Hello, and welcome to snyder's return a tabletop roleplay podcast. Today we set the stage for my guest to appear his arrival for shadowed by a foggy outline. As we maintain our vigil, we must not underestimate them. For when the lights go out, we will be greeted by far more than a mere role player, but an individual of incredible and versatile talent. As we take comfort in the main house, we wait and watch as they combine the intimacy of candlelight with the or inspiring Limelight to bring us revelations that could cause us to go supernova. What horrors will they bring what monster this week as our fate is determined by a turn of a card, or maybe that's vice versa. We welcome writer, editor, producer and podcaster Matt Boothman to the show. Matt, thank you for joining me.
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:Thank you so much for having me. And thank you so much for that great intro.
Snyders Return:Thank you. Well, Matt, before we go into some of the things I've alluded to there in the intro, would you mind tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into podcasting and tabletop role playing games, please?
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:Yeah, sure. And they sort of go hand in hand I ended up getting into both roughly the same time I'm, I guess, relative, a relative newcomer to a role playing games. I did not play one until 2017. And my my route in was, as I'm sure it is, for a lot of people playing nowadays was critical role and the adventure zone. So seeing actual plays before I ever actually played myself or kind of read a rulebook or anything like that. And we had a nice bit of coincidence that as I was starting to get into critical role, and starting to get that feeling of I could really get into this I could I could see myself playing these games. How on earth do you get a group together? Someone else in my group of friends was having a similar sort of awakening and got a group together. We started playing d&d fifth edition and branching out from there after the end my next kind of stepping stone was powered by the apocalypse games purely because of the the adventure zone showcasing them so going from in the middle or nearing the end of a big long d&d fifth edition campaign to a kind of a season with a powered by the apocalypse framework, suddenly went Oh, games can be this way as well. And I started seeking out different games of that kind started experimenting with it was interesting that I my first exposure to power by the apocalypse was as a framework to be hacked, rather than as like a published game. Yeah, so I knew the adventure zone hack of the powered by the apocalypse system before I ever read apocalypse world or masks or or any of those games. So I think the first actual published thing that I sought out from that was a real the simple world, which is sort of a game, but also sort of a guide to hacking powered by the apocalypse and creating your own power by the apocalypse games to emulate whatever genre I hacked together. Small ghost story themed powered by the apocalypse game, run it for some friends on a holiday. Everybody had a great time. And some of those friends are part of a theatre company called Blackshaw Theatre Company. And I approached them after the holiday and said, wasn't that fun? Would you like to do it on a regular basis as a podcast? So that's the that's the routine. That's and it's, it's been that podcast started in October 2017. It's called merely roleplayers, which is a good riff on the fact that it's role playing, but we are all theatrical people. And that's been going since October 2017, with a couple of breaks, but pretty regularly since then.
Snyders Return:All right. Well, did I? Yeah, similar to you. I got in three critical roles. And you've taken a very path which is which is great. And how did you find the almost the mindset shift from the DND d 20. Game structure to the power by the apocalypse monster, the week style games.
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:It took some time to work out. That it is like you say it's a gear shift. In terms of kind of the relationship Ships between players and GM. And in terms of like the role that dice play is, is quite different between fifth edition and and powered by the apocalypse. I think the biggest thing to get my head round was the idea that you resolve, like, you can resolve a situation involving a player and a non player character with just one role that the player makes. It was working out so but but when does the non Player Character do their damage will take that action like that was the hardest thing to get my head around? And I don't think I fully grasped it until that until I actually did pick up a copy of Apocalypse world and read that because the Baker's explain it so clearly. And so evocatively in that book, like it really is foundational for that kind of system.
Snyders Return:Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I was not on the exam thinking, yeah, I had this the very same issues. And you mentioned many role players. So we'll do the, we'll do the social medias. And then I can ask you more questions as we go through so many roleplayers Where can we find you and everything that you're doing at the moment,
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:everything is at merely roleplayers.com. That site has all of the links to follow the podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts, wherever you get them. It also has all of the social media links for your if you want to follow us on Twitter, we have an Instagram, we have a YouTube channel where all of the episodes go up because I'm told by the podcast press that a significant portion of the podcast listening public listen on YouTube, which I can't get my head around, but apparently they do. Yeah, I think that's I think that's all the main channels. But yeah, merely roleplayers.com is the place that you want,
Snyders Return:and scrolling down. So on your website, you've got the medium roleplayers stuff vigil, which I alluded to So would you mind describing I promise we'll get to why I bought you one, which is very special and I want to build up to it. So I'm sort of jump jumping in a bit almost. But what what vigilant and and what will people get what they experienced by listening to us.
