Hello, and welcome to Snyder's return a tabletop roleplay podcast. My guest today has turned success into an art form displaying her multiple talents on various platforms for our visual enjoyment. She has twisted all of these elements into her new sci fi ttrpg Kickstarter, guiding us to look a new word which decorates the night sky. She takes great care, even though living on the edge can be precarious, to say the least. Using all of her cognition and resilience. My guest is taking her diesel shot at success is an absolute pleasure to welcome Pat long to the show. Thank you for joining me.
Pat Long:Wow, I'm blown away by that intro that was off. That was that was poetry. Thank you for that. Hi, I'm tired. I didn't have anything quite so elegant, prepared, but um, I am certain that this will be a scintillating interview.
Snyders Return:I mean, to be fair, but that's all your hard work. I've just rephrased it and sort of worked it back to you. I can see
Pat Long:the care aka the statblock. shining through.
Snyders Return:We'll get to that soon. Actually before Yes. Before we get into the the Kickstarter itself, would you mind telling us how you go into ttrpg? Originally, please?
Pat Long:Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So so let me let me try to abbreviate the story. But um, so when I was younger, I kind of grew up a little a little poor. And I spent a lot of my we didn't have a TV, we didn't have computer really, we didn't have video games, I spent my childhood in borders, books until they closed and I had to go home. And, you know, every every day or so after, after school, I'd ride my bike there. And I just hang out in the cafe asking for free water and reading the books. And before putting them back on the shelves like it was a library. And so what I tended to look at a lot was d&d, I didn't really have that many friends. No real group to play with, except for my brother. But I loved the lore, the the mechanics, the interesting things I saw, the the monsters, it was all very exciting. And eventually I convinced my brother to start playing d&d with me. And we would like go on walks. And we wouldn't roll dice necessarily, but we'd have little d&d adventures, kind of inspired by the books, rather than using the Mac. But um, you know, as I grew up, I found a couple of people who played the game, bought and lost a lot of merchandise for the for the d&d game, and, you know, found for myself, some folks who were willing to play with it, and I kind of immersed myself in the role playing game geekery. And then my, my brother, who, with whom I shared these collaborative stories, and kind of anticipated working in the future on creating some maybe games or, or working in collaborative storytelling passed away. And that was a rather dark period for me. And I found I found another group of players after that, perhaps, I think two years later, which included my my now collaborator, Lee, with whom I'm writing change stars, and we kind of had the similar bond to my relationship with my brother, and that we wanted to tell stories together and create great worlds. And Lee actually exposed me to a lot more games than just d&d. I had, of course, you know, branched out a little bit in the past, you know, checked out the Star Wars, tabletop role playing game a couple of others, you know, I was always into card games and board games and stuff like that, too. But I'm really, really kind of working with Lee and creating diesel shot exposed me to a lot of amazing new games other than just the other than just the d&d. And I kind of found myself immersed in the indie world, which led me to a lot of other really great games that nobody talks to me about as a kid. And that weren't around when I was a kid. Like I found mothership and, and alien RPG and you know, Stars without numbers, and so many different games. And and it's just been an incredible experience finding myself in this amazing community.
Snyders Return:So you mentioned that diesel shop, would you mind telling us a little bit more about diesel shop, please?
Pat Long:Absolutely. So diesel shop is a creative team, co led by myself and Lee who's Leander tech, who's the the co author of change stars. And it's, it's mostly focused around our twitch stream and are associated, you know, media platforms. And we as a collaborative venture have a functional relationship wherein I produce a lot of the illustrations that are used on our channel. And I'm a performer in many of the games I occasionally, not occasionally, I regularly run games myself, but Lee does a lot of the brunt of that and takes care of some of the mapping stuff and and we work on we have a really functional nice relationship where we kind of are focused on putting out content and either, you know, in the, in the format of our regular twitch shows on diesel shot, that's our twitch handle all one word, just like change stars,
Snyders Return:actually.
Pat Long:A lot of people get confused, and they google it as two separate words. And they find, you know, interviews about how LeBron James was a kid and now he's not you know, whatever. And so changed ours is all one word just like diesel shot. And we were making games now. And we put out a couple modules and actually we had already published a tabletop role playing game by the time I met him and we were just focused on creating and and showcasing our work for people.
Snyders Return:You mentioned that your your twitch stream and the the content you you put out you leave it as diesel shock, would you mind sort of letting people know where they can find you and the content you put out? So I can put links in the description below and people could come and find you in common support?
