hello and welcome to snows return a tabletop role playing podcast if you have ever sought the knowledge of elminster or been lured by the dark secrets of shady organisations and factions turned off the main road and into the wrong alleyway or just wanted to strip it back to the bare bones to study it and see what was behind it all there my guest tonight has just what you are looking for a huge thank you to the prolific bestselling writer for tabletop role playing games empty black empty welcome to the show
MT Black:thank you very much adam it's a real pleasure to be
Snyders Return:on well thank you for finding time you never seem to be putting your pin down from what i understand from following your social media so before we get into what you have been doing and a relatively new release of yours that sort of outlines part of what i've described there in the intro would you mind give us a bit of background of how you got into tabletop role playing games to start with please
MT Black:oh yeah i've been i've been doing tabletop role playing games since i was about 10 i was introduced to d&d by i'd seen it the media but i started playing it school with a kid in school library and it was a love at first sight experience i've described it i absolutely loved it that was the that was the top moldvay basic edition of dungeons and dragons playing keep on the borderlands you know millions of people that was their first game experience back in the 80s and i've really continued to play throughout my life since then d&d has been a focus but played a fifth selection of other tabletop role playing games as well so a pretty typical introduction to the to gaming
Snyders Return:yeah no absolutely and many people find have found a similar pass to yourselves and some people have come out at it from a very different angle so the early start sort of getting in from the school library and then moving on when did you stop rolling dice and start picking up the pen and really sort of putting everything down onto onto paper or print
MT Black:yeah it's indian day i think most players and certainly all dmws there's a really strongly creative element to the hobby and from the very earliest days i found myself just as a dm you know if you found yourself just filling our graph books with dungeon maps filling old notebooks with with new monsters with adventurer ideas writing out plots drawing up on new lands and making up strange names and that was a even attempting drop matching games which i did a few times when i was when i was still a teenager that so that was a that was an ongoing part of my experience with the game was that whole offline creative element of it and i've been doing that again you know through much of my life in terms of formally publishing things that really started with the dms guild in in 2016
Snyders Return:so you mentioned there are a lot of the creative creative sides sketching maps writing adventures and countries and or lands and foreign places do you still get to sit behind the dm screen mature or is that sort of taking a backseat to creative work
MT Black:i try really hard to make sure i continue to do a campaign regularly i did when i read first got into the writing that was focusing so much time on that i didn't play for several months and i decided that was another really healthy state to be in that whatever i was doing i didn't want to get to someone who was creating for the game and not actually experiencing on a regular basis which sometimes happens with creators so i have a regular campaign we just finished a big level one to 20 campaign that took like two and a half years and we're just literally tonight in fact we're starting out starting on next campaign that's a level one campaign we're kicking that off in our kit callum shin in the forgotten realms so i worked very hard to make sure i play regularly
Snyders Return:You wrote a supplement for Callum Shan if I'm not mistaken, so you must be well versed in it.
MT Black:That's right. Although it's a I'm a little bit rusty on it because I wrote and did most of the research on that a few months ago now. So I've been digging back into my book and and pulling ideas out. But yeah, it's exciting actually to I can't wait to for the campaign to kick off.
Snyders Return:But so I got totally I'm now gonna pry into your personal life and your home game. Go for it. So you're moving on to Callum Shan level one, you know, brand new adventure something exciting for the for the party to get to get dove into where was your last adventure? And have you shifted far from location?