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:So we have two different kinds of streams on the podcast on maley roleplayers, we divide the stuff that we put out into main house productions and studio productions, which is terminology we borrowed from the theatre. So vigil is our current main house production. And that's to cater to if you're a critical role fan, if you're a adventure zone fan, if what you like in your actual play role playing game podcasts is an ongoing story with consistent characters that you can get to know and ongoing plot threads that you can get your teeth into and speculate about. And, you know, long satisfying plot arcs, that kind of thing. That's what we do in the main house. So vigil is a monster of the week campaign. So that's powered by the apocalypse game. Based on creating stories like Buffy, like supernatural, that kind of thing. We put a very English twist on monster of the week. So if you read the book, it's so us centric, everybody's got guns. And I mean, that's the that's the main that's the main giveaway. So you know, we we've taken that and put it in, like a neglected Middle English town. And the reason everybody's got guns is the Hot Fuzz reason of everyone's packing round here of farmers and farmers mums. So yeah, we kind of characterise it as it's kind of a little bit Buffy but by way of the movie Hot Fuzz. It's a semi rural, very neglected English country town, where austerity means that it no longer has a team of like publicly sponsored supernatural investigators they've pulled out which means that things are going bump in the night left right and centre when they weren't before. And so a load of concerned citizens who are not trained to deal with that kind of thing are not getting paid for it are just trying to get on with their lives while also dealing with this stuff. Have to kind of step into the breach and deal with all of all of the baguettes and elementals and all sorts of other things that are crawling out of the woodwork now they're no longer being suppressed.
Snyders Return:And it sounds brilliant and I love the the fusion is the strange word to use but I'm going to use it the fusion of the the American style with the the English twist is brilliant. And and if you on your website scroll a bit further down. There's first Nova I believe that
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:Yeah, so yeah, yeah. So the first Nova is our most recent studio show. So the the other stream that we have on the show is the studio Where we do more one off one shot stories. So we'll what we'll do is we'll do a five episode season of Virgil, which is full mystery of you know, a monster appears in episode one we defeat the monster and episode five and then we'll close the main house for a few weeks and we'll do a studio production This is partly just so we don't get stuck in a rut it's to keep us kind of fresh and it's also with an eye on potentially if when vigil and what is going to be our next main house production it'll probably come from the studio. Okay, so the first note was our most recent one of those one off experimental shows. And that is a space opera star fantasy. And for that one we're playing galactic second edition, which is a belonging outside belonging game written by Riley Rizal. So that's I mentioned Avery Avery older earlier, she pioneered this whole belonging outside belonging, no dice, no masters system, kind of an evolution of power by the apocalypse games, where there are no dice. There's no Game Master, everything runs on a token economy of characters make mistakes and weak moves to gain tokens that then allow them to make stronger moves later down the line, which we just found, it's yet another gear shift. From you know, d&d to power by the apocalypse is one gear shift. And then you go into belonging outside belonging, where you don't have a GM, everybody's sharing that GM responsibility. Anybody can jump in and start, you know, setting the scene for the other players. And so a learning curve, but really enjoyed it. I'm really, really happy with the with the result of that.
Snyders Return:Definitely brilliant. It sounds, it sounds a lot of fun in the system sounds really different to a lot of things that I've played or seen being played. So I make a note that I definitely
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:go, I'd wanted to play galactic for ages since that I bought it when the first edition came out, and didn't get to play it until the second edition came out. But it was the fact that it was pitched as this is a Star Wars inspired game, but it's for people, it is to tell the sort of stories that we wish the Star Wars movies would tell. So it's if you're watching the more recent Star Wars movies, and you are more invested in Finn and Poe and the storm pilot ship than you are in any of the Palpatine nonsense, then galactic is the game to play because it lets you it really focuses on those relationships and lets you tell those stories instead of the silly space necromancer ones.
Snyders Return:Fair enough? Well, so people can go on and listen to the incredible main house and studio content you put out. I'll make sure there are links in the description below to your website and your links on Twitter, and various other things that people can can find you follow you and support you where possible.
