Games Workshop Veterans Take On Godzilla! | In Conversation with Jordan Sorcery

The first ever official Godzilla RPG just launched on Kickstarter and Jordan Sorcery is joined by two of the designers - Games Workshop veterans Gav Thorpe and Mark Latham - to chat about the development of the game, how it works, IDW Godzilla comics, and why it's fun to chase down Kaiju!

Gav Thorpe & Mark Latham in conversation with Jordan Sorcery.

Check out Patreon.com/JordanSorcery for some bonus questions from this interview as well as loads more exclusive content!

_____________________________ 

Find out more about Godzilla: The Roleplaying Game:

KICKSTARTER: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/idwgames/godzilla-the-roleplaying-game

_____________________________ 

Support My Work: 

ELEMENT GAMES AFFILIATE LINK:
https://elementgames.co.uk/?d=11216

PATREON:
https://www.patreon.com/jordansorcery

KO-FI:
https://ko-fi.com/jordansorcery

DISCORD:
https://discord.gg/vtjKzTGevD

INSTAGRAM:
https://www.instagram.com/jordansorcery/ 

BLUESKY:
https://bsky.app/profile/jordansorcery.bsky.social 

WEBSITE:
https://jordansorcery.com/

_____________________________ 

Art, Music, and Copyright: 

Images used belong to their respective copyright owners 
Jordan Sorcery Theme by Joylin Music 
Jordan Sorcery Heraldry by Becka Moor 
Jordan Sorcery Heraldry and Theme copyright @jordansorcery

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hello. Godzilla has taken many forms since first destroying parts of Tokyo in 1954. There have been an enormous number of sequels and remakes, reboots, spin-offs, adaptations, TV shows, comic books, and much, much more. But there has never been a roleplaying game. At least until now. Thanks to the recent launch on Kickstarter of Godzilla the roleplaying game, you can now fight Kaiju and save the day in the IDW comics universe of Godzilla. IDW have brought together a trio of veteran games workshop designers in order to create this brand new game. Gav Thorpe, Jervis Johnson, and Mark Latham. And I was very lucky to get the chance to talk to Mark and Gav about their work on the game and what they love about telling stories in this Godzilla universe. I'm Jordan, this is Jordan Sorcery, and today I'm in conversation about Godzilla the role-playing game. Gav, Mark, thank you both for joining me so much. We're going to be chatting about the Godzilla RPG, the role-playing game, and sort of exploring how you've developed it and put it brought it all together and what you can do with it. I I suppose the first thing to get into, I guess, it would be like what were your roles in the creation of the game? So I mean, Gav, let's start with you. What what do what were you doing to help create this RPG?

SPEAKER_00 1:41

A bit of everything really. And then I've been focused on the starter set and the starter adventure. And then developing some of the we've been developing the character classes, and we have the bad, the big bad guys, and this is called antagonists. So we've written over with the kaiju essentially. So again, Mark and I divided our duties on on basically the character classes and the kaiju between us, in terms of coming out with the stats and things like that, while Jervis was finishing off the rules. And then there's a few appendices and games master advice, and then there's the background section about because this is set um the the the main the main drive for it is the new Kai say era setting that IDW have, which is a particular kind of um Godzilla setting and series of comics. So I I was writing the the background section essentially the uh for that. So yeah, that's that mostly more on the narrative side of stuff, I guess, um rather than the crunchy rules thing, which was more Jersey's domain for me.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

And what have you been leading on, Mark? What's been your sort of main part of the project?

SPEAKER_01 3:39

Yeah, so I think um I'm probably even less crunchy than Gav. So I'm I'm much more of a narrative guy. Um we did share the kind of character classes and all kind of stuff from the antagonists. Um but I've mainly been working on the very long um core book adventure, like a multi-session, multi-part adventure, mini campaign, really. Right. Um that's only just gone off. So yeah, I think uh that's been keeping me very busy. Um but yeah, I think that the sort of thing, because Gav was like the Hannibal trying to get the A team together, um, and he'll he got stuck with me, unfortunately. So I'll be I'll be murdered. So uh yeah, I think we started off to kind of all kind of get involved in a bit of everything, but then our roles kind of settled down as we got as we went along and the and the core world became a bit more defined, and Jervis went away and did Jervis magic on those. Uh and we all got some coverals, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

Yeah, I mean so yeah, I mean it was it was a quite deliberate choice of like obviously Jervis is very good at rules systems and things like that. Marx had much more experience. Well, this is the first game role-playing game Jervis and I've worked on with Marx had more experience working with role-playing games, particularly in more recent years. And uh, full disclosure, Mark is actually running a role-playing campaign that I've been part of on and off for a couple of decades now. Yeah, so again, his his his DM experience and stuff. Um, amazing. What game is that? Well, all kinds of things really, but currently um we're using Black Sword Hack, that's right, isn't it? Blacksword hack to do fantasy adventure set in Titan the world of Fighting Fantasy.

SPEAKER_02 5:18

Oh, amazing. That's cool.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

Because Mark can't do anything out of the book, apparently.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

No, that's that's the weird thing. Actually, working on a published game is so weird for me because I'm one of those every DMs who just mix stuff up all the time. So like I don't really care if if a rule set is complete or even good. So we focus on the mind getting stuff published.

SPEAKER_02 5:42

Yeah, it's interesting, I guess, because your your homebrew is actually the official material in a way. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

That's great. Yeah, I mean we've been trying, I mean, genuinely we are that is the kind of experience we're trying to draw on, you know, it and it's quite a big difference working on role-playing games to miniatures games in many respects because of that, because you know there is a DM and players who are going to give it a little bit of latitude, but we didn't want to like rely on that necessarily. But also, you know, we've got between the three of us, that's probably like I mean, Jervis quite often likes regaliness and fan that you know, he's an original DD player, you've got the you know, and stuff like so. There's like a hundred years' experience of role-playing games between us, I think. Um not all of it on Jeff. Um, but play, you know, what we wanted to put that in, you know, we did look at this game and think, you know, uh we'd have to design it from scratch and say, as a player, as a DM, you know, as a starter set and a core book, what do we want in there? What do we need in there and as a system, and try to address everything, you know, if we've got this one chance to create a game, you know, what are we gonna do with it and and how are we gonna make sure it does all the things we want the game to do?

