begging for work or just doing it on my own. And I think there was my wife and I had gone to New England, and we were doing a tour through Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, just for vacation, and we have a nice evening with my good friend Steve kenson and Steven I talked a lot about the future and he really convinced me that there I could probably pull off doing my own imprint. So without Steve's Abel and wise advice, I probably would be flipping burgers at McDonald's again, like I did my youth, but that is not the case. Instead, I started 12 Entertainment as my imprint for all things dark and sinister. And to vent my ID on the unsuspecting gaming hobby landscape. And we launched with shadow the Demon Lord was the first game. Now there are over 200 supplements for this product all priced very reasonably, and available on my website and I drive through. We have just released punk apocalyptic the role playing game, which is based on the miniatures squad based miniatures game by my friends in Spain. their company's called Bad Role games. And now I'm busily working through shadow the weird wizards to bring that to Kickstarter probably early of 2021.

Snyder’s Return : 7:09

So I mean that's that's a lot in of itself. And so you sort of excuse the pun but stepped out of the shadow of Wizards of the Coast and, and you created shadow the dean, what could you for someone that that may have heard it in passing? Or maybe not even aware of it? shockingly, I have to say, what was the foundations of shadow of the demon lordan and what drew you to create that particular system?

Rob Schwalb : 7:38

shadow the Demon Lord reflects my sense my design sensibilities at the time when I left wizards working on a big venerable game, like dungeons dragons means that there's no one overarching or overarching vision about which way the game would develop, which meant that there are a lot of decisions A lot of design choices that exist in that game as good as they are. happen to come from a lot of distillation of many different viewpoints and design goals and, and just play styles that they would that would that could come up and come into conflict in design meetings, and it's something that conflict was good, because you can get to the best ideas by cutting away the chaff. But I mean, you see, some things are very much Rodney Thompson, some things are very much Monte cook some things are very much Bruce Cordell and Mike murrells, and so on. But that game is very much one that was designed by a group of people. And I had very clear ideas about what I would do if I was going to make Dungeons and Dragons. And one of the things that I really wrestled with was the promise of big big sandbox style RPGs and The reality there's a promise in big games that you'll be playing these things forever, that you'll take a character from level one to whatever you want the whatever the end is going to be, whether it's 20 levels, and fifth edition, or 30 levels, and fourth, or 36 levels. And second, it doesn't really matter. The point is that there's a promise that you're going to play through all of this. And there's a sense that you will be complete. When you have gone through, you've jumped through all the hoops, and you've gone over all the hurdles, and you completed the quest and did all those things and fought the evil bad guy, God at the end or whatever. But the reality is that most gaming groups is fat. We found this out during development of the game. Most role playing game, both role playing groups, and campaigns tend to fall apart after eight weeks. So two months of gameplay and you're done. And which means you either start or you miss out some of the most formative levels or you're starting at a higher level so you can get further along in the campaign or something happens. Now granted, there are people who out there that have been able to maintain gaming groups for years on end. And I certainly had that in my long history of gaming that there were times in the past where I had groups that would survive for multiple years. But realising that promise of what could be the most exciting moment of the campaign, which comes to the end, as something that is just almost impossible to achieve for the average gamer. So what I decided to do was think about ways I could design a tabletop RPG that's both familiar, but then also delivers on that promise. And in order to do that, I wanted to go with this idea of saving the world which is a standard, a trope and fantasy games, whether it's as good as he was leading the armies of hell into the into the material plane, or work if it's going to ruin everyone's day or there is a planetoid that has come into orbit of your native setting and is turning everything undead monsters or whatever else. These are the NP set these in the end piece of the the end set pieces rather. So some of the ideas that were behind elder evils for example, were informed a lot of what I was thinking about at this point, but rather than pin this out in some destination that will happen years or even many years, from the point when you start with a rotating cast of character of players because people drop out and come in. I decided I wanted to make this possible for you to realise that and in as little as 11 game sessions. So what happens with Demon Lord is that it has an accelerated progression where you every time that you complete an adventure, your group gains a level and get something for it. adventures are not. Period there's you're not doing a full simulation of What happens in the lives of your characters you're playing, but rather, you're only telling the most interesting stories that happen in the character's career as a move towards the end. So you would, you know, you might start off as your first starting adventure, where you play a bunch of desperate people that are coming together to solve a problem with whether it's plague rats that have been exploding out from the the bowels of your town. And it turns out that somebody stole this radioactive meteorite, and they brought it in, in their head somewhere and the rats eating it. And now there's all these other problems, but you're starting characters, which are super simple to play, managed to overcome this thread, and then they form a group. And so everybody makes a choice about how they want their character develop. Well, I want to be a warriors because I fight a lot of things and I'm good at fighting with weapons, or I want to study magic or I want to serve a God or whatever you want to do. At three points down the from the first venture, you're making other decisions about how your character develops, and you Each one of those decision points is called a path. And so your character is following different paths to realise what your ultimate expression will be at the end of the campaign. And that's kind of a snapshot. Mechanically, if you know how to play any, when you know you think about the fact that if you pulled 100 people 100 random gamers, 98 of them are gonna tell you they play d&d or some form of it. So this is not the time for starting company for me to say, Well, I'm gonna do something crazy with dice or dice tricks because I don't want to create barriers to customers for purchasing my product. I want to make it so that they can, oh, I understand how this works because you use a D 20. And even though everybody hates the D 20, because it's official. You ever but you know the process of what a D 20 represents, in the lexicon of what it means to be a gamer. You means when I want to do something the game I pick up this fickle, fickle die and I throw it at the table and see what happens. And if that's true for 90 to 100 people Then there's no reason to change that. And so at least in the kind of stories that I'm trying to tell the experience of trying to create the table with Demon Lord, and weird wizard, and punk, apocalyptic, so it has some familiar elements, but then it also has innovations that reflect the nature of the tone of the game, which is one of the Demon Lord is one of the apocalyptic endings of the world falling apart. And so there's corruption and sanity scores and horrific demons and possession and all the other fun stuff that comes along with that.