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:Thank you very much. I hope I hope anybody finding us from this really enjoys it, find something to enjoy, have a scroll back through the archives because we've done a lot of different productions and you know, if you're, if you're not fancying the sound of space fantasy, you know, we've got kind of spy fi stories, we've got ghost stories, we've got all sorts of stuff in those studio productions.
Snyders Return:They're definitely something for everyone. And you mentioned that sort of theatre is would you want to give a shout out to your theatre and your cast and everybody else that are involved with your show?
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:Absolutely. Yeah. So we have risen from spun off from black shore Theatre Company and are still in the credits for every episode is still produced in association with Blackshaw Theatre Company. Many of the voices that you'll hear on merely roleplayers also crop up in Blackshaw Theatre Company productions on the stage. And on their podcast, they produce a lot of audio drama as well. It's a South London based theatre collective. I know them because I went to university with most of them, I'm a I was a theatre student. And there they are, that company is my friend group essentially. So we're all very close. But they they have quite a kind of, they built a reputation as a new writing company in London. So they had a regular I think monthly or bi monthly new writing night that ran above a pub for years, where people could come along and try out new work. And they would sometimes talent scout some of that new work and develop it into full productions. So kind of new writing producing theatre. And they also have a very strong audio drama strand as well. So sometimes when they do a stage production, they will then talk to the playwright about adapting it for the For the radio and have done productions or read as original audio dramas as well. So things like adaptations have great expectations, they did a like epic kind of six or seven part fully SF ext adaptation of great expectations. And their most recent couple of productions. The the mismatch skimming mysteries are plays that are designed to be performed on stage as a radio recording. So if you've ever been to see radio being recorded live, you know, it's it's not actors fully embodying the characters, it's active standing by the mics, potentially script in hand. And it's giving a vocal performance. But they have a live Foley team on the stage. You know, dropping balloons into bowls of water and snapping bits of celery when somebody gets punched in and all of these sorts of things. So the audience in the room on the night of recording gets that experience, if they get to see how the sausage is made, and how all of those sound effects are created. And then the product that they get out of it, then they're recording the whole show and then gets mixed and mastered and put out as an audio drama.
Snyders Return:Building on on that sort of audience. witnessing the audio recording the audio drama being produced, that sort of is a nice sort of step up treading the boards as it were into light sell. If you wouldn't mind giving us a price a I can't give you an ask for a preview. That's entirely unfair because that probably require cast members and things but a description of what it is and and and what people can expect when they come on watch it.
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:Absolutely. So lights out is the many roleplayers team getting back to our roots as the utricle people and doing a show a live show on the stage. So it is a merely roleplayers show. It's the maley roleplayers team, and it will have the merely roleplayers maximum drama energy that we always strive for. What it isn't is a live podcast episode recording. And those are very valid. And we may we may do something like that at some point. But this is a this is a stage show by the team behind the podcast. So it will have Yeah, let me let me sum up the story for you. So it's in development, because it's by nature is improvisational. So I don't know fully what's going to happen. But the story will be four people died in the dark on time. And on the stage, we are going to step into their shoes and see if we can reconstruct what happened to them. So our actors have studied those people and their lives so that they can embody them they can make the decisions they would make. And then but how do we simulate the things that we that nobody can know. The the strangeness is that they discovered on that final night of their lives. We are going to discover those things through drawing from the Tarot. So this might, and the whole thing is being done by candlelight. And the candles also play a role in the storytelling. If a candle in front of a character goes out, something very bad happens to that character. And anybody who's played the incredible game 10 candles by Steven Dewey of cavalry games is going to recognise some of those elements. We started with 10 candles as a kind of a framework and have hacked it and built on that to create something that is designed to be performed in front of an audience as opposed to played in a group of friends. So the the short version is it is a 10 candles ish actual play of tragic horror is an improvised story about four people who are going to die by the end of the story. But what we don't know is whether they will find hope before they do. And we and we don't know the circumstances, what led to their demise, what choices did they make along the way? That's the stuff that the the audience is turning up to find out and that we're turning up to find out because a lot of it is down to candle randomly going out or a particular card being drawn from a deck. So exactly the same reason that you would listen to an actual play where part of the appeal is You don't know what's going to happen. Because everything comes down to a roll of the dice, you get exactly the same experience here.
