Hello, and welcome to snows return a tabletop role playing podcast. My guest today is taken adventures plays from her majesty's flying steam city to criss crossing all over the world investigating all manner of occult activities, and eldritch horrors. In trusting keepers with unspeakable truths and testing the very sanity of investigators. My guest has ensured a thrilling adventure which can be played using different styles for your gaming group. It is my pleasure to welcome from chaos Ian, Associate Editor of cooler Cthulhu Dr. Lynn hardy Lynne, welcome to the show.
Lynne Hardy:Thank you very much for having me.
Snyders Return:It's an absolute pleasure. And I'd like to before we get into to why I originally invited you on, find out a bit more about yourself and how you going to tabletop role playing games, please.
Lynne Hardy:Oh, right. Oh, no. I mean, there's probably quite a few your listeners already heard this story. And it's a bit of a weird one. But it's all down to the Seattle Seahawks
Snyders Return:that has left field as they come to continue on this thread.
Lynne Hardy:And well, you know, many, many years ago, so we're talking 1989. I went to university. And one of the things me and my dad used to do on Sunday afternoons was we used to watch the American football on Channel Four. Now my dad supported the Cowboys. I'd kind of toyed with the Redskins just as a bit of a friendly family rivalry. But I just really liked the design of the Seattle Seahawks strip, and the colour and the colour combinations. And also, you know, they weren't a bad team at the time. So I ended up only rooting for the Seahawks. Now, at that point in time, American football t shirts and American football tops were actually quite fashionable, but you were talking about the Raiders, the dolphins, you know the big teams, Seahawks was a lot harder to get hold of. Now I can't remember the exact details of how it happened. I think it was just one of those accidents. You know back in the days when your mum used to get a catalogue and order things out of it. I think purely by random who ever case catalogues buyer was they just decided to get a Seattle Seahawks actual one of the the airtex tops. So that was my Christmas you know it was going to be my present. In fact, I think it was the Christmas present the year before I went to university. It was one of my prized possessions because not many people had them they were incredibly hard to get hold of in Britain. So I went to university I had this top I went up to freshers week in the UN. I was at Newcastle University I was put into Ethel Williams Hall out in long Benton, which was an amazing building had a very chequered history was named after the first woman if I remember right and graduated medicine from Newcastle University. I saw Williams herself, and there was a very stern portrait of her at the end of the dining hall that glared at you during every mealtime. And so I thought it was freshers week. And I went along to the first night party and I put my Seahawks top on and, and a couple of blokes came over to talk to me because they were actually in the American football team at Newcastle University. And we got talking about all sorts of things it turned out they were fellow geeks, and they were also gamers. So I'd always wanted to do role playing. But you know, despite the bad press, I think there'd been a target episode where there was some lunatic was doing live role playing and going around murdering people in the sewers. And there was you know, all the satanic panic stuff going on still, and kind of filtered over from the States. And my one true memory of it was sort of like a flu induced hallucination or most of them playing Dungeons and Dragons in et. I was very poorly when I went to see et I had a really bad case of flu. So I don't remember most of that film, and I could never be sure whether I'd actually dreamt that or whether it was real. So when these guys said they were gamers, it was a case of great I've always fancied trying that. And they were brilliant. My first game was run by a guy called john Wilson who I'm squarely laying the blame for all of this on his feet. Great bloke, I'm very, very good GM. And the first game I ever played was rune quest. And I inherited a dwarf called Shirley. I had been somebody else's character in the past and they thought the easiest way to get me in was just to give me a premade character and away we went. The rest as they say is quite literally history. And and we were very lucky in that group because pretty much everybody walked bar one person GM, so we had a good roster of games, everybody took turns and within a month or so, have me actually started gaming. They handed me the red box for d&d and said wasn't played this an age as you're running it. So I got into that. It it didn't really I enjoyed it, but they knew it backwards because they've been gaming since they were kids and I didn't really feel that I could surprise them. And so, you know, all those adverts that used to turn up in the old games magazines about no elves Hell is lanta that really appealed to me. So I ordered the book. I got it. I got various other supplements that I ordered. And that became my game. And it was through TELUS lanta and after Wizards of the Coast took over it. I wrote them a very cheeky letter and sent them a couple of scenarios. And they obviously liked what they saw because they got in touch with me. And I remember standing in a very cold and damp phone box at the corner of coach lane over the road from Ethel Williams Hall and my old room and talking to someone from Wizards of the Coast and then inviting me down to euro Gen Con at camber sands to meet them. And from there even though I never actually had anything published by wizards foretell is lanta that introduced me to the guys at nightfall games. I wrote some bits and bobs for slay industries, I avoided various bits of my PhD by going up to guys go and spending time with the night for games guys. And that led me to make contacts in the industry. And yeah, that's that they'd never kind of really looked back. Slight hiatus 20 years ago when I was moving between countries and getting married and getting a house. But never really completely left it in one format or the other either as a play tester as an editor or as a writer.