SPEAKER_02 6:54

Sure, yeah. And so what's the like what is the I guess the sales pitch or the 15-minute elevator pitch of like this as a game? Like, you know, you're tackling Godzilla, a specific like version of Godzilla from the ITW comics, but like what what's the intention? What are you trying to achieve with it?

SPEAKER_00 7:13

Um at its core, um it's it's it's it's kind of a super team up game, really, actually, because the focus is on g Force, you're members of or sort of like contractors of uh contractees of gforce, uh, and their role is essentially to defend human civilization from the kaiju. Um and you know, and gforce USA in particular to you know want to kill Godzilla um uh and to destroy the kaiju. Um that's not necessarily uh uh an opinion that's shared across the world, but that's very much the G Force USA thing. So the the player characters are members of D Force, from soldiers to scientists to wow, you know, that kind of thing. And the emphasis is that you know there's a a kaiju threat, which may or may not be evident right at the start of the adventure, but you know there will be a kaiju turned up at some point because you're playing Godzilla, the role-playing game. Um and uh uh and they're very hard to take head on. So there's there's essentially building up your allies and your resources to be able to combat the big bad when it turns up all fine, or trying to work out what you're trying to do. Because again, a lot of the time it's not necessarily about just rocking up and trying to fight it in battle, it's about trying to redirect it or address its needs or whatever. Very much the the the direction from Toho is like kaiju are this natural disaster, basically. You know, it's it's like trying, you you can't necessarily defeat them, you can only survive them and hopefully, you know, mitigate them. And that was so that's very much the idea of you know, you've got this uh team of character interesting, cool characters who can come together and fight a kaiju, basically.

SPEAKER_02 8:56

Right, sure. I mean that must make it and Mark, I'm I'm imagining from a a like a narrative perspective and a and an adventure design perspective, that must make it really hard to create because obviously you want that replayability in the game, yeah, but you don't always want to build to the same climax. So, like how are you tackling that? Like, what tools are you sort of putting in and approaching that?

SPEAKER_01 9:17

Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, when we when we first got together, um I think I think the Kaiser era comics hadn't even launched. So we naturally assumed you're gonna be you know you're gonna be writing a game about people running away in terror from Godzilla, but now we're playing uh now you're gonna be playing the people protecting the people who are running away in terror from Godzilla. Yeah, so uh essentially it comes down to antagonists, which are one of the the the biggest part of this game. Um, and you have your kaiju, and you have the immortal kaiju, the famous ones everyone knows, you have the lesser kaiju, which you can create yourself using uh uh Gavin Jovis's handy kaiju generator, which is pretty amazing. Um but then you also have the non-kaiju antagonists, and I think that's where the stories really lie. You basically have uh organized crime gangs, you have uh corporate uh megacorps, um like into biotech and stuff like that, you have rival militaries, you have international militaries, uh mercenary groups, and you have all these different factions who are you've all been shaped by the Kaiso universe. So essentially they they were trying to get something from Kaiju or to destroy kaiju or they're generally getting away. So the main plot involves how you deal with those people, how you negotiate those threats. And then it's just like a very human-level uh RPG, but there's gonna be a kaiju storming through at some point. So it's kind of have you succeeded in kind of defeating the main plot to give you the best possible chance of sorting out the kaiju threat, or have you not, which makes the kaiju threat much more difficult. Um that could be anything from uh kaiju spawn and popping up all over the place to uh they've created mutants in their wake or launching a massive attack, um, or extra kaiju being attracted by by your battles on the ground and now there's three kaiju fighting over the city. It could be anything. Um I think the variety stories is there, but you have to focus on the kind of the human level rather than focusing outwards towards the kaiju because they're just their own immutable thing.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

Sure. Right. Yeah, because there's this like ticking clock mechanism, isn't there, within the game, right? Where it's always is would would that always build up to okay, this is the rampage moment when the kaiju now bursts through a building and whatever you're doing is going to be affected by that? Or can you use that ticking clock in other ways as well?

SPEAKER_00 11:36

Um so yeah, the crisis clock is a was a was an early mechanic and one of those that, you know, uh again, one of those those things that we see in various games like doomsday clocks and stuff like that. We want to make it a central conceit of the game, is that the world will continue without you. So that your whatever your players' actions and they're doing and stuff, you know, um the world isn't waiting for you to walk through that particular door before this thing happens. It's like it will happen whether you're there or not, particularly with um because the the adventures use a map, they use a hex map, and things will move around on the map. Once you've got a kaiju, it's gonna move around and smash things up and destroy the city and head for the power plant and do its thing. And it's not gonna wait for you to encounter it before it does that. So we have the crisis clock, which essentially so it's worth pointing out that everything's driven by it. This is card-driven, playing card driven, not dice-driven. So everything is all about that there's two decks: the crisis deck and the chance deck. So the crisis deck is essentially the DM's deck, and and at the end of each turn, or the in the in the crisis phase of each round, uh the DM flips a card and the score just gets added to the crisis clock. Um, and the adventure itself will have predetermined events at certain numbers, and you have which we call flashpoints. So you have a minor crisis, which could be anything really. Sometimes it might be a rise in Kai say levels or some criminals uh using, you know, some mutant criminals are doing a bank heist, or whatever. It could be, you know, there could be subplots, they can be, you know, your commander gets on is on the radio telling you that to go somewhere, any of those stuff. And then you have major crises, um, which some of which may be kaiju appearing, you know, a kaiju appearing would obviously be a major crisis, but they're not always that. Again, they're large events. The the main thing about the major crises is they reset the clock. Reset the clock. Um kind of so one, you there's some control in design adventure of like how how how variable the timing will be, but also it's like you've hit a big milestone, a thing's happened, the clock resets, and now you're building towards the next milestone. But you don't necessarily know what they are. So again, um it's up to the, you know, there's a there's a uh lever there for the DM to play with, either when they're designed adventure, but also in play of like, ooh, then you know, it's like, oh well, you're up to 26 now, nothing's happened yet, or must be getting close, maybe. Um, you know, so the players are feeling the pressure. Um because one of the other things is that because it's kaiju, the scale is big. This is not like this is not a dungeon crawl, it's more, it's not quite a hex crawl either, but it's kind of in between. You have a large hex map of like you know, several miles of city or some outskirts of a city and a reservoir or whatever the you know is, and and you're moving across these, and rounds are uh between five and fifteen minutes, really, depending on what you're doing. So a player can do quite a bit, uh a character can do quite a bit, a group of characters can do quite a bit in one round, um, because you're not worried about five foot squares where the kaiju is around, it's like it's the entire it's like it has it destroyed this city block yet. Um, so the the crisis clock again makes it gives it a sense of scale and things moving, but on on that level of like big things happening, the the world still turning as your characters are maybe spending quite a lot of time investigating a thing or fighting a thing. Um yeah, so so yeah, but the crisis clock, um, you could there also there's a mechanism potentially like if you do certain things, if enemies become aware of you, say for example, the corporate or the uh you know rivals or the criminal gang that you're after or whatever, if you do something, you might trigger an extra card on the clock. So they all advance their plans because they're you know, and brings you closer to the next crisis. Um very I don't think there's there isn't really anything that lets you take stuff off the crisis clock. It's always it's always turning the screw tighter and tighter, basically. And gives play, again, it gives it just a momentum. You just have to keep going, um, you know, because you know stuff's gonna happen. And if you if you mess about too much and spend too long doing certain things, um events will overtake you, basically.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

