Roll to Save
Three middle-aged nerds dive deep into the golden age of tabletop RPGs, covering the classics from the 80s and 90s that shaped the hobby we love today. Iain and Jason banter their way through gaming history while Steve desperately tries to keep them on topic—and occasionally succeeds.
Whether you're a grognard who lived through THAC0 or a newcomer curious about what to do with all those lovely polyhederal dice you've aquired, we've got you covered with historical deep-dives, roundtable discussions fueled by questionable nostalgia, and actual play episodes where our players' competence is... variable.
All of this released on a schedule that can charitably be called "flexible" at best.
Grab some dice and join us for a trip down memory lane—just don't ask us to commit to when the next episode will drop.
Roll to Save
Clay, Cards, and Character Deaths - an Interview with Jon Cohen from Tale of the Manticore
Stakes make stories breathe. We sit down with Jon Cohen - writer, host, and designer behind Tale of the Manticore and One Shot in the Dark - to explore why consequence beats comfort, how a hybrid format turns solo play into gripping audio drama, and what it takes to build a one-shot that actually ends in one sitting. Jon walks us through the creative risks, the craft, and the quiet discipline that keeps a polished episode shipping every 10 days without losing the sting in its tail.
We also talk about One Shot in the Dark, John’s rules ultra-light dungeon crawl where cards prompt the map you draw, four hapless adventurers push forward through three levels, and a final boss waits at the end. It’s emergent narrative with real replay value and a surprisingly welcoming on-ramp for kids and new players.
If you're interested in checking out One Shot in the Dark it can be found here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/366526/one-shot-in-the-dark
Likewise, Tale of the Manticore is here: https://www.taleofthemanticore.com/
Contact us at:
EMAIL: roll.to.save.pod@gmail.com
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/rolltosavepod
WEBSITE: https://rolltosave.blog
HOSTS: Iain Wilson, Steve McGarrity, Jason Downey
BACKGROUND MUSIC: David Renada (Find him at: davidrendamusic@gmail.com or on his web page).
TITLE, BREAK & CLOSEOUT MUSIC: Xylo-Ziko (Find them on their web page).
Welcome to Roll2Save history podcast. So hello and welcome to another episode of Roll to Save. Today we have the pleasure of being joined by a longtime friend of the podcast, John Cohen, writer and host of the wonderful Tale of the Manticore podcast. John, it has been a while. How are you?
Jon:I'm really good again, and it is very good to be back and uh great to be hanging out with you again. It's been too long.
Iain:It has been too long indeed. Yeah, last time we spoke, actually, I was tormenting you in the game of Paranoia. You were one of our wonderful voice actors for our critically acclaimed episodes of Paranoia. That was a joy.
Jon:Folks, if you haven't heard that, if you haven't heard that, go and listen to that. Not not for my performance, but some of the players are hysterical. That was a that was a great run.
Iain:Anyway, John, how are you? What have you been up to gaming-wise recently? Because again, it's been a while.
Jon:Outside of the podcast, uh, which is a game that just is always there. Uh, I've got a couple of online games. We're just talking about that a bit before we hit the red button. And one of them is a weekly Mithras game, which I didn't mention before, and it's my first time with that system. And I have mix I have mixed feelings about Mithras. It's clearly um it's made with love, for sure, but because it's so simulationist, it does tend to make for a very slow game. So if you're okay with a very slow-moving plot, combat that takes uh excessive time, uh hours, um, then it then it might be the system for you. I know it's a lot of people's favorite system. It's a bit of a shock because we pivoted from OSC to Mithras. So we went from this very high tempo kind of thing to this very slow slog. But we're all kind of thinking, well, we need to learn the system, and then once we learn the system, maybe it'll it'll kind of speed up a bit. So that's interesting. And then I'm in a second campaign, which is a it's such a classic. It's a uh OSC keep on the borderlands game. It doesn't get more classic than that.