Snyders Return:Let's quite a story starting from NFL Blitz on Channel Four to via Canvas sans grey venue Canvas ads,
Lynne Hardy:oh, I kind of miss canvas. And the funniest thing was I'd actually stayed in the it because in the Pontins next door always the other way round, because there were the two holiday camps next to each other. And as a child, I'd actually stayed in the other one. So I it was quite a trip down memory lane when I first went down there because I recognise the whole area. But it you know, holiday camp on the southeast coast, in November, it had a certain kind of atmosphere. The weather was usually dreadful, the freezing cold but you there really was this amazing sense of camaraderie that you get from conventions that are in the middle of nowhere that you can't escape from?
Snyders Return:For I can I can only imagine maybe something for the future when when life moves on a little bit with the current circumstances. So that was sort of your time with the sort of nightfall and and things like that. And then so how, how did you take that step two cogs, cakes and sword sticks, and then onwards to where you are now?
Lynne Hardy:Well, I'd written various bits. In fact, I've written quite a bit for dying Earth, and I'd known Robin laws for years. I'd met him at actual Gen Con, when it was in Milwaukee in 1994. And we we'd argued loads before that, because at the time, he was going to be redesigning tellers, lanta for wizards. And we'd had many friendly disagreements about which direction it should go in on various bulletin boards and things again, when I should have been doing my research work. And so, you know, I knew him. I did a research job in Canada in Toronto for years or as part of Robin's gaming group. So it kind of fell into play testing a lot of Robin's stuff pelgrane when I came back to Britain, and that was when they you know, they were we play tested dying Earth, and then I started writing for it because the sense of whimsy really appealed to me. So there's quite a lot of stuff that I did in excellent prismatic spray and a couple of the other source books. And so that was that was always there kind of ticking along. And then I had sort of like a bit of a hiatus, I left research, I started retraining as a teacher. I wanted to teach arts and crafts, particularly historic embroidery and design and pick the worst time possible. I could have done to do that, because that was like one of the one of the first times the government withdrew a whole load of community teaching funding. My timing is ever perfect. So I had to go back to teaching sciences. So while I was doing all of that and trying to get my City and Guilds in embroidery and design, the gaming kind of went a bit to one side, or the half of our group had a baby so they weren't gaming particular anymore. So we kind of drifted out of it for a bit, but we got pulled back in because we did a lot of live role playing that was mostly what we were doing at that point and both myself and my husband had been part of treasure trap at Durham University. I was an interloper. You know, I was I was allowed there under sufferance because I was actually at Newcastle and, and Newcastle having been once part of Durham University back in the dim and distant past, and we'd made a lot of friends through treasure trap. And as a way of, you know, maintaining friendships after everybody graduated, various other people have actually started writing their own live action campaign. And it was called codename crimson, which was set in the Victorian era. And originally, I think it was basically an excuse for everybody to dress up in nice costumes and go and have tea and cake, interesting locations. But there was a bit of role playing Indian around it, rich and I written my husband, we joined a bit later on and really got into sort of that, when that campaign finished, we went and did something called League of crimson, which was set in the 1920s. And around the time that was ending was when steampunk was really starting to come up in sort of like in terms of popularity, and our friends who'd done codename Crimson were into the steampunk scene in Nottingham. And they invited us along to, and it was called the asylum. And it was the big steampunk event in Lincoln. That used to be in September. The reason it was called the asylum was because it was held in what had been the old asylum in Lincoln, out the back of the castle. Now, I mean, I grew up in Nottingham, sure, I used to go to Lincoln quite a lot. So it was quite nice to actually get to go there and spend some just time just hanging around with friends in an amazing location, and play dress up, basically. And while we were there, at that very first one, it became obvious that people kind of interested in gaming, but didn't really know where to start. And I was trying to get back into it at that point in time, we were going to various conventions and things and, you know, trying to rekindle that, and the tabletop side of things. And it was just one of these things that started as a bit of a thought exercise. On the way home in the car, you know, like what kind of a game could we design that would work for this. So I put together a bit of a brief and over the next couple of years, sort of like playtested it at the asylum with gamers, non gamers. And the whole idea behind it was that, you know, there were a lot of people who were thoroughly enjoying the cost play, really wanted to have a go at gaming, or really intimidated by the two systems that were available, which was Victoriana, and airship pirates. You know, and I edited Victoriana third edition with Walt. So you know, I'm very, very fond of that game. But it isn't the one that I would give to absolute beginners. So I wanted something that was as simple and straightforward as possible, that would lure people in. And that you could I mean, the original design brief was that it was sufficiently simple that you could play it in the comfort of your favourite tea shop with nothing but a napkin and a sugar cube. Because these days, you don't really get cube sugar cubes, you get these like lumps of fancy sugar, or and we actually went and bought a box of Titan Lyle to do is a bit of a promotional thing. And it turned out that they're actually not even cuboid anymore. That's all a little flashy boxy things, which was really disappointing. So we ended up having to buy an absolute tonne of cola cubes and pineapple cubes and Apple cubes. And I got food colouring pen, and I used to draw the dots on the cola cubes, and we would have a bowl of them. On our little stand on the table. We were running the games out to sort of lure people in because people cannot resist cola cube dice, they cannot, or they really can't. And so yeah, I mean, the whole thing was was to have a nice strength, simple, straightforward, fun to play a game that required the absolute minimum of equipment. So we base it all around a single D six, because most people could get hold of one of those pretty easily. Many people would have had one in the house, if they'd had any form of board game at all in their life. And we just wanted it to be fun and fast. And something that you could play really quickly, you can just pick it up and have a go. And if you wanted to, you could have a campaign of it. I mean, I know people that did. And and it really seemed to appeal to a certain set of people and it went down incredibly well. And we had it on a CD we used to sell it at the asylum of various places, because I didn't want to have to worry about the logistics of printing the thing properly. And then when I left teaching because I'd had enough, I decided I was going to make a go of being a writer and an editor. And I used the draft of cogs and cakes as my writing sample, both for cubicle seven and modiphius and it got me the Victoriana third edition editing And it got me to work on acting Kathie Lee,
Snyders Return:and downwards into where we are now.