Sure. Yeah, it's really interesting because that I mean the the question of scale, I think, is a is a a natural one for like a Godzilla game, isn't it? Because you're you like you say, these things are huge, you've got these kaiju, and whether it's Godzilla or or Mothra or anybody else, they're enormous, and you want to feel that in the game, but also you're not you're still playing humans, right? Or or roughly mostly humans. So you're there's kind of this disconnect, you're not getting into Zord suits and fighting them, so you need to have that sense of difference in that scale, but also the game needs to account for like how how what's God's because it w if it just walks straight through the city, it's gone before you heroes have been able to do anything. So like that feels like a difficult one to square. I mean, I'm I'm curious about the game, the actual game mechanics and the card system. Like, how did you arrive at cards being the main driver for the mechanics in the first place?

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Um it was almost an instant decision just because sort of the the lead from IDW was we want to make a very distinct game system for for you know uh for them um that was as identifiable as D20 or you know other multiple fate or whatever. So the you know, almost instantly, I think most of us just went to well using cards because not many people do that. There's very, very few games, so that's almost instantly recognizable as different from any of those other systems out there, is a card deck-driven system. I know Jervis liked the you know, there's a lot of things you can do with dice have have lots of advantages in many ways, they're very quick and simple to resolve stuff, you know. Um, you can do re-rolls, you can do dice sports, there's lots and lots of ways. But with cards, you have all the fun of like um hand play, coordinating cards with other players. Cards have memory, which dice don't, you know, they they retain their qualities um from place to place, and being able to look at the top of a deck or do all that kind of cool card play stuff. So that was instantly, I think, sort of like Gothe's sort of like game design antennas twitching and like, oh yeah, we can do kind of cool stuff with this. But they are they're a very weird thing to write a game around in some way because of the the way probabilities work and stuff, which is very non-traditional for a lot of role-playing games. So there was quite a lot of tweaking, very a lot, a lot of tweaking just to get numbers right. But essentially, it's um a target number challenge system, is the way it works, is your player the player narrates what they want their character to do. Um the DM, the deckmaster, uh decides uh so you have four aspects. You have mindfulness, which is sort of like your how well you read people and situations, and sort of like the slightly more emotional side of things. You have intelligence, which is obviously your education, cleverness, uh, and then you have coordination, which is your dexterity, physical ability, and strength, so your physical prowess, basically. So the DM will choose which of those aspects uh the challenge is for. So they'll say, Oh, you know, you say, Oh, I'm trying to I'm trying to convince the mayor to send, you know, to get on to to tell the police chief to send out the cops, kind of thing, or whatever. Okay, that's a mindful challenge. And then the difficulty level of like, okay, that's gonna be a five plus or however difficult I think it's gonna be. And then you have uh uh a bunch of attributes essentially from your character sheet. So you have the aspect, so you go, oh, my mindfulness, I've got plus one mindfulness, so that's four points already. You have what we call traits, which are character traits. So they they uh and and sort of um so that you might be saying, Oh, actually, I've got the um uh persuasive trait. I don't know if it's quite easy, you know. I'm gonna you so you can pick up to three traits, and each of those will give you plus one each. You have gear, um, which I don't know, I'm trying they'll be gear, they might help you with a mindfulness. I've got flacking seed plus three, yeah. Whatever that always helps me. Um and uh you have abilities, which um again, like gear, they're sort of like between plus one and plus five, but they're more much more specific. So you could say, my ability, you know, your character might have trained negotiator as an ability or something. So you've got so you'll pick one gear, one ability up to three traits and an aspect, and that gets added. That's your basic score. Yeah. Um you can do a thing called a stunt, which is like if you can come up a really clever way of doing something, um, you can either add an extra gear, an extra aspect, or an extra ability. But the problem is there's more risk. So if you fail, you'll end up paying more costs, basically. So you put in you're trying to do something more spectacular, but you're gonna risk more doing it. And then usually what will happen is you flip the top chance card. So um, and if it's a red, that gets taken off the score. So anything from one to ten taken off the score, base cards count ten. If it's black, it gets added to the score. Um, or what you can do if you want to, you've got a hand of five cards, your destiny cards. So you can play one of those as well. So if it matches the aspect, so in this case, hearts is mindfulness. So if you play a heart, it automatically counts ten. So again, there's a bit of hand play in there in terms of like trying to match your cards to either your strengths or your weaknesses and uh and things like that. So, and then if your final score beats the challenge, the target number, then you've succeeded. Uh, for most challenges, well, for some chat for normal challenges, that's enough. It's like succeed or fail, that's fine. But we also have risky challenges and have degrees of success and failure. So either pass or fail, but also for every extra five points you fail by, you pay it a cost. So not only do you not convince the mayor, but then costs are things like you lose willpower, which essentially is your health points, but also it's like it's a combination of mental health and emotional health and physical health. So you can run out of willpower without ever physically getting hurt, but you're just giving up the five. You know, I can't go on anymore. Um, you can lose gear or you can discard cards, that kind of stuff. But on the flip side, for every five points you go over on a risky challenge, you get a real you can choose a reward. So uh rewards are drawing a card. Um, you get we have this thing called hero points, which we can get into. Um, you can reduce nemesis points, which is something that DM has. Um, and you can and generally in battle, you can do extra willpower damage. So that's the main thing is actually if you oversucceed on an attack, you can do more damage basically. So you're trying to score big and high. So I gave something like a kaiju, which has got 20. Willpower. Most characters start with five. So you're trying to do a lot, you're like, okay, let's try and get the score really high and do a lot of damage with this one attack. Um, so yeah, so that's kind of how that's how the basic mechanism works. Um with with again less special abilities and as well, special rules that can kind of change the way that that works. But yeah, the central that challenge system is the central mechanic. Sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:23