MT Black:Oh, um, so the last adventure was a was kind of an ambitious idea. My originally with the was, was to sit in the Forgotten Realms. But the idea was to basically touch on every single adventure hardback that once you've released for the fifth edition, d&d, to take an element of each of them and kind of string it together into a mega campaign. We didn't quite do that in the end. That was just a bridge too far. But it was a it was a really far ranging game. It started in BRAVIA with the characters defeating straud and then soon after that, they went to white plume mountain they picked up black razor and black razor became a really prominent element in the game, and a source of continual strife in the party. With half the party wanting to get rid of the sword half the party wanting to keep the sword the party literally split a couple of times over the sword so it was this was this beautiful. really a fantastic kind of role playing piece that we added. They then went and did a bit of storm kings Thunder cleared out a couple of dry things there went under deep went down to the tomb of the lion gods in chalked, went over to Asher on for a little while one of the characters, this is kind of a lighted hero's a full one to 21 of the characters became the God of War temporarily, they had to go and deal with him and eventually the whole thing wrapped up in the feywild where they had to go to gloom bright and and they figured out by this stage that the big baddie was the Raven Queen. And the Prophet said they've got to go to they've got to take black razor to gloom brought in in order to defeat the raven coin. So they finally got there is level 20 after a few adventures in, in the in the Gulf shadow Phil rather. And they they discovered actually that the the Raven Queen who'd been missing in action two or 3000 years, had actually transformed herself into into black razor. So they've actually kind of um, brought her back to query abroad which they fulfil the prophecy then a big fight and, you know, followed and they and they finally defeated the Raven Queen and that was the end of the year. That was the end of the campaign. So fairly typical homebrew campaign with elements from everywhere. It was fairly crazy. But
Snyders Return:that sounds amazing. That sounds absolutely amazing. I have to be honest, I wish I wish you'd filmed it or put it on camera because that just sounds brilliant. And within the writings you've done recently, you've touched on a few of the small, smallest, unfair, somewhat iconic places that may be DMS and players won't have visited too often. Places like dark Holden, candle deep. Would you mind sort of putting your, your spin on on those for us, please?
MT Black:Yeah, the so candlekeep the way that came about was I was involved with writing of burness of boulders gate set and tool furnace. So the hardcover from a couple of years ago. I was one of the writers on that. And I had written a whole bunch of stuff about candlekeep for that book. And as it happens, yeah, a lot of that hit the cutting room floor they just didn't have they just didn't have space for it. So a couple of friends of mine and the Justice we're putting together can advocate Bork, they approached me they said hey, do you want to contribute and I was able to actually repurpose a lot of the stuff I'd originally written for a vernis and and he could finally see the light of day. So that was really pleasing to actually be able to share that in share the information that I put a lot of work into a couple of years ago, and candlekeep was just such a fantastic location. It was a great to bring that to life now we worked with in terms of dark old we'd worked with ed greenwood on the candlekeep book and that was a terrific experience had a lot of fun working with him and we were tossing around for another book to do on the forgotten realms and we sent to ed you know do you have any suggestions and he said all i've always wanted doc hold to be done correctly which is one of the headquarters last remaining headquarter of the entire room and and that's how that really came about a suggestion by greenwood and i hadn't known a lot about cold before then to be honest i do a bit about this entire and but i'm really drilled into it and so that's how that book came about and that was a that was a fabulous experience we had we had so much fun putting that put together and and really not only fleshing out this this location dark hole but also really drilling into this entire room and answering a lot of the questions that never been answered over the years and we're also actually ed greenwood was sitting on a whole bunch of law that he'd never published about this entire and which he shared for some we were able to to include a bunch of that that as well and that was that was pretty exciting it's full on i'm incredibly proud of
Snyders Return:the doc hope book yeah cuz dark holden only really gets sort of touched on in the sword coast adventurers guide nothing is the only place you ever sort of hear referenced and there's entire and pop up in numerous saw published adventures but it's sort of their this faction and they have these agents and the dark old and the relationship with monsoon and all that sort of stuff it's it's such a deep lore that you've been able to bring to us and allow us to sort of fire the imagination on the on that particular faction
MT Black:oh yeah it's um i mean there's more lore about tacos in the earlier editions but it was never treated in in a great way it was never really presented as this really thesis and keep always this kind of this icon of centaurum power so it was great to be able to revisit that and ed greenwood himself said you know he was he felt really pleased he felt like we had last done justice to this entire and we kind of felt like over the years and i've gotten groans they kind of become the kind of keystone cops like real easy beats you know they kind of show up and and be very incompetent and characters very easily deal with them whereas we really made them pretty kick ass you know really tough you could you could see why they they were so powerful so influential and then the other thing is to just off on a tangent of you know the the perception of or what they tried to do what what he tried to do with this entire image shifted over the years so it back in the old days pre ffiv they've been this they've been the bad guys there's been no doubt about it what he tried to shift them initially when they released five he just turned them into well they're they're kind of these they hire out mercenaries and they're and they do trade and they used to be bad but they're not so bad anymore and then that started to shift back into okay now actually they are a fairly malevolent malevolent mafia style organisation so we tried to pull those threads together into into a bit of a coherent whole and show and kind of align all of that and i think we did that pretty well yeah and some great artwork on that as well jack cost the cover which i hope everyone will check out and yeah the maps are brilliant as well like i say we're incredibly proud of that book
Snyders Return:so you've not only written for the entire month or dark old and callum shan and you but you've done and i cannot keep we mentioned they're playing through or dming through descend into a furnace a moment and we're still in boulders gate so there's a whole world for us to discover plus another plane of existence but we'll go into that so i'm really loving it and looking forward to sort of taking the party to candlekeep so i think our minsters guide to our companion companion to candlekeep is certainly going to be on the on the supplement list to help me with that but you've also written small bits for other places so what Deep and you you've written as part of the oracle of war stuff, would you mind sort of expanding on the different ways and places you've taken? Taking your writing?