Lynne Hardy:So yeah, we are now
Snyders Return:stepping into the Cthulhu Mythos and the game as it is an acting is second world war based if I'm not mistaken. Yes, yes. So what was the draw to that project and cazuela as a entity
Lynne Hardy:awkwardly and colicky Sue was one of the earliest games I ever played john again. He decided one day he picked up this game called colicky fool, and we were going to play it as light relief for a bit of a break between rune quest and other games. And we never played a lot of it, but I just liked. I liked the mystery element of it all. I was raised on murder mysteries, I was raised on Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie. I'd also always loved that side of things. So that really appealed. That whole solving the mystery side of things. And again, the thing with my diffuse was kind of an accident, we were at dragon meat, Sara Newton was there, and I was running a game of so I can't remember what I was running. But rich was busy talking to Sarah, and saying that we'd been doing this live action, and it was the third instalment LARP of the Crimson series, which was codenamed crimson, which had moved up to World War Two. And Sarah had mentioned how she and Chris were busy getting a world war two game ready. And that's why I submitted Cox and cakes to Chris in the end, and it was all very serendipitous, very accidental, if rich hadn't been talking to Sarah and hadn't mentioned the LARP, I wouldn't have known to get in touch with Chris. And so it's just one of those happy accidents that quite often seem to happen. In my role playing to be quite. I'd hate anybody to think it was ever planned and organised particularly well. And, and yet, I mean, originally I was going to be brought on as the researcher, because, you know, research being my background, even, even though it's not the same discipline, and but the person who was going to help the project had to step down. So I came in at the last minute. And I mean, all the writers and artists were in place. So I actually had a very reasonably easy job of it, I didn't have to worry about the financial side of it either, because Chris took care of all of that. And so it was basically my job to act as chief cook bottle Washington cat herder to put the plans together for the books, get the writing done, and get them out the door, basically. And I was very lucky to work with a supurb team. So we had dem Martin doing the art. And he was a really smashing guy, a Greek pharmacist by training. But a superb artist, and Dave bluer, who did the savage worlds conversions for us and me how cross he was doing all the layout and graphic design. So that was our core little team as the four of us. And then we had the freelance writers. And, and I remember when Chris said he was going to do the Kickstarter, I think originally was only asking for something like 8000 pounds just to get the printing cost sorted for the investigators and the keepers guide. And me sitting there thinking, Oh, would it be embarrassing if this doesn't fund and then sort of that went complete gangbusters and just took off in in a gigantic way. And I think we ended up putting out 13 or 14 books in the end. From that Kickstarter. I think about 12 of which I worked on directly in a couple I had a bit of involvement in and but I actually had to sack myself in the end. Because everything well I you know, I was I was chief. I was line editor I was chief writer and editor and I had shattered Atlantis to write and I just couldn't get it done. Because I was busy doing all the other bits and bobs. So at finish, I left return to the mountains of madness in Jason derails more than capable hands. And there was the godlike crossover which really didn't need anything for me because, you know, they know exactly what they're doing over there. So just you know, a few continuity pointers and I let them go with it and there was another book that I'm I can't remember which one it is now but I didn't have a lot of involvement with that. So I could get my head down and get shadows of Atlantis finished. And but yeah, occasionally you do have to fire yourself to get these things done. Because you've got so much else to do. Your Own Book kind of becomes the the least
Snyders Return:important one professional section
Lynne Hardy:sacrificial. You know, the unloved child if you like
Snyders Return:speaking of your own book and books you've been working on you you've worked with coming again sort of stepping forward in time the revision or the the seventh edition revision of the the epic for Get my pronounciation masks of nice one topple.
Lynne Hardy:Oh, I don't I always say I always say nothing. nyarlathotep but I do believe some people say Nyala hotep, which it probably should be, but I don't think he minds.
Snyders Return:I think he's okay with it.
Lynne Hardy:Probably okay with it. He is the crawling chaos after all. So everybody mispronouncing His name is probably a part of a divine plan of some sort.
Snyders Return:So what was it like to sort of bring that to the latest edition?