Snyders Return:It's It's such a unique premise, as you say, you built and hacked always, always seems a strange one to use when we're on about, like mccobb or a darker subject, but I can imagine a sort of being in the audience being sort of drawn in by the soft lighting, the candle lights, and, and really, sort of feeling that that sense of wonder, again, potentially not the right word, given the themes, but sort of being drawn into the, what is happening on the stage that the self and the team are performing. It's such a wonderful idea. And is that for free Halloween event? What's, what's this in? in aid of, shall we say?
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:Yeah, so we're performing this as part of the London horror Festival, which is an annual, I believe it is an anniversary this year, and I'm going to embarrass myself by not knowing whether it's the fifth or the 10th, but it's a significant anniversary for the festival this year. So the London horror festival is a is a horror Theatre Festival that runs throughout October and over Halloween. Our slot is on Sunday, the 24th of October 8:30pm. So after dark as it is only appropriate. And it's black shore theatre have a really strong history with the London horror festival. So I talked about their new writing nights earlier. They also for the last five or six years, must be the It must be a bigger anniversary for the horror festival because black shore have been performing there for six or seven years now, doing the scare slam, which is if you've ever been to a poetry slam or a spoken word night, it's that but scary stories. So performers will come along and they'll read an extract from a play they've written or monologue they've written or, you know, a scary letter or something like that, that performing in that kind of poetry slams spoken word night style where like those radio plays, it's it's just a person by a mic with a spotlight on them in a dark room. But you get that kind of campfire story atmosphere. So black for have been running that for. So this is the sixth time they've done it. But it's for seven years because we missed last year because of COVID, of course. And lights out is running in a double bill with that this year. So this guest line will be 630. Then there's a bar at the theatre. There's a pub downstairs that does pizza, and then at 830 lights out.
Snyders Return:So we got enough time to get a drink, steal your resolve, fill your belly and prepare for a immersive experience that you guys will be providing.
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:That's what we're hoping and we're hoping it makes a good double bill because you have kind of an hour of bite sized scares and chills and thrills from this gas lamp. And then that hopefully wets your appetite for the full the hour long. single story improv of lights out.
Snyders Return:Yeah, definitely. So has has sort of this, this horror side of things. So you vigil has sort of the monsters and that the horror elements to it. And this is very much focused on that. That darker theme? Is that the sort of themes and emotions you prefer to express? Or is this just just something that has come with you along in your podcasting performing journey?
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:It's weird. A few years ago, I probably wouldn't have ever said I was a horror fan. Like, if you look at what I read, it's mostly sci fi and fantasy. If you look at kind of the movies, I watch dito, to be honest. So in a way, you know, this is where the imposter syndrome kicks in. And I go, I don't know what I'm doing in the horror space. But But yes, I have done work in in that genre. I am interested in it. I think it is a good genre to explore at difficult times. So I'm interested in kind of the, the cosmic side of it, but not so much the Lovecraft side of it. So I'm very influenced by William Hodgson, who was an early 20th century British horror writer who wrote a series of stories about kind of an early pro to ghost Buster character, car anakee, the ghost finder, who all of the short stories about him are him spending vigils in haunted rooms inside his steampunk, electrical pentacle. And you know, dealing with the manifestations that come from the from the haunted room throughout the night. And there's something about that, about that kind of image of the, the human in the the, the fragile protective circle in the dark, surrounded by candles, beset by terrible cosmic things trying to break in. And another thing that appealed to me about those stories specifically was that Hodgson had quite interesting thoughts about kind of where hauntings might come from. So it was it was never kind of the simple, easy hand wavy, oh, a person died and this is their ghost. He had a kind of whole horror cosmology in you know, a Lovecraft mythos light to kind of thing about the outer monstrosities and the various rings of reality and what they what they all housed. But my favourite story of his the whistling room is about it is about a room where a grisly death happened. But the manifestation The Haunting, that fills the room is not the spirit of the departed person. It is almost like the accumulation of the legend and the story around them that has come to haunt the room. So it's because everybody knows there was a grisly murder in here, because everybody knows that the the victim whistled mockingly as he died. It's, it's the, it's the imaginations of the survivors that have made the room whistle have made the room haunted, as opposed to the you know, the soul or the afterlife of the of the person.
