Hello, and welcome to snows return a tabletop role playing podcast. My guest today recently helped convert a base idea into Kickstarter gold you might be familiar with it is also a producer at teen Digi sprite has recently joined the cubicle 17 as a staff writer working on both Warhammer age of Sigmar soulbound and the Warhammer 40,000 role playing game wrath and glory. She also knows how to run a marketplace for wild adventures, Linlithgow have teamed Digi sprite and cubicle seven. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me on. It's an absolute pleasure before we move into your shall we say professional side of things how give us a little bit of background about yourself. How did you get involved in tabletop role playing games, please?
Elaine Lithgow:Oh gosh. So I'm Scottish born and bred. And so growing up in the UK, my sort of earliest introductions to tabletop games in general was mostly through our local Games Workshop, and the odd little smattering of small groups of nerds who were interested in shuffling small plastic figurines around the table or bombastically declaring that the cast spells etc. and imagining waving your hands around the table. And my mother is an even bigger nerd than I am. And she speaks cling on and has an entire wardrobe filled with these pulp paperback, science fiction and fantasy novels. So I remember, we lived out in the Scottish countryside. I remember spending a lot of my youth when I discovered this great big treasure trove of 70s and 80s, Pulp Fiction, science fiction, fantasy and diving in there. And getting all that sort of stuff. So I was really inspired from a young age, it was reading way ahead of what I should have been reading. I look back on some of those novels. I'm like, Well, hold on. I think some of those might have had some some loot content in them do. Right, but but yes, so very, very good exposure, young age to all that sort of science fiction, Fantasy games, workshop bits and pieces. I eventually I started with a lot of that stuff to the side for a while. And when I discovered video games, and my my ear, impressionable mind at the time, it's very much our video games in the future, they're going to they're going to be like that the thing and I want to I want to make video games. So I ended up going off to study game design, Production Management at Aberdeen University, which is through in Dundee in Scotland. That was a great course for teaching a lot of like, basics of game design and how to actually, you know, take ideas and make them into a final product and all this sort of stuff. So that was good fun. And then I graduated right smack bang, and on the 2009 recession.
Snyders Return:So timing,
Elaine Lithgow:great timing, perfect timing to try and get into a degree a degree Sorry, I like an entry level position in the games industry that had rapidly contracted overnight. And Dundee for those not in the know is like a very, very big games city. Okay, Rockstar Games were founded their DMA Design, making, like lemmings and Carmageddon and all these sorts of things at the time, we had real time worlds as well, that we're making the crack den games for the Xbox. But then suddenly, I graduated and emerged onto a marketplace that contracted horribly overnight, so entry level positions, what few that were, were being filled by people with eight to 10 years experience and things like that. So I ended up grabbing the first thing I could which locked me into the oil and gas industry for about three years, and it was making pre visualisation tools and interactive tools. So sort of trying to message some of this game design knowledge into Strange things like instals for conventions or training tools for offs of CA offshore oil rig workers and things like that. And so that was a it was an interesting few years where I felt very much like I was an I quote, working for the bad guys. No, no disrespect him and working in oil and gas. But I met some some very interesting human beings, who were very aware of environmental impacts. So, but then after a few years, and I eventually managed to get back into video games industry, I started working at mobile game studio, and working on Angry Birds and things like that, and bounced around a little bit, it was a producer in the games industry in a different company for a while. And then I ended up I ended up as a designer, working remotely for a company in California. And, and they were looking for a designer to run sort of community events. And if you imagine this remote company of 100, plus software developers scattered around the world, and I was running the equivalent of Dungeons and Dragons games for them. Because they were this awesome, crazy company with this CEO, who just wanted to have this really awesome community environment. So they were happy having a full time. Dungeon Master on staff. Oh, so yeah, so I did that for two years. And during that time, I started freelancing as well. And because I always had aspirations of writing, and novels, science fiction, fantasy, all harking back to that wonderful, cupboard full of paperbacks, and, and I saw, there was just an open call from cubicle seven, I think I stumbled upon on the Twitter a couple years ago. And that was when they were looking for people to write content for the upcoming age of Sigmar solandt game. So I submitted some work some examples, and Emmet and the team at cubicle seven like my work, so I started picking up the odd bit freelancing from them. And before I knew it, I had I was writing for soulbound and my first big thing I was writing beast theory for the core book, when you came to came at, and the ATM free, starter adventure, crash and burn. And they hit and then before I knew I was also getting tapped by Zach at cubicle seven to write some stuff for wrath and glory. So I ended up writing in the relaunch of that book. And then a couple years later, and just just over a month ago now I've only been here five weeks and but I got the full time offer from cubicle seven to come on as a full time staff writer. So long story short, it has been quite the strange bouncing around limb flailing exploration of my careers that have led me to this current point where I'm now a full time staff writer for cubicle seven
Snyders Return:yet yeah, that is that is quite a thank you for for sharing all that with me and I guess, coupler to your mom would just run with that. pronounciation I'll apologise to all the Trekkies another time. So we're in this this thread did your involvement as producer of team Digi sprite? Where did that sort of offshoot come from? Because you've had some fantastic success on Kickstarter with certain projects that if you'd like to mention those as well?