Lynne Hardy:When you weren't kidding when you said epic? I it's not. I've read bits of it when I've been doing shadows of Atlantis, just to make sure I didn't step on any toes contradict anything that was in there. But I'd never read the whole thing we'd never played through it. The colicky philia was very much something that we did between other things is standalone. So we hadn't done any of the big campaigns. And I think that was one of the reasons why Mike wanted me involved in it was because I had a fresh set of eyes on it. Whereas he, Paul and Scott, they'd all played it and or run it. So they kind of had potentially, Rosie, you know, Rose tinted spectacles on when it came to looking at it. And so it was, it was quite a challenge. Because obviously, it's famous and much loved. And, you know, for good reason. But it was also written in the early 80s. And the way that you did things in the 80s is not the way you do things now. So you have to sort of juggle this. Well, a we have to update it to seventh edition, and there's quite a few things have changed. It was always know Tories is a meat grinder. So we have to turn that back because people aren't really introduced constantly having to reroll new investigators. So it was quite handy actually. Because with the pope rules being in existence by that point, we pretty much took the original stats and use those for Pope because your Pope investigators, heroes are a lot harder. So they can take that kind of punishment, and then just sort of like toned it dialled it back a bit for a classic campaign. So it was quite nice for that. But the thing is, there were big gaps, there were leaps of logic, I think there were only 13 female characters in the entire book and 10 or 11 of those were there purely to be sacrificed. So you know that the the changing? You know, so there were lots of things that needed doing. There were some massive leaps of logic. You know, investigators were going to places and had no real reason to be going to them other than the fact that the plot demanded it. So we, we were each assigned a couple of chapters. And we worked on our own chapters. And then we basically looked over other people's chapters to make sure that the ties and the links were there, so that people had a good reason to be going to these places, and that the information was there to lead them to those places as naturalistically as possible, you know, without basically the GM just going well, you're here now, you have to be and but it was a completely epic task. I know. Originally, we thought it might take us about six months, it took well over a year at the end of it, because it is such a big campaign is so tightly interwoven, to make sure that we updated it respectfully. So we didn't lose what made it masks of nyarlathotep, but also made it accessible and usable to modern gamers. That was quite a trick and took a lot longer than we thought it would mean, hopefully we did a decent job of it. People seem to quite enjoy it.
Snyders Return:Yeah. From from what I've read, because I'm quite new to Call of Cthulhu. I'm not hide that very much, sort of introduced to d&d, but quite late into my more mid mid life period, shall we say? So I'm just learning and exploring these new games and new systems and Call of Cthulhu. And and the work you've done on that has seems to have garnered such a great response from the community. So kudos to you there. But yeah, I can imagine updating things that were acceptable in the 80s dealing with a 1920s adventure, the bringing all that must have been as you say, a challenge and a half. And we've we've mentioned there are a couple of different keywords, should we say as phrases. So if someone has got to this point in the interview, thought the Call of Cthulhu sounds like my kind of game. Would you mind give a quick sort of precis of what colour Cthulhu actually is, please?
Lynne Hardy:Oh, it's an investigative horror game, predominantly set in the 1920s doesn't have to be though. We have various different settings for at times, you know, different time periods, but that's mostly it. It's an investigative horror game, where you're investigators, and together in the face of insurmountable odds to just try and help the world exist for that little bit longer.
Snyders Return:And you just sort of average people shall we say, you know, you
Lynne Hardy:are you are completely average people if you're playing the classic game, if you're playing the pope game, which is a fantastic supplement, I love Pope debates. It's much more kind of Indiana Jones type action. So you know, your two fisted heroes, you know, a lot tougher and you can go in there and it's a bit more action oriented, whereas classic call Cthulhu is much more investigative, your your everyday run of the mill people who are just doing your best against the forces of evil chaos and darkness really,
Snyders Return:you say so eloquently, and yet it's so sinister in its in its play. And the latest adventure, children of fear is by no means a small task or undertaking having sort of sat and read through and it is such a wild ride across that part of Asia that's involved in in the adventure Would you mind talking, outlining and tonics a little bit more about children affair please
Lynne Hardy:course. Well, children affair was another one like shadows of Atlantis, which is kind of a bit of the unloved child because it kept getting put on the backburner for other things. Obviously, big projects like that, that can sometimes happen. And and particularly when you're publishing games, priorities change, there are things that you know, need to shuffle up in the pipeline and cost masks was one of those. I was, I done all my research, and I was ready to really get my head down and do the writing for children of fear, coming around quite nicely. And then Mike asked me to do masks, I would have been a total idiot to say no, because you don't get that chance very often. And that was what you'd have to ask Mike to confirm this, but I'm pretty certain that was the thing that, you know, finally got me the full time gig at Kaohsiung was the work that I did on masks. And because I was freelancing for them at that point. So children affair was one of these things that came about after conversation at Gen Con, Moon design had literally just taken over Kaos. EME, it was their first Gen Con in charge. They were I was on the modiphius booth, they were literally on the coding booth opposite me. And I kind of knew how to go over and say hi, but it was a bit shy about it. And I was chatting to Robin. And he's known as Jeff is one of the CO owners for years. So Robin basically, route marched me over to the Kaos human stand and introduced me to Jeff and told him to hire me. Oh, there was a slight expert of in there as well, which was highly hilarious because Robin doesn't normally swear. So that was incredibly bizarre and funny. And so Jeff and I sat down at