Snyder’s Return : 14:36

And it does sound a lot of fun. And so you've built on that and you've just looking through your Twitter and on your, on your website, which I'll ask you to reference in a moment. What is it you've you've changed, pushing it on from the inception that was shuttered the Demon Lord have a hugely successful tabletop role playing game into this new iteration with the We had was it.

Rob Schwalb : 15:02

Right? In early early days. I was very cavalier about making the game that I wanted to make with Demon Lord. Demon board was an opportunity for me to kind of show off the kind of adventures and stories that I like to tell when I'm running a game. So it's going to be dark and gloomy and full of dick jokes and fart jokes, and there's be poop everywhere and demons showing up in inappropriate places with bizarre capabilities. That's the kind of neat I mean, because I also like to run my games a little tight, little drunk and relaxed and everybody have a good time. But I also come to see it wasn't what didn't take me very long to realise that as fun as Demon Lord is it's not a game that I would probably play with a group of kids or people with certain sensibilities or that are that are offended by you know, having My character crapped himself to death because somebody cast hateful deprecation on him. So what I wanted to do is I wanted to throw out a wider net so the original plan for shadow the weird wizard and it has gone through many different name changes over the over the years because I started this project almost four years ago was to do a what I would say a clean version of shadow of the Demon Lord then allow everybody to kind of jump in and earlier iterations of the design it was very close to Demon Lord in terms of the the danger and the difficulty of certain things and horror games have different expectations. If you watch Halloween, and you don't see at least half of the the ensemble cast get butchered by Mike Myers. You're going to watch your money back and shadow the Demon Lord is a horror game. Horror fantasy game and the expectation is that it should be brutal and awful and pleasant, because that's what that is. And if everybody comes through that unscathed, it's I'm not doing my job as a game designer and the game's not fulfilling its promise. And the trouble I found was that that level of difficulty didn't translate well to a game that is built for more high adventure and exploration and mystery and weirdness. So that required going back into the the guts of the game and adjusting the math. In some cases, completely redesigning the underlying math, so that characters were both more durable and had more options to deal with a variety of threats that might come at them. It also gave me a chance to change a few things that after five years of hard testing with thousands and thousands of people playing the game That I'm able to fix or correct and shift direction a little bit. For example, one way that I am simplifying the game even more even more than what Demon Lord has, if you are not familiar with the initiative system and Demon Lord, Demon Lord posits that there are that you just go players go first, and they go in any order they want. And then once the players have taken their turn, then the game master gets to go. And there are two phase two opportunities to ask for players and two opportunities to act for the Game Master. And as fast and slow turns fast. You can do one thing on your turn slow, you can do two things on your turn. And so it's a nice it's a back and forth thing and it kind of forces the gamers to eventually get to the point where they're only doing one thing each turn because they want to go before the monsters. What I've done with weird wizard I've simplified it even more by just saying that the sage actually goes first with Sage as the name for the Game Master, but players go first by taking the Initiative's so the sage only has one opportunity generally to act players can leapfrog over the sage and reduce what they can do on their turn by one it's the end and then go before it does exactly the same thing, but it just cleans it up and tightens it if that makes any sense.

