Hello and welcome to snows return at Pathak roleplay podcast. My guest today has delved deep plumbed unspeakable depths, and become immersed in darkness and become immersed in darkness, that words are brought many to the threshold of the blessing paradise beyond death. This is not a cult. No, no, as we shall learn that will come soon enough. Maybe we have lost some divinity, but it pales in comparison to what horrors my guest has disturbed beneath the sea. Gather your thoughts, get comfy in your coteries, and arm yourself with your best quips, as we Rouse a gentleman and scholar. It is a pleasure to welcome my guest to weave the words of the world of darkness. Mr. Matthew Dawkins. Matthew, welcome to the show.
Matthew Dawkins:What a beautiful introduction. I don't think I've ever had an introduction quite like that in any podcast that I have ever been interviewed for. So kudos to you. Thank you so much for such a warm welcome.
Snyders Return:One of what Thank you very much. And really, it's the inspiration from your words and your words, and your work is something we'll get on to just in just a moment. If you don't mind me asking, how is it you going to tabletop role playing games initially, please.
Matthew Dawkins:So I first got into tabletop role playing games when I was at college. So I was about 16 or 17 years old. And I was already a I was already a video gamer by that point had been for most of my childhood and teen years. And I was really getting into the ballers gate video games crpgs. And I was at the college library, just looking at the black isle forum, looking into which NPCs you could recruit for one of the borders, gate games, and a man approached from behind me, who was clearly keeping an eye on what I was doing. He was one of the library workers. And he placed his hand on the back of mine. While it was on the mouse. This was a strange introduction, guided it to the web address and typed over me to look at a website. I think it was I think it was shallow force Archer at the time, which was a spycraft website. And I said I was more interested in Forgotten Realms and he said, Oh, you're interested in dungeons dragons, then he he thought I was a role player. He wanted to show me a website after that very odd introduction to this man by the name of john, who was a bit bit creepy BIT bit overfamiliar. Also a conservative counsellor, I don't know whether they go hand in hand, but quite possible. He. He introduced me to the local or invited me to the local role playing club, where I live, how it met up every single Sunday, and said I should come along because they had a campaign of d&d running and d&d was what I was interested in first and foremost. So I turned up on Sunday and was to participate in my very first tabletop RPG. And it turned out I had turned up on the wrong weekend, and d&d was running next weekend. So my very first tabletop role playing game was Hercules and Xena The Legendary Journeys. And then the week after that, I started playing d&d, but it wasn't long after that, I really started just throwing myself into lots of different role playing games. Obviously, Vampire the Masquerade and Wraith the oblivion scored very highly for me. And as a matter of interest, they just pulled me in almost immediately godlike, which was a very new RPG at the time, also grabbed my attention Call of Cthulhu a lot of the traditional staples, but a lot of the ones that were new in the late 90s and early 2000s, to just completely captivated me.
Snyders Return:And, and from being captivated by this unusual introduction to sort of paraphrase your own words, and sort of moving into the, the vampire and the Wraith. And those sorts of games. Where is it? Or how I should say not well, how is he went from being tabletop roleplay game player, like, like myself and so many others? How did you sort of cross the threshold into into writing and content creation for these games that you know, we love and adore?
