Hello and welcome to snows return at will talk role playing podcast. My guest today bridges the gap between media, different platforms and popular game systems he has tapped into the spirit of the hobby to educate, entertain and entwine us in his world as an ambassador for charity, he is known for giving his time to help others and has agreed to speak with me mano a mano, the warmest of welcomes to majors or mentors, aka Mr. Thomas Cami. Thomas, welcome to the show.
Thomas Conmy:Thank you for having me. It's,
Snyders Return:it's an absolute pleasure. Some of the stuff I alluded to there in the intro, we'll touch on it a bit. But would you mind give us a little bit about yourself and how you got into tabletop role playing games, please?
Thomas Conmy:Yeah, sure. Um, so I'm a high school teacher by trade. I've been in the field for four or five years. Now, depending on how you look at it. I'm a doctoral student, finishing up my dissertation. I'm all but dissertation for all those out there that know what that means. Which means I'm very close to a couple classes away from finishing my dissertation, which is basically formatting research questions around Dungeons and Dragons, aka tabletop role playing games in the classroom. And I've also have a lot of experience of being a content creator and a twitch streamer and a podcast creator and a magic judge. And it just keeps going with the amount of things I have my hands and trying to get more work done so many irons in the fire then lots of hats, hats,
Snyders Return:lots of hats, many irons many fingers, many pies. It all sounds delicious, Li hot. So before we move on to your sort of Dungeons and Dragons kind of stuff, how did mages and mentors get started, let's let's backtrack and pick up from the start, shall we say,
Thomas Conmy:I needed a brand I need to branding. I'm in the weird middle ground camp of so I have my educator researcher background where it's all your proper name. And then I have my school teacher background, which is my proper name. And then you have your gaming world which is all handles and trying to bridge the two I needed to find a medium grounds that would let me make my name and make the brand tie to one another specifically. And I started looking around and shop around for some brands. This is about I want to say it officially or unofficially, officially on paper, the reboot in the Rebuild of majors a mentor started March 29, March 2020, when United States started doing the whole COVID-19 lockdown phase stuff. The brand itself on officially I was doing a little bit of work for about a year beforehand, but nothing big or regular to keep the brand going. So I've been much more much more tied down to doing a lot more consistent product building, specifically with Twitch and with the podcast platform, starting March 2020. Going forward, and then like one of those little moments of when you see your work come to fruition I was playing. I was streaming match of Magic the Gathering online playing a vintage cube. So it's a lot of let me make sure everybody's understand. Playing magic gathering online is one of the platform's to play match at the gathering. Vintage cube is a very cool, interactive, limited format. And in my opponent messages me on the app going Hey, is your username, named after an online d&d game on twitch? I'm like, Yes. Like, Oh, cool. When my friends is in that game when they play in the game. I'm like, yeah, I'm the dungeon master for that game. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you, thank you. It was one of those like real cool moments of just watching like the the, the connection rate to get from me to this person on this platform in another game engine referencing my other title. It was it was a really nice one of those happy moments.
Snyders Return:I can imagine I can imagine. So you mentioned there Twitch. So would you want to take us through your your stream game and a little bit of background on that and and sort of how that came about please.