Snyder’s Return : 19:17

No, it makes perfect sense to me but I'm sure other people will be able to follow it that too much issue and definitely when it gets released proper so we've mentioned there sort of to your properties where and and so people can if they choose to stop now and go and find it where can they find you your content and and all the things you saw work on and sort of promote yourself in a source social platform.

Rob Schwalb : 19:49

Sure. The best place to find news and updates about my company is going to be through schwalb entertainment.com if you just do a search for shadow the Demon Lord it should probably come up pretty Quick, I am more active on Facebook than Twitter. Twitter causes me a lot of grief as it does many people I'm sure will follow me at RJ Schwab. On Twitter. We also have a company account called schwalb underscore Ent. And then I am on Facebook as Robert J. Schwab and we have a page for shadow the Demon Lord there. It's called the cult of the Demon Lord. And then we have there's a time page and a Portuguese page. Also on Facebook, where you can get updates for there are my various partners who translate the game into their native tongues. And then you also find me on Instagram, although I mostly take pictures of beer and food.

Snyder’s Return : 20:47

There's nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that at all. So that's where we can find you. Where can we buy your products?

Rob Schwalb : 20:55

My sugar, my website has a shop attached to it or you can purchase my product On drive thru RPG comm just look for a Damon. I'm also available and find hobby stores around the world and on Amazon.

Snyder’s Return : 21:09

Well, I will put as many of those links I can in the description below because I'm sure people will want to go and check out your various products and things into speaking of various products where you've taken a shift from the the horror, fantasy and the slightly more higher fantasy for wizard with punk apocalyptic, would you and that's being your latest release, which like to sort of tell us a bit more about please.

Rob Schwalb : 21:37

Sure. My Spanish translator, Gunny and David David Gonzales approached me maybe a year after Demon Lord came out and about doing an adaptation of the punk apocalyptic miniatures game and I am not one who chases licences. I know it doesn't seem that way since I've done a free port version. Have Demon Lord, but that was mostly for continuty for me, and my ties with Ronan's still. But what made punk apocalyptic so appealing was its crassness. Its Gonzo sensibilities, and just the ridiculousness of the world. It is a it has all the classic trappings of a post apocalyptic setting in that there, but it with with call outs to some almost 1970s sci fi. So there's some Megaman stuff going on there. There's also, if you got these giant dumb cities that were all the rich people fled to as a World War was collapsing. Some of these have fallen, some of them have remained intact. People that have remained intact. There was something weird that's going on there as well. But much of the world and most of the people are condemned to live out their days in the irradiated wasteland. radiative wasteland, and the setting of the book focus zooms in on an section of the wastelands with scrap bridge as the centrepiece and scrap bridge is kind of a neutral zone where all the gang violence that happens out in the wastes. It's kind of put on hold and people can kind of get together and trade and swap news and those kinds of things. So what you do in this game is uh, you're you're fighting crazy bastards in the in the wastes you so there are there's a fifth Reich for example, in the fifth Reich are there they discovered this store of Third Reich memorabilia in some buried vault, but they didn't know if the Fourth Reich can happen. So just be safe. They decided they were going to be the fifth which I thought was funny. So the fifth Reich, they they hate mutants, and so they're on this mission to exterminate them humans and the mutants Of course, are just bizarre and disgusting and but are fully there, but buddy, lots of lots of fun to play. And so you've got those kind of things going on. You've got gangs, you've got weird mysteries of unhinged scientists that are trying to nudge the world back to what it was or destroyed all sorts of stuff that you can do with this game. So it It uses a variant of the Demon Lord engine, I made some changes so that you have eight attributes instead of four. Some of the things are derived were they in a different way than they were a Demon Lord, and most of that was done so that I could reflect the mood and tone of this game. Just like I was talking about with weird wizard. There have to be some mathematical changes in order for you to deliver the play experience that the game promises.