Matthew Dawkins:I don't really know what motivated me at first. I recall In the early 2000s, not long after Vampire The Requiem was released, the White Wolf website put out a sort of open call and all call for people to send submissions for bloodlines for a book called bloodline to the chosen that was coming out. And that was my first attempt at writing something for an RPG for other people to see, I'd obviously been running games by that point, but I wasn't sharing my notes with my players or anything like that. And so I wrote up a bloodline for this book, sent it off to White Wolf didn't hear anything back because I strongly imagine my writing was utter trash. Now, a few years later, they did another roll call this time was for the Vampire the Masquerade trivia game, which was never released. And I did get hired to work on that. So I was responsible co responsible for the mal cavion based questions for this game. And ultimately, the the game was cancelled before it was released. But it was a good piece of experience. Now, about six years after that. I just was getting back into tabletop RPGs in a big way, after I guess, six months to a year of downtime, and was really interested in the 20th anniversary of vampire and werewolf and and such. And I had my youtube channel running around the same time, which was, of course all about tabletop role playing games and video games to a lesser extent. And I saw the wealthy apocalypse 20th anniversary edition Kickstarter writing. And I thought, there's a level on that Kickstarter that really appeals to me is the ability to be a consulting developer on a forthcoming project. I didn't know what a consulting developer wants, but it cost a fair amount of money to pledge for that. So I sold off a bunch of my RPGs to get the money because I didn't have it. And I put the money down, went on as a consulting developer for wealth, the apocalypse book of the worm. And what that role could have entailed was simply sitting back and watching as other people wrote work, and maybe occasionally chiming in with a comment or two. But I made a real conscious effort to study how people were working to watch how the developer redlined the kind of guidance, they gave their writers as a developer by the name of Steve Wilson, and ask questions without being too much of a pain. And eventually, I got to do some writing for book of the worm further to my cold consulting developer gig. Now that experience, which I paid for, was, in my mind, the equivalent of a creative writing class, it was like signing up for to go to college in the evenings for few months to do creative writing. But instead, I put my money down with an RPG company, so that I could get a foot in the door, and see how the sausage was made, essentially, and decide whether I liked it and what I could learn from it. And as it turned out, I learned quite a lot, because then I sent in a formal submission to work on whichever book would have me, but I was hired by a developer, to work on a book for mommy the curse Further to that submission. And I feel like I wouldn't have written a solid enough submission at that point in my life, had I not been able to experience I guess the development process as a consulting developer first is not a route everyone needs to take. But it was the route I needed to take. Now, after that, I became very active in seeking out further work, I'd get near the end or close to the close to the end, or at the end of an assignment. And I would be asking another developer, onyx path or at another company, I've worked for lots of companies now, I would say, I've worked on this book, this book, this book, I can send you samples of my work, I would love to work on your line. And I found quite a lot of joy and getting hired across a variety of game lines. And so I became quite a prolific writer for those three or four years, doing this part time in evenings and weekends alongside my full time job at the time, I was a technical trainer at a pensions company. And so I was working all hours but I was really enjoying it. And come 2017 I had the opportunity. I was getting enough work by this point. And I was given a good offer bionics path so basically start doing this full time. So I gave up the training job which I enjoyed, but I replaced it with making games for are living since then I've never really had to look back.
Snyders Return:Wow, that's an incredible story and full credit for you, to you for selling off RPG books. If If I could master that skill, I probably have loads of money and
Matthew Dawkins:I wouldn't do it now I wouldn't even know the cost of shipping, even domestically is insane. Unless you are a frequent attendee of in person conventions, and I'm not going back to them quite yet, during a pandemic, I yeah, I don't recommend trying to sell books off secondhand unless you can do it in person ad in bulk. So I'll be waiting a while before I sell off more of mine.
Snyders Return:Fair enough. Fair enough. But instead of sort of going with you when looking back now, what if people want to come and find you? Where can they find you on social media and on various platforms to come and engage with some, some of if not all of the content you've created?
Matthew Dawkins:Well, I'm always more than happy in fact, so this is the route I like to direct people. For people to contact me through my website, Matthew Dawkins calm, I've got my full list of credits. In fact, it needs updating on there, so you can check out what I've worked on. But if you prefer social media, I am available on Facebook as Matthew Dawkins, but I imagine there's several of them. So your better bet is to go on Twitter and look for Dawkins MP, that's me. Or go on Discord. On the Onyx path. discord is where I'm probably most active. As just Matthew Dawkins, you'll find me on there. So yeah, I'm all over most social media spaces.
Snyders Return:Yeah, so we can, I will make sure that links are put in the description below. So people can go and find you on those various social platforms, and of course, your YouTube channel. Is that under your own name? Or is that under a separate name, and where people can come and watch your videos? You know, it's
Matthew Dawkins:funny, you mentioned that because I so often forget to refer people, so the YouTube channel now. And in a lot of ways, it's where it first started my really getting into role playing games in a major way. So I'm on YouTube as the gentleman gamer, I have a channel that I started uploading videos to in about 2009. And I ran, it's pretty actively with the least weekly content more than that for a while, from 2009 to probably about 2015 2016. So it was running for a while, I got a decent number of subscribers. But eventually, the demands of the full time job the writing as well in the evenings as well just ended up sort of leeching away the time that I would have spent on YouTube. It was nice to have videos on there. I don't upload as frequently but I certainly invite people to subscribe to check out what I have to say and but to do to also do so on the Onyx path YouTube channel because I upload videos there more probably more often than
Snyders Return:I do to my own one now. Well as before, I want to ensure there are links in the description below this podcast. So if you want to go and see the gentleman gamer at his very best then please follow those links below. Cross social media and YouTube. So moving now into not into the world of social media, but into the world of darkness. You have worked on so many amazing titles we've mentioned some there are many more besides what has been up until now or even in development. If you if you wish to share what has been your favourite thing to work on. It's been one of your first things when you were finding your feet or has it been some of the your newest and most current work that you've put out?