Pat Long:Yeah, absolutely. So you can find us at a diesel shot, which is our Twitch, our twitch handle. We also I believe have a diesel shot Twitter account we also have a change stars Twitter account but Lee and I use Twitter quite quite readily. I am spider Queen long on Twitter. That's my persona long underscore spider. If you want to, you know directly find me and Lee is under the name Quad Core Quad. k o RPS on on Twitter. And other than that you can find us on Facebook under diesel shots handle we have a discord that we would love to see anybody here who's interested find themselves at and right now kind of a the focus of this interview is about change stars which is an ongoing Kickstarter that will be live for another week I think after this is produced and we have a link for you to that as well. If you find this interview interesting, you can go back the the game we've already funded. We we got actually funded in the first five hours which was incredible. We actually streamed my response on on diesel shot. I was on a lunch break actually at work when we hit the mark which was the best coincidence ever. So yeah, he was just it's just been an incredible experience running diesel shot and and having an awesome successful Kickstarter.
Snyders Return:I'm we've mentioned it there a couple of times. So someone's ears pricked up, they're interested, they're engaged because of all the creative content you put out and you produce like, Yes, I want to support this project. Tell me more. What is changed? Space stars? Don't put space anywhere. There's a space. I'm sorry for one word, don't put the space
Pat Long:no space stars. All Stars new space. Um, yeah. So change stars is a an innovative sci fi universe that I've created with my with my gaming table and with Lee and the kind of taglines that we that we toss out on on Twitter are that it's a queer themed feminist sci fi set in a communist union between three different species who have worked together to move past the devastation of a Galactic War. So there's obviously a lot of a lot of words in there that perhaps need justification or explanation. So really what change stars is about is it's my my take on the feminist sci fi genre. And it's kind of an inversion of a lot of a lot of older fan side science fiction that has been considered classic for quite a long time. And, you know, perhaps has has merits as such, but is not necessarily in keeping with modern viewpoints. And I think probably no, no, no one would be unsuspecting, if I said that this is kind of an anti hind linnaean story that we're trying to tell this is not a tale of fascism, uniting the human race in a war against bugs, or something of the sort, it's quite, quite cheekily the opposite. So that's, that's what it is kind of on the broader scale.
Snyders Return:Okay, well, if you're happy to narrow down into into how the the species interplay with each other, and maybe move into some of the game mechanics after that, if you
Pat Long:absolutely won't, yeah, sure. I want to give you a quick kind of history of the setting that'll kind of explain just maybe one or two words,
Snyders Return:that would be brilliant, please.
Pat Long:Sure. So, um, in in the future, about 400 years from now, humanity is there their attempt to form kind of a loose democracy of worlds in in space falls apart and out of the ashes of that attempt comes a terrifying fascist regime from Mars that quickly overtakes the disparate, corporate found funded or nationalistic colonies that dot the stars in the near vicinity of Earth and using kind of modified or rediscovered precursor technology. They they quickly conquer all of human space and to declare themselves the empire of man and this extreme, militaristic Empire cannot sustain itself without continued war, and how they rationalise that is they then start to combat against other sentience species in space, and they perform horrific acts while they're on this conquest March and they declare that the entire Orion's arm if not the galaxy is humanity's Manifest Destiny and they they attempt to just spread as much as humanly possible. And in the process of this horrific march to the stars, they encounter the moroi who are an insectoid species that form hives kind of use social and their their initial thought is that they are disgusting and need to be exterminated and they start a genocidal war against the the moroi which does not last long because the Mariah have allies in the in the thread who are a socially complex kind of long, long lived spacefaring species that assists the samurai. And they turn the tides of the war against the human Empire pushing them back to Mars after about 50 years of war. And this process is taxing on everybody. But ultimately, the human Empire Falls and in its place after 50 years of controversial and potentially, you know, extreme in the opposite direction, changes. There, they're kind of becomes this new middle ground, which is what what forms the artemesia and camion. So, the so after the after the war brings the human Empire back to Mars, and after 50 years of perhaps problematic in the opposite direction, changes to human society, the decomp now decolonized portions of space wherein humans still reside and no one else was there beforehand, kind of band together under the leadership of an AI known as mother of steel, and form a new form of government called the artemesia and camion. And this, this nascent nation state alongside the belligerents of the war, the other belligerents of the war threat Federation and the Mariah Council of Queens form a tripart Union known as the Trinity and it's been 50 years since That and humanity is trying to live in harmony with those that they once considered their enemies so long ago. And that's the setting.
Snyders Return:Wow, there's a lot there to sort of really dive in and get involved with and someone is interested. Here's this wonderful law that you put through, put over all the history available to go and sort of discover some of this for themselves. If they go to your Kickstarter.