I think the question people always ask when I kind of describe the game to them is um so as an action, then I'm just gonna use my really cool superpowered armor to punch Godzilla, right? It's like, I don't know, an action is much more than that. Actually, it's you imagine each action as like a panel or two of a superhero comic. So as an action, you're drawing on your gear and your abilities and your traits, and you're kind of going, right? I'm gonna activate my jetpack and I'm gonna fly up to Godzilla's face to to distract him, I'm gonna fly around here a few times, and I'm gonna pummel him with the fists and do all of this damage in one go because that's the panel, that's a double h spread. Amazing. I've I've done a stunt to do that, but of course if I fail, my my jetpack blows up and I've plummet to the ground and somebody else can't catch me.

SPEAKER_02 23:06

Sure. I mean that's a really nice way of thinking, like even the the the comic book sort of timing of sequences and events and rounds and stuff like that. And I suppose like tonally, this is a version of Godzilla that because it's driven by that comic book world, right? So i is that it's maybe a bit more heroic, I guess, would be a way of describing it. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 23:26

Yeah, yeah, the he the heroes are they're borderline superheroes, the characters because they they have amazing technology, some of them have mutants with mutant powers. You can play a robot and if you've seen Jaguar in the comics, he can grow to the size of a kaiju, right? And that's a that's a thing you can just do because it's a comic book world where crazy powers and abilities exist, you know. Sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

So we like in a typical adventure, then do you think that there is gonna be a split between like you know, we talked about like okay, there's there's you need to go and convince the mayor of something and help with an evacuation, versus we all want to find a way to like become supersized and get our jetpacks on and fight like is there all is there always gonna be a balance, or would you see different adventures skewing towards one or the other sort of uh type of play?

SPEAKER_01 24:12

So I think the one uh the the one I've just finished with the core book is very much a split. There's a a lot of uh investigation and uh convincing people and persuading people and kind of trying to get to the bottom of the the mystery that drives the story forward. But those scenes are punctuated by fights with super powered foes and or kaiju. I think that's really important because you want people to be able to play a scientist or a spy or a thief and actually have really cool stuff to do. You don't just want the the soldier class to have all the fun, you know. So you've got to give them that balance. And even in a fight, you know, you can you can draw on teamups, which is such a great uh a great thing where um you've got a rapport with the scientists in your group so you get them to kind of analyze the weak spots of the card, you said to have to add even more bonuses to your uh to your mighty power punch or whatever it might be. Um so yeah, I I think every class has to have their moment to shine, and uh the the adventures we've that Gav and I have worked on so far have really kind of played up to that.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

Yeah, one of the things worth pointing out as well, something again that we put it's quite key to the characters. So we talked about the traits and abilities and stuff, which are very mechanical. Um, but the first three things actually you generate with a character are their catalyst, motivation, and temperament. So the catalyst essentially is you know, how did you how did you get into the kaiju fighting business in the first place, you know? And a lot of it is like my squad was mauled by Godzilla, or you know, my parents were eaten by Godzilla, or there's a lot not all of it, it's traumatic, but quite a lot of it, or but some of it's like you know, I want to I wanted to prove you know that my theory of kaiju behavior was correct, or you know, that kind of stuff. Um so that's that's your catalyst of um, and then the motivation is something concrete as a goal, basically, that you're trying to achieve. So um I will, yeah, you know, it's like I I will defeat, I will show that the kaiju can be defeated with my new drone technology, might be your motivation. Uh, and that's something you can literally achieve and earn hero points for, basically, or work towards. So again, it's not just like, oh, my motivation is to look cool. You go, well, no, it needs to be something it's like motivation, might be I want my victory to appear on the evening news or something, yeah. So that can be measured by the DM. Um, and then lastly, you have temperament, which is how you go about things. Uh, so that's like uh yeah, uh your motivation, your temperament could be like, you know, leave no one behind, or you know, first in, first out, that kind of stuff. So so between those things, you've got a p a kind of like a view of how your character does stuff. And very deliberately, one of the things you we've said is so hero points, which are like essentially they're bennies that you can spend on things, but they're also experience points that you can spend between games if you haven't used them in game. Um uh you earn you can earn hero points for good role-playing, basically, uh, and essentially play into your temperament, playing to your motivation, playing to, you know, or drawing in your catalyst, that kind of stuff. So you're like, oh, right, okay, you know, um, you know, as a scientist, uh, I actually I'm gonna stand here and continue to analyze the problem, even though I'm just about to get trodden on or whatever. Um, oh, that's really cool. You're here, have a hero point for your good role-playing type thing. So um, so we've we've like Mark was saying, it's still kind of the human stories in some ways, and team ups and all that, you know, uh, like because comics are about that, because actually the big bad is usually not the story. It's the I say it might be the reason why there's a this it's that external obstacle, that external thing, but actually it's the team rivalries or the the conniving commander or the something else, which is actually your real obstacle, or or you know, it's the the enemies we made along the way, um, or whatever it might be. So, you know, most of the mechanics are actually driven by those character narratives, their traits, their temperament, and things, you know, but your because mechanically most of them are just like worth or plus one or plus five or whatever, you know, they're all very similar. So actually those keywords, those what they actually mean narratively is more important. Can you can you spin that into a cool story about what your characters do? Can you persuade the um, you know, can you persuade the DM that actually, yes, I can use my intelligence in this situation rather than my coordination. I'm going to think my way out of this trap rather than jump out of it. Do you know what I mean? So you go using my you know, the power of analysis and my data pad and this, I mean uh yeah, so you you're again you're encouraged to come up with interesting character-driven solutions to challenges. So again, that's one of the things that keeps it fresh, of like, it's not always you know, even if you're the soldier, you're not necessarily having to like just shoot everything, and that's your answer to everything. You have other abilities, you have other aspects that you can draw on. Um, and then and it makes those character, that character interplay, which is really what role-playing is mostly fun for, um, kind of the center of what what the story is.