Matthew Dawkins:Oh, well that's that's a very good question because most writers look back on their old material, and they wince because they will recognise mistakes they made back then they don't make now and I would say for World of Darkness, that my fondest projects but also one of the projects that required the most work was Bacchus Jihad diary for the 20 Vampire the Masquerade 20th anniversary edition. It became the capstone for that edition of the game. It was a huge book of metaplot in character documents, artefacts, diary entries, transcripts, records, a brilliant book that's fantastic for any storyteller or vampire at any point in their storytelling career. And it was also the opportunity for me to essentially offload the the vampire law that I had been accumulating for the preceding 15 plus years. Of being into Vampire the Masquerade. I read these books avidly, I played the game and ran the game so much. And so I acquired a huge amount of this metaplot. And for whatever reason it stuck with me. And so Becker's Shahad diary was a dream project because this was the big book of metaplot for vampire. And it was so gratifying see how well it was received afterwards after was released, because there's always a possibility with metaplot books, that people will read them and say, Well, I don't use metaplot. Or I don't like to be told what's going on in this published world. I prefer to come up with a story myself, but it seemed that walked a good line between narrative strength and creating pockets of freedom for storytellers to tell stories they wanted with a nice backdrop. So I'm very pleased about that. And I'm also very excited about a similar book that we're doing for werewolf the apocalypse, we've got a book called apocalyptic Rekord coming up for werewolf the apocalypse 20th anniversary edition, which will in many ways be that games Becker's Jihad diary, the capstone for werewolf prior to its fifth edition, and I've worked with a fantastic team of creators on that book, my co developer on Beckett's was a man by the name of Neil raimon, price on wealth, apocalypse erecord as lead shields, both of our wonderful co creators and the teams we worked with of writers have been amazing. So I'm very much looking forward to seeing how that lands, I think we're doing a crowdfunding campaign of some kind for apocalyptic record in the coming months,
Snyders Return:I can imagine that'll be a huge success given the love that sort of the World of Darkness games have both through the previous editions and V five, version five that is available now. From all good retailers and all that sort of good sales pitch. You know, I have a copy of it by my foot with some of your new work the the fall of London supplement and a few others that have been made available for the five and it's it's fantastic stuff and I'm yet to run it myself. That's something I'm building up to. But I know other people in the community, which leads me on to a question between developing fantasy the werewolf book and for other projects, we're going to move on to another two while Do you still get the time to play we're still actively storytelling to your private groups or, oh yes, I should have eased off a little I
Matthew Dawkins:run a regular game for right now I'm playing in a weekly game with my local group we can now of course, start seeing each other in person again, which is wonderful. Over the pandemic lockdown we were running online via zoom and other such mediums. But right now I am playing in a game of mouse card that to my friends are running, and separate to that I run. It's going to shortly be five separate games a month for people who back my Patreon. So you can back my Patreon and basically pay me to run games for you. Some people get a bit sniffy at the idea of that, but I see as well you're paying for my time and creative energy. You know, if you want me to run a game for you, I will quite happily do so if you're happy to pay me for it. And thankfully, there are people who do that and have enjoyed doing it for a couple of years now. I've got games of Cthulhu by gas lights, worldwide wrestling, and Eclipse phase. And I will be beaten by my patreon if I don't remember all the games I'm supposed to be running. What else do we have going on? We're about to start a werewolf the Wild West game which as well as the apocalypse set in the mid to late 19th century. And they there is of course a Vampire the Masquerade or vampire the Dark Ages game that is being run for them. Historically, I've ran Call of Cthulhu, the five Pathfinder a whole bunch of games for people through that patrons and sponsors we get to the end of a campaign and we start a different game. Eclipse phase and wealth the Wild West will be particularly new because they those groups games have just finished. Yes, I am never not running games. I also have the benefit of a couple of local gaming clubs that have remained active online or in person Over the last year and beyond, and they are wonderful fodder for playtesting. I'm a strong believer in playtesting work that I am games that I'm working on. And so if I can, I will go to one of these clubs, and I will pay for their pizzas for the night, they will play my games that are in progress, and they will provide me feedback. And you'll be amazed how willing people are to provide you with feedback, if you just feed them hot food, you know, for an afternoon and evenings gaming, the feedback you can get is utterly invaluable as a creator, in my opinion. So yeah, I'm very fortunate in that regard.