Thomas Conmy:I got early access. I got into the content of the Wizards of the Coast content creator programme for Magic the Gathering arena. I got into it. at PAX East 29. Teen I ran into one of the coordinator at that show. This is one that was listed as groundwork when they were starting the whole programme. I got involved then started doing a whole bunch of early access streaming contents. I remember early access streaming from like, really bad Wi Fi when I was in Oslo on a vacation just to make sure I can get act just so I can keep my pre generating content, and was playing a limited format for like 12 hours straight with a couple friends of mine one in, in Europe on a different time schedule just to make sure we're making product. But then it went from, you know, little casual big streams every so often with a small, little smart, like, you know, your friends are showing up people that's on your Twitter, on our Facebook, they're coming in other shows. And if we're working on your schedule, flat, fast forward to I want to say twitch con 2019. So that's like September 2019. Ish, I was working twitchcon because I was also an event contractor working all the gaming events of 2019. Because I want more things to do in my spare time. Because, you know, why not? Why not fill the schedule up? When I was there, I was networking around shooting a whole lot of hands with a whole lot of people and a lot of people in the industry. A lot of magic grinders or magic pros are much content creators, or they're in the space and it was handshaking with a whole bunch of people. And it reached a point where like, oh, cool, what's your name? I'm Tom. Okay, cool. What did you do on the magic judge? Cool. What else do you do I stream kind of what's your platform, I'm like, Okay, I guess I need to work on this. And that was the like, the good old proverbial kick in the butt to get that going. And I would say winter 2019 into the beginning of 2020 was the I'm going to get serious with this. And then when the situation came up, were like, hey, you're home all the time. Now, while I was like, fine, I'm just gonna get into it. I honestly started everything this year, in 2020, was specifically to I was running seven d&d games a week streamed to be a source of entertainment and relaxation for a whole bunch of my friends going through the beginning of the lockdown situation. And it was a bunch of friends in the US, it was a bunch of friends in Europe, couple friends up to Canada, we were connecting everybody together to play games, and just relax and get together. And then a couple people were like, you should be doing this, you know, you have some professional dungeon mastering experience, you've gotten paid doing this for gigs before, you should be doing a bit more with this to you know, make an extra couple of little extra. And I was like, we'll get there, we'll figure it all out. And I started the twitch as a platform to, if I'm going to make content amounts, we'll just put it out there worst comes to worst. And we'll see what happens. We'll get there. And that was March, it's now we're recording this November 30, aka, almost December. In my head. It's December now because of the schedule, but we're November 30. Now, so we're recording this. And it's been we've gone through a lot of iterations of the product that haven't stopped have kept going. The podcast came along, I recorded a massive amount of podcast episodes with a whole bunch of players get more than get enough views and traction. So I was like, Oh, this is good. This is working. And just seems to be people want the content and people were interested. And it's everything from people I know that I talk to on a daily basis to I have people on the corners on my social media that I have officially reached the I don't really know who you are person. But you're looking at my content now. I'm like, Okay, great. We've moved, we've moved on now we're at the we're at the echoing phase array from who I am to other people getting interested in asking questions and getting involved and being a part of the podcast and the channel and commenting on Twitter and whatnot. And it was it came from a ground of community building. Everything I do specifically is community building, either it's my teacher background, or my streaming personality. I'm a mental health advocate. I just got signed up and joined a tick this.org to do mental health advocacy on the gaming platforms. I'm a school teacher by trade so everything I do is in a PG pG 13 Can you do that? Could you talk about this or discuss in a classroom type of setting. So approaching everything I do from that kind of framework has allowed me to spread out and interact in a whole bunch of different realms that I didn't think was really I knew it was possible but I'm doing it versus just thinking about it.
Snyders Return:Now it's it's impressive, to say the least and something I'm sort of aspiring to with the our podcast but the world isn't PG may have to reconsider certain aspects but
Thomas Conmy:Asterix Asterix there's I'm looking at don't look at every episode. Oh.
Snyders Return:So the stuff that's throwing me off
Thomas Conmy:slightly. sorry that I'm
Snyders Return:not it's all good. It's all good. So would you like to tell us more about muldrow it because you wrote a huge law piece for that, that I've had to look through and and it's very expansive and very, very deep as well but very accessible. I love the maps you've got in there as well, by the way.
Thomas Conmy:Thank you a shout out to dark brown maps, aka Toby on Twitter. I got a I found them one day randomly from a without Twitter, I would not be where I am today. Without Twitter, I could not find any of the networking I have done, I could not find any of the DND connections, academic connections, the DND and academic connections, I can bring up that story in a bit. But without Twitter, I would not be in this conversation right now, that being said, check out dark road maps, because they made all my maps. Speaking of muldrow, my fantasy setting. So I've been this is the brainchild or the the I need to write when I'm not doing academic writing kind of results. So, you know, during that free time I talked about I sat down and world built, and every game I've run for the last two years, operates in real time, in the same game setting. So I've built my own, my own, I've built my own water deep or I've built my own, my versus redsea are diverse. And the goal was that I could number one, control the mechanics and all the background stuff. And number two is I can mould it and I want the game the game