MT Black:Yeah, I mean, one of the big books we did for water deep we did Blackwater deep city encounters, for example, which was, it continues to sell, you know, really well, three years after we released it. It's it was just basically a collection of in encounters a fella colder, will die. All those, you know, just one of the greatest tabletop designers in the world really led that project. And he had, he had a really strong idea about how to put together a random encounters book. And we're so we threw that together. There's a whole bunch of us worked on that a lot of the adventurers league admins worked on that as well. It's a book of random encounters at the end of the day for the city. But it's just very cleverly laid out. And yeah, there's a there's a reason that sold like nearly 10,000 copies. Now, it is really, if you're venturing more deep, you really should pick it up. It's a great value book. In terms of the article of war, that was actually again, that was will dial on Sean Miller when we're leading that effort up as well. And it was it or it basically is an ongoing level one to 20 campaign for everon. So which is adventurers league legal. So that was the whole idea for that to give people an AR, legal ebron campaign, and something that went from levels one to 20. And I think wills just released one of the most recent actually, they just released another epic for it. But I think they're up to about level level nine or 10 in the standard series now. Yeah, now, level 10 our judgement of AI and they've just released that a little while ago. But eventually that'll be a four level one to 20 campaign forever on. So yeah, now that was fun. I'm no not never an expert by any means. But I've written several adventures there now. And I, I show you I talked to I talked to everyone experts, when I'm up getting in there to try and make sure I get the get the law, right. But in terms of locations, I've explored my very first adventure the was Sydney tribe, or in the Forgotten Realms, which is kind of a little bit north, it's right in the middle of the savage frontier sort of region in the north. And probably my first seven or eight books I wrote around that whole region, there's a, there's tribal, then about 100 miles north of that is a little Hamlet called long saddle. And I said all of my adventures, you know, seven, or eight for seven or eight of them in that region, I just got to know it quite well, it's kind of just a little bit to the east of Arthur Neverwinter. And that sort of region that people are a bit more familiar with. And that just, um, that was really the hour just being picky at a time at random initially. And obviously, then you start to drill into an area, then you get to know it. And so I was able to actually thread those together a little bit of a coherent, coherent storyline, but it's, yeah, it's a lot of fun to actually just grab an area and really get digging deep into that and then then tying your your adventures into that. Take a great deal of pleasure in that it is a crater.
Snyders Return:Yeah, absolutely. I think most new players to fifth edition, we all know the, the sort of the tribal trail and and how it Yes, up through that north or south through there. So I'm sure many people have been through the the area that your adventures are set in. And speaking of settings, you mentioned that you weren't an urban expert. Is there? Is it primarily just short the Sword Coast that your is your favourite place to sort of create content for or is there some way you always sort of have out the corner of your eye like, I'm coming for you soon?