Snyders Return:I'm, I'm I doff my cap to you, I'm in awe of your work ethic between Creative Writing playtesting, pizza delivery, and running these games for your patrons. Again, I will put a link in the description below. Because to be able to play one of these games with one of the creators, one of the writers who have established this world that everybody, or a great number of people really immerse themselves in week to week, or whenever they get to plan their game sessions must be such an honour. So I would definitely put a link to your Patreon down in the description below. So please go and click that and support. Matthew. Well, that's very nice of you to
Matthew Dawkins:say, and honestly, that's the thing I I tend to forget. And maybe it's a bit arrogant of me to forget that. I sometimes I, when I advertise my games, I don't think to myself, this is giving someone the chance to play a game with the person that wrote it. I always think that this is just a chance to play a game with someone who knows how to run it. And, and so when I run these games, I don't sort of come in like I'm the big I am. And what I say goes, these are this is the these are the rules. This is the setting. I know, because I wrote it or anything like that I just run to have fun. And luckily, that's how the players seem to respond. But it's probably worth remembering that that's why some people sign up to. So I do appreciate that reminder. And not to mention, it's Yeah, it is it can be a challenge to juggle all of this pursuing creative job, or career and playing and running all these games, as well as being a husband and a father. And you know, having any kind of social or family life but it's it's not a career, I would turn my back on. No, not yet. Anyway, it seems I seem to be doing all right. Well, well,
Snyders Return:I implore you to not stop now because we're going from sort of chasing around and and sort of trying to accomplish so many things which you do admirably to now being pursued by something that has come up from the depths as we take our D 10s. From Vampire the Masquerade and take them to your more recent or a very recent release of yours of the came from beneath the sea bed very different but both incredible I I've I've sort of picked up they came from beneath the sea Would you mind because I'd love to hear your your take on it rather than my approximation of it. But they came from beneath the sea is and why people more people like I have should go out and buy it.
Matthew Dawkins:Absolutely although do bear in mind and crap elevator pitches as they call them. So they came from beneath the sea is a in a sense, it's a love letter to sci fi to b movies to monster movies. But in another it is the ultimate parody game. It's a game that is all about having fun at the table. It is not a game that demands great introspection, or character development on the part of players. It's a game where you are quite willfully playing in a setting where they set a rickety the costumes are bad, the acting is wooden and the aliens look like people dressed up in rubber outfits, and is set firmly in the 1950s sort of Cold War communists scare era of small town coastal America and embraces the movies like it came from beneath the sea and them and the attack of the Gila monster and so on. It's under plan nine from outer space, that kind of thing, solid b movies. And so this game allows you to play the archetype or types of cards. All right so that exists in this movie The every man the survivor, the the scientists and so on, but equips you with abilities such as cinematics and cinematics, and they came from our the power to do things like declare that a wall is a cheap set so that if you're cornered by a whale lobster, you can literally run through a brick wall as if it were paper, or insert a missing reel because the party is about to be devoured by centre plus that 100 tentacle activists you can insert a missing reel which basically means it's about to devour, you know, your party is extracted and placed somewhere safe, you can narrate where you are, and how safe you will feel now, but you cannot say according to the rules of the cinematic how you escaped certain death. It's just a few you can allude to it, you can say I've never known anyone to do something like that with a pineapple before. But you can't actually explain how you escaped. And so it plays on all these bad movie cheap movie tropes that are well loved. I love them. That's why I created this game about them. But most importantly, because I know a lot of people get put off by the idea of comedy and games because everyone's been at tables where you're constantly being hammered over the head with lines from the latest comedy show on TV, and lines from Monty Python, and it completely takes you out of the game. And I love spouting off Monty Python lines and games, but I admit it can kill the tone of a game. This game is all about having fun, but not prescribing how to do it. So it's a game that you can choose how horrific how serious and how parodic and how nonsense this game is. And you put the tools in the players hands these things like quips, your characters, one liners that can win them extra dice and things like cinematics and they can choose how they use them. As an example, you know, I just gave you an example of how you might use it in a silly way a cinematic like missing reel, I ran a game of they came from beneath the sea for red moon role playing or an excellent actual play podcast. And we did they came from beneath the sea as a serious so almost lovecraftian suspense game where cinematics when you use them are things like the great old ones and Elder Gods intervening with reality and reshaping and so when they use a missing reel, that characters wake up and they literally have no idea how they got out of this situation or why they are now covered from head to foot in blood. They just know something horrible happened. And when they can hear the voice of the director, as far as they're concerned, it's the babbling of the gods in their heads. So you can play around with it and I've loved watching and listening to other people's actual place of they came from beneath the sea to see how they approach the subject matter. So if this were an elevator pitch I think we've gone all the way to the top of the Empire State Building by this point but i that is basically the game
Snyders Return:What if that was an elevator pitch all the way to the top I push the button and enjoy all the way back down again. So I mean it's a different genre but but part of the field of the game that you described where it can it can be that lighter tone reminded me to myself and I'm not sure everybody's in this film but the Steve Martin film dead men don't wear plaid at the played on the films in the 50s the sort of suspense thrillers and how you know, or a bit like Police Squad where they walk around the sets and things like that you can play for laughs and you can sort of mess with the flow of the action. Or you can go right to the other spectrum of tone as you did with with red moon role playing and I agree they're a fantastic team put out some great shows and take it down that that darker path it has so much going for it and carrying over the carrying over maybe unfair but using the detailed system for success and things just I'm in love with it I'm gonna find time to run it and I'm going to I'm not going to make people love it. I am going to hopefully introduce and bring people into it because I've fallen for in a big way.