to feel lived in and also have a connection I wanted I had like my you know, I approached it with the Marvel Universe kind of theory where I've started at one point with a whole group of games of players. And then over the time of playing it, you're going to see the crossover pieces coming into play. So everybody that joins my game gets to join in the game. Oh, it's December 2020. And then I have a I have a particular language for what year and month that is in my world. But it's moving in real time with us. And the world is constantly changing. And people can see that because we're experiencing that in the real world normally, so then I'm applying it to a DND engine. When I was running in March, I was running or the hay day over the summer, depending on how you look at it probably like July or June, I was running seven to eight games a week plus one shots. Now I'm down to four consecutive games, one stream to three offline with one of them once in a blue moon online based on their time schedule. And then I run at least one monthly podcast at minimum I recorded a bunch of them a couple months ago. And we're going to drop them over as we go. They're all interacting. And you can see that all of the pieces if you're a repeat user or repeat listener, you'll start hearing certain things I have growing across the the the the the lore document and certain power structures that are growing, that are starting to gain particular footholds in places they weren't before. And power ships. And I wanted a place to delve into and control and get really deep into the design. And I also get my a lot of my players designing space, a lot of stuff you'll see on that document, there's gonna there's a thank you button, there's a thank you list at the end and a whole bunch of hashtag referencing to people, because I give every player the chance to make the world their space as well. It's not you know, it's not just like in no matter what we do, right? It's not just me as though curaytor controlled us, you don't get any authority or any ultimate autonomy in here. It's like, No, you want to create a guild or an organisation and you want to create a new order of knights or you want to cater religion or you want to create a business opportunity or you want to create a small town do it, we'll put it in there and then we'll have it evolve. And I'll let you either a once in a while go back and like tweak some stuff about it or move some NPCs along or be Give it to me. And I'll let the random table manage it over time. And that's worked out pretty well. A lot of people seem to they like to having moving beyond I own or I access just my personal character. And now everyone's like I Oh, I access my personal character. And the framework from which they were curated from either a, the order they're from or the the wars they fought in. Like I had people starting to write up their backstories my cool he wrote this backstory now. That's canon. Congratulations, you just created 200 years worth of history, I hope you're ready to hope you're ready to flesh that out a bit more. They're like, Oh, well, I didn't want this and this to go down. Cool. Let's Let's workshop it. Let's design stuff. This comes specifically from I did this with students to start I made my students design a whole bunch of content for their characters. So it was a writing exercise and a writing project to get them to see more than just character identity. It was to go like how do you get from stimuli a stimulus to stimuli? How do you get the character and the reference for where the character came from? versus Oh, I just saw this video game I want to make this character it's like no, like, how would that character come about? What's the decisions that would make that happen? Okay, this and this happened cool. Where did that come from? came from this structure and this power base or this castle and like you just let them go and they'll just right and just and just tell you so much creative world building. And I saw that was a cure God good. Bring us in, put it in the story, add it together. And now they you've impacted the narrative beyond just character choices and dice rolling. You've now impacted the creative process
Snyders Return:is amazing. And I'm guessing the students still take to Dungeons and Dragons. Do you use other tabletop role playing games or is it just Dungeons and Dragons, you
Thomas Conmy:So I use tables. So my research point of view, I use tabletop RPGs, and simulations and games in general to as my benchmark. My specialty is d&d, but it can be applied across the board. I've been on a whole bunch of panels about game design and RPG themselves. I just use d&d as my go to. So anytime I'm saying d&d, it's just a framework I'm most familiar with. But I'm not just saying just use DND. I'm saying you can use any of them.
Snyders Return:Yeah, that's fair enough. I, again, draw, drawing attention to your law document, the executors caught my eye with their symbol. Was that something you would devise? Or one of my players came up with that, really?
Thomas Conmy:Uh huh. That player unfortunately, right now had to take some time away from the game for like work reasons. But um, I that is my most long running game. I think that company started. August 2008. Teen, I think we started playing that game, maybe that summer. And that company, the first contract that company had to do in game by role playing, we solved on Halloween 2020. But we've been running that game and the characters are loving it. The player base took off with what the world building aspects with the thing I started with very much a I'm your mercenary company. You've done a bunch of contracts, you've worked with each other for several years. Some of you are different kinds of positions. And they're accelerating a lot of the world activities right now, because they're the most active and most meeting game and they've running for the longest time. But I let them I put them in a zone that had to be flushed out so that they because they wanted to. They looked at me and said, We want you to run d&d. And we want a long game. And I looked at them like what do you mean, they're like, we want 2530 sessions, guaranteed, we want you know, I want to be able to say we've done this for a year plus type of thing. I'm like, Okay, alright, sure. We'll do it. And then we started at level five, I think, just to shortcut over the backstory and let them we did some flashback episodes. But yeah, contract a contract 100% as a contract delivered set, the tagline on
Snyders Return:the photo sounds very much like it, I would just yeah, there.