Iain:Yeah, I love keeping the borderlands. That was one of my well, I see I love I think the last time I played Keeping the Borderlands, I was probably 11 years old, but I have very, very fond memories of it. It's got the nostalgia hit for sure. It's super detailed. Like I've got the Goodman Games remake of it, where it does a it does a fifth ed version and the classic version, and the level of detail is obsessive in the original because it was obviously like we're gonna make this town for you, right, and it's gonna be your base of operations, and you're gonna go forth and do stuff, and yeah, there's it's it's a lot of fun. But I'm glad it holds up after all these years. It's curious what you say about Mithras because last time we spoke in like this setting, which was probably about four years ago, you actually mentioned Mithras as one of the games that you wanted to get into.
Jon:Oh my gosh, did I? You know, the last couple of years have really been about me trying to at least once play all of these games that I missed while I was in the deep freeze because you know I I kind of stepped away from for for literal decades from the hobby, and when I came back, there was so much stuff, and so much stuff that people loved in sort of online conversations and and with all the cyber friends that you make. People mention these things, and I had no experience with any of them at all, including 5e when I came back, and so it it takes a while to hook up all of these experiences because it's not always easy to find a game. Even online game is sometimes not easy to find, but my my preference, uh like a live table game, can be really, really difficult to dis to discover, uh, and to find a uh a good one where the the people gel in the correct way is that's practically a unicorn. Um my my hit rate is low. Uh yeah, I'm not doing a great job at finding a live table game which will stick. Um I've had some success, but um but I've had some failures too.
Iain:It's hard to find a table game that will match your t your taste, mainly because when you're doing an online game, it's usually your core group or people that you know through similar circles, and therefore your tastes are likely to be aligned. But when you're finding a pickup game, it will literally be Randos. Yeah. And you know, for everyone who wants to play a game like you, there's one guy who would be more at home playing Avalon Hill War games, but he's decided to translate that into DD, and there's another kid who's you know been watching YouTube videos about how to optimise his character build and gets very upset that he's not actually playing a video game. I don't want to surprise you, but there are some strange people out there. We actually talked about this on our we did an episode about Mindseye Theatre, which is a world of darkness LARPing from back in the day. Uh. And I have never in all my years as somebody running games found more of a magnet for genuine oddballs than that. And don't be wrong, I've had some of my best gaming experiences through Vampire LARPs. Yeah. But also it's been the only occasion where as an adult I've had to actually kick people out of games for just how they're behaving. Because one of the things with these LARPs is you really, by their very nature, need a large body of players. Yeah. And while I had never quite subscribed to the come one, come all approach, I would be open to when people are like, Oh, here, my friend from out of town wants to come in and join the game, can they? Like, sure, you know, have them come along, and then like some freak in a trench coat turns up who's more interested in like sexually harassing all the female players, and you're like, Oh, great, we're gonna have the conversation again.
Jon:There we go, it's the hobby, it's the hobby we love.
Iain:It is that it's a nature of the beast, yes. Yeah, so I mentioned before, obviously, long-time listeners will know this, but you are the writer and host of Tale of the Manticord, and you're not what your like third season now, like the 50 plus episode into your third season. I also I'm so envious of the fact you reliably release an episode every 10 days, which is something I am incredibly jealous of. Your your output is prolific, and it's not just your prolific, the quality is prolific as well. Like, every episode is incredibly polished, you write it well, it's very well produced, and I'm like, how does he do this every 10 days? Whereas I spend my time getting rid of the ums and ahs that me, Jason, and Steve drop into our conversations all the time, and I'm like, editing is hell.
Jon:There's parts of making uh shows like ours that are not fun, right? It's just work.
Iain:But let them see behind the cotton joint.
Jon:There's something about seeing the accumulation of the story getting bigger over time and attracting listeners and just seeing the thing grow. That's really satisfying. And I'm just addicted to doing it, and so I've just made it all of my hobbies are now this one. They all funnel into the show in one way or another.