SPEAKER_02 28:53

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I'm assuming that like for for you, for you both, and for Jervis, now your favorite Godzilla is probably the IDW comic book series. But like prior to this, like did have you got long histories with Godzilla, like as a as a a franchise, as a creature, like have you are you both fans for a long time, or are you sort of discovering more about it now?

SPEAKER_01 29:20

Quite a long time for me. Uh weirdly, uh it's almost embarrassing, but my first Godzilla encounter is uh the Hanna Barbarica with the amazing theme tune and Godzuki playing little smoke rings. Right. Incredible. And I used to absolutely love that show as a kid. Uh but that that's that was kind of my gateway drug into checking out all the black and white Godzilla movies and stuff like that. Um I'm actually quite a big fan of the Monster Verse too, the the new stuff, which is uh I I know it's kind of a bit hit and miss, especially when King Kong gets involved, but uh you know all all things Godzilla. I just love big monsters fighting each other. Come on, I'm quite easy to the police.

SPEAKER_00 30:00

Yeah, I I I I think my so my my knowledge of Godzilla stuff has been fairly I would say, just kind of drawn a savvy rather than being I've I've seen some Godzilla movies and stuff. I've not I've become I've I've had to research and read a lot more around it before I'm taking on the project. It wasn't an you know, I I I can't say that, you know. I remember Godzilla and Godzuki and of you know certainly new stuff. Um he's not here, but we say good I mean this was very this was very poignant for Jeff because I think you say he's the first film he went to see at the cinema was Son of Godzilla. If he was here, I don't know if you've seen it, he's got a the poster movie poster, because he if the if the final day was shown, his mum asked if he could take the poster home, and he's had it for however many years that is. Um so for him it was like a real uh it was a real thing, like cool, yeah. Actually, getting to it, you know, he you know he's obviously a big movie fan and all the rest of it anyway, so it was uh uh a great opportunity for him to bring uh a lifelong passion into a game, you know, which probably wasn't expecting to do at any stage of his career, I suspect. But uh so yeah, it was cool. I I'm I'm the more modern convert, I think. Mark's kind of in between, and Jervis is like the old school.

SPEAKER_02 31:24

Well, what's I mean, you know, like thinking about that sort of stage of careers, when you mentioned Gav that neither you nor Jervis had worked on an RPG before, like how what has that transition been like? Like it is it different to develop an RPG to developing a miniatures game?

SPEAKER_00 31:40

Uh it is, uh I think you know, uh the the clip answer is it's easier in some ways. Um, because you're deliberately writing for a group of people who are trying to collaborate and create a story. I mean, to be fair, I've written miniatures games like that as well. Um, but uh but I think we just kind of from mechanically we approach it in the same way. You still want it to be a solid game loop experience, very playable, the rules to be written in a clear, concise way, and all of those lessons we've had from many, many years of writing miniatures of war games. Um and uh and the only thing being is we don't necessarily have to worry about a miniature. So you can do stuff that isn't necessarily tied to the spatial kind of relationships of miniatures on a tabletop. So you can have fun mechanics that are quite abstract and don't, you know, there's stuff you can't do in miniatures games because they don't make any sense because they're not related to the tabletop experience of miniatures, whereas role-playing games, because you know, again, particularly in this the you know, the where we've taken this game because there is a certain physicality to it, there is a map, you have locations which are you uh will share with other characters or uh Akai. You know, there are hexes that you know and you move around, um, but you're but it's not a tactical combat game, like Mark was explaining, you know, a battle isn't one hit, one, you know. Again, you know, miniatures games tend to be very structured in that way, of they are tactical combat simulations most of the time to a certain extent. And we've kind of not really got into that for this. This is much more of a narrative experience of like doing the cool thing and very simple abstracting mechanics to resolve that in many ways. Um, but we're just with enough hook that the mechanics kind of reflect the the narrative that you've created for your character. So, yeah, it's it's one of those like 80% of the work is this kind of same, but the 20% difference of like we we don't have to make this is a different kind of experience as a playable thing. Um it's quite freeing. Um, but there's other you know, there's there's there's other limitations, you know, having to design adventures and you know um uh kind of making sure there is still enough of that into play uh for for the character, you know, for the player to get into their character stuff, not abstracting stuff too much, all that kind of stuff. Um, you know, it's things that we've kind of like been adjusting the dial on uh as we've been going through. Right.