Pat Long:Yes, yes, a lot of it is kind of explained in more consistent detail than I was able to disseminate just now, if you go to change stars, the Kickstarter page has like a four paragraph introduction to the lore, and the quickstart guide has even more in it. And that is freely accessible at the top of the page, you just press a little button that says quickstart. And it takes you right off to our drive thru RPG where it's for $0, you just grab it and go download it and check it out. It'll also give you a little bit of the mechanics and it'll touch on the species as you were interested in knowing more about.
Snyders Return:Absolutely. Well, yeah, touching on sort of going into to that side of the game mechanic. So the species, is it just those those three that are sort of available to play for, for players? And what's available to players and gms to run the game?
Pat Long:Yeah, yeah. So actually, there. So it's not just the three species that are mentioned, as being part of the Trinity that you can play as or interact with every every sentience species is rep that that? Well, there, there are a few that aren't and you know, those will be the source of expansion books in the future, but they're not necessarily by by the creators, mainly considered to be common enough in in the kind of galaxy at large, at least, the portion that we focus on to be worth noting in the very original document. So there are quite a few sentience species that are playable and interactable with humans and we don't this is not this is not a setting that tells you orcs are always evil. This is not a setting where, you know, there there's some sort of external cling on force that's trying to invade. There are no evil species, just evil individuals. And yeah, so in that respect, there's no like monster clash of species or anything, these are all just people in space, they may have drastically different biologies, psychologies or cultures, but they are all potentially playable. So we have to start off the humans who are not considered as as many sci fi role playing games, pin them as jack of all trades are quick learners or whatever. Humans in the setting are actually the closest to the Klingons they're they're like the, the the resilient warrior species who's got high endurance and tenacity, and we're really fucking hard to kill, hard to beat down. And you know, that force of character into toughness is is how you would you would characterise the human species in this game. And we also have, of course, the thread who are a formerly matriarchal turned egalitarian well before they met the human species, sort of people and they, they have detected degrade legs, horns, long ears, and extremely bold coloured patterned skin. And they are, you know, universally polyamorous monogamy does exist within the threatened species, it's just called you have one partner, that's fine, totally valid. And but there's no assumption that monogamy is is normative within the threatens society. In fact, they have very, what we would perhaps in the modern day consider progressive views towards sexuality and and gender expression and everything. So, those those are the probably a counterpoint more to the human Empire than they what I would consider the contemporary Trinity human society, which has course tried to move forward past that dark era. And then in addition to the thread who due to their nature as the only actually I'll get into that later, so aside from a thread within the Trinity, we have the Mariah, who are a non vocal species, they, as I mentioned earlier, form hives within which there is a queen and the average player character of MRI would act be considered a moroi aristocrat, which is one of the three kind of castes within the the marine biology moroi queens can give birth to either What are juvenile queens or moroi aristocrats or workers who are essentially pheromone controlled robots, more than like they're their biological robots basically, like ants. They respond to pheromones and act in in respects, but they don't have independent cognition abilities. However, the aristocrats are all juvenile queens themselves, and they have full sentience. But you know, not all of them ascend to being a queen, that is very rare, and special occasion. So that's, that's kind of the end, of course, they're insectoid. In physiology, they have external therapists, although I would note as a biology buff, they do have internal skeletons as well. They're not founded on the, the old notion that you can just upsize a bug and it'll make sense in, in biology, no, I need to focus on the anatomy of these things, it really matters to me. So we've got them arrived. And because they're non vocal, and because the Trinity is composed of the thread, Mariah and humans, and the thread being perhaps the more stable of certainly the more stable state at the beginning of the foundation of the Trinity friends plane, which is the language of the in universe con line of the friend Federation is now the kind of lingua franca of Trinity space. So I've actually developed part of Khan Lang. And we've reached the stretch goal that will allow me to develop it further. So odds are, if you're speaking in whatever language you you normally, normally speak in the game, you're speaking from playing, actually, and we've got words and, and glyphs in such that you can use in game to represent that if you'd like you don't have to. Yeah, so there's a lot of content there already. But in addition to the three primary species, that one might be expected to play, there's a whole bunch going on in the world. And we have three other that are kind of focused on to a broader extent, which are the veer who are formerly treated in a very nasty fashion. I would go into it