Thomas Conmy:They were doing a very, very intensive mercenary company situation, and they're having a lot of fun with it. So and then I gave them a day currently, their organisation currently controls a city state now because of background politics to operate out of, and spoiler alerts for those that are well, this is not out there, really, it's kind of their own, but they have to start dealing with the fairies soon as they're next. That's the next angle they're going to go to is they've may or may not have inference influenced the fairy of fake court conversation, and they're gonna have to start messing with that problems on
Snyders Return:the face. See how that goes? Yeah, I'm sure the the fee are just as fickle in in your setting as they are in every other.
Thomas Conmy:Oh, they they care very much about how you make deals.
Snyders Return:So a contract signed is a contract to deliver. So yeah, I love it.
Thomas Conmy:That's one of my players came up with that. And I was like, great, I have another player whose literal job is you're the you're the lore master. You have three years worth of campaign backstory that you get to create go, because there are a writer they wanted, they wanted to be able to write a journal of the campaign of the of the solar campaign that in earth stuff, but their job is to carry the book or the animals of the company. And their spec is uh, you know, whenever they do bartered stuff, they can read from the book of deeds that their company has done to inspire their team with actions and events and contracts they have completed, but is
Snyders Return:brilliant. God has has brilliant. So with respect to you mentioned there the consequences of certain conversations, certain actions and things like that, but bring us out from maldo slightly and looking at DND as a whole. Where are you wanting d&d to go next? What would you like to be the next source of inspiration for for either you or your group or, you know, the direction the game is going in.
Thomas Conmy:So, creation and design by players as a key factor, I abandoned rules as written a long time ago. I like them as a benchmark, they're a good place to reference. They bring up a whole bunch of material that someone sat down, they designed all the stuff I want to be involved in doing that I started writing my own framework for a whole bunch of classes and whatnot. That being said, feel free to experiment, fulfil the tweak for the design, people want to do stuff, let them do it. Because the players know how to balance the players know if I want to do this and I want to do this and I want to do that. Then I have to give up this they will do it immediately. unintentionally, they'll look at you and they'll go, I can't be you know, I can't have all these things super maxed out, I know, they're gonna have to be some penalties or some thing that makes the spare like they already do this already. It's already programmed. I think video games I've done this, I think watching other people playing d&d or other tabletop games come into play. So let play give players the space to tweak things the way they want to tweak it a bit more. Make stuff walking the path, like locking things into niches is fine if you can show how it works across the board type situation. And opening up classes and opening up packages or stuffing to other areas are making it more simple to cross class or cross move a thing over is the framework I want to go with or at least give it a better like, if I'm going to homebrew or home tweak this thing. Cool. Here's a framework you need to make sure you have these number of spell slots if you're gonna do a spell thing or you need to make sure you have access to Don't be afraid to give your players a little bit better gear or a little bit better items because they're going to utilise it in the best and silliest ways you can imagine. And the end result is always going to be fun. And that's what we're aiming for in the first place. Like we're here playing game. So
Snyders Return:yeah, definitely. Like we're going with Yes. I agree with you It definitely. there's a there's a shift. The question was, was as much pointed to a particular setting that you might draw from? Do you have anything favoured in drawtube? Would you like to see something say in the firewall mentioning the FE or the astral plane there's there's places as yet untouched by source documents or publishers media.
Thomas Conmy:So like, I'm still I'm in that camp of I know a lot of what's going on. I also feel like I don't know enough. And I think it's great because I'm curious to see what people start experiment with and what comes out. And then try I also don't want to know too much because I want to be able to build without saying I took it from somebody else type of situation. I want to be able to design and create an implement and then someone's like, oh you just went in copied from this thing like Oh, I didn't know that existed. Alright, great. I will tweak this now to make sure that I don't you know, steal from this other person cuz that's not cool. I want to make sure that I don't where my influences come from I want to make sure there's a healthy space so I can at least create and then get to the point of going okay now I've created this thing let's go check to make sure this isn't somebody else's work or somebody else's direction that being said, I really love I mean I love what five years doing when most of the like the the the the realms of what they're trying to explore with I got really into a furnace I really liked the stuff that they're doing with the burner storyline and the arc of what the what the hell's and whatnot. I as a person always confused the hell from the Abyss and I'll say that like I'll say like this is a demon and someone's like also they come from this place and like everything comes from everything comes from the house Come on all right know what comes from the best Alright, fine. Guess what the best in the hell is have a door they go they cross each other now so deal with it. And they're like, well, demons I'm like it's fine. They're all infernal. They're all demons. Do you have resist? You have favourite day? I'm favourite against the frontals. Like now your favourite what demons do a good job? Like I know, silly things,
Snyders Return:huh? That's fair enough. That is. So well. You mentioned that inspiration. And you you've said that a lot you you know you give that that freedom of space for your your players to help world build and really bring the setting to life in that ever evolving sort of day to day life that sort of mirrors real life to certain aspects. But where, without sort of touching too much on the previous Where do your influences and soul creative standpoints? You know, where do you draw from?