Jeff asked me the sorts of things I'd like to work on. And stupidly because I hadn't learned my lesson at that point in time, having not long finished out as Atlanta. So I said, I've got all this research from shadows of Atlantis that I've not used. And there's some really interesting ideas, I kind of really fancy doing something set around. Now India, because I will admit, I've been fascinated with India, since I was small, it's a place I'll never be able to visit for a variety of reasons. But you know, it's just, it's, it's another one of those things that it's it's just always fascinated me. And so we had a chat, and we had a bit of a, you know, backwards and forwards about the sorts of things I wanted to do with it. And I was told to basically go away and put together a pitch I went off and did some research and put the pitch together and discovered the actually the thing that I thought it was going to be about which was mostly set in southern India was not what it ended up being about. And actually completely the opposite end of the country. And, and, but it was one of those weird things where as I was researching the various areas and looking for things that caught my there was a thread started to appear. And I'm not going to say what because it would be a bit of a spoiler. But, you know, I kept coming across the same thing time and again, wherever I looked, it was like I think the research is trying to tell me something. So I retold it. I mean, to be honest, I will admit that one of the reasons I picked that part of the world is because laying aside the fact that our biggest demographic is actually 18 to 35 year old Japanese women for colic Othello in terms of Western world sales. Most of the people who are going to buy Kisumu in the Western world won't necessarily know that much about India, China, Tibet. Central Asia, in the 1920s. So it was partly chosen to get over some of the the the fact that the players know huge amount about it. So the players are going to be just as much out of their depth as the investigators are going to be. But that did also give rise to one of the sets of handouts that we did, which is what your investigator would know. Because that was one of the things that came back in playtesting, was that people really don't know a huge amount about that part of the world in the 1920s. So it was nice to give them some the keeper something that they could give to their players and go, Well, this is kind of general knowledge to everyone. In this time period. If you're from this area, then obviously you will know more like for you in on that. And this is kind of like what your average person would know about Tibet in the 1920s. About peaking in the 1920s. And the various other locations.
Snyders Return:Yeah, it's just it. It's, it's educational, as well as entertaining, as well as, again, not wanting to I don't want to sort of throw in a spoiler by trying to compliment you on how well the venture is put together. But yeah, certainly, I learned a lot. And you sort of look at the map and you think, Oh, I know, I actually don't know much about this region in this time period in this timeframe. And the more I read through the more I was inspired the mysticism of the religions, the locations and the transitions that certain sections of that part of the world were going through at that time. It's it certainly opened my eyes to things that I won't say I ignored. But I've had just not thought to learn and I guess many people will be in my kind of shoes in that respect.
Lynne Hardy:It was something that one of my playtesters when when I was playtesting shadows of Atlantis said, it was like I always learned so much when I play one of your games Lin, I would put I panic to my arm. That's kind of you know, and he went No, no, no, no, no, this is a good thing. This is I really enjoy learning bits of weird history that I didn't know anything about psycho thank heavens for that. Well, hopefully,
Snyders Return:as I'm sure it has been people listening to this and have seen you in various social media has been to cons and things we'll be looking to sort of pick up this adventure alongside the the keepers rules. And even the starter pack for Call of Cthulhu is great. But where where can they go to find the will do a bit of a sales pitch? Where can people go to find you will sell you as a person first, and then the content for Call of Cthulhu and the other things that Kelsey putting out for the world?
Lynne Hardy:Well, you can find me on Twitter, at cogs and cakes. And I generally ramble about what I've been doing during my work day. With the occasion asides about movies, I've been watching things I've been buying and doing getting up to and with the occasional rant. So that's me, in terms of the K ozium stuff, the first place to start obviously, is the K ozium website. Now, one of the advantages of buying from Kay ozium directly at this point in time with with pandemic and everything is that if you buy a PDF from us, then when the print version comes out, you will get the money for the PDF of directly of your print version. I'm fairly certain we're also bits and mortar, I'd have to check on that. So that's the way if you buy book from your friendly local game shop, you get the PDF, as well. 47 were part of that, but I would have to double check after that for the PDF versions drive thru RPG. But one thing I would ask your listeners to do is where you can please support your local game store. They've had an awful time of it during the COVID pandemic. And a lot of them are struggling. So if you can put in pre orders through your friendly local game store, please do that to help them survive. They do so much for the community, so much to help form the community, keep the community going provide game space quite often provide gaming opportunities that you know they they really could do with your help.
Snyders Return:Yeah, absolutely. I know. I'll put the social media and website links in the bottom but I can only echo your sentiment to support the local businesses. And so certainly, if they're your friendly local gaming store was always good to keep a friendly community going, which is what I think we have in the the tabletop role playing space
Lynne Hardy:to a very large extent. Yes, I mean, there are certain elements as there are in all fandoms that you know, slightly less desirable. A lot less desirable. But you know, there are some wonderful people out there who are doing a great deal to help build local communities and support people. And even in these times, I mean, the number of ones I know that have set up discord channels and various other gaming channels so that those communities can continue in some form or another. You know, it's wonderful.
Snyders Return:Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, your, your work doesn't stop with with children affair. So what is next for you with codium? And, and for yourself?