MT Black:Yeah, um, I've done a lot of the Sword Coast for that. And that's really more just because it's the area that wizards have focused on as well. So it kind of makes sense. Obviously, I did Calum shed, which has an arc Sword Coast, you know that that's the shining south. And I'd like to I've been trying to encourage people to crate adventures there. And a few people have been I've been trying to help out creators who are doing that, because I'd love to see more adventures sitting down i'm shannon and when i get some time i'll no doubt published a couple of myself so i'd love to see a bit more done down in the south i'm i'm also interested i've done i did publish something over in the moon sea region over in the east somewhere that was back in the old days of adventurers league that they they would the moon so region was one of the areas that set aside for adventures league content so i did something come sit over there and i'd like to go over to that region do a little bit more route call me when we did dark hole that set in the the valley that dark cold setting is right next to call me and that kind of real work and my interest in colombia that i hadn't looked at for years so yeah i'm certainly keen on a lot of folks as well a keen for people to get out of the sword coast and say a bit more of the world i am as well so you can expect to see a few more adventures sit outside there was an adventure i did release a couple of years ago was the lich queensland forgotten which is set on the astral plane and that's received a fantastic feedback so yeah i certainly have tried to venture out as the as the opportunity has come
Snyders Return:so you mentioned that the astral plane and you spoke about your campaign going into sort of the fi world and shadowfell and places like that from without maybe dragging any kind of nda you're involved with where do you want to see dungeons and dragons sort of next release going because we've done as you mentioned the sword coast on charlton burrow via and we've been up to now recently so most recently the far north with icewind dale and ryan with the frost maiden so where would where would you want a personal level like to see next
MT Black:yeah that's a that's an interesting question i i really what you know i am someone who loves the history of the game is really i haven't played for many years really engaged with them a little bit of the nostalgic aspect of it and so i would love to see some of those old settings opened up i really would i wish wizards were moving a little bit faster on that so i'd be delighted to see grey hawk opened up and and wizards have said they're definitely gonna do grey hawk it's just a matter of fun when it fits into the schedule so i'll be thrilled to see grey hawk open up i'll be thrilled to see sigil opened up which i'm sure it's coming and hopefully soon so you can kind of go to the plains at the moment but they haven't actually done sigil so i'd really like to see that done i'd like to see dragon lamps they've been a bit of controversy around that recently and that may slow it down which is be a bit bit unfortunate i'd like to see it but i think there's a real place for dragon lamps dark sun is not a setting i overcome into when i was playing back in the day but i know how much it is loved and i think again it would be a real bonus so i'm kind of saying all of them but i do feel that i do kind of feel seven years after the book has been released that they're going slowly and the strategy has been a good one but actually i do think it's time to open up these settings and even if they don't plan to release hardcover books for them i'd love to just see them say hey this is now available in the dms guild go for your life like you know my earliest campaigns were in mystara which was the old basic d&d world i'd love that now they never got the door misstara hard book like that would make no sense but i'd love for them to say hey if you guys want to do misstara it's open on the guild code for you can release mr content and see there'd be no reason they shouldn't do that so yeah there's a real hankering for me to see them actually just like those those those classical worlds available to play in
Snyders Return:so if if they were or say a project you're working on now and i'm focusing more on you as a creator unless yeah the sort of area places so if they were to say okay mister is available on the dms guild and you will say yes this is this is what i've been waiting for new project you sit down what is your creative process how is it you engage that creative side of yourself
MT Black:yeah i mean there's a few different ways to tackle this and i actually um you mentioned before i've released a book called the anatomy of adventure which is really a yeah it's a monograph which is a lot of it's about my creative processor i really break down how i cope out right or how i went about writing a number of my adventures and it also includes a few essays on some of my ideas on game design and so on but there are a few different ways that i've come up with an idea and actually start to tackle and turn that into a product yeah i have like like a lot of folks i have like an ideas file some people have a notebook on my cloud drive i have an ideas file and when ideas pop into my head just you know something that you'll see could even be like a website or something will trigger an id i will drop that down in my ideas file and sometimes it will sit in that ideas file for months or even years and then i'll open that up and have a look and say oh yeah that's right yeah it's time now to actually try and develop that into something so i do have fun you know i have probably hundreds of just you know one or two line ideas now just kind of hovering around on my cloud drive and i see almost sometimes let's just think of ripen you will look at something sir okay i know where to develop that now that that is a source of a lot of ideas that i have if it's not like that if i've been given a project to do and have to manufacture some ideas so for example for the dms