Elaine Lithgow:Yeah, for sure. And so did you sprint back when I was slogging away in quality assurance in the and mobile game studio. And this was four, but four years ago now. And I met my no fiancee, Robin. And she had she had been working on digital games for a while she'd been producing games in her spare time. And she she was just this one woman Dev and enter her company was Digi Sprite. So that was her brand and everything. And she was working away on a digital card game, which he'd been been wanting to put it was this was sort of at the height of Hearthstone and other games like that. And she wanted to see about doing her own thing. So she was working on As a sort of dungeon crawling card game, and she'd been working away in this game for months and months, but anyone who's worked in software development will tell you how frustrating it can be to get even the most basic interactions to play out on a screen. So if I see in like in a card game, you can very easily say to a human being, okay, shuffle the deck and draw five cards. And that's a very simple interaction. Hmm. But when it comes time to showing that on a screen, suddenly you're dealing with, okay, you're having to like, do all these random things and shuffle this and then display on the screen. And then how do you know that it's actually random, you need to bug test you need to do these things, etc, etc. So she was pulling our teeth out, I can't remember exactly what particular interaction it was, it may have just been some rapid prototyping or play testing or whatever. And I said to her, why don't we just actually, we've got a bunch of these ATM card sleeves from my flatmate, Sam tailors, and Magic the Gathering stuff, why don't we literally just print this game out on card on paper sleeve all up and just quickly play the game rather than you worrying about all this like technical side of things. And we did that. And by the end of the day, we had a working prototype for our first game, which ended up being Doomsday bots. And we were sort of taken aback by just how crazy quick it was and how fast and easy it was to make iterations rather than having to go in and alter code and everything. You can literally scribble out numbers, right interactions on paper and everything. And just like very, very rapidly, prototyping developed these games. And and that was sort of the my initial first involvement with Digi spray. And we decided, like, Oh, this is very cool. We're really enjoying this game. And our flatmate and my friend, Sam, is, as we call him, the card wizard. He has a galaxy brain when it comes to card games. He's one of these people who's just so so in tune with card game design that we brought him on as a designer as well. And so as Robin director, myself, producer, and then Sam as designer, we all sort of banded together, we made our first game Doomsday bots. We took that to Kickstarter, and that funded very well. And we got that all done. We got that kicked off. We enjoyed it so much that we decided we will keep on keeping on so no Did you spray is this same sort of company that the three of us work together, we try and play a game a year. So we our second game was adventure mark, which was a bigger and we wanted to see how big a project we can make. So we wanted to make a big LCG card game. And I had a friend who I'd met from my time in the video games industry, Steph Bolin and she'd worked on Angry Birds and Candy Crush and a lot of these other titles. And she had this incredible art style. So we got her on to do all the art for these game, which turned into infant remark. And that was our second game that did very well. We ended up getting picked up we got and we actually cancelled that Kickstarter. And because we were approached by a publisher, midway through the campaign, and when we were at the UK games Expo. And so hub games approached us. They said we love the game, the game is like pretty much done because we were already locked on design and art and everything. And they just said, you know, hey, do you want to work with us and we've can use our distribution networks and polish up a bit and things like that and get it a big global release. So we did that. And that's been good. And then this year, our game was familiar alchemy which was and we decided to scale down because adventure Mart was insane and dominated our lives for a very long time. And every night was working on adventure Mart and we we have Digi sprite Sunday's as we call them so all three of us we just our Sundays are just sacrificed at the altar of Digi sprite as we call it. For playtesting for developing and things like that. So So yeah, we want to scale down and Robin had this idea for a plant growing and potion brewing game which turned into fuel You're alchemy and then that went on Kickstarter? Just last month. And yeah, that's that succeeded as well. So we're 343 so far. So no complaints on that
Snyders Return:front now? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I've sent it across. Obviously, it's I'm recording this release slightly, but time recording, there was a lot of support for a lot of people sort of getting behind the project. So they must always be pleasing to see that kind of response to your hard work.