Matthew Dawkins:I will I'll say something about the detained dice pools so they came from beneath the sea and the other they came from games we've got others forthcoming. Users detained dice pool system called story path is the story. path system. It's a system that is used by onyx path publishing for a host of our games. Now it has clear roots in the storyteller and storytelling systems which are used for World of Darkness and chronicles of darkness respectively. And those systems have roots in the shadow run the sixth system, which was de six dice pool system invented before World of Darkness came along. And it always interests me when we're in role players express a, an enjoyment over of one system over another. And, you know, they gravitate to dice pools or they gravitate toward percentile systems or fate based plusses and minuses or D 20. Or whatever. So they it's it's very heartening for me to hear that you enjoy this system because I think we've used it in a very interesting way and they came from and certainly the feedback we have got is very positive.
Snyders Return:Yeah, definitely. And you mentioned that a few other releases in the same vein, or from from the same sort of setup as they came from the need to see what what releases are out there for people if if the the beneath the seat genre doesn't quite pull them in?
Matthew Dawkins:Yeah, of course. Well, we kick started they came from beyond the grave last year. So beneath the sea is 1950s sci fi b movies so it can handle alien invasions from space as well but beneath the sea as the name now beyond the grave is hammer horror amakhosi movies some Roger Corman very night late 1960s into the 1970s. So it's more garish, it's more horrific by design. It's less camp humour, and more about overdramatic acting. So there's still no air of camp to it. Anyone who's familiar with all the breasts and blood that you see in a hammer horror movie will be very familiar with her. Now we've got expansion for beyond the grave coming called they came from Camp Myrtle Lake, which is a lovely Title I love camera like and it is one of my favourite they came from games to have worked on, which is all that 1980s slasher movies are still horror. So that's why it's attached to the on the grave. Now coming later this year. Yeah, that's our intention. We have we will have a crowdfunding campaign for one or two they came from games. One of them will be they came from classified and is classified in big capital letters and square brackets. It's our espionage movie spy movie, and TV series themed game. less serious bonds, not Daniel Craig bond more like Sean Connery, Roger Moore era, the Avengers, the good ones, well, the British ones I should say. The Scott Jason King, the man from on call the champions all of those fantastic shows feed into it. And separate to that. We have they came from the cyclopses cave. And that is our fantasy movie they came from so it goes that one. Rather than being fixed on a certain era of media, like the previous games, pretty much runs the gamut all the way from 1930s voyages of Sinbad Clash of the Titans or stop motion, skeletons and the like, all the way through to mid 90s, Hercules and Xena camp fantasy TV series, we wanted to cut it off just before fantasy shows and movies started really getting good. And that, I would say that's probably the Lord of the Rings movies in the late 90s, early 2000s. So Hercules Xena was kind of the the end of fantasy and sort of sorcery as it was. So you have everything from sort of Greek, Greek mythology, there's a lot of Greek mythology in this game through to the sword and sorcery of the 70s and 80s. Things like crow Hawk, the slayer cone, the sword and the sorcerer Willow movies like that. And yeah, you end it with the early 90s take on fantasy which wasn't necessarily Great. So yeah, we have a lot of they came from coming, but need to see is available to buy already, as all of us expansions at this point. And beyond the grave for a very limited time is still available to pre order but we have all of the art in for that book now is simply being laid out. So that won't be long before it gets dispatched, I imagine. And yeah, anything else beyond the beyond the grave is coming soon. So Do keep your eyes open for Kickstarter campaigns and such for think games like classified Cyclops cave
Snyders Return:Yeah, definitely definitely. I'm excited by classified as well. That's that's pricked my ears up
Matthew Dawkins:yeah I have to say classified for me. I love I've loved working on all of these games you know this is my brainchild I came up with this concept and so it's been my joy to develop it from concept to delivery is the first game I have ever come up with whole cloth You know? And we're all of them occupy a place in my art classified for me feels tonally like the strongest one then my my point of view on that may change in a few weeks or a month or however long but right now classified I feel has that right level of debt conveys the sort of ministry style of narrative so the book is constantly telling you now listen here agent sit down you know grab a grab a whiskey because we're going to get into some serious business it's got a very isn't just British but it does to my my taste have a very British Ministry, defence civil service, a little EMI six, but probably not quite so glamorous. Air to it. So yeah, I think it's a lot of fun to read as well as to play.