guild sometimes not so he is yeah we need you to write adventures sit in your therapist for example and you need to go and down manufacturing idea the process is a little bit different so usually in those instances i'll sit down and i'll look at the constraints that i have and very often the constraints that have been put on that project will help me to start to outline what that project looks like and the lich coins forgotten is a good example we were asked to write and i was asked to write an adventure to tie in with more than kind some tone tone of photos and i was given the gift as my subject area so i had to write a gift adventure i had to write you know it had to tie with the monsters from more than more than canaan's tome term of photos so there were a couple of constraints i looked into it and i thought to myself actually i really i could set a gift adventure on the natural world but i really want to set it on in the astral plane however i think to make it usable it needs to start in the natural world so the adventure was starting to outline itself okay it starts in the natural world you go to the you go to the astral plane and then i had a vision like one of the things in the astral planes is you've got these giant god corpses just floating around you know and that's just to classic ar an image to ignore so i had this idea of you know the ultimate eye encounters kind of take place in the head of record i just had a vision there i think that was a little bit inspired by guardians of the galaxy as well so i've kind of again started to put itself together i can now have this episodic adventure is going to go it's going to feature the gift that starts in the natural world you go to the city of death which is where the gifts all live on the astral plane you then you kind of travel through the astral plane you got to end up in the in the head of a dead god so that's kind of a little bit of an instance of where you know where you're kind of given an assignment you look at what the constraints are you look at what you're trying to achieve with the adventure what are your design goals and then start to outline that adventure and then with that broad kind of adventure outline i'll probably i'll probably then have a look at the first episode or the first scene okay it was this guy to start who's going to be involved we're going to have a you know we're gonna have a fight in the city somewhere it's going to be these people and bit by bit that is a very yeah it's a challenge to describe because the process does vary from adventure to adventure and i drill into like about half a dozen adventures in my book and show you how each one evolved but that's fairly typical example of how an adventure will start to come together you know the process a little bit different again when you're looking at something like like a sore spot for example but i hope that's helpful but feel free to drill in on anything you want
Snyders Return:well absolutely well before we saw a journal a few points i sort of picked out that would you mind sort of letting people know where they can find you where they can find the anatomy of adventure and and things like that so if people well it's the people that are listening can go through it and find and sort of find you and purchase your publications and publish works
MT Black:yeah the best place to go is my website which is nt black games.com so that's empty black games.com and that's got all my contact details like twitter and facebook and my email etc it also has links to a number of my products including the anatomy of adventure and once you click through to those you can basically very easily find any other products as well but the anatomy feature is published on drive thru rpg but probably the best way to easiest way to find it is to go to mt black games.com
Snyders Return:all right well i'll make sure that links for that are in the description below so please if you're listening scroll down a little bit and follow those links so you mentioned them an inspiration and one of the examples you were given was from guardians of the galaxy but where else do you draw your inspiration from what what inspires you
MT Black:yeah i like i draw a huge amount of inspiration from existing d&d material and existing rpg material there is yeah the the the d&d canon so to speak is absolutely massive you know it runs to 1000s upon 1000s of documents and millions of pages you know would be literally millions of pages of published material and so i i really especially when it comes to adventure design i really enjoy digging back into old adventures i do that a lot pardon me i enjoy writing a job re buying and reading old adventures i enjoy browsing through old editions of dungeon magazine and i take a lot of inspiration inspiration from there there's just been you know so many areas that for example the leash queens forgotten you know for those who don't know i kind of wrote that as an unofficial prequel to a chris perkins adventure which was called the leash the lich queens beloved okay so it was kind of a little bit of a play on that and a little bit of an unofficial a prequel to that adventure that's an old dungeon magazine adventure but i do that quite often i'll take an adventure that that speaks to me and i might write a sequel to it or a prequel or a mockery imagine that like for example and then you combine that with a bunch of other ideas that come to you for example there was a there was an old dungeon magazine adventure called schitterende has been which is quite a famous adventure but the the essence of that adventure was that you get shrunk down to a miniature size and then you're going around fighting with ants and frogs and things like that as well but it's a really fun idea and i thought you know i'd like to do a shrinking adventure so i had that written down and my id file shrinking adventure then i saw i'm just on a website one day on on the sydney morning herald website here in australia on the on the domain of the real estate section there was a heading once that said town for sale and