SPEAKER_01 34:06

One thing I one thing I found along the way when I first started doing role play stuff is that it's slightly easier for old lags like us because we remember when war games were kind of like role-playing games. It's like like remote trailer and stuff, and even the precursor like laser burn and stuff like that. If you read those sets, they're just like, come on, guys. Or or even stuff like um the original Hero Quest remote manual, which is like this these rules aren't complete. Let's be honest. I'm gonna make some stuff up here. We're just kind of used to doing that and filling in the blanks with that, you know, whereas I think the the the modern school design is actually everything's gotta be covered, it's gotta be vacant, she rule sections are longer. Um I think the RPG mindset is much closer to the old school wargaming mindset, which is kind of why I find it easy to make the jump personally.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

Right. Yes, and and again, it's more toolkit, you know, a role-playing game is much more of a toolkit type approach, but here's a bunch of stuff, here's a bunch of rules, and if and you're you're equipping DMs in particular, but you know, that was one of the things we decided was like, you know, actually the person who spends the most time with that book is actually the DM. Yeah, and this just needs to be as DM friendly as possible, and the game system itself is as DM friendly as possible. So there's an adventure generator in there, the SkyG generator, all that kind of stuff, but also just as an approach of like, because the person who buys the book is the guy that runs the game, that's almost the reality again of like 30 years, 40 years of playing role-playing games. Um, that's the way he's like, oh look, I've got the book, guess who's gonna be running the games? Um, and and historically, that's not always been the case. There's always, you know, there's been kind of like this illusion that the players are gonna spend quite a lot of time with that book, and there's lots of detail about characters and things, and then they get their own books about their different classes and da-da-da-da. And the DM kind of gets left out quite a lot. Whereas like, no, we're gonna do this the other way around the DM. We're gonna try and we A, we're gonna design a game system where there's very little crossover actually. The characters, the players really concentrate on their characters, and the DM really concentrates on the adventure, and that's the thing, they're not gonna have to worry about what all your abilities do, and they're not because one, there's not that many. Um, you know, the the central mechanics cover 95% of situations, and your special rules will just tweak them a bit, and it's up to you to know your own special rules, really. Whereas again, starting out with some game systems, you know, you need the DM to be like, oh yeah, you've got a thing, don't forget your thing works with that. So we don't really try not to have any of that. The DM is worrying about what's on the adventure, what the kaiju are doing, and interpreting the player's actions and saying what's that how's that to be resolved mechanically, and then putting all that information into the book. So it's all about how to resolve what the characters want to do. That's mostly what the book answers. It's like how to say how to you know how to put things in front of them and then how do they kind of resolve that? Um, from really you know, from the rules section, which yeah, like Mark said, is actually fairly short. I mean, it's a chunky rule section, but actually, compared to a lot of role-playing games, it's pretty brief because we have lots more discursive elements elsewhere in the book. We try not to clutter the actual rules section itself, which is the same exactly the same rules in the starter book clear and in the core book, you know, literally page for page they'll be the same so that we can reference them and things. But actually, it's like it keeps those clean mechanically, they're very clean, it just tells you, and then it refers you off to other sections of the book for more discursing, for more in-depth discussion about character creation, about uh kaiju actions, about creating adventures, that kind of stuff. So you don't again, hopefully, as a reference thing during play, it should work quite um quite smoothly as well.

SPEAKER_03 37:31

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

Again, that's one of those war games thing of just like putting together, you know, there's never an ideal way to put together a rule set because you always have to introduce a concept before you can fully explain it, and then yeah, it has an exception and then another exception to the rule, and then a caveat to the exception. And that's still true, but actually, you know, presenting information in a logical or at least an intuitive fashion, I suppose, is one of the things you have just got very good at over the years.

SPEAKER_02 37:53

Um, I I did quite like in the quick start booklet that it's kind of but there's a sort of one player, a solo adventure style, sort of it leads you through the rules and kind of looks like, okay, what would you do here? Oh, you've chosen to do that to do this. Here is how you would affect that in-game. Like that's quite a nice uh way to get someone to learn the rules, I think. Is that in the sort of core book as well?

SPEAKER_00 38:19

Uh yes, so yeah, it's a separate book from the start set, and it's uh it's one of the opening sections in the core book. And again, yes, that was one of the important things of just in principle. I again I bang on endlessly to anyone who listen about rule books of all types that launch straight into the rules, but they don't actually give you an idea of the shape of the game. You don't know what you don't have no, you have no context for what you're reading. So you might mechanically understand it. I already die for this, or do that, but you don't really know what it means. And so example extended examples of play, but in this case, you know, we settled on the kind of like choose your own adventure style, slightly solo adventure type thing, which Gervis and I co-wrote. Um as a everything else after you create that context, and people kind of play through a little game and understand it. And then when you're reading the rules in detail later, you understand, oh right, okay. When I was doing that challenge, I understand that this I was actually calling a stun, and I deal with doing this, and I was doing and yeah, so you you've got that overview first, and then the T tab rules later. That was that was very important. Again, part of that, and again, there's no small number of people coming to this game from the Godzilla side of stuff, not from the role-playing game side of stuff, and this will be their first, you know, first time they've opened up a role-playing book. So, you know, we were exceptionally aware that they may have no experience at all, or only a vague experience or knowledge of what role-playing games is. So we had to we wanted to put them in the right space. And similarly, we've reproduced the 10-page kind of our introductory comic to the Kaisei era, that's in the core book of like what is the Kai say era? So again, people understand what's going on without a 60-page like history section. It's like, oh, here's the story so far, and then you start, you kind of your adventures pick up from here. Um, because again, yeah, context role-playing games require that context really of you know, why are my characters doing this? What are they trying to do? And the rules and the background kind of work together in that respect.

SPEAKER_01 40:10

I think all the number of the role-playing games I've tried to learn or try to teach with with a group of players or whatever. How how useful would it have been to have that little 10-page solo playthrough and just say your homework just one hour before you turn up is to just play through this? We all know the rules and we know what we know what we're doing. Get around the table, just start.

SPEAKER_02 40:30

Yeah, it's a great shout out, actually. Yeah, I hadn't even thought actually, yeah, you could literally get everyone all of your players to do it because it takes it's only you know ten minutes, right, to to to make your way through it to understand it.

SPEAKER_01 40:40

And the start of the rubber convention basically says if uh you if you're not played before, this is your first adventure, then get your players to play for the solo thing first and then go to the adventure.

SPEAKER_00 40:49

And again, that's one of the things is like as a modern role-playing game, one of the things we've incorporated is that idea of session zero and that opening conversation with the players about what you're trying to do and all of that kind of stuff. So that that's all again, we don't assume anyone knows that stuff, even if those experienced role players, you know, it's like, what is a session zero? You know, like how do you go about organizing playing a role-playing game and getting started and you know, uh, and you know, as opposed to just kind of usually launching, like, well, everyone creates a character and then you have an adventure and that's it. And you're like, well, hang on. I think it seems to be no, it's it's it's under pounds known territory of like, you know, one do this, do that, and then boy, adventure. Um, so we try to make sure that all the steps are there and covered and talked about, um, in a way that is very real. I suppose that's the thing a lot of this came comes from our very real experience of playing lots of role playing with different people and different systems, and try to answer as many questions before they get asked as we can.