Snyders Return:I'm looking forward to and to move. So we've moved from the world of darkness, we've moved into the depths of the ocean and, and six feet under and sort of all the dark deceptions of classified and things like that now taking on a different detailed system, but in a very different way. What's your involvement with with cult? divinity last and your work on on that tabletop role playing
Matthew Dawkins:game? So that's an interesting question. Because Coulter's game I played for the first time probably a few months into getting into role playing, and it left a mark on me it I remember the setting I fell in love with it. I bought several of the books and loved reading them, but very rarely find a group that wanted to play it. And main reason was it had its most recent edition back then, had been out for a little while. newer games would come along, people were just ready to move on to other things and Colts sort of lay fallow for quite some time. Now, one of the developers of the newest edition of cult divinity lost a mammal no pet anello had checked out my YouTube channel and saw a video I made about setting tone and role playing games. Basically, how do you make a role playing game horrific through narration alone. And he watched that video and he thought, wow, this voice would be fantastic for Colt. And so he asked me would you like to write on Colton? I said yeah, definitely. And it's interesting because I through my relationship with Petter. I ended up getting to work on a video game for paradox because he also works for Paradox Interactive, who happened to also own the Vampire the Masquerade and World of Darkness licence as a small industry gaming, video gaming and RPGs it turns out, but so far, my involvement with cults has been to write a couple of scenarios. I wrote one for terrazza comm and other tails a scenario by the name of the summit, which is very much an old if you want to be kind to jG Ballard's high rise ballad is my favourite author. I'm also incredibly fond as anyone who reads my work will realise I I have a fixation on the idea of a vertical hell and not necessarily with the deeper you go the worse it gets. Sometimes the higher you go, the worse it gets. It's I suppose the the idea of removal from street level and normality The farther and farther you go, the more weird things become. And the summit is all about that to explore why you are drawn to explore a an abandoned high rise should be abandoned and the middle of a cut off part of the city that was designed for designated for renovation or gentrification or what have you, but at some point the funding ran out and the government lost interest. And so people pretty much closed off the bridges, you know, there's not much reason to go here. And at the centre of this place is this complex of apartments that pierces the sky. And for reasons established in the scenario, you end up going there. And each successive level of this complex is a new hell, that you've basically got to make your way through not in Dante's Inferno style, but in a very cult of entity last, rather, at times, at times as body horror, or sometimes it's pure oil and vulgar. Sometimes it's deeply psychological, or based purely on certain sensations. And the other scenario I wrote, which is in screams and whispers, a book that was funded on Kickstarter recently for cult is it started and ended with screens, that's the name of the scenario where you play youth sent to a centre for troubled youth, which also happens to be run by a rallied, who is a servant of Inferno. And so the, the prefect there, the life lives of the children who are there are by no means pleasant, the staff who are they're all horribly corrupt. And it's kind of a game of survival and the steps you will take to take justice into your hands. And whether you have the moral right and weight to actually exact that justice given everything that's happening to you. Neither of those scenarios are particularly pleasant, I will say that they are of a deliberate tone that I would not explore in a game leaving like vampire, let's say, another horror game, because I like to feel like different role playing games offer a different flavour or a different tone. And there are certain things I would write for cults that I would never write anywhere else. And it's, in some ways, if I'm writing something of a cult, I'll do it and I will feel a bit sad or even a bit nauseous afterwards. But there's other times I'll write it and it will feel a bit cathartic to have done so because it can be fun to I guess, purge yourself of that kind of horrific creativity, and then jump on to something like they came from beneath the sea, which is a lot more lighthearted. And there's a certain amount of Camp slapstick to that when compared to the visceral grotesque scurries of the game like cult cult is certainly unique.