Thomas Conmy:Hmm, creative influences to me. I mean, I've been a fantasy nerd and in in the culture my whole life. You know, I grew up on Laura, I grew up on gargoyles, and Lord of the Rings and Power Rangers and I've been playing magic since 2000. I was playing d&d before I was playing magic and I'm only like, in my early 30s. So I was always I was always prompted as a child or as a younger individual to world builds to story built to tell tales to read more stories, to be more to be connected more to that what is going on around me type situation. I would say I had a very active imagination as a child. And that allowed me to have an access to having to having nerd parents and dinner conversations involving arguments over which Star Trek captains the better Captain leads leads to a very interesting adult life. Let me tell you,
Snyders Return:I'm knowing shaped as to what the outcome of that conversation
Thomas Conmy:It's Janeway, I will take no questions.
Snyders Return:Okay, I have a car fan, but that's only because I watch the next generation with my dad. So you know, my family standpoints?
Thomas Conmy:Of course, of course.
Snyders Return:No. So that's, that's and you mentioned that playing Magic the Gathering and how did you get into the the judging side? I know there's a bit of a shift from d&d to magic, but what really now they're the same company. So we'll go with it, how do you get into playing into the the judging side of things?
Thomas Conmy:So I've been, so I started playing magic in 2000. I was always in and out of the game from 2000. Until now, there was couple periods of like, you know, I need to take a break for this to go do something else, or a different kind of activity, but you always come back, I was a competitive grinder pretty much for the last 15 years or so in some way, shape, or form. So I'm always around events, I was always around tournament organisers, I was always, I had a whole bunch of people I knew in the circuit, there was a couple shifts in the judging programme in my career, where I started knowing more and more judges based on where I was going into places I was in, I now live in a much bigger city with a very high density of Judge population, which led to like my match playing friend group from the new store, I go to the people I hang out with just happened to be statistically more judges, which led to Hey, you already you show these kind of skill sets, you do this kind of activity, I was like, hey, I want to be involved in this. And I just took off with it. That was, I want to say the summer of 17, maybe, maybe, yeah, the summer of 17. I started. And then January 2019, was the I got picked up for my first big large scale event. And then I worked 24 weekends Of The Year of 2019. So almost every weekend or every other weekend, I was either I was either in an airport on a plane or at an event centre working for either a tournament organiser or event con, or I was at a small show, I was on a larger scale shop wearing our show. Just just doing a whole bunch of stuff. It was a it takes for my teacher background. It takes its customer service, it's making sure he's having a good time. It's making sure everybody's problems are being solved. There's rules management. I just participated in several judge conference panels since like the summer, and several them were how to go from working in your small game store to working at the larger events known as magic fests. How do you judge brands? What is the purpose of branding? What's the purpose of social media? Did you know that if you're a judge, you're now on a public spectrum, which means everything you say and do is a representative of the judge programme or the judge Academy or the magic programme in general. And as much as you want to keep things your own, you're also representative so be careful. And that's no different than being a school teacher. You're on the platform all the time. Everybody sees you all the time. Everything you say and do is a representation of your classroom and your demeanour and the school you work for so I have never not operated like this it's just always a was just another thing that I was already set up to do
Snyders Return:while you go so as a judge Do you need to have fast eyes or just a patient by
Thomas Conmy:you need to have good shoes a lot of times standing and those event floors are mostly concrete or roof. They don't bring the rugs there was a couple shows where they they put padding down and you could just you could walk in the room you're like I'm on the moon now this is amazing. I can do this for nine hours now. You need in that conversation. Fast eyes isn't the key as much as communication is the key is the more aspect because like we'll miss stuff too Don't get me wrong we're all human. But we're going to do the best we can the goal isn't to you know to hammer people down with this is the rules you messed up or the goal was to go Hey, something here is amiss or most of the time it's most of the time it's players like judge the game does the game is not currently where it's supposed to be what's the best way that we can fix it to be in a line to where we should be and that's our job Our job is to come in to mediate to bring both players to the closest point where the game should be we used to have a we used to once upon a mana go before I was judged backgrounds a grinder there was a rules. One of the one of the standing rules that we call today is failure to maintain game state which is one of the penalties will give out for you know you did you move that you put the thing in the wrong zone or you have the wrong they've you've done wrong combat or you've done something it's a very miniscule just says you're also responsible you fail to maintain the gamestate It used to be called failure to maintain reality. Which if you look at it, it's kind of funny of the concept that We're trying to make sure both players are on the same page with what's going on on the game. And we're trying to interesting because you have a whole bunch of linguistic barriers, you have communication barriers you have sometimes there's sometimes there's like a cultural barrier because of, we're slightly in a position of power and the way that we were also making sure that there's a, we're technically investigating for making sure there's no foul play involved or any investigation for any cheating type situation. But my argument, the way I approach it is, both players want to be playing the game. And because we're playing, and if I'm there, that means you're playing at some level that requires me to be there. So there's some sort of stake, I'm here to make sure that both of you are doing the best you can to play the game the way it needs to be played. And that's we just problem solve from there.