SPEAKER_02 41:46

Yeah. Yeah. Because I suppose there's a lot of received wisdom, isn't there, when you come to the table and there's a lot of expected knowledge and stuff like that. But if you're designing something for brand new people, like you say, there's there's a lot of building blocks you need to do.

SPEAKER_00 42:00

I mean, I I guess it's it's probably sorry, because one of the other things was that some of the DMs knows is it's actually trying to we have to undercut some of that received wisdom because they're a different game system in some respects. So some of the DM's advice later on is about even if you're even if you know role-playing games, this is how to play Godzilla. Like these are some of the elements of the venture creation things that you will not necessarily have come across before. So these are you know, so I when I was writing that DM's advice, uh yeah, it was like trying not to just do it for just the beginners of like my first adventure, because actually that's quite covered. There's a procedurally generated adventure system in there that kind of gives you, and then you know, there's advice about how to fine-tune it and things, but actually, it's like what is this and what isn't this, even if you do know what role-playing games or you think you know what role-playing games already are.

SPEAKER_02 42:46

Right, yeah. Yeah, because I mean, what what what sort of differences are then? Like, what would you say are those kind of major differences for the Godzilla RPG versus you know a DD or a woof roll?

SPEAKER_00 42:57

Um, I think it's some of the stuff we've covered already. So that sense of scale, that sense of timing, using the crisis clock, um, using, I mean, again, it's not necessarily unique to this, but using those traits, using that narrative to drive stuff, uh, uh, which is you know, there's elements of like fate in there and things like that with the way keywords and stuff work, but it's not quite the same thing. So some people might be aware of that, some people might not be aware of that. And and so again, trying to get people into that space of narrat, it's it's definitely a there's there's a country system there, but it's a narrative first adventure. You know, it's like you're saying what your characters want to do rather than just we didn't want it to devolve down into a I've got you know, I'm just gonna have three trades plus three. It's like no, you you tell the DM how you're gonna resolve it. And you also, when you're paying your costs, you explain to the DM how you know how did you lose your pistol? How did you you know what, you know, why is your character, you know, what you know, what is the the willpower loss, what's that representing, all that kind of stuff. So you're telling that story, and then the mechanics are kind of there to do the things the mechanics do. Then get out of the way. And so explaining those things to play like this is how this game is supposed to be played. Um, and again, then you're removing again a lot of those arguments. It's like, oh no, we're gonna there's gonna be no discourse because we've already answered it. Um kind of thing of like, no, we've told you people what we intended the game to be like, so you know, there you go.

SPEAKER_01 44:18

Um relationships too, which a lot of RPGs don't have, yeah. Uh which is like you've got to have your kind of building an affinity with other characters and and allies, uh, or building a rivalry with them or an enity with them. You might, you know, things might go bad and you decide you hate another character. How'd you play that out? And that kind of stuff. But that's a fundamental part. That's on the character sheet, it's a fundamental part of the rules. Um, and a lot of games don't have it, but I think that kind of building relationship, telling stories together, um, affects your team of abilities, that kind of stuff. It has a repercussion in game on so much that you do. Um yeah, definitely a narrative first.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

Yeah, there's there's there's other little interesting things like interludes. So again, not I wouldn't say it was like radically new for this, but and never been used before. But like the again, the reality was sometimes because of the scales and things like uh we need to travel quite a distance. Well, travel is the main thing, or you need to spend a night in hospital or whatever, because the because the rounds uh you know that are uh are quite long and you do quite a bit, but you don't necessarily have that many of them necessarily. You know, it's quite a compressed action because it is a comic style adventure and things. So we've got the idea of interludes, like if you need to get on a plane and literally fly to a different city, right? Well, because of the crisis clock, it's like, well, we don't want to spend six hours equivalent game time of just like, oh, well, here's another card in the crisis clock because it just doesn't work. So we have the idea of interludes where you essentially cut away from the action. Uh the players get a couple of special interlude kind of actions and you add a couple of cards to the crisis clock. Um, so that kind of just gives us again, it's it very much focuses on the narrative aspect and the storytelling aspect of it. Of like you can do a quick meanwhile, because it's like it's not that interesting just to be flying somewhere for six hours across the United States, whatever to oh, we're trying to get to Miami. Okay, interlude. Oh, well done, you're now in Miami. Um, and you you you made friends and you healed up a bit along the way, but also Godzilla is a bit closer towards the city centre. Um and in the and in the same vein, we also have or mentioned earlier nemesis points. So it's all fun for for players to get hero points, and as I said, hero points you can spend. We have a thing called downtime, which is like essentially between adventures, you have downtime. You do downtime activities, you spend hero points to increase your stats and you know do cool stuff. But the DM has nemesis points, and that you've got two main roles. The main role is actually as one, there are a cost you can pay. So actually, if you mess up on something, you can as a cost, you can give the DM a nemesis point. Nemesis points add to the difficulty of all challenges. So just as nemesis points accrue, everything gets harder, including the kaiju and the saves against the kaiju attacks and everything else. So you don't want to be doing it too often. One of the rewards you can get is to take a nemesis point off the DM.

SPEAKER_03 47:04

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:04

So you've got this varying thing, but actually, again, like the players in downtime, the DM can spend nemesis points to uh give new abilities to kaiju and things like that. So even if you've got a kaiju coming back several times, like say how do you keep it fresh? Well, actually, this time this kaiju now breathes fire. Um, because I've spent I've I've changed one of its attacks or I've added to its abilities, or I've done this thing, because I've spent my nemesis points in downtime. So again, the DM is part of the DM is another player. DM still gets to do cool stuff, they're not just there to do your bookkeeping for you. They um they get to so as they're planning the next adventure, they'll be like, I've actually spent some, I've got three nemesis points, I'm gonna add this in and I'm gonna do this, and actually, yeah, it's gonna uh you know, uh Anguirus is gonna come back, but this time he's yeah, he's got lightning bolt eyeballs or whatever, I don't know. Um so uh yeah, so that that was again explaining how to use nemesis points, and again, those things that you don't necessarily see in role-playing games.