that just that phrase town for sale just done are stuck with me so grab that put that my id file and i turned that to one village for sale and then i thought that actually how about magic village for sale and that so that was just an interest sitting in my idea file for a few months and then i thought i tie those two ideas together i took the shrinking adventure and magic village for sale and that became the adventure of that title magic village for sale which is which is a quite a popular adventure i published a couple of years ago but which is a shrinking adventure so very often the magic i mentioned this in my book but very often the magic comes from combining a couple of elements i find that often often happens i'll kind of have half idea over here our five year over there and then you jam those two together and and that gives you the full idea i'll give another example in in the book of my adventure wizard in a bottle i was looking at an old d&d adventure called bottle city and thinking i'd really like to write something like that was kind of sit in a bottle and i'd also been looking at venture see that the regarded suspended animation and i think i was influenced by future armour and all those star trek episodes you've got someone's caught in suspended animation yeah it's a real star trek i've done that about half a dozen times at least i think and then they come out and so one entry mr dfr was suspended animation adventure the other thing was a bottle adventure and i was thinking bottle city city in a bottle than the phrase wizard in a bottle popped in my head and then i thought oh i can jam this together with the suspended animation adventure in the premises that this wizard is caught in suspended animation in a little bottle and that's the and that became the seed for the wizard in a bottle adventure so you know whether whether i'm not sure whether this is useful for other people listening but this is an insight into how adventures and how ideas come together you know just from a whole bunch of sources and then just trying to grab ideas jam them together cat you know come up with a new premise and take it in enough directions that's all very typical to how these adventures happen
Snyders Return:yeah i'm sure a lot of people will find that useful definitely taking inspiration from us taking inspiration from from others so it's all helpful definitely and for the creative people out there wanting to to start so if someone sort of moving on a little bit if someone was interested in stein to publish tabletop role playing game it does not necessarily d&d could be you know vampire the masquerade or any of the hundreds of tabletop role playing games out there what advice would you give to them
MT Black:yeah um look they if there was one piece of advice i probably say there's a there's a workshop that runs a couple of times a year called the tabletop rpg designers workshop and i would run by a friend of mine called ashley warren and if you could do only do one thing i'd say sign up for that workshop i you know it is excellent 1000s of people have gone through that now and hundreds of of products have come out of that so it would be a great way to get started another one piece of advice might be to pick up my book anatomy of adventure where which i wrote specifically for folks who are getting started doing adventure design but there's probably enough in there if you want to do any sort of tabletop rpg design for getting down to brass tacks a few pieces of advice i give to everyone one is to work on your writing skills do a little bit of work developing your writing skills because i encountered designers a lot people who love playing games who have great ideas and just the mechanics of actually writing trips them up and what they really need to do is just do a little bit of work learning you know just about the fundamentals of writing itself a little bit of the hard yards on that and just getting some practising spending some time on the keyboard that's one thing i've recommend i've read really strongly recommend people get familiar with the style guide for whatever system they're writing for if you're writing for d and d or call of cthulhu or whatever there's a style guide you really want to get familiar with that and you'll actually learn a lot about game design just by getting familiar with the fight with the with the style guide i also really strongly recommend people read old adventures you know our new adventures as well but just read good products in the same way if you want to write a novel you should probably be reading a lot of novels or if you want to write a d&d adventure you should be actually reading d&d adventures and having a look at how they do things you'll just gonna learn a lot you know stephen king said if you if you want to be a writer there's two things you need to do a lot of you need to write a lot you need to read a lot so i'd say the same thing and probably my final little piece of short advice would be to start short sometimes oftentimes i think people for that first project just bite off way more than they can chew and then they just get bogged down my first products were just a couple of 1000 words each and i think it's a i really recommend people start off with something that's fairly small get it out there load and they just keep going so there's a bunch of stuff that i hints i tend to share to people when that questions asked
Snyders Return:what thank you for sharing them i really should probably do get that question quite a lot so i appreciate you sharing them with with me and and with with buddhists are learning and listening and taking it all on board i hope and again your your books available through your website and on drive thru rpg and the writers rpg writers workshop run by ashley warren can be found on twitter and various social and again as you say such a fantastic programme so with all this writing you started small and you expanded into into full books and published content and you did a paladin most of the night bring around so you've you've sort of varied your your portfolio and our seem seem to be continually writing what is it you do for downtime we mentioned your d&d game with the star you do for air quotes downtime