Elaine Lithgow:Yeah, absolutely. Especially with the way the world is right now is quite hard for small teams to get backing and things like that, you know, people are in the world are squeezed for finances and stressful and obviously, with the ongoing pandemic, board games are kind of a hard sell, especially physical ones, because who knows when we're actually going to be able to sit across the table from our loved ones again, and play games together, especially passing around cards physically and all this sort of stuff. And when we're dealing with second waves and and social distancing, and everything card games can be a very hard sell. So am, we were we were worried a little bit with familiar alchemy, just that it wasn't going to fund because of that. And, but especially in the latter half. And the latter sort of the last week of the campaign, we had this massive outpouring of love and support from the, the gaming community. And we managed to go and fly across the line and everything. And which was, which was incredible. It was really great to see all our friends and supporters and everything coming together for that. So, so yeah, it's been, it's been really, really lovely to see. Especially when you have the haters, you know, gotta gotta show up the haters.
Snyders Return:Indeed, indeed. But you mentioned there, obviously the situation in the world and not being able to get in that close proximity. Whereas saw the your other professional hat if I may call it that you're sort of writing for cubicle seven tabletop role playing games and are being played either on sort of platforms like role 20, or across sort of discord and things like that. So has that sort of freedom, knowing that those those hobbies are being sort of still maintained and picked up as that sort of helped fire imagination for ages Sigmar and wrath and glory?
Elaine Lithgow:Yeah, I think so. So personally, prior to the pandemic, I was fairly against, and playing by video, sort of, you know, playing over screens. For me, tabletop role playing games, were always an in person thing. You sat together, it was a social experience. And, you know, you, you work things out, I found it incredibly difficult to especially GM, or video, I hated doing. But then obviously, everything happened on my games, we could no longer run them. Unless we were doing the videos. So I caved and started running games. And I've gotten, you know, I still prefer to do it in person. But I've gotten much more accustomed to and I actually do quite like, and for the ease of setup and things like that. And joining for like, I've been able to join onto various guests streams are good guests on our streams. And, and that's letting me play with people I never normally would have been able to in the past, which is great news. I think it's why we are seeing this almost a renaissance it feels over the last year or so where there are so many actual play streams on twitch and everything with incredible casts, so many talented actors and storytellers all coming together to share these worlds together. And it's I absolutely love it. I think it's great. Well,
Snyders Return:I agree. And you mentioned the twitch and one thing we haven't mentioned is where we can actually sort of find yourself and everything you're associated with on social media if you'd like to us or give us some some links, so people listening can sort of follow those and again, engage with you on a on a social platform.
Elaine Lithgow:Yeah, definitely. For if you're looking for my personal accounts, the best place to start to find me is at Elaine Lythgoe on Twitch. And not sorry, not Twitch, Twitter adaline lift go very original. And that's that's where I do most of my my rambling into the void. It's my poison of choice as I call it as far as team did you spray ourselves and that we are at team did you spray on Twitter we're also at team Digi sprite on Twitch. And and we're sort of we're we're picking up twitch we're doing a bit more stuff I've been doing some design and streams on there so like talking through encounter design for tabletop RPG and and bits and pieces like that should have been quite fun and also just streaming the odd board games and whatnot we're finding our feet we're deciding how much we want to do with Twitch and and you can also if you're looking for more cubicle seven and for all though obviously soul bound dress and glory etc I believe they're just at cubicle seven on Twitter and and and various other platforms I'm not 100% sure what they have I think it's just one cubicle seven for pretty much all their stuff
Snyders Return:I'll find it and put a link to in the in the scription below this podcast so people please follow up follow those links and engage with with those various outputs of content mentioned their ages Sigmar and wrath and glory that the mall within the Warhammer umbrella they are very different worlds in a very different games. Without sort of diving too deep into each would you are you able to give us a brief description of ages Sigmar soul bound in a sort of a brief description of wrath and glory please.