SPEAKER_02 48:01

Yeah, that's great. I mean, that's they fail like quite nice, like cinematic mechanisms, and like the even down to like you know, that having that downtime sort of the the ability to do globe trotting adventures, and like yeah, you say go across America and go to different locations, but that's still accounted for within time within the game's own timeline. You know, the clock is still ticking, the the kaiju are still out there doing stuff, and yeah, that's that's pretty nice. Um I mean I I I'm I'm really curious as well, just about like you know, you said Gav that you you came on and you you reached out to Mark and Tajus, like getting the band back together sort of vibes of like because obviously you've all all worked at Games Workshop together in the past. So like like how how has it been working together again as a as a team? Uh I guess on something completely different.

SPEAKER_00 48:55

I mean it's been great. I mean, for for me, uh obviously I've uh particularly recently I did quite a lot of work with Andy Chambers again on Warlord games and Cenesis stuff. So getting the chance Jovis was there a lot longer with them, you know, GW and stuff. So but you know, it was it's been great because I've not worked with Jovis for what 19 years now, you know. Um so I say I see Mark a lot more often role-playing stuff, but again, it was nice to to actually like say uh share a project rather than just like play one.

SPEAKER_01 49:27

Um yeah, I think we all know in quantities as well, we kind of know each other's strengths, and uh we can we can play to that as kind of assigning um things to do for each other for each other's pretty easy because I you're good at that, you can do that. That kind of thing. And uh yeah, so I've I've worked with James more recently than Gavett Games Workshop, I think, um, as an editorial capacity. And uh we worked together on a project about a year ago, um, which is a game we designed, which thanks to the vagaries of client-based work, is never going to see the light of day. Oh wow. An original Mart Later and James Johnson Dungeon Crawl that will never be published. So sad. Terribly vexing. Um but but yeah, so I've worked with Jervis quite recently, and I've I've all played with Gav pretty much every fortnight for God knows how long now. So fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 50:19

That's great. Well, so uh I mean I guess the the sort of final questions then are the are around the actual release of the game. So it's on Kickstarter right now, right? It's already been funded, right? Is it yeah?

SPEAKER_00 50:28

Yes, yes, funded is heading towards the uh$200,000 stretch goal. So it's got upgraded book and components and you know, does all that kind of stuff. Um so yeah, there's about a week left. Right. Uh just over a week left as of recording. Um but the thing is, yeah, uh it's a fixed, it's you know, it's fixed on stuff, but actually, as Mark alluded to earlier, we go we've literally just finished the first draft of the well, in fact, most of the manuscript is like it's done and is going into just copy edit and layout and stuff. There's a couple of bits we might you know we'll have to go through, but actually the manuscript's all done, it's almost designed, it just needs laying out and then editorial and stuff. So it's not one of those, like, oh, there's gonna be problems like IGW is a large publishing company. They don't like Ellen, the the editor has been very much on our you know, it's like this due now, right? Okay, when are you gonna get the second draft of this in? When are you gonna be so you know uh there's none of this, oh we just decided to add an extra section in and it's gonna be another six months late. It's like you know, it's part of a big, a big publishing machine, essentially, that we uh fed words into, um, and then that will happen. So I think it's due for release, or at least sorry, it's due for delivery. October, maybe it'll be on the thing, but essentially it's gonna be, you know, uh as the Kickstarter finishes, that's going into production and then printed and shipping and stuff like that over the summer, and then it'll be there. And then I think that it I think as Ellen mentioned, it'll be retail release next year. So there's gonna be a gap as well between it's not gonna be like, oh yeah, get your Kickstarter and then two weeks later it's in the stores. It's like the the the kick there is a Kickstarter exclusive cover, all that kind of stuff, but also there's probably about I think a four or five month lead time at least. I don't know exactly when 2027 was coming out, but there's a you know, get your hands on it now and then because the the the retail production run will then kick in at some point, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 52:17

Right. Sure. I mean and I know this is probably a ridiculous question given that it's you know you're literally still working on it and it is in a Kickstarter right now, but like is there a prospective potential future to like you know, with are there supplements in mind or ideas floating around or cool stuff you'd like to do if the opportunity arises?

SPEAKER_00 52:37

Uh we hope so. Obviously, we can't talk too much about that. Uh and you know, I mean the Kickstarter's been a success, it's funded, there's lots of people. Um, so hopefully, you know, um IDW have set up games divisions to do this. I don't expect they would just plan to do one game and then close it down again. So, you know, the uh the the the goal is we will we want it to create a game that's going to be on shelves for a long time. And yeah, the the the comics and things have got plenty of legs to it. Um, you know, we've we've written this that it's self-contained, it works, you know, you can create loads of different adventures, and let's say it's got you know, you can generate your own antagonists and all the rest of it stuff. So it doesn't re it it doesn't require any more supplements, but obviously there are lot there's lots more cards. Uh we could do this there's spin-off comics and stuff like that, but yeah, that's all kind of like reliant on the market being there for it, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 53:27

Yeah, it's never the lack of ideas, that's the problem, is it? So well, Mark, Gav, thank you both so much for joining me.

SPEAKER_02 53:36

This has been a great chat. I'm really excited to see more of it because yeah, it's it's this you you've you've really brought it to life. It sounds really cool. So I think it'll be really fun. Thank you. Great to chat to you. Colossal kaiju sized thanks to Mark and to Gab for taking the time to chat to me about their work on Godzilla. If you would like to find out more, then you can check out the Kickstarter page. I've linked it in the description. The Kickstarter is live until I think the 2nd of April, so there should be a little bit of time to get involved if you fancy that. And if you happen to be attending PAX East in Boston this weekend, then you'll be able to have a demo game of Godzilla, the role-playing game, and you can tell us all what you think about it because we're eager to know. Thank you once again to Gav and Mark for talking to me. Thank you for joining us. I'm Jordan, and this is Jordan Sorcery.