Snyder’s Return : 24:55

Oh, yeah, that's right. It sounds it sounds sort of a bit of a mixed between one to nine good references, Mad Max Logan's Run Fallout, trying to think of other sort of post apocalyptic where there's that sort of wasteland environment and it sounds a lot of fun. You sell it well, I have to say.

Rob Schwalb : 25:19

Sometimes it is written. There are more f bombs in this book than I think people are expecting. Part of it is to kind of match the tone of my partner's, their, their books are very much in your face. Very Frank, and very filthy. So that's why there's a warning label for 16 and up. I think if you're 15 and you're looking at this book, your head might explode. So you've got to wait until you're fully writer at 16 before you can dive into the madness of punk apocalyptic

Snyder’s Return : 25:55

or not Vega. Yeah, we just discretion advised. Maybe the night sounds, it sounds a lot of fun. It does sound a lot of fun. And so that's the three of the trying to think how many products you've got on your website you've got but what's what's godless. That's that's another thing that you you have through your website.

Rob Schwalb : 26:17

It was one of the last things that we unlocked in the shadow the Demon Lord Kickstarter campaign. And originally, the vision was to translate, Shadow the Demon Lord into various different kinds of settings. So one of them was going to be godless and other one was going to be a science fiction game and there was another one which would be a more modern style. We only mock the one and I had plans on doing the other one. So though, the other ones have spun out, at least conceptually into their own standalone games. With godless it basically brings Demon Lord to Earth ruins Earth and then you get to run around like a crazy person with demons and magic, fast cars and guns. So it's a lot of fun we have three adventures for that there and that kind of a lot of the things I learned from godless and making godless allow kind of came through and showed up in punk apocalyptic

Snyder’s Return : 27:14

alright so speaking of magic and guns you worked with Matt for back for the shotguns and sorcery role playing game. What was that like to work with

Rob Schwalb : 27:26

with him? It was really it was an interesting time. We did this five years ago I think. And our entertainment had approached me and I was right in the middle of Demon Lord and so either I was building Demon Lord or the Kickstarter was over and I was working on other things. There were a lot of I had a lot of plates spinning. And so this was one of the projects that came in and so I certainly was happy to do it. We Monte cook company, Monica games had just opened up there. game system to other partners and outlet that attainment. When Matt decided they were going to make the Cypher system the the game system for for shotgun sorcery, I've worked on Cypher system products before. It's a neat game system. Montes a mad genius, and every in every good sense of that, that pairing of words. And so we had a, it was a lot of fun translating some of the ideas of the game system to match the war setting the fantasy world setting that mattad so cleverly created. It's a fun set. It's a fun setting. There's a lot of opportunities for mystery and shenanigans in in the city as well. The power structure of the dragon ruling on top and just the the background idea of taking together the classic fantasy tropes and then combining them all into a city that's encircled by roving bands of undead seems like a neat, neat project be part And Matt and I are friends. We've been friends for nearly my entire career. And it's always great to work with

Snyder’s Return : 29:06

mom. Yeah, he was an absolute joy to speak to and shotguns and sorcery is available on Drive Thru RPG as well. So definitely a link to that. And I'll sort of make sure that's, that's known. And so you mentioned plate spinning. So you've got punk apocalyptic, you've got shadow of the weird wizard. What else have you got spinning at the moment that you can tell us about?