Elaine Lithgow:Okay. So it just like we're soul band is set in the Warhammer, their their new fantasy setting. And I seen you I think it's been a few years now since it came out. But it's Sam all very, very high fantasy. There's a pantheon of gods with personalities and goals, and clashes and Titanic struggles of incredible. And armies in a strange multiverse. That's each plane is attuned to a different type of magic. So you have realms of fire and realms of chaos and realms of metal and only sorts of things so very, very, and quite like these old heavy metal album covers that you would maybe have seen back in the 80s big bombastic you know, people standing out with a sword to slay the dragon and all this sort of stuff. And, and in the role playing game you play as and soul band, which are a group of individuals who are selected by a pantheon of gods to be their champions in the Mortal realms and go where armies cannot, and root out evil and corruption. And you're all magically bound together in this ritual. And the best sort of cultural touchstone I use for is it feels a bit like you're playing as the Avengers from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you have incredible levels of power and agency to go where you want to go and the the marshal might that you have. And I like to compare it if people are familiar with like Dungeons and Dragons, and a level one soulbound character has the same sort of equivalent level is like a level 10 dragons character so from the instant you step out of the gate, you will be cleaving through four or five enemies per turn, you have so much of this incredible power. And, and you're sort of expected to do great and incredible feats and deeds and everything. So it's very, very bombastic and exciting and I love it. And, and wrath and glory, and on the other hand is sent in the the grim dark future of the 41st millennium. And it's, I feel like it's more familiar of the settings for people who are used to Warhammer Warhammer 40,000 and everything. It's Space Marines, it's, you know, aeldari, and orcs. And all this sort of thing, the same setting that's been going since the 80s. And both guns and plasma guns and ships that are also cathedrals they're the size of cities, flying through hell dimensions to travel from one planet to another. So it has this big epic sort of grim dark and Gothic vibe to it. And, and in wrath and glory. You're playing a, a sort of ragtag group of heroes and has a very, very Power scale because there's a tear system involved. So if you want, you can pick up wrath and glory. And you can say, okay, we're all gonna play scum. We're all gonna play criminals and we're going to be in over our head. And we're all going to have nothing but alas, pistol or side and our faith in the Emperor to try and get us out of these crappy situations. Or you can say, okay, we're all going to play orcs. And we're going to go or Ark Ark, we're going to get in our truck and we're going to drive around and shoot people. And, or you can say, we're all going to play primary Space Marines and be these incredibly powerful like warriors going on these and like crusades or whatever. Or you can play Inquisition and go on. And he say like, a high sort of an investigation things we're doing here corruptions and cults and all this sort of stuff. And or you can be a wonderful mix of all those things all in the one party and see what happens. So it's a very, very wide system, wrath and glory it tries to, to have all really, so it can be a fun system to take and bend to your will and do what you want to do with it.