further, but you know, we only have so much time by the human Empire and the the news why, who are kind of extremely alien by human standards and the rest, and I'll get into those three in a presently. So the the veer are kind of, if I were to describe them, I would say they're kind of like we will send our folk with rhinoceros skin. So it's probably pretty hard to visualise. But they're, they're tough skinned, herd forming species from a planet much like mercury that is very slowly rotating. So one side is dark, and one side is light, generally speaking, but it's a little faster than Mercury. So you get a nice middle ground that generally moves along with the planet as it goes through its day and night cycle. So the viewer don't actually sleep, what they do is they just continue walking. And that was, that was their existence, they formed. They, you know, they evolved as a society they formed nations and they have wars with each other. And then humanity showed up at their, at their planet when they were about it need polar ionic, Euro technology, and the humans consider them uplifted, but reality they were forcibly removed from their homeworld, and brought to a whole bunch of other planets for use by the human Empire as cheap labour force that doesn't sleep. So it was really horrific, exploitive process that left a very large Exodus population have removed population of Vir on all sorts of planets. And part of the process that that came later after the human Empire fell was removing humans from those planets actually, that they were that were predominantly veer populated. And now the viewer are one of many spacefaring species in the setting, and they have a very strong aversion to the Trinity and humanity at large due to the horrific abuses that they were that were forced upon them. So that that's one of the species and of course, there are again, this is an individual species there are many veer within the Trinity actually, you don't have to be a member of the you know, the You don't have to be like, friend, human or Mariah to be a member of the Trinity. And so there are VR in the Trinity but kind of By and large population has has kind of an aversion to the Trinity at the moment. And in addition, moving on, we have the news guy who were actually former allies on an very, very individual basis of the human Empire. Because the news Why are each and every one of them is completely unique. They are a social and have a very strong aversion to one another. Their ships are the only ones in the space in the setting that are designed to be piloted by exclusively one person because they just don't get along well with each other. And when you look at a new sky, you'll probably see it is easily the most alien species in the setting. They're non civilised, meaning they don't have heads, what they do have though, is a large pteropus form. And on either end of this form, they have quadrilateral symmetry, and on either end, they have eye stalks and grabbers and and claws and paddles, and of course, legs in between. and in the very centre of their body, they have a single mouth slash anus, which is, you know, their their primary orifice for consuming and expelling food. So they're, they're very non human in those terms, hard to anthropomorphize. And not as a result of their biology necessarily, but more their psychology, they're very strongly individualistic. And they, they tend to form if anything amongst each other guilds, which are kind of United tradesmen and crafters who kind of all practice the same art and need protection. So they kind of band together for more of a defensive pack than anything else. So we've got the news why, and they're also like one of as well just very fun to kind of exploring an alien biology like that very fun. And last, but certainly not least, I think everybody's favourite species in the setting actually over the thread. And the more I easily is the rest who, who are easily recognisable as kind of being otters in space. They are about otter size, or you know, we would say maybe halfling sized or habit size or what have you. And they're their little semi aquatic, free sapient anthropomorphize species, and they've got little antennas on the top of their heads because their planet they come from, is predominantly a water world. And in this planet, there were a lot of seafaring things that consider them very delicious, including a another sentience species that evolved on their planet, the rasti and sea dragon as they call it, or the avina, as they prefer to be called, which are as some of them do they have different languages, but that's I got needlessly excessive with some of the world building but um, they the veena are very, very hostile to the rest. And so what they've done is they've left their home worlds predominantly and taken to the stars, and they move about in giant home ships, as they call them, which are mega city sized space station slash ships. And within these, there's quite a few and they formed a confederation and, you know, mutual defence pacts and such. And within these, of course, the predominant population of the rest exists, and they, they have kind of a very recognisable, dystopian vibe to them. They're kind of the the capitalists of the setting, in a very large way, like the United capitalists, the Newswire are often I would call them an prims or an caps, but the raste form a very recognisable form of capitalism. And they, they there's a little bit of a tension between the rasti and Confederation and the Trinity itself, although both sides would deny that. So that's one of the finer elements of the setting that kind of defines a lot of the the back drop for some of the conflict that can occur. Should the GM choose to engage with that?