Snyders Return:from, from what I've read, and the reading through the book and comparing it to I have to agree it, it doesn't compare to anything else. It certainly goes in a direction when I first looked at it, and saw the artwork, and then read it and sort of started digging through the lore. And I was glad it took my breath away. At times. It's it's a fascinating game. But as you say, its tone is so much darker than pretty much anything else out in the market the moment that I'm aware of. You may have Yeah.
Matthew Dawkins:No, no, I would agree because there are games that position themselves as dark and grim and horrifying. But they don't necessarily handle it with the maturity that a game like cult does. I think that's where Colt really excels. To my mind, it presents horror in an utterly horrible way. But it does it in a way that signposts to essentially you know what you're getting in for. And it comes with the kinds of warnings and guidelines that a game like this should. It doesn't write in an exploitative or lurid fashion. It writes in a, it's creative, but it's also quite clear about its intentions, and about the kinds of things your characters will encounter. And I really appreciate that. So it's the same way if I was going into a see a movie in a cinema, I appreciate the post, or the little black car that pops up before the movie starts. So this movie contains scenes of this, this, this and this. I don't feel like it's ruining a surprise to know that that's coming. It basically tells me that if there is a piece of content that I that that triggers me that that upsets me in some way or whatever, and like most people have something they don't enjoy interacting with. If something like that comes up, I can at that point, if I wish to stand up and leave the cinema game like Colt can well that does it as well in the book it basically fair from the start shows you the kind of things you're going to be interacting with if you run a game of cultural play a game of colds, and that transparency, I think is valuable in horror as a medium in general.
Snyders Return:Yeah, yeah. 100% 100% up to lighten the tone, shall we say? You have a great experience, storytelling, jamming dming as well. So if from your your width, breadth vast experience of game creation and game running, if someone was looking to get into, say, playing the company to see or vampire or another system that you're happy and familiar with, what sort of general advice would you give to someone just looking to take on that, like, game running mantle?
Matthew Dawkins:It's another good question. Because I would suggest different things for different games, where the game like they came from beneath See, all you really need to focus on is a story that's going to last a single night. I think most people who run they came from do it as a one shot, at least at first, they see campaigns as challenging. And I disagree with that, because I've obviously done both, but I can absolutely see why it appears that way. And as soon as you start thinking, Okay, well, in that case, I need to make a plot that's going to last three to four hours for one session, right? What else last three to four hours. Okay, a movie, long movie. But let's say it's a two hour movie, I can stretch that out to three or four hours because players aren't going to be as direct and decisive as characters in the movie. Therefore, my first day came from game, it can be based almost entirely on an existing B movie. And most people aren't going to realise or I'm going to change enough material, make it my own character names, place names, certain plot events, that at this point, it is no longer a carbon copy. Now, at that point, you've got your story, because it's already going to be silly, it's already going to have a certain cheap quality to it or predictable quality. And there's nothing wrong with predictability in a game based on B movies of the 1950s. They weren't known for their stunning m Night Shyamalan style twists. And beyond that, of course, you're then looking for your group, you're looking for your venue your place to run. And my best suggestion and this applies to most games these days, is to look online. Of course, there are so there are forums, you can go to their discord you can go to one of the best discounts I know I mentioned already. But if you're interested in certain onyx path games like they came from, is to go on the Onyx path discord because we have a server for people looking for games. And invariably, you will find other people who are looking to play in games as well. It's especially good if you turn up and you are the person who wants to run because the old role playing dilemma is typically where lots of people want to play when no one wants to run the game, I actually find the opposite is the case these days when you're playing in person, because of games have become easier to run in my view than they were in the 90s. And before. There's lots of potential gmms and no players. But online you can find a little more room in vampire vampires a similar thing, but the advice I would give for a new storyteller is keep everything intimate keep everything close. Don't worry about outlining every vampire that lives in the city, every plot that's going on in the background, who the princes sire was where they're embraced all of this stuff. That's colour you can add to a game as you go on if you ever need to. The best vampire games I have played, the most emotive, the most gripping are the ones that concern characters and their immediate concerns. And what that tends to mean is there is a problem on the block in which you live, or there is a problem in the part of the city in which you live. And often that problem will be something mortal based because it's so easy as a gang of coterie of vampires to just march up to a rival