Snyders Return:All right, well, thank you for a description on each shift. If someone was interested in, say, ages Sigmar soulbound is a is a, like an entry level package that they can pick up to step in, or is it sort of straight into the main source books,
Elaine Lithgow:if you're looking to just get started, and for soulbound, a starter set has just launched and you can get, you can preorder it now. And that gets you access to the PDF. That's how cubicle seven is doing all the releases right now. you preorder it you get the PDF and all the content, no. And then when everything goes to print tickets, it gets shipped out to you physically, and just very good for this day and age and gets everyone the the content earlier. And there's also the free adventure, and which I wrote for soulbound, crash and burn. And if you're looking to just sort of get a look at how he soulbound Adventure plays out, you can always grab that and have a look through it. I believe premade characters are available as well on the cubicle seven page. So technically, you could probably. And if you were to watch, say, a YouTube video or something talking about the rules for soul band, you can pick up the free adventure, the pre made characters, and have yourself a good like six, nine hours of soulbound before you've paid a penny if you really want to. Wow,
Snyders Return:that's what sort of kept our faces. So what would come in the starter set once it's once it's fully released. You mentioned that the PDF I've got a PDF for wrath and glory. So I'm looking to get the hardbound version of that when that becomes available. But what comes in the starter set itself for for age of Sigmar soulbound
Elaine Lithgow:Oh gosh. So the starter set comes with a bunch of stuff. It's got in big fold out maps, it's got and quickstart rules and everything I believe in there. It's got the a campaign. It's gorgeous got a bunch of creatures, beasties and everything in it. It's got a massive city guide for this city brightsphere where this is all set, and which has it's incredibly in depth and it's great. And that also comes with lots and lots of plot hooks and little campaign ideas and things like that in there. So because whenever we're designing our sort of product with cubicle seven, we want to make sure that you're not just playing through a starter set once and then it's kind of done and used and you can't use anymore. So it's got this big city guide and information on like the surrounding areas and lots of plot hooks in everything to develop your own adventures in that city and keep the adventure going. And and more of the time probably forgetting it's jam packed full of stuff. But it
Snyders Return:sounds really great. a lead on question. That's the sort of tie tube and not tied exactly into Warhammer. You mentioned there you created crash and burn and your development for products for cubicle seven. What is your, your creative process? How is it you? You sit at your desk or a laptop or a tablet? What is your creative process going from? concept through to whatever it is ends up as?
Elaine Lithgow:Gosh, I guess it depends on what we're what I'm delivering hoping for something like a tabletop RPG, and a lot of it and and bearing in mind that I have only been doing this full time for a month or so, and then freelance for a couple of years and attend for the tabletop RPG stuff tends to be that there will be a pitch. And because we were working with a licence holder, for a lot of our stuff Games Workshop, we will like pitch them ideas for books or adventures or whatever. And they will give us thumbs up or thumbs down as in like, Oh, yeah, this is a cool thing you can do with our licence. Because whenever you're working with a licence, you're essentially playing with someone else's toys. So you got to just make sure that they're okay with you. destroying them on occasion, or whatever. So we'll do that, we'll get the thumbs up. And then it says on to outlining and to sort of get like a framework for it. And starting to fill things in writing as we go, editing, developing, and playtesting as well as we go along. And it just goes off, I'll do like first draft on my work, I'll get fired off to editors will come back or go through producers, it'll come back or go off to Games Workshop. thumbs up or thumbs down on what's happening Oh, come back, and then re editing and it's this. It's like playing tennis, you're like balancing your work back and forth across the the court until it reaches a point where everybody's happy. And then and then whatever it is, whether it's beasties you're writing statblocks, you're making adventures you're writing, eventually, it just reaches a point of Polish where everybody's happy. And then off it goes to the printers.
Snyders Return:Well, you mentioned the event horizon writing and beasties and things like that. And let's just say you've been sort of freelancing on it for a couple of years. So where, where is it you draw your inspiration from for, say, crash and burn or a beast theory that you've created? What what are your favourite inspirations or influences into to your work?
Elaine Lithgow:Hmm. And sometimes it's like, it depends on what I'm working on. So in general, and I think most people who write or create sort of tell you this. And if you're a writer, for example, you should read twice as much as your right. So I do read a lot, I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy. Sometimes I read very old work, sometimes I read. And I do write like reading a lot of very modern stuff, because you can sort of get a feel for more modern tastes and what people are excited in. And movies and stuff are also good. I do watch an awful lot of movies. And it's one of my favourite things. And I legitimately miss going to the cinema Hello, I know cinemas have fallen out of fashion a lot recently. But my favourite social activity is still going to the movies and then sitting down afterwards with my friends. And slowly but surely dissecting the film and talking about the themes and the office camera. And this shot was really cool. And that was really cool. And this is great. And that was terrible. And some things a terrible movie is twice as interesting and exciting as a good movie. So I kind of tried to cast as wide a net as possible for gathering up inspiration. Because you just never really know where something's going to come from. And obviously, I also buy and read a heck of a lot more tabletop RPG source books, and then I can ever actually play. I have stacks upon stacks of digital stacks upon stacks with PDFs, and, and everything. And because I just love, I love reading real sets and settings. And then I'll write characters and do little experiments and encounter designing or whatever for systems that I've had for like 10 years, and I still haven't got a chance to play. Just because you learn so much by just looking at the other people in your in your industry or working on things. Yeah, and, but then sometimes it's also a case of, so that's like my baseline. That's just stuff that's always going on if I'm like okay, cool. Gotta go. And that's just my basic, always simmering inspiration. But sometimes if you're working on something, and you're in pre production, for example. So with soulbound, for example, and when we were starting to work on it, and I was talking to me and the team and everything about the power levels and the feel for these adventures, and I sort of cottoned on to this so they're they're likely Avengers, so I went back and like I watched a bunch of the Avengers movies or whatever you go, if you can sort of boil down what it is you're planning on writing. And I like to make like an inspiration list, which could be just 1015 pieces of whether it's a movie or a comic book, or a manga, or an anime or a TV show or video game, or music or anything that can sort of really crystallised that theme. And then you just sort of dive in and consume it all. And how does it make you feel? What are the sort of key lessons and cool things you can take away from it? Is there anything really awesome that you're like, Oh, this, this was the best example of this for me? And then how can you take that and try and translate it into your own work, what you're working on? So sometimes it's just general wide net casting, and other times it's laser focused? I must research lovecraftian Horror this week, because I'm planning on writing something that's dealing with lovecraftian horror.