Snyders Return:Yeah, that that's an amazing amount of stroke should we say for for a GM to drop in and draw from? You've done an incredible job well building, I'm no expert myself, but I'm just in all of the effort you put into it. It's amazing. So gems gather their their players and they pick one of these or a selection of these species. How does the game support Then mechanically, should we say sure,
Pat Long:um, first kind of as a as a single sentence, not necessarily aside. But addition, I would, I would say that I'm kind of the expected setting is that one would be a trinity member. But that's not necessarily true. This is kind of a sandboxie game, but the average gameplay is your, your regular person doing your regular thing in space, and then you interact with whatever conflict occurs, or you have been hired to, you know, interact with it, or what have you. But there's, there's generally, our previous tagline was average jeans, you know, or, you know, average jeans doing extraordinary things in space. But um, so once you've gotten your average jeans, or Joes, or what have you, you will, you will create your character through a very simple method, you have a certain amount of points you can put into your stats and the certain amount of points you can put into your associated abilities. And, of course, the abilities feed off of the stats, and your your stats, actually, because you've mentioned them already in the game I are in the interview, I feel it's probably necessary to say spell out care, cognition, alacrity, resilience, and empathy. That was a little little silliness that we, we threw in there, because we thought it would be very fun. And it kind of does, it's defined by the, the metaplot, that the Trinity, in which you're expected perhaps to, to be a member of is a society that actually is trying to improve the the sapient existence of its citizens, and it actually does kind of care. So that's, that's where that comes from. So once you've got your stats and your abilities, and you choose, and of course, your species defines certain things. For instance, if you're threatened, you are faster than your average human but you're also physically less less fortified, you have a lower stamina. And if you choose human, of course, you are kind of a kind of a physically endurable, visibly adorable character. And if you're a Mariah you can't speak if you're a raste you are you produce pheromones, and you can speak through a translator device, it's very readily applicable, so your character can totally speak. But um, or if you're a RAST, you can hold your breath for so many minutes. And all these do come into play. But generally speaking, you know, it doesn't doesn't really affect your statistics. So once you once you have moved on, past that stage, you can choose your archetype, which is, you know, kind of akin to your class, it's very customizable, though, you don't have to choose to engage with every single aspect of what we call your archetype in the book, you can mix and match to at your discretion with the the rules that are laid out in that section. And once you've chosen all of that, then you're probably pretty much good to go just pick an equipment pack or you know, buy your own, if you really want to look through pages and pages of the book. And in this respect, it actually is pretty akin to, you know, the year zero engine games, or mothership or some of the kind of more easy to jump into games where we kind of expect you to be playing a one shot, or a more just want quick character generation. And that's what this game really offers you. It's very fast and very easy to make a character and once you're once you've got your character, most of these, most of these roles will be queued off of your ability and stat combined. They're they're listed and linked in the the character sheet so it's not that hard to figure out what goes where. And you add them all up. It's a dice pool system D sixes successes are sixes and everything else is a failure, which doesn't matter unless you have already reached which is our dice rerolled mechanism. There are other ways to get this but reaching will give you an edge. And once you have edge, you're rolling another dice alongside your regular dice pool and that one you actually have to pay attention to the failures on because it will if you get a one on your edge dice it will let the GM come up with a through a series of McCann have specific rules come up with some sort of malice for your character or those around your character. To experience so that that's kind of a gambling mechanic that we've seen in a couple other games that we really quite liked and wanted to perform a modified version of in our game. So one of the things that kind of define or that kind of unique defies this particular gambling mechanism, though is that if you've gained enough edge, if your characters at some sort of breaking point, there's actually positive repercussion from that, aside from the potential just be more rolling more dice, which is after a certain point, in humans, it's lower. But for I think the majority of species at six or seven edge my memories failing me at the moment, you can actually do what's called an edge break, which is your enemy protagonist moment, you're at the you're down for the counter, you're at the back of the wall, the big bads just you know, announced her evil schemes and you're there with the the crew, and you're all but beaten down. And you've got that last ounce of wrestle resolve that last modicum of your, your own unique person edge. And that's when, when the cards are down, you, you edge break, and then you know, there's a couple of mechanics for it. But um, basically you just succeed really well at whatever it is you you wanted to do, and then you go catatonic. It's not exactly like that. But that's how it ends up playing out as in most scenarios, when it happens. Some rather expensive play testing, most people don't make it out of an edge break awake. Because you actually roll over all of your edge rolls and anything that doesn't it's not just ones anymore, anything that's not a not a success counts as a failure, and then you get all the shock associated with that.
Snyders Return:Wow. It sounds a lot of fun, such a great use of the mechanics and how does say you've gone through the sort of the roleplay using the system will not be dice for you. And you go into combat, how does sort of combat and that kind of stuff work? Yeah, within changed hours.