Snyders Return:Sounds like an incredible sort of collection of works. But actually, I'm, I get the information off and I'll put it in the description of the podcast because I think a lot of people would, would really sort of take up on that there's, you know, pick up in your horror and and Eldridge style, sort of horror and things like that. So I think I think it's definitely worth putting in the show notes. So please scroll down and check the description below. Not only can you follow Matt and Millie roleplayers and Blackshaw Theatre Company, but you could also check out this fantastic horror work that just been mentioned there.
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:Which is definitely worth checking out if you like Lovecraft, but don't want all of the racism. Yes. And and I would be silly not to mention the fact that I I wrote a play about Kentucky the ghost Finder. So I kind of, he's out of copyright. So it's not fanfic, it's a it's a, you know, a legitimate derivative work. Like I said, I was drawn to the idea of that, that scene of the person in the in the circle. So I wrote a play set in the circle, entirely set within the electric electric pentacle and if you go to my site at foggy outline.com, you can get you can listen to the audio drama that Blackshaw produced of that play, tying it all together. And you can also download an ebook which has the script and several of the original Hodgson stories in it as well. If you want a primer,
Snyders Return:yeah, that will also be in the description below this podcast to go and check that out. Questions slightly on a tangent but actually totally not foggy outline, where did the the origins of that name come from?
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:So that comes from the fact that so I used to come compartmentalise a lot of the different kind of strands of work that I did. So, you know, separate Twitter accounts for day job and, and like extracurricular creative work, separate websites for podcasts, playwriting, whatever else that was I was doing that week. And that is just too much admin, to be perfectly frank. And so when I was I was consolidating everything together and going No, no, no, put it all on one site. Much easier for everybody. And you know, you get nice cross pollination, if somebody comes to look at the podcast, they end up seeing the playwriting stuff as well. It's all good for me. But I was going What do I call this then? What is the what is the address going to be? And that name just comes from that, the more I thought about that, and the more I was trying to think about, like, how do I describe all of the different stuff, the more I started thinking that actually the little boxes that you put those different things in our mind. as solid and rigid as they look, and that they the borders between, say, theatre and actual play are the borders between radio drama and stage drama, the borders between your writing for prose versus writing for drama. All of those borders are incredibly foggy. And so, so foggy outliner is kind of is almost like a manifesto statement of categories are bullshit. No, I don't believe in them.
Snyders Return:Fair enough. Fair enough. Thank you for sort of letting us in on that question. touched on briefly. And obviously, I don't want to delve into personal life too much. But how much is your your day job interacted and worked with your sort of creative side, the podcast and things like that? And how much has gone the other way? Is there a sort of connect between the two? Or have you tried to sort of disconnect and keep the two very much as separate entities despite the foggy outlines?
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:Yeah, like I said, I used to compartmentalise a lot more. I think that the biggest influence from the so my day job is in marketing, and PR, I'm a writer and an editor. So I mean, there's already a connection there that, you know, I'm writing creatively outside work, and I'm writing creatively, but for a kind of more selling purpose. In my day job. I think that the biggest skill that I've kind of brought over from the day job is interviewing. So there's elements of the day job, that touch on journalism, I have to interview people about what they do all day, I have to sometimes ask quite probing questions about why things work a certain way in their workplace to try and get a sense of what could be done differently. And when I started in that industry, 12 or 13 years ago, I was very bashful and not very good at talking to anybody on the phone, or or over, there weren't a lot of video calls then that or talking to people across the boardroom, that kind of thing. You know, I'd been a theatre student and had worked on performance. But I have always tended to be backstage, you know, writing or doing some sort of sort of tech rather than being the performer. So, it I think it took being made to talk to a variety of different people about a variety of different things. With that clear goal of by the end of this interview, you need to have found out this useful stuff that we can do something with, to kind of bring me out of my shell. And what I bring from that into into role playing games I GM a lot for merely role players, but also for home games. As a GM, you need to you need to be a curious person. You need to you need to be interested in the characters that are creating the story that you're presiding over. So anytime I ask an interesting question about Oh, okay, why did the character make that decision? Or what's the character got in their pockets or what from the character's backstory is influencing this? That's all skills that I've built up in the in the day job. Okay. Okay.
Snyders Return:And you mentioned their home games do? What sort of games or systems do you play at home? And is it sort of just want to mix in some board games and card games or? Yeah, what do you do with your free time? It's basically what I'm asking. Kinda.