vampire, stick a stake through him and set him on fire, disintegrate him and say job done because no one considered As the moral impacts of killing an immortal and undead being, well, the impacts of killing mortals if let's say, let's say you're a vampire and a vampire for five years, and you get contacted by your daughter from whom you're estranged, and she says that she's got a boyfriend is blackmailing her, or something like that, or is mistreating her, let's say, or maybe your son is hooked on drugs again, and you need to get your son off and away from the guy he's with, or the drug dealer who's fixing him up. Now, you're dealing with stakes are very street level, very mortal level. But what makes things different is while you as a character might handle this, typically, let's say if you were a mortal, you might involve the law where you can't do that, because you're a vampire supposed to be dead. Let's say you would usually beat these people up, well, you can do that. But now when you do it, you're going to feel first of hunger. Because you spill some blood and you want to taste them. Maybe you decide you're going to take a shortcut and use one of your vampiric disciplines your powers, this is where the fun for me, a vampire comes in for a first session, because you actually start playing around with the question of what does it mean to be a vampire? Not? What does it mean to be a member of the camarilla, or a member of the sabbats, which can be fun, it can be fantastic. A lot of my games do that too. But when running a first session, for a first time group, keep it local, keep it about their personal attachments that touch stones, and you will find you running a very rewarding and hopefully gripping session.
Snyders Return:Thank you, Matthew. That's that's invaluable advice. And something I'd certainly take on for when I take up the storyteller seat, hopefully sooner rather than later. is is there? Is there anything else you'd like to discuss as we bring this interview to a close? And I think we've not touched on maybe where the ttrpg community is going or anything in the ttrpg word you'd like to touch on?
Matthew Dawkins:Well, I don't consider myself a great expert on the industry. I don't know the way that I don't know trends so much, I can obviously see a lot more people playing online, especially as a result of the pandemic. And I don't think people are going to suddenly stop suddenly, some people returning to tabletop where they were forced to play with their friends online. But if you just found gaming by the internet, why would you change now, what interests me is how conventions are affected by all this, and also how companies that put books in stores are affected by all this. Because I think the last year and a half of COVID has made a lot of people quite wary of going places, they're built up well filled with people, such as conventions, and people have become quite comfortable with ordering their products online, ordering them electronically. And going into a bookstore, a game store is probably slightly less attractive now than it was. What's more, over the last couple of years shipping costs, printing costs have risen astronomically, they've taken unprecedented bumps and cost. And so it will be interesting to observe how the industry evolves to cope with that, whether it just means games will be primarily available electronically, which you could argue they already are. Or whether Yeah, whether whether it signals a greatest struggle for people who really want their media imprint, essentially, to justify the cost of a book like, I don't know, let's say the dungeons and dragons player's handbook. Right now you can buy it for a pretty low cost for a book that contains that amount of information. But the reason you can is because Wizards of the Coast on Hasbro who own them are very, very big companies who can absorb some of that cost. Any other company on the in the industry does not have that luxury. And may well we'll see end up marking the cost of their books up. Because they have to that's the only way they can justify putting them in stores. So that will be interesting. As for me, I always very keen for people to check out the they came from games and also my work on whether that's anywhere to be honest at any of my work. And if you're interested in any of my work, please, by all means contact me through Matthew dawkins.com. And I can point you in a good direction. And yeah, I'm always happy to help people who are interested in role playing because it's, it's my career, but it's also my hobby. It's one of the loves of my life. And the more people who are gaming the happier I am,
Snyders Return:thank you so much, Matthew for for coming on today and sharing not only your your knowledge of of game creation and your fantastic production put out, I will put links in the description below. So people will come and support you, through your website, through your Patreon through your YouTube and the Onyx path, YouTube and right across the social platforms where you can be found, so I will make sure they are down in the description below. I'd love to have you back on the show in the future. I discuss things like classify when it comes out in any future products as as time develops, and your work comes to fruition if you'd be willing to come back Of course. Yeah,
Matthew Dawkins:absolutely. I very much appreciate you having me on this time and I will be more than happy to return.
Snyders Return:Thank you very much, Matthew for coming and we will speak again soon. 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 us, come and join us over on Patreon and we also have a Discord server. Please leave us a review because we'd love to learn how to improve the channel and provide better content alpha for those who are listening until we until we speak again. Thank you