Lynne Hardy:Well, obviously, that one of the big things that I'm working on at the moment is the rivers of London role playing game, um, which sort of came about by chance, but not entirely. It's something I've wanted to do for ages. I did actually pitch it the idea of doing it to a different games company many, many years ago. And then they didn't, they weren't really interested. So it kind of just, you know, forgot about it. And then Ben came up to Newcastle to do a book signing in Waterstones. And it was the first time I'd actually been in the same place as him for one because we always, he always seemed to turn it when I was out of the country or at the other end of the country. So it was a case of all right, is there a right, I'm going and I was telling Mike, that I was going to be going and Mike said, pregame in it No. Oh, yeah, I wanted to do one for ages, he went avoided in there. Okay. And that point in time, I didn't actually have any business cards. Because I was, I was, I was mostly pretty much employed full time by Kaohsiung, but was still technically freelands at that point. So I could trundle over into Newcastle got her nice and early to make sure I was at the front of the queue, so I could get him before he got fed up for people asking him stupid questions. And, and, you know, chatting to the people in the queue. And it turned out that several of them were steamed bonkers. Quite a few of them were gamers who were actually really quite excited about the fact I was going to have a word game. And so I got to the front of that, you know, and arrives and I am sort of chatting away. And this is a false value and false value came out in hardback. Now wasn't false value. It was the one before that lie sleeping, and a lie. And I said, Oh, you know, have you ever thought of doing a role playing game based on your books? And he just looked at me like, yes. And I said, Oh, you know, I work for Kaos him. And you know, he's, he's my old business card with, you know, even my email address, scrolled on it, my private one. And, you know, please get in touch. If you're interested, we can have a bit more of a chat. And then over the course of what it was, pretty much a year, we sort of hammered out the licencing agreements, and goodness knows what because these things are tricky to do you need, you know, it takes time to get it right. And, and, and was chuffed to bits because he's a gamer. He's a massive geek. And he loves Call of Cthulhu. He always hoped it would be a BRP game. And so the, the fact that I rocked up and went, would you like me to do a BRP game of your books was like, perfect. And, and then of course, we announced it, this time last year at dragon meat once everything was signed and sealed. And we've been putting it together this year. Obviously, with the world the way it is, it's taking slightly longer to get around to because playtesting has been harder to organise our play testers have gotten much more pressing concerns to worry about. But we've had some very, very good feedback. I've just got a new version of the rules back and this this week. So I'm going over that. So we're hoping to move on to the next round of external play testing in the new year. And it's coming along very nicely. We've got some fantastic artists working on it, but he's very happy with what we've what we've done so far. And
Snyders Return:tried to infuse to try and try and jump in and so what is it percentile dice? Is it what sort of without obviously tall? I know you're still playtesting going through but what was the sort of the framework of the game?
Lynne Hardy:Well, our thinking was, we're doing know that most of the people are going to pick this up probably already existing Kaos in France. But we wanted to make it accessible to fans of Ben's books, and try and encourage new gamers. Because, you know, we're all getting on a bit now. We need a new generation of gamers. And if we can hook them in through something like rivers of London, that's brilliant. So it's part of the BRP family. But VRP has always been adapted to suit its purpose, you know, to support the storytelling for that particular licence. So its aim is for new gamers. So it's going to be a streamlined version of quality theory. seventh edition basically is where we started from, sort of looking at what Mike did with the starter set and what Mike comported with seventh edition, the full version and kind of Working from there to try and make it as fast and accessible as possible, also, so that it models the tone and pace of the books. So of course, it's got to have its own bespoke magic system. You know, and it, it has to be able to support that urban fantasy storytelling, which is one of the things we've been really focusing on and working on to make sure that that does give that support and certainly the playtests. With feedback, we've been getting the proof of concept before we had any rules at all, just to see the sorts of things that people would get up to. And so we knew what rules we needed to include. And also from the playtesting of various bits and bobs that we've done in internal and the first round of external playtesting. People seem really excited by it, people seem to really sort of enjoy telling stories in that world, which is great, great sign, and we're just trying to make sure that the rules will support them in doing that.
Snyders Return:Yeah, absolutely. It sounds an interesting the system or game more to get involved with. So I'm very excited to see how the the next set of play testing and everything like that goes and pans out. So it's definitely something that's piqued my interest, I can't lie.
Lynne Hardy:And I've been really lucky, I've got a fantastic team of writers who say we're starting to evolve some lovely artists, and is great to work with as a gamer, he understands what the you know, and as an author, you understand what the field is like. So, you know, Paul fricker is the lead designer, Mike's been mentoring me in in doing this, because really, this is the first time I've actually properly run a game line. But you know, in all the financials and everything and hiring and hiring people. So you know, I've got a fantastic crew of people, we've got thinking, we've got three chapters completely in the bag, we're gonna have a choose your own. So I call it that, we're going to have a solo adventure, he says rapidly correcting herself. And we're going to have a solo adventure at the beginning of the book to introduce people to the rules in the same way that we did in the cork nearly starter set. And we've got a couple of scenarios for the book to help, you know, introduce people to the setting and the different styles of play. And so really, what we're doing at the moment is when nailing down the rules, and I'm starting to commission and concept drawings of all the characters, so that we can make sure that all of the artists know what all of the characters look like, so that when we put them in the art, you can actually recognise them between the different artists and go, Oh, that's Nightingale. That's Peter. That's Beverly. That's Abigail. So you know that they're recognisable people. And it's fascinating. It's, you know, it's nice to work with some new people that I've not worked with before. It's good to work with Paul again, in a different way. Because obviously we work together on on masks, but that was a different relationship then. So yeah, it's been a fascinating project. And but of course, I'm sort of splitting my time between that and call Kathie Lee, because squid Lee does not wait for any woman. And there's still an awful lot of work for me to do on that line as well.