Snyders Return:That sounds sounds good. So similar question to the tabletop role playing game, but with respect to as a as a continual player, not the one I was going for, but as a an ongoing player and the adjudged for events and such and so on and so forth. Where are you excited by where the magic game is going? And sort of card games of that ilk?
Thomas Conmy:What do you what direction are you suggesting it's going?
Snyders Return:Well, I I'm not the expert. I just with respect to d&d, I have an understanding of, of how the books sort of play out an idea of story and theme and where people would like to take it. But I haven't touched a pack on Magic the Gathering since I was about 16. And
Thomas Conmy:shopping for Emilio Christmas present. All right. Oh,
Snyders Return:that's very good. All right. to
Thomas Conmy:snowball off that and my concept of how I understand it, I'm in the camp that the best car game that ever existed is magic, and I don't think anything's ever gonna beat it. And that's a personal opinion. That's how I believe it's then it's the game that has the most put together behind it that got the most most people thinking in the in the in the in the r&d team is gonna be wrong. We we have there's things that can be improved. There's parts of the game that can always be tweaked. No game is perfect. No game is, you know, everything needs to everything is a scale of perspective. That being said, I've invested 20 years of my life right now, I think into this game. It takes a lot to shake me out of it. Don't get me wrong, I will explore other game engines. I'm not I'm not that, you know, closed off. I've definitely played other games, I've definitely I've definitely got to the point of experimenting with rules, engines that come from other places. But the fact that magic is a at level zero, it's a framework that you can start tweaking in your own ways, so that you have your formally acknowledged and sanctioned formats, is constructed and limited. And there's a whole bunch of constructed formats and unlimited changes based on what cards that you're using. But then beyond those, say those that level zero, we start moving into more curated, custom created type of formats. We've been playing elder dragon Highlander, aka eth, aka commander has been the growing and growing format in the last couple years. It's been around forever, but it's gotten a lot more steam. Why since wizards gain control and created commander with talking to a bunch of community members, that format has blown up to the point where everybody gets words massive, it's probably the more one of the most played format in the game right now. And it keeps pushing that that came from that was a player created format. It came from players, it came from us designing how do we want to make magic work for us and wizards like, okay, we hear you, I personally play a format called battle box, which is it's a customised limited format, where I'm using a I'm using a manna system from a different game, to make it work where you're playing a stack of, you know, 200 cards I've I've pulled together put together a stack, we have lands off to the side, there's no lands in the stack, and me and the other person are just playing, we're drawing for cards that turn off the stack. And then we're playing as we go. These really tight, intricate, evolving games that aren't the same every time through because we just pick up the stack the stack and we shuffle it up and just keep going. It's it allows for that creativity. And I think that that example and cube drafting I talked about before which is customised draft limited pods, and then these competitive formats and then there's new there's fan created competitive formats and then commander itself because we have the framework of the rules and the card depth of 20 years. It allows for us to design and play the ways we want to play. And because of that one, I don't think the game is ever going to Because it also has a very stable secondary market.
Snyders Return:Yeah, absolutely. I noticed you mentioned that commander in the crossover with ravnica and and theorists sort of being carried in a lot of stores and places like Amazon and places like that sort of having dedicated stores for certain product lines and so it I can see the popularity and it's just one of those things that I picked up put it down and never went back to it again. But I know people that play it and love it and like yourself have a real enthusiasm for it and and care about the game.