Rob Schwalb : 29:33

Well, I've got I'm on the hook for two Kickstarter stretch goals. So one is for the Hellboy roleplaying game. And I'm doing a mission that's loosely based on the conquered is where conqueror worm storyline from Hellboy. So that's interesting. The Hellboy game takes a little bit of Demon Lord I think they're gonna adapt the initiative system from Demon Lord for use that and then but it still has basically fifth edition chassis. They're working with the characters go from level five to 20. And you're playing agents. Now you're not playing Hellboy, but you're playing the ages around Hellboy and you do cool missions and stuff like that. The other one I'm working on is for is that big adventure for my friends to produce the nightfall setting for five years well and that's pretty much what that's the extent of what I'm doing freelance wise. I am really reluctant to take on freelance projects just because my time is is super crazy busy. But But beyond that, I still have products coming out for Demon Lord, we're going to new victims, which covers itself ancestry. We'll be doing a deep dive in the northern reach setting which will explain that out to maybe almost 20,000 words I think. I have two products coming out for punk apocalyptic the scumbags guide to scrap bridge and then an 11 mission arc like covers that I've been kicking around this idea of doing a micro game use a Demon Lord engine called Lost and Found where you play children who wake up in a haunted orphanage and you have to find your way out. So that should be fun. I have a neat map for that already. And we've got the one game Let's see what else do I have my desktop we've got returned to the witch King which is a full campaign for shadow the Demon Lord which I hope to get to work on sometime before I'm dead. And then I've got two other projects that have two or three. Yeah, I've been talking with the advanced fighting fantasy to do a new edition of that game. That's been that's kind of on a back burner right now. Doing a cyberpunk version of Demon Lord coming up and then I've got another dark fantasy setting using the engine believe it's all supposed to be in the works. But finally the last two that I'm most excited about which will Design of those stars soon as weird wizards done is avedon the angel of the void. And the currently untitled and modern magic setting, which will follow on its heels. avedon, and I've solidified that a little bit more in my mind and I have some notes on it. But the idea is that the cosmology of shadow the demon Lords posits that the demiurge stole the divine substance from God, and use that substance to spin out reality through its underlings, which were the genies are the geniuses. And so the Demon Lord is what used to be God and so he is, or it rather is inclined to reclaim the substance that was stolen from from it at the dawn of creation. And so what happens is the Demon Lord just kind of haunts the void and whatever it draws close to a reality that it was created from itself. It devours. And read starts to reclaim itself in doing so. So the void is littered with all the the ruins of countless realities that have been shattered and destroyed by the Demon Lord. So an Abbot on the angel avoid it's this gigantic ring city that floats in the void that's assembled from the bits and pieces leftover from shattered realities. And you play characters who are struggling to survive in this utter darkness of this place. And you see your demonic invasions, but there are laser pistols and jetpacks and spaceships and all that other kind of stickers avoid is kind of like space but a little different. Science Fiction, magic fantasy crossbreed. It's gonna be a lot of fun.

Snyder’s Return : 33:47

It sounds a lot of fun. And just the way you were describing a little bit I had and maybe the references aren't perfect, but the devouring of planets made me think of Unicron from the transfer Almost animated film, the way it sort of crushes and devours planets and the the taking of power reminded me of the mythical character promethease sort of stealing that power from from the gods and disseminating out. And obviously, they weren't overly chipper with that. So it's, it's setting up a fire in my mind, just the way you've described it. So I'll definitely be looking into that to come out when you managed to get that pen to paper as you were.

Rob Schwalb : 34:30

Yeah. Yeah, I think now that the another weird wizard is I mean, we're, I'm really close I, right now I'm doing my doing the final pass through expert paths and master pads. And then I have the sage chapters, right and the best area to finish up and then a few adventure adventures. And we're in play testing right now. But we have discovered very little that worries me in the play test or feedback so far. So that seems like we're moving moving along at a good clip.

Snyder’s Return : 34:58

Absolutely. So question I have to ask for the amount of things you've mentioned products and storylines and things like that. Where does your inspiration come from? What inspires you?