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:Yeah, definitely building some board games. Had a great board game weekend about a month ago playing nemesis, which is a very complicated alien and predator kind of inspired board game of exploring a ship and aliens keep bursting out of the vents to try and kill you. Very complicated if you've read the rulebook, but actually ended up playing very snappily. And yeah, home games. Sticking with the horror theme, I've been running a campaign of heart the city beneath, which I think is my, maybe my favourite campaign that I've ever run all played in. Which set us by Grant Howard and Chris Taylor from Roan rock, and Deckard is a dungeon delving game in a kind of reality bending under city that wants to eat you. But also wants to love you and also wants to give you a give you everything that you desire. And so that that has, like I've taught about kind of cosmic horror and and dread and hauntings and candlelight vigils heart lets me go full body horror which is not a muscle I've stretched too much up until this point. But the book is very good at encouraging you to describe corridors lined with teeth and and tendons stretched across a bases and all sorts of good, terrible, awful mutated creations.
Snyders Return:I mean, I've I own cult, which is a, a dark horror game in and of itself, but I might have to and this one's slightly twisted the way I'm sort of almost joyfully saying it but I might have to check out heart just to sort of see where where I sort of lay with it if that makes any sense.
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:Yeah, really highly recommend it. But then light and shade I've been running that but I've also been running masks which is kind of the opposite tone you know, it's it's happy go lucky teens superheroes who are happy go lucky until they say something they shouldn't and and alienate all their friends and have to go and smash something to make themselves feel better. Is the team the team drama RPG?
Snyders Return:Yeah, not again, love to run a game about in the future. Give it a go. So with all that going on dming jamming, emceeing game mothering keeping, that's a fair Call of Cthulhu, keeping various systems, various games, what advice would you give to gems that want to maybe switch away from a particular system want to try something out, try something new with a group Be it sort of one page RPGs, or a whole new genre maybe, or a whole new game system.
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:My advice for gems, especially if they're switching from the big dragon game, is do less work. And this is primarily why I don't run Dungeons and Dragons anymore, is because I've transitioned to other systems, and they are so much less work for the GM, so much less of a burden. And you know, there are there are d&d dungeon masters who love that and who you know that it's there, it's a joy to them to come up with all of the paths and, and encounters and doing all of the number crunching and creating stat blocks, and all of that kind of stuff, and more power to you if that is your joy. But I love that I can do 15 minutes prep before a mass game. And that's enough. And that it doesn't all have to come from me, you know that that's the that's where that advice is going the flippant version is do less work. And the the longer more involved version is. The story should come as much from the characters and the players and their actions as it does from the gms or the DMS prep. Sorry, I said should that I try and avoid saying should because everything is correct in role playing games. There is no right or wrong. But, you know, I found dming a slog. And I don't find running things like heart and masks a slog because they their stuff baked into the systems that help you, as a GM, take ideas from the players and respond to what the players are bringing in and follow their plot threads in a way that just generates a story and keeps it going without it all having to come from one person's brain. And I think stories are so much I have so much more fun when the story can surprise me. And if it was all coming from my brain, if I know what the big bad is and all the different ways they can get there. Then Then the story can't surprise me. But if somebody rolls badly on a on a masks move. And actually the big bad kind of wins this encounter, then we all get to decide together what happens next. And that's that's why that's why I play role playing games is to is that emergent story. That's kind of you know, that's what I wanted to bring to the to a theatre audience as well. yet.
Snyders Return:I mean, we have our own city of Mr. Xu play. And it's, it's powered by the apocalypse based so I can identify a lot of what you're saying there were, you know, just a simple, fail roll, twists the story and even if they do succeed, but maybe they don't or something else happens and the way that as you mentioned early, you can resolve a whole series of events in a single role and it's still exciting. It's still dramatic. It's still a allows the players to have the power which is, you know, where the game comes alive really, as you say, if it all comes from the one chair, then who's really sort of playing the game? And yeah,
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:and beyond even dice rolls, you know, the, the culture in indie games generally is say the GM says, okay, you know, here's this mystery, how do you solve it? A player can say, Well, I'm going to go and talk to my friend Roberta, the Witch, and maybe you've never heard of Roberta the witch before. She doesn't feature in the gems prep. Nobody's mentioned her in character creation, but the the player is allowed to make that character exist and you all get to then find out what happens with her.
Snyders Return:Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's, it's a lot of fun. I have learned I've tried to, and it's become hard, but tried to turn the DND games into that kind of style style of game.