Thomas Conmy:I am invested I love the game where it's going I want to be in I'm going to be involved more when we go on. And we are we have the most people ever playing the game is playing right now. We'll have the most people ever playing the game. We'll be playing when this podcast gets pushed because of MTG arena. And because magic itself is a social game that people want to be playing. Because of these amenities, arenas, making the game accessible by a lot more people by teaching the game, teaching the game teaching how to play magic is probably the most time intensive moment because once you get it, you don't you don't undo it, you don't forget it. Right, the rules stick with you. You just add on small little pieces of what's been tweaked since I've been gone. what's what's the new mechanics, but the baseline engine sticks with you and stays with your new can pick it up and you just read up on it. mtga being the best intro platform that's ever existed to teach people how to play the game, to get people in and it's across. It's getting everybody it's across everywhere. That's getting people into the platform. And then because of that one that gives you into the game and then all these communities and all these different kinds of formats. want people playing they don't want we're not we're the days of you know, you can't play with us we can't be at our table like that. That's not real. It's those are those are very small niches of people that are there. They're out of the game anyway, we don't know go away. We we care about these these growing, thriving, flourishing communities that are bringing everybody in because they want more people playing at the table.
Snyders Return:Yeah, absolutely. And speaking of community and and flourishing and things like that, to let everybody know where they can find you and your content, because I'll make sure there's links in the description below. So people can come and finding an engaging and sort of experienced the world and the life that you're creating in in both the magic the gathering space and through your d&d campaign. Sure.
Thomas Conmy:The easiest thing to do is follow me on Twitter twitter.com slash majors and mentors. Because I post way too much and I post when I'm actively live and all kinds of everything I'm getting involved in. And without Twitter, I would not be where I am today. sidebar twitch.tv slash majors and mentors is the go to platform for the twitch content and all over them pushing out there. If you want to hear the podcasts, major mentors dot pod bean calm or just search majors and mentors on Apple or Spotify, whatever podcast polling programme you want to use probably called me up, it will have the same banner that looks like from the twitch page. It's also linked on Twitch so and Twitter so everything comes out of the Twitter and Twitch, you can find it from
Snyders Return:there. I will make sure that as I said before the links in the description below. Question. You kind of half answered already by telling me you don't have any but what is it you do for sort of downtime? How do you relax away from your streaming and competitive gaming?
Thomas Conmy:Well, it's uh, so we're recording this podcast on November 30. I am level 56. And while right now I'm grinding Shadowlands content, when this podcast goes live in March to answer that question, and I'll probably be playing other kinds of video games or computer games or if I'm not playing games, like at my computer, and I can socialise, I play a lot of board games, I play a lot of ascension. I don't play a tonne anymore, or if you know we're done with that, I've been playing a lot of teamfight tactics because it lets me use my magic brain but it's not playing magic. So it's a different kind of aspect. I read I continue reading as much as I can when I'm not doing my academic research we're getting because I want to keep which the thing I look at impacts or hinders my writing process because I'm having to switch languages depending on how you want to look at it. But I am trying to get through the Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson and I picked up Gideon the ninth. So those are on my next downtime binge to start reading through,
Snyders Return:then sounds like a lot of fun, away from all the fun you have professionally slash sort of streaming content.
Thomas Conmy:I'm going to say if I've played more commander since March 2020 like From March 2020, until right now, I have played more commander via webcam with people than I've played command your lifetime, because of people want to be socialising people want to be playing, and they want to be doing more than just one v one v one v computer. So webcam commander is super, super popular super live. You can find it on Channel fireballs, discord you can find in the play eh, discord, I'm not affiliated with any of these things, I'm just giving you a heads up like, you can find webcam commander, and get involved and play more With your friends or play more with other people and get, get more games going. And so fantastic middle ground space until we can get back into paper in real life
Snyders Return:again, in case someone is, and I hope they are inspired to take you up on that offer. Are you able to briefly explain what commander is and how it works. Within the Magic the Gathering framework
Thomas Conmy:commander is 100 cards Singleton format, you have a commander which is a legendary creature or planeswalker that says can be commander on it. But most of time it's just a legendary creature. Your deck has to follow the colour identity of that creature. So say your creature is a blue, red and white creature. Everything in your deck has to either be blue, red, white, or colourless to match that commander entity. You're playing off up to four players the most effective games is a four player pod, we like to call it so for people in the in the group who started 40 life, you draw on your first turn and you you're playing casual magic, you're basically you we've reached the point now where we have establishing like power levels, but it's you saw all this with a turn zero conversation going, Hey, I'm playing this commander. My next plan is kind of like this or that so we discussed if it's fair or not fair for the tables level of play, and then you play it out. Commander is very much a political format. It's a format where you're incentivized to chat with people, it's very much a we're here chatting and having a good time with each other and we're also playing magic. But magic is like number two on the list. Number one is the hanging out. Part Number two is the magic playing. You'll have a lot of like decisions and deals at the table like Hey, hey, do you mind if if you don't attack me next turn I won't I won't mess with your enchantment. Or if you don't take the next turn, I won't mess with your artefact You know, I'm not gonna mess with your lands. If you if you give me three turns of pass like it's very much the board game interaction mentality coming to magics table. that's currently that's a it's the it's a wonderful approach. Because the decks are single 10. So you only need to buy what you only need one of some playgroups let proxies happen some playgroups don't you talk to your group, that the combinations and interactions are intensive. They're constantly being they're constantly places to research, every set gives you new tools, people will identify different kinds of power commanders they want to play for different kinds of experiences. I have like 10 commander decks on my desk plus the pre cons I've bought into just to have them. And then it just gives you a space to play different kinds of games. It's a very deep format that is only getting bigger and better, bigger and more accessible as time goes on.