Pat Long:So combat functions a lot like a lot like the the kind of skill checks you you add your dice pool associated with your ballistics skill. And are actually I think sometimes there's, I think we have a melee skill too. I haven't seen it used very much. But, um, yeah, no, so you use your dice pool, but then your weapon can add like an additional dice or something to it. So it's kind of like an an up graded skill roll. And you know, you can, you can also have tools and stuff that upgrade your other skill roll. So it's really not actually all that special, but you um, you can pop off a shot or bash someone in the head with a wrench. And you can use use your use your skills and ability combined, add the bonus from the weapon, and then it deals a certain amount of damage based on based on you know, your weapons, and how much how many successes you've got, and what we can do. One of one of the fun things that happens actually in in all skill tracks, including combat is you can twist, which is when you get additional successes other than the ones you were you already got, you can add, you can do fun things depending upon. Again, there's some guidelines for this, and they're very malleable. One One of the things that we wanted to do was ensure that they got the cinematic experience flows well and is decided in collaboration by the GM and the player. So a lot of the a lot of the twists and shock results and a couple of the other things in the game can be negotiated between the players with with some guidelines, but yeah, just to make it fair, but um, you know, it's it's all in the conversation. It's all in the talk.
Snyders Return:Oh, it sounds really, I've I've really taken a personal love to the more cinematic style of ttrpg that that's, that's out at the moment. And that's not I love the indie and and the sort of the de 20 systems but these such as yours and similar systems that allow that cinematic release of expression as you play feel so much more freeing. Is that what sort of drew you to sort of draw on on those influences?
Pat Long:Absolutely, absolutely. It really we just made the game to fit the way that we play similar games and we wanted to create an experience that was cinematic and enjoyable and you know, it could be as roleplay heavy as you'd like. while still having rules for those who prefer to, you know, really delve into the mechanical side of things, you know, this isn't, this isn't a game that's all roleplay there's definitely some strong mechanics but it's really for creating a fun scenario and thrusting yourself into a world of change stars and experiencing the immersive world and interacting with it and telling a story.
Snyders Return:It's an it's such an exciting project and I highly recommend, like I have gone to the Kickstarter, download that quickstart guide. The artwork is amazing. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely amazing. What has been one of the most exciting things for you to work on like I've heard the exuberance in your voice on various topics, but what has been your, your favourite to work on through the project? Oh,
Pat Long:God, now you're making me choose. Like, this is like telling a mother she has to choose one of her children. Oh, I mean, like, there's a lot like, honestly, I'm a huge sucker for world building, right, like creating a con line for this several conscripts In addition, has just been amazing. I'm delving into the the cultures and physiologies and histories and ongoing political tensions in the setting has been fucking wonderful. But I think one thing that I probably haven't actually talked all that much about that a warrants mentioning here and deciding what my favourite aspect of change stars is, is the art I'm, I'm the illustrator. And I've just loved creating all these black and white traditional pen on paper pieces for the, for the setting for the world. And it just really enables me to bring my vision out and, and create a piece that one can interact with and see the world more than just, you know, through through the, through the words and ideas that one might get from the book. And I feel as though I've grown as an artist over the course of creating change stars, and that, that definitely is probably my my favourite part. That definitely is probably that's my favourite part. Just the fact that I've grown as an artist and I'm looking at my works now and seeing the improvement and I'm feeling comfortable and good. Giving people of giving people a book, a hard hardback book, perhaps even, that's filled with my art, and I can look at that and and feel feel happy with with how my work looks now, which wasn't always the case, you know, growing as an artist. It's a long process, but I feel as though I've gotten to a point where I'm professional enough to, to put a price on a book filled with my art, and that's incredible.
Snyders Return:The artwork is incredible, and you should be really proud of it. It's amazing. I do like the the the illustration of the mural, I think it's it's definitely in the Quickstart a couple of pages down, stood out to me immediately. So that's a personal favourite, that, that I will keep referring back to it. It's highly recommended you go and have a look. You mentioned there about giving people the hard hardcover book, when they back when they back to the Kickstarter, because they will when they go to Kickstarter, what can they get in the tears? For for backing your project?