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:It can be done, but the system is kind of fighting you to some extent. When you when you try to do that, whereas you know, the difference when you're playing a system that actively supports that kind of players is a world of difference.
Snyders Return:I think one of the things I found the most freeing and it's not a Christian against sort of games like d&d, and others that use the initiative structure, but games like and you can correct me if I'm wrong, games like mass definitely city missed another power by the apocalypse, you just you just bounce backwards and forwards and the GM might not say anything for a good sort of five or 10 minutes while the other players are going through and resolving things and everyone is still having fun You don't have to go right. So you then it's me then to other people, then maybe I'll have a go in 10 minutes time and
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:your next Have a think about what you're going to do. Yeah,
Snyders Return:yeah, don't forget is you next
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:kind of thing. please learn your spells.
Snyders Return:But there's so much good advice from him. And I appreciate you sharing that with us. So we've gone over many role players, we've gone over lights out this this great production you're going to put on for the for the horror festival, your fantastic team and the black shore Theatre Company and another sort of projects that you have and and a little inside your home game. Is there anything we haven't touched on yet that you would like to maybe mention about TT RPGs or podcasting or just the community as a wider sort of as a whole?
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:I think just that i think it's it's an exciting time to be in the space. Partly just because there's so much great indie game design happening and, you know, new, interesting, weird, tiny games popping up on h.io every day, but also specifically in actual play, whether that's podcasting or streams, where we're kind of at the we're riding the first wave of a new stop form of storytelling here. And you know, in prophecy, we need to remember what where we've come from and acknowledge that this isn't, this isn't entirely new, you know, in prophecy existed for a long time, audio drama has existed for a long time spoken word storytelling, collaborative storytelling, but the the format's that we're seeing created now the kind of growth of podcasts, the growth of streaming, we are all as a community kind of figuring out together what the rules of this new form are. And it's it's like, being there when television was was invented. And you know, television storytelling became a thing for the first time. You know, what does? What does a serial TV story look like? What does a serialised versus a one shot actual play? production look like? What is the language that we use to describe you know, what is the different effects that you get when it's uncut versus kind of heavily produced with music and sound effects? You know, there's so many different people trying different ways and just tweaking this and that here and there. That I just think it's a really exciting kind of movement to be a part of,
Snyders Return:absolutely 100% agree. And so people can be excited and be a part of everything you do. Would you mind reminding everybody where they can find yourself? Maybe role plays and everything you guys are sort of associated with please
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:Sure thing, so you can find everything I do at foggy outline.com. All of my socials are that I have a monthly newsletter, where I update people on all of the stuff that's going on you get previews of lights out and discount code isn't all that kind of thing? merely roleplayers the podcast where theatrical people play role playing games is at merely roleplayers.com and all the socials and though Spotify and Apple podcasts and so on are on that page, lights out will be at the Pleasance theatre is LinkedIn in London as part of the London horror Festival on Sunday, the 24th of October at 8:30pm. There, if you sign up to my newsletter, there is a discount code, an early bird discount code, if you book before the 24th of September. And if you book it as a double bill with Blackshaw theatre
scare, slam, which is at 6:30pm, same day, same venue, you'll get an automatic discount applied at checkout as well. I believe that's all the details.
Snyders Return:I will make sure everything is put in the description below this podcast, scroll down, check out the links, check out the books and the games and things that that we've mentioned. Matt, thank you so much for spending some of your time to take me through everything new in many roleplays doing especially about lights out, I really appreciate your time.
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:Thank you so much for having me. It's been a great talk.
Snyders Return:What I'd love to have you back on the show in the future, maybe for another interview if you're doing another event like this or maybe for you and yourself or some of your team for a one shot or something similar. If you'd be willing, of course,
Matt Boothman - Merely Roleplayers:absolutely. Any time. Next time something's happening, you'll be the first to know. Thank you. I
Snyders Return:appreciate that. Until we should get to speak again. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for listening. If you'd like to learn more about the show, then go to WWW dot Snyder's return.squarespace.com. Alternatively, you can find us over on Twitter. At Return Snyder, you have a link tree link in the description of this episode. And if you want to support us, come and join us over on Patreon. And we also have a Discord server. Please leave us a review because we'd love to learn how to improve the channel and provide better content out for for those who are listening until we until we speak again. Thank you