Snyders Return:I'm just gonna say without sort of making it sound like I'm down Sunny, sort of the beer and pretzels. Magic. You can be social play, but you're still having that good time and a competitive experience. Yeah,
Thomas Conmy:yeah. And like, Yeah, it's definitely very much I would say it's the you're hanging out with friends, you're, you're at the coffee shop, or you're at the bar, and you're chilling, and you're hanging out and you want to play a board game, but you all want to play magic.
Snyders Return:That's what you're doing. That sounds brilliant. Sounds like a lot of fun and a good laugh. Definitely. So I will pull the links for those out as well and do what I can to put them in the description below just to help people connect with a with a wider and welcoming community. Yeah,
Thomas Conmy:you're welcome to the twitch channel,
Snyders Return:I streaming, I'll make sure that link is probably at the top. So just to make sure people can definitely come and find you. And I'd like to thank you for coming on. It's been it's been brilliant. Do you have anything you want to talk about? though? We haven't touched on yet,
Thomas Conmy:piece of advice to offer to new creators and writers? What would I want to give out? My advice? Please?
Snyders Return:Absolutely.
Thomas Conmy:Don't be afraid to experiment. Don't be afraid to try if I will treat all of you like my seventh grade students. There's nothing wrong with trying and there's nothing wrong with failing as long as you continue trying and experimenting. The goal is always to see what you can do and what you can improve upon. And you'll you'll be super surprised what happens when you take that shot.
Snyders Return:That's it. One question that sort of ties on to that about giving it a go and trying What did you learn the most about moving into twitch? or using the twitch platform.
Thomas Conmy:There's always something new to learn. Twitch is an ever evolving tool platform that level zero was turned on your video game engine on Twitch and turn it on, say go, and then stream it. And then every level beyond that is another level of tweaking. Um, there is no perfect twitch stream, because I feel like everything can always be adjusted, modified, tweaked or improved. Once upon a moment ago, I have production background, and it comes into play that in my brain goes, I know that this can be done in these direction ways. And I just don't have either the, the the plugin tool or the the access to whatever this is at this current moment due to whatever reasons. So it's always a thing, it can scale, everything is scalable, and which is not an it's intimidating, but it's not, it doesn't say you can't do it. It says, Hey, reminder that everybody's going to start here at the level zero, we're going to start here with the basic setup. And then you're going to organically over time, see what you like and what works for you and your channel and your community and your product or your content. And you're going to slowly but surely start scaling it up by putting different kinds of, you know, pieces into it, and never look, never go looking at someone else and go, Oh, I'm so mad that that person has all these things and I can't have it's like, no, that person was able to do this. They're showing you a way that can be done. Take what you can take what you can earn and make a note of what you haven't gotten access to yet, and see if that's something that you would like to aim for down the road.
Snyders Return:That's it. That's very fair advice and tacking on to your your inspiration to give it a go. I absolutely echo that sentiment. And you know, I just want to say once again, thank you so much for sort of taking some time out of your your day and and clearly busy. Busy day, week, month, year to spend a bit of time in it. Glad to be here. spend a bit of time and speak with me today. You know, I hope you've enjoyed it. I'd love to have you back on the show.
Thomas Conmy:Sure how we can I'll be back. I'm glad to come back and talk about some more stuff down the road. But thank you for bringing me on and reaching out.
Snyders Return:Yeah, no, absolutely. And I look forward to doing it. Again. Thank you 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 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