Rob Schwalb : 35:12

I am an interesting one. I'm a voracious reader. I read 30 books at a time and listen to one audible at a time. And every month I refill up my books reading back to 30. And I read everything from philosophy to to crummy trash fiction or fantasy fiction, and everything in between. For a while I so there's, there's that part of it. So I because I read so much. I'm constantly being exposed to new ideas that I can then translate into something that works for me I also this is a I also grapple with mental health problems. I have Some manic depressive tendencies and anxiety disorder so creating is a good way for me to burn off a lot of the noise in my head and so it I'm able to translate a lot of that frustration and rage into the products that I expose the to the world. Right so that's but like for Dina Lord Thomas legati is one of my favourite writers conspiracy against the human race is a fantastic read the Eugene factors and dustless planet, which is the horror of philosophy, and his treatise on that so just three books, Dustin's planet tentacles longer than night and there's one other one that also kind of informs doesn't kind of it really doesn't form my worldviews and also the things I like to explore in my health game so they may

Snyder’s Return : 37:00

Why'd you definitely found a positive creative output? And I'd thank you for sharing those personal details you really didn't have to. So I appreciate your honesty. And I'm bringing that to the table. So thank you, of course. So moving the question on slightly. So going from what inspires you? What is your writing process? So if someone wants looking to get into tabletop content creation or short story writing and things like that, what is your writing process that allows you to put pen to paper and product to print?

Rob Schwalb : 37:43

It's, it's changed a lot. I am really good at multitasking. And I'm also very disciplined. I have some obsessive compulsive tendencies as well which allows me to focus on one thing Then, you know, and then finish it. It's the biggest obstacle I think a lot of people have when it comes to doing anything a creative side is, are they are the obstacles they create for themselves? You know, I've for years, people have asked me, What can I do to get it to break into the hobby, and I would tell them don't. And my reasoning was that having done this for almost 20 years, I used to love gaming, right, it was a, it was the way for me to be creative, to engage with my friends, to entertain my friends, and to be entertained by my friends. And I was a consumer of all RPGs and that was my that was my, that was my thing. And then because I decided that I was going to do this professionally, it became a job, and I don't get the same levels of enjoyment. Sometimes no enjoyment at all from doing the things that I grew up, loving. But that said that aside, if you still if you're not deterred by my word of warning, as I was saying, I think the biggest obstacle that people have are the ones they create themselves. Thinking too big. For example, I'm going to write a 10 book series in the vein of Robert Jordan, you're not gonna write 10 books, if you've never written a short story or let alone a paragraph. Not having a good place to do the work. Some places quiet or the time to invest in the work, you got to think about how many words you can generate per hour. So much of my time that I spend working, I might be sitting at a bar with a notebook and taking notes about things that I want to do or solving really difficult math problems that allow me to tell the kinds of stories I want to tell or do the things I want to do in the games. And these are a lot of the prep work that you do that are spent not even typing, but once you get in front of the desk, it's good to set yourself A daily goal. I think, Stephen King said he shot for 1000 words a day. I think that's right. Maybe it's more. But maybe start small like you start with, I will write 500 good words today. And do that every day for five for five days and then see what I have. And then if you can do that, then you can do 750 words next week. And then you can do 1000 words a week after that. And once you get the rhythm and you understand the process and what it feels like to be taking the disparate thoughts that are banging around in your little attic and throwing them up on your screen for other people to consume and then judge and weigh and then have an den and deal with that kind of nightmare that comes with this process. Then you're well on your way to becoming an alcoholic like me, and

Snyder’s Return : 40:53

fair enough, fair enough. So fat is a view into sort of I want to say breaking in but starting the creative process for for oneself or someone out there looking to, to move into this this line of work.