MT Black:goodness me it's a i mean it's a my day this is not not my day job either it's kind of a part time job game design so you know i have a day job that that probably takes two to three days a week which is in it i run my own business so that kind of pays the bills there's a sense in which writing started out as my downtime and still is to an extent but as it's become more business like as well again it becomes more like work and a little bit less like what i do to relax but otherwise yeah between a day job or between writing a lot as you say then i've got a family as well as a relatively young family a home and you know friends and so forth to keep up with so it's a it i don't have any really strong hobby outside of the writing really aside from that it's looking after kids and you know doing the school run and and spending time with my wife etc etc that's that's pretty much it
Snyders Return:yeah that's fair enough
MT Black:yeah you know it's a pretty full it's pretty full life
Snyders Return:as long as it's a happy life that's that's the main thing
MT Black:yeah i am happy yeah
Snyders Return:good well that's that's good so you mentioned they're not getting much time outside of work and family and and your writing sort of commitments and things like that but you also mentioned to sort of using the stephen king thing to sort of be a writer you have to write and read do look at other tabletop role playing games and sort of see how they do things is there any any other could even be a board game or or something like that and you look at it and think i liked that mechanic or i like the way that's styled i like that piece of prose or whatever it is
MT Black:oh yeah i i look at other role playing games all the time i buy them you know i've got a my reading list is massive i've bought a lot more than i've read to be honest but um i do focus mostly on d and d but i'm also a fan of cork fuu i enjoy playing that when i get a chance which is not often enough rune quest as well so i enjoyed that basic role playing game system that that kazeem own and have released now as well as in a system reference document and open game licence so other folks can can jump on board and produce content with it but i also read recently i've been reading up on old role playing games as well i've just been going through first edition role playing games like the old tunnels and trolls role playing games you know chivalry and sorcery and some really ancient ones that you know no one would have probably would have heard of i read through the original traveller rules the other day i hadn't looked at those for many years so i really try to keep myself open to a lot of a lot of input both through influence my d&d game design but also i've done a little bit of design outside of d&d as well and i certainly plan to do more so that um yeah yeah absolutely absolutely yeah a bit a big fan of everything that's that's being released and the only thing that stops me grading more of it and playing more of it is just the lack of time
Snyders Return:and certainly is a chain so penultimate question then where is it you see yourself in other top almost a horrible question i regret asking it as i say it but you know where's next for you where are you hoping to get to as the hobbies or really picks up in the community continues to build
MT Black:yeah look my my goal is always to write to To write material that people have fun playing, I'm not looking to you know, I'm not looking to establish myself as a, you know, to get a job at Wizards of the Coast or to, you know, to something like that anything in particular like that. But my focus is just to keep on creating games that interest me, and hopefully finding an audience for those games. So as I've been able to do in the past, I've done I've released a tonne of stuff for d&d, that will continue to be take up a fair bit of my attention, because I enjoy it. And I think 5g is a great game. I do hope to release some more stuff over the next year that Yeah, might be 5g, but not necessarily set up in the DND world. As well as some other role playing systems. I should actually by the time this is this podcast comes out, I probably will have published my first court follow adventure, for example. So that's, that's pretty exciting. I'd like to design some more systems myself like last early in the year with a guy called Matt Callie, I released a on five a compatible system called whispers in the dark, which is basically a horror role playing game set in New Orleans. In the 1870s. I wanted to do more work in more words around a role playing systems that could be 5g compatible, but I want to expand beyond that as well. So I've got ideas at the moment, they're all in the ideas file, I said, there are hundreds of ideas. And I'll just see which ones ripen as we go. But I'm hoping to kind of expand and expand a little bit in the in the next next 12 months for sure.
Snyders Return:I'd love to have you back on the show, if you'd be willing to join me and sort of catch up and find out how all of that is progressed, if you'd be willing to come back and speak to me again,
MT Black:certainly at any time.
Snyders Return:From the bottom of my heart and part of my wallet because I bought some of your public stuff. And I intend on running my oath of the night being a paladin when I get the chance to step out from behind the screen. But that's a personal issue. So thank you so much for taking some time out of your date for speaking with me. And so really sharing more than you had to about yourself and your practices and all of your work. So thank you.
MT Black:Oh, it's been a real pleasure. Well,
Snyders Return:I look forward to speaking to you again. Yep, CSN Thank you for listening. If you'd like to learn more about the show than 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 out for for those who are listening until we until we speak again. Thank you