Pat Long:Oh, yeah, so um, it's not, you don't you don't have to take the hardcover option we have, we have plenty of options for you. Um, so you can either back us just kind of because you support us and want want us to succeed. And we greatly appreciate that. But if you want the book, you can get the PDF version for $15. A dirty, stinking yank. And this is all in good old fashioned American cash dollars. So you can pledge a $15 and you will receive the the PDF sometime in January when we're finished with everything. And after that though, we have wallpapers of the art. You can get a character art token pack, just in case or for the likely chance considering the global pandemic that you'll be playing online. We have a lot of this stuff in a readily usable fashion for those of you who who have moved kind of towards an online approach to your tabletop experience, which unfortunately a lot of us have. Though, I was kind of doing this earlier because all of my friends live everywhere else. And what we also have which is very interesting Oh aside from like, You know, a PDF of the art which is, which is you can just get a PDF of all the art that's going to be in the book as either an add on are part of your tiered pledge. And one of the one of the really cool things that I haven't at all talked about is actually the third big contributor to the content within change stars, which is to say, Cole who has produced a an EP, an album of music that pertains to the setting, we have kind of a theme song for change stars itself, as well as a kind of a theme, elite motif for each of the the most readily interactable species within the setting. And there's like an EP for the Trinity itself as well. And it's just, the music is incredible, the sky is amazing, as a synth artist, and you can find his work on YouTube. He's odd, MK, Amman. And I can, of course, drop the link. And he's, he's just been fantastic to work with. And he's a good friend of ours, actually, part of the tabletop role playing group that I made change stars for originally, in its early conception. So he's just just a great guy. And this is kind of his, his music music debut, much like is mine as an illustrator on some of the things but you know, much as it is kind of diesel shots, debut as well. So that's one of the things that's included. If you start backing at I believe the first tier for the hardback book is $45, and you'll get everything previous. And in addition to the PDF, you'll get hardback version. And after that, you just can add on more and more. And we actually have quite kind of towards the bottom of this tier list, you know, when we're getting get into the big bucks, if you're really interested in in what we're doing here in the art in us as people and and if you want to interact with the content of the game even more, we have the Trinity envoy and Trinity diplomat tiers 102 100 respectively. And with a pledge of 100, you can actually get a physical piece that's in the book, the original black and white ink on paper, the drawing that I've made that you'll see in the book that will arrive at your house, you'll get one of them, we can kind of work on how that's going to be decided which one you got. But um, there will be, there's a certain amount of these that I can give out, but I will be giving you the original copy of some of the art in the book. And that's the $100 pledge$200 you work with Lee and myself, and you come up with a character that fits in the world. And I draw that character, and there's also possibly a chance that that character will appear somewhere in the book, I don't know depends on how much I really need to pad the art. Just getting a really just, it's gonna depend on on my my own personal preference, but so no promises there, but you will get the physical copy of the art that I make as well. And you will get a chance to work with us and create this character, everything stats to personality to their kind of place in the world. And that's that's what we've got for you there. And then we've got two further tears, limited one of each neither of them and taken on, which is understandable considering the price range that we're working on with these two. But one of the things that I'd like to offer you as the artist of this book is some of the unique oil paintings that are going to be featured in in the book, either as like an undercover page, or as the cover itself. So with a pledge of 1000, you get an oil painting that I've made called orbiting cloud fall. And with a pledge of C 1500. You actually get the physical oil painting. That will be the cover of the book. Wow. So if you're, yeah, if you're interested and you really want to shell out some shots and some serious stuff on a cool creative project that that's being worked on by people you believe in then we have that as an option for you. And I'm got pieces not presently finished, but you know, obviously it will be by the time that the book arrives. I'm very proud with the progress that's been made on it so far. It's looking great to me So
Snyders Return:yeah, definitely definitely exciting stuff and so much there to offer different people on different sort of price marks and sort of comfortable with their their ability to back support and help bring this project to life. It's amazing. A question I meant to ask earlier and I've been sort of persistent through this interview is, I'll be careful. Our phrases don't want to sound like a like, Chris is absolutely not. What is it about sci fi that has drawn you in so much? Why sci fi? How? Oh, that's starting to d&d. And and you've you've sort of brought this sci fi. And you've mentioned a couple of references there. I just wondered, where the decision where your influences came from, to sort of come into the sci fi genre?