Snyders Return:Anything on that line that follows on from children affair that you can sort of mention to us at this time?
Lynne Hardy:Um, well, there's going to be few more scenario books coming out in the next year, I'm going to be getting my head down and mostly doing editing for the next 12 months. I was just discussing this with Mike this morning. So I've already got besides rivers of London, I've already got seven scenario books. Actually, that's not strictly true. I've got five scenario books and something that has been mentioned in the past, which is the reboot of Gaslight, and to take care of AR on my docket for next year. So fingers crossed, we'll get through all of those as well as rivers of London. And so, you know, when you're not going to run out of things to play from Kaohsiung next year, Mike's off working on a big project that I can't talk about, which I think people will be very, very excited about. And he's also working on a couple of other little things, little things she says on the side as well. So yeah, we've got some very interesting things coming from coming next year, across the different settings. And while Mike is away working on this big project, where I'm you said mostly going to be focusing on editing scenario books, so that people have got things to keep playing with.
Snyders Return:Yeah, it sounds like it's gonna be a fantastic 2021 foot cosy room and, and all the team with all this stuff going on, which which begs why. My next question with all the work you're doing, and have done for children affair and all the work you you've mentioned, that you've got lined up for 2020 Do you want to know everything you're doing in between? How do you? How do you relax? How do you? Do you have downtime? Is there a gap between editing, sleeping and editing.
Lynne Hardy:And sometimes I'm, I mean, this year has been zerk. For obvious reasons. Normally, we get to break up the the strenuous bounce, of writing and editing by going to conventions and running games and doing things like that. So all the physical conventions obviously, haven't happened this year. So we've not had as many breaks. And we have been working flat out to make sure that people have got new material to play with their groups and pitched at different levels. So we've got introductory stuff, we've got more advanced stuff, we've got stuff, small groups, because we appreciate that people can't get together not everybody has great online access. So you know, there's the solo adventures, there's the one to one scenarios. You know, trying to encourage the people who picked up the starter set to take a chance on something bigger and a bit more complicated, but giving them stepping stones like gateway to terror, you know, sort of just to try and introduce them slowly or they can throw themselves in we do you know, people who have gone right for masks with the starter set, bless their hearts. And so, you know, it's, it has been an incredibly busy year. I think I was checking the other day and I think we've managed to release seven books this year in PDF form. And obviously there's a couple of ones have come out in physical from PDFs from last year. And so you know, again, considering permanent staff is me and Mike and Nick Macario, who does our layout and everybody else is freelance, I don't think we're doing bad actually. So it's quite a punishing schedule and he said we haven't had the breaks that we would normally get by going to conventions but I mean my my weaknesses for murder mystery so I do like watching mode period murder mysteries in particular on TV. So you know any old rerun of Gen X's Miss Marple. I'm in there, David T. Shea as Pyro Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes and Johnny Lee Miller actually a Sherlock as well I love elementary that's that was super very good updating. So things like that I really enjoy I like reading period murder mysteries as well. So Racine Khan, and technically not period, the inspector check for mysteries. They're great. A bear Mukherjee is doing the the Windham bannerjee mysteries which are fantastic. And Fiona Veitch Smith does the poppy Denby mysteries, they're great. So you know, this is the kind of thing I do when I can face reading. I mean, to be honest, I haven't read as many books this year because I've been doing a huge amount of work reading and sometimes my brain just needs to do something totally mindless. And I am somewhat addicted to much three puzzles on my iPad. Quite often a lot of that goes on as well.
Snyders Return:There's nothing wrong with with having the mental downtime. So yeah, so things like personal health and mental health within within games is clearly important for both those that create it and those that play it those that enjoy it on on various level. So it's definitely nothing wrong with having some time for oneself.
Lynne Hardy:Oh, no. And you should do I mean, you know, it's Do as I say, not as I do, because sometimes I'm absolutely dreadful at it. Particularly when there's things that you know, you need to get out and projects that for whatever reason you've been distracted from kind of like children of fear. There's another book coming out soon called a time to harvest which is another one that kept getting put on the back burner for other things. And that's going into layout very soon. It should be out fairly early next year. And you know, you and sometimes I am very bad at going direct you know, you know I'll just I just need to go and do this. And but he is very good at making sure that I have at least one day off a week and I've been really good the last month I've been having two days off a week. decadent anything. But then again, you know, I have been known to work late and seven days a week if I need
Snyders Return:swings around about
Lynne Hardy:it can be swings and roundabouts. Yes.
Snyders Return:So when you with your editorial I sort of scanning across your own books. Are there any other sort of tabletop role playing games out there? You look at it because I've spoken to others who who buy more of them than they'll ever get to play and I don't know saying that's that's a habit you have the then the my question will be kind of valid. Are there any systems out there you think? I love the way That looks I love that game mechanic. I like the way that I might not be able to ever play this game. But that I love to draw from that in one way, shape or description.