Snyders Return:All right. So that's, that's a lot of works. What you mentioned going to the movies, but what do you do for downtime? How do you sort of do you give yourself a break from the creative process? Or how do you sort of bring yourself back to centre?
Elaine Lithgow:What's downtime, and now, it is legitimately a problem I have acknowledged in the past, I people tend to make the joke that I work four or five jobs, because at any one time especially, we're talking like a few months ago, I was working nine to five as a game designer for this Californian company. I was freelance writing tabletop stuff for cubicle seven, I was working on games for Digi spray. And then I was also writing my own science fiction and fantasy in my spare time. So we're talking like four jobs all at once. So I do sometimes legitimately find it difficult to turn off my brain. And I've got this sort of constant analytical thing going on. My brains just always tuned a little bit. When I'm playing something, Video game or reading a book or whatever. And I'm constantly just, it can be difficult for me to turn that turn off and actually just enjoy it. What I'm the media I'm consuming. Yeah. So so if I ever find a way to make a really solid balance, I'll let you know.
Snyders Return:If you appreciate that, that would be great.
Elaine Lithgow:I think I think probably the one thing that I can sort of turn my brain off is I play a lot of Monster Hunter. When I want when I want my brain to chill, and that's simply because it's a franchise. It's a video game franchise. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it. Yeah. Yeah. It's a Japanese video game. It's very sort of basic, very mechanical, hacking slashy, sort of almost MMO, but not MMO. And we're You are a hunter, and you hunt big monsters. And I love it. And I've been playing those games since the first one came out 16 some years ago now. So since I was a teenager, and it's one of the few sort of games or pieces of media that I can really just sink into. And it's almost like I've I've passed beyond an analytical mindset, because I know so much about it, that I no longer have to dissect it. It's no longer a puzzle to me, you know, I know everything about it. But the gameplay, the core gameplay loop is cathartic. And I enjoy it. So I can sort of sit back and it's one of those games you can just pour endless hours into if you really want to collecting rare items, defeating the hardest monsters. That's probably the one game or piece of media that I can just sort of turn my brain off to.
Snyders Return:I can totally respect that. Totally respected. They are very good games to be fair. So I really agree with you. They're excellent. So I was tempted to reengage your analytical mind, but I don't want to keep you awake all night thinking of these things. Ask the question. Go for it. You're eventually a monster Monsanto being a cathartic experience. And you mentioned about sort of analysing other tabletop role playing games and sort of working through characters. Are there any other role playing games outside of your sort of Warhammer sort of circle that you've looked at and thought, that's the next one I'm going to buy or that's the one I really want to play. Next, given the chance. Have you got sort of a shortlist of ones you look across on your Drive Thru RPG or DMS Guild, or wherever it is, you've got your tabletop role playing games compiled on and use or keep eyeing up the same couple of titles.
Elaine Lithgow:Oh, gosh, that's a very unfair question, because that list is very long.
Snyders Return:Not to ask it.