Pat Long:Yeah, no. Um, so I've actually always been a huge fan of sci fi. I kind of fell into d&d out of lack of knowing the field more than anything else. And even when I was playing d&d, I kind of tended towards the more interesting and alien environments they're in described. So I would like really folk hyper focus on like, the underdark. And the interesting species and societies that were created for that particular aspect of the, the broader fantasy scale, or a broader fantasy genre. product that the ideas and you know, I found myself very interested in the kind of lore about the species and and kind of their typical societal underpinnings. And of course, well, while some of the the older books are a little dated at this point, it did, it did inspire me to delve into world building but really what I'm, what I've always been interested in is sci fi from from the get go, even when I was focusing on the fantasy elements of d&d, I've always been a huge fan of sci fi, I think it probably started when I was young, and I first watch alien in in like, a hotel room, way too young and age and it kind of traumatised me. And I kind of had some serious phobia responses thereafter that I've mostly worked past and, but like the the world that it depicted was so interesting to interact with. And I've always kind of considered myself a little bit of a realist. My brother was kind of always interested in more of the creative elaborate, the high fantasy or space apres parts of things, but I've always kind of been more interested in the gritty realism, like, like, depicted an alien or some, you know, it is a fantasy example the earlier seasons of Game of Thrones. Yes, I haven't read the books I'm sorry. But um, you know, I, I like I like realism, and which is kind of strange considering make kind of a bit of a space opera setting. But, you know, it's grounded in a lot of the same, a lot of the same industrial aesthetic of alien or the interest in depicting a realistic science fiction environment, like, like you can see in the expanse, where they where there's really a lot of attention to detail, concern over gravity and air flow within a ship. And, you know, you're not gonna, you're not gonna hear swooshing noises in space, hypothetically, if this became a if this became a film as opposed to a role playing game. But um, ya know, like, that sort of stuff has always interested me. And I'm, I've trained as a biologist, I have a biology degree. So I've always been interested kind of in the how things work aspect of settings. And one of the things that I really don't see all that often is kind of how things work on a fantasy scale. But one thing that is almost always a feature of science fiction universes is, at the very least a hand wavy explanation of what's going on, in the nitty gritty. And that always just, it's something I can sink my teeth into.
Snyders Return:Thank you, thank you for that. I mean, we've touched on so much, and thank you for your time. Is there anything we haven't spoken about that you would like to bring at this particular point of the interview? Oh, crap.
Pat Long:We have actually spoken about quite a bit. And now I mean, there's, there's so many things that I would love to say, here, but I can't, I can't necessarily think of one in particular, that's more pressing than the others. But, you know, this is a passion project that I've been working on for about a year now. And it's demonstrative of my growth as an artist and diesel shots growth as a collaborative team, and the amazing people that we've been working with, to create this this book, and actually Yes, I think I have come up with the the one further thing that I would like to mention diesel shop is not a two person operation. And change stars is not made by just two people. There is an amazing team that's backing us and, and supporting us and working with us to create all of the beautiful things that you'll see in the book when it arrives at your doorstep. We have, you know, an amazing team, including but not limited to, we slash void he is working on the layout of the book, he made the kind of the quickstarter that you'll find. There are actually two of these on the team. It's kind of amusing. But this this way, is the the layout boy. And he's created an amazing quickstart that everybody can check out on our graphic design team, we have Casey who is is absolutely foundational in the aesthetic of change stars and created the kind of overlay that we use on our twitch stream, and a whole bunch of other amazing assets that you'll see use throughout the book, including but not limited to collaboratively creating the logo, and Luke Byard who is himself a science fiction author of creating deep systems, which will be released, you know, whenever. And he's been foundational in a lot of the aesthetic as well, he's doing a lot of the kind of vector art that we needed, done helping us a lot with the layout of the change stars Kickstarter page. And, you know, just working on a whole bunch of stuff behind the scenes giving me creative ideas, because, you know, as I mentioned, he's a science fiction nerd too. And it's great to just chat, chat with him and pick his head, knock Phenix. member, the alien RPG community has created a roll 20 sheet that facilitates gameplay. And there's so many more people who are working on on this behind the scenes, it's just incredible. And the community that we've built, and that has been supporting us, and that has backed the Kickstarter already is just phenomenal. And I'm absolutely thrilled to be working in this supportive and uplifting environment and community.
Snyders Return:Absolutely, thank you so much. And it's really appreciate I'm sure, when people do get their hands on the book, and they see through the credits, they'll appreciate the hard work and teamwork that you've you've sort of all put into to bring this product, as you say, the doorstep. Just before we close Would you like to remind everybody where they find yourself and changed ours and everything you guys are putting out there into the into the ttrpg community and beyond? Yes.
Pat Long:So you can find me at twitter. Spider Queen long is my nom de guerre, and you know at long underscore spider, and you can find us on Twitch at diesel shot, you can find us in our Discord server associated with the channel as well. You can find Li the co author at you know quad core on Twitter. And you can find changed stars all one word, no space on Kickstarter right now. And as of this podcast release, it will have a week to go. And if you like what you heard, if you want to see more of this art than please go back at and support me as an artist and the team behind change stars in creating the content that we love to create.
Snyders Return:Thank you so much for your time, I'd love to have you back on the show for future interviews, future releases, future projects, just anything in the future. You've been such a wonderful guest, and I really enjoyed having you on. Thank you so much.
Pat Long:Thank you.
Snyders Return:Thank you for listening. If you'd like to learn more about the show, then go to WWW dot Snow'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 alpha for those who are listening until we until we speak again. Thank you