Lynne Hardy:Oh, well, I mean, there was one that I thought was that but I actually ended up running it earlier this year, which was golden sky stories. I'm a massive fan of Studio Ghibli. I love the Ghibli films. And one of the things that happened during pandemic is that the people that we game with Bill we did a lot of the live role playing with, we used to go down three times a year to one of their houses. And we'd all stay open, we'd have a massive board game weekend, and it would be brilliant. But of course, that hasn't happened this year. And so one of the things that were suggested to keep everybody in touch was to sit down and watch a movie together every Saturday night. So we'll have the movie on. And everybody will be linked via whatever platform we're using at the time. And we will be you know, watching the film and commenting to each other in chat. And then you know, have a tea break partway through so we can have a bit of a discourse to see how we think it's going. And there's a bit of a chat beforehand and a bit of a chat at the end. And the whole reason it started was because the Ghibli films came on Netflix. So we started walking, working through them and somebody just made the offhand comment one week of, well, does anybody else really fancy just playing a Ghibli ask role playing game? No, I have the system for that. And I'd had golden sky stories for ages and read it and thought it was very sweet, but never thought I'd ever get to run it. So I actually ended up running it for two groups, one for the people watching the film ways. And one for the people who run my friendly local games cafe and a couple of their customers. You know, it's a bit late really for them, actually, because they've had a terrible year. And so, you know, that was that was just, it's very gentle. And it you know, if you if you're doing something like kissy loo, and various other gaming systems are very sort of like, you know, combat is kind of an option. Even if it's not your primary response, necessarily. Golden sky stories just have this very gentle, whimsical element to it. It's resolved with tokens and discussion and, and comparison of stats and things. So there's no dice rolling in it. And it was just this really very gentle, whimsical game. And it was lovely. And I do like having a little bit of wimzie. And a little bit of strangeness in my even even my call Cthulhu scenarios. And so that was just it was just a really nice change of pace. And they want me to go on runner when they're all playing anthropomorphic animals and guinea pigs and things. So I need to get that sorted out for them at some point. And so yeah, that's, that's one that I'm very fond of. And he said, thankfully got the chance to actually run. And there's so much good stuff out there. Either so much interesting stuff out there. And even if you you don't use it directly, it can help to inform your thinking, you know, ideas of like, well is, is this the best way to do it? Is there another way we can do it? Um, can I take elements of this and use that in my own game. And like you said before, we've done a lot of LARPing in our life. And we quite often apply things we've learned from that to the tabletop gaming. And that was certainly part of the design for cogs and cakes was sort of looking at the way that LARP handles things and then applying that to the tabletop situation, which can be very handy. So yeah, I mean, the whole point is, is that there are you know, there are so many games out there. Don't be afraid to try. Because just because the first one doesn't fit, you doesn't mean that there isn't something out there for you find it can sometimes be a bit difficult because there is you know, this is a golden age of publishing, with print on demand and you know, making things available electronically. And so just keep your eyes open. Because there there will be something out there that will appeal to you. It just might take you a little bit of time to find it. And don't be afraid if you if there's something from another game that you like, take it and apply it to the game that you're running, you know, mix and match. We genuinely don't keep tabs on what you're doing with our games watching for them. And as long as you're having fun with them. That's kind of the entire point. And we're all very happy when you do
Snyders Return:it's it's a it's a great message. And I'd certainly hope you're keeping tabs on on people but maybe more in line with your products than
Lynne Hardy:I could possibly tell you I couldn't possibly tell you whether you let you know whether certain people certain elder things at keeping an eye on folk but officially, of course, they're not officially,
Snyders Return:officially. We spoken about a lot and you've touched on some great topics and expanded on various bits and pieces. Is there anything that we, we haven't brought up in conversation that you would like to mention anything you would like to sort of bring to the fore? as it were?
Lynne Hardy:Well, we don't think so. Actually, I think we've, we've, you know, I tend to ramble when people interview me. So usually by accident, I managed to hit most of the points that you want to talk about. And I think my key message is, you know, be be mindful of your fellow gamers, keep an eye on them, look out for them. Enjoy your gaming support, your friendly local game store, and your friendly local podcasters as well. And there are a lot of people putting out free content, or content on Patreon and things like that. And we do have a fantastic community. And it's one that, you know, we should be forging tighter links within we should be encouraging new people in because like you said, you know, we're all getting older, new people bring new ideas, new viewpoints, and that's always good, you know, enriches the entire hobby, if you have people from different bringing in different perspectives. So you know, encourage new gamers support existing gamers, Bitcoin to your GM, make sure they're having fun, too, and just, you know, excellent to each other, to steal a phrase from something else.
Snyders Return:That sounds vaguely familiar from a film franchise or something along those lines. But the the spirit behind the messages is certainly something we we echo as well. So it and Lynn, it has been an absolute pleasure. And I've probably got another hour's worth of questions to ask you. But I may have to save those for another interview if you'd be willing to come back and speak to me again.
Lynne Hardy:Of course I would. It's been an absolute pleasure on this NT. Thank you, Adam.
Snyders Return:It's it's been great. So thank you for your time. Links to the content links to yourself and co cioms calm content will be in the description below. So please, as I said, Look out for Patreon discord channels, Facebook forums, it engage and interact with with groups, and podcasters better self promotion. And thank you once again,
Lynne Hardy:thank you very much for having me. Take care everyone and stay safe.
Snyders Return:Thanks 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 out for for those who are listening until we until we speak again. Thank you