Rob Schwalb : 41:12

I do want to add, though that if you are serious and somebody serious about trying to break into the game, there are no there's no there are no gatekeepers anymore. There's no reason to think that you have to put an application in wizards, the coast or some other publisher. When all the tools for you to make your own things your own really cool things are available on a Chromebook. So you don't have to have that job to do what you want to do with your creative self. You can self publish to drive through, it's super easy, and you can build an audience by producing content that appeals to you first. And also don't look for holes to fill. That's one of the big problems that comes out of designing things for Existing game systems like Demon Lord or fifth edition d&d or anybody else is that people will think, man, there's got to be an angle that needs to be filled. So I can make some money. But rather, you should be writing about the thing that turns you on. And that gets you excited, then that keep that wakes you up out of the middle of asleep, because you saw the problem that you're at. And the first thing you're going to do is not go squirt in the toilet, you're going to go and hit your desk, and you're going to bang out the words and figure out and put it into reality. So don't think that, as I said, there are no more gatekeepers anymore. The hobby has changed so much in 20 years, where the only way to get into the hobby into the business was to get dragon magazine or dungeon magazine to buy your adventure or your article. And then maybe just maybe you'll be able to make something of yourself in the business. Now it's go out, build your audience, make cool stuff and the audience will continue to grow.

Snyder’s Return : 42:57

Yeah, absolutely. I know. games like Dungeons and Dragons spy hander, vampire, the masquerade. And all those have their own separate libraries on places like Well, there's the diems guild specifically for Dungeons and Dragons, but there's storyteller Vault for Vampire the Masquerade, and there's by hand a grim and perilous library. The amount of releases you've mentioned for a shadow the Demon Lord is staggering. So definitely the The opportunity is there. If you're not trying to reinvent the wheel, I guess.

Rob Schwalb : 43:31

We do have the disciples the Demon Lord programme through drafter as well.

Snyder’s Return : 43:34

Well, they go. So just shows that if you have that spark, you can make your mark in the world if you're prepared to work for it, I suppose. So that is sort of your work, the pressures of work, getting into the pressures of work, what does he do for downtime? How is it you sort of You mentioned you read a lot and you listen to audibles and audiobooks. What else do you do to relax or cut off from the pressures of, of creation, shall we say?

Rob Schwalb : 44:12

There are some things that I think that my biggest hobby outside of everything else is probably music. I don't play, but I'm a I appreciate music. And I'm, I tend to lean towards the heavier harder more evil flavour varieties. So black metal, death metal, Doom Metal, all that stuff. And I have I collect albums, I have probably several thousand and I listen to them while I work. But I also use them for kind of decompression. And then I do pretty much whatever else does I lose my mind into whatever current hotness is on one of the 18 billion streaming services that have subscribed to it. Currently, I'm watching the last episode of down the last episode of season two of fortitude. And I'm working on dabs on Hulu and dark on Netflix. Yeah.

Snyder’s Return : 45:17

Fair enough, and everybody has their own escape, which is is important to them and sort of grounds them so they can get back to to zero, I guess back to centre. Right. So, would you like to remind everybody where they can find you and your content and where they can sort of purchase sort of shadow the Demon Lord and your other releases, please?

Rob Schwalb : 45:43

For sure. best place to find me and to interact with me would be through Facebook and just give me at Robert J. Schwab. I'm also on Twitter sometimes it's RJ Schwab. My website is www.entertainments.com You buy my products there or on Drive Thru RPG and the physical, the d'etre versions of my books are available and find game stores worldwide and also an amazon.com.

Snyder’s Return : 46:11

Well, Robert, Rob, thank you very much for taking some time to speak with me today, you've shared so much and told us about all the fantastic products and games that you you have not only worked on, but you produce yourself. So I really appreciate you taking your time to speak with me today.

Rob Schwalb : 46:31

It's been my greatest pleasure. Thank you very much for having me.

Snyder’s Return : 46:34

It's it's been great. I'd love to have you on the show again in the future, if you'd be willing,

Rob Schwalb : 46:39

always, anytime.

Snyder’s Return : 46:40

All right, well, we will keep in contact. And once again, thank you so much. You're very welcome. Thanks for listening. If you'd like to learn more about the show, then go to WWW dot Snyder's return.squarespace.com. Alternatively, you can find us over on Twitter. At Return Snyder. You have a link tree link in The description of this episode. And if you want to support us, come and join us over on Patreon. And we also have a Discord server. Please leave us a review because we'd love to learn how to improve the channel and provide better content alpha for those who are listening until we until we speak again. Thank you Transcribed by https://otter.ai