Elaine Lithgow:No, no, it's perfectly fine. Yeah, so I think like, like I touched on, I do purchase a lot of different role playing games, because I get enjoyment out of even reading source books and imagining characters and the storylines we can tell with the systems. And, and certain things like I got in on the racial justice bundle on itch, and IO, which has hundreds of small indie tabletop role playing games. Some of them are just little one page, creative little exercises, and some of them are, are like longer things here and there. So they're, they're great. And I'm still parsing all of those. And I'll just dive in and read the odd one here and there. My hit list. I know, I've been dying to play some masks for a while. Which is the power by the apocalypse superhero system. And I really love a lot of the systems a lot of stuff that's going on there, I was lucky enough to get and I played monster of the week on stream and on foxfire stream. And, and I really enjoyed that. And that was my first exposure to the powered by the apocalypse system. I love how narrative is sort of telling a story and you're just you know, when your key actions are kick ass, and things like that. I just it makes me smile, it makes me smile. So masks is essentially that but also with superheroes and teenage turmoil as you're a bunch of teenagers trying to wrestle with fight the bad guys, but also teenage drama. And so that's on there, I really wanted to play blades in the dark as well. And because that's a very, very good I'm a huge fan of the Lies of Locke lamora and novel series if people have read that, there'll be some people who are listening to this or nodding along and other people who are shaking their heads, but fantasy Ocean's 11 style shenanigans, rogue archetypes, running gangs in seedy places and trying to trying to not get murdered by the people, there are very dangerous people they're trying to rip off blades in the dark seems to just channel that atmosphere and everything into their mechanics so perfectly. So that's on my list. And, gosh, honestly, I could be here. I could be here all night. I also did enjoy Dungeons and Dragons, and the amount of creativity and everything that comes out of lots of indie creators who are working on like the DMS Guild, and things like that there are so many interesting twists and turns on that system. I do think there are, there's a lot of work there. And I do encourage people to go out site of d&d because there are so many amazing and creative systems and settings and oh my god, you guys should really try some really just just go on, buy a couple like $2 RPGs. And just have fun one shots, it's great fun. But there's also a lot of really great stuff that's coming out of there. And every time I see like a new class or a new setting that's really creative, sort of piques my interest, I'm writing an adventure for the Beowulf Kickstarter campaign that launched a while ago in that set a dedicated one GM, one player system. And they've they've got a lot of really cool mechanics and everything. And obviously, it's all based around the Beowulf poems. So it's, you know, sort of, there's no magic magic users, you're dealing with things with their sort of gritty kind of realism, but also that like poetic heroism, and it's a very interesting system.
Snyders Return:Beware the Grendel.
Elaine Lithgow:Were the Grand Ole indeed. Gosh, so yeah, there are so many I constantly have this insatiable hunger to play different systems and make different characters. And there's never enough hours in the day and I'm also normally the GM. And two different designers isn't just one thing to run the games, but then also wanting to play the games are two very different desires, neither of which Do I get enough exposure to maybe in the future? Maybe.
Snyders Return:Thank you so much for your time, Elaine, again, I, I think we could talk for hours. But if you wouldn't mind, letting everybody know where they can find you and your content. As you mentioned before the age of Sigmar soulbound, and wrath and glory work that you do are just one avenue of all the hard work and creativity you put out into the, into the general spaces. So if you wouldn't mind telling people again, where they can find you and their content, it'd be greatly appreciated. Yeah,
Elaine Lithgow:as I mentioned, I think the best place to find myself keep up with what I'm doing is just on Twitter. At alien, let's go one day. Soon, hopefully, I will get around to actually making a website. For the time being, that's the best place to track me if you're looking about with a Digi sprite work. That's at Digi sprite on Twitter, and cubicle seven there at cubicle seven on Twitter as well. So that's sort of the three places you can sort of see my work filtering out into the wider world.
Snyders Return:Oh, it's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you, Elaine, I'd love to have you back on the show in the future if you'd be willing to come back and speak to me again.
Elaine Lithgow:Oh, yeah, absolutely. has been lovely. And I'm sure there are many, many more things I could ramble on about.
Snyders Return:Sure. Between the both of us, we could ramble together. So I will let you get away and continue with your analytical take on life and media. And we will speak again soon.
Elaine Lithgow:Perfect. All right. Thank you very much.
Snyders Return: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. We 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