Iain:So if you were to talk to a new listener, give us our brief synopsis then of the difference between seasons one, two, and three of Manticore. Like you talk about watching it grow, you've obviously seen it grow, and as listeners, we've seen it grow over the three seasons. How would you describe that to a brand new listener if you were pitching it to them?
Jon:Right. I I guess I should go back even one step. And if for people that aren't familiar with the show, the concept is basically it's it's the collision between an actual play and an audio drama. And so it kind of vacillates between those two states. You know, talk about the game, playing the game as an actual play, as a solo actual play, uh just to make things more complicated, and then pivot into a dramatized, you know, third-person past tense version of it with music, with sound effects, and over time adding things like voice actors. And the and the reason that's meaningful is because I can do things in the audio drama portion that are not available in actual play games, like flashbacks, uh, extreme point of view shifts, things that wouldn't work at a table game, do work in this hybrid medium. Okay, so now to get back to your actual question. This the seas season one, I just wanted it to be, um, as as somebody who's returning to the to the hobby after a long time away, I wanted it to be like a love letter to my early gaming experiences. And I was I had selected BX uh D D mostly because it works well with the audio medium because it so rules light, and I wouldn't have to spend much time in explanation, I wouldn't have to put a a load on the listener of things to keep track of, which I think for the audio medium is important. And so with BX, I just did a a deep dive into all of those classic tropes. And so season one for me is it's about classic DD. There's green slime, there's a dragon at the end, you know, it's it's all of the things.
Iain:Sparless John, come on.
Jon:Yeah, it's full of cliches, but but very deliberately so, you know, in in love letters style, in in homage style. And and then also season one is a bit is about me learning how to do podcasting, and it's about me learning how to do this uh kind of new medium where it's where it's a hybrid, and uh I just kind of feeling out the boundaries and trying to innovate further and further and further. Uh season two. I thought, well, I'll do what I didn't do in season one and try and do a kind of uh urban environment, and my intention was to do a more complicated plot. I'm I succeeded in the urban environment. I'm not sure that I succeeded in a more complicated plot in the end, uh, but that was the original idea to have sort of different factions and how they would influence each other. Kinda Game of Thrones uh inspired idea there. And then again, urban, much lower fantasy, like human characters, nothing but human characters, I think, and darker, and and sort of explore almost fantasy slash horror. And then season three, which is my current season, about two th I'm about halfway through in terms of publishing and about two-thirds of the way through in terms of script writing. That one again is a um just uh contrast. Uh, and I thought, well, I'll t I'm gonna take a risk here. I'm gonna do higher fantasy, which is not even my preference, but I thought I'm gonna try it. I'm gonna try a female protagonist, and instead of an ensemble group, really actually have a main character, which can be dangerous because I promise at the beginning of every episode that characters aren't sacred, they don't have plot armor, they can die, and that is true, and so I thought, oh, if I do a main character, they could die, and I will have to deal deal with that. I won't spoil and say whether that has happened or not, but but yeah, season three has been dare I say lighter tone, higher fantasy, moved away from horror. It's still not for kids, it's still very much for adults, but this one channels in season two I was thinking like Martyrs. Game of Thrones, you know, exploring like real dread, uh trying to anyway. And in this season, I'm thinking more like Dark Crystal, Wizard of Oz. It's it's a lighter, higher fantasy, but it's I still wanted to feel ugly and gross under the skin. Because I always felt like as a kid they're the best time bandits, dark crystal, these things that sort of grabbed me as a child, they were always kind of ugly under the surface, and that's there's something there that I loved, so I'm constantly trying to capture that idea of it's light, but it's also really dark.
Iain:Uh, at the same time, I think you've succeeded in getting that contrast between the seasons because like season one, you're absolutely right, very much BX uh D D. Yeah, that it it I think it conjured that vibe perfectly. I would say with your season two, it gave me much more Warhammer fantasy roleplay than DD in terms of the urban environment, and like you say, the the underlying horror to it. That that's one thing I always like with Warhammer, I always try to explain it to people. It's much more, it's got more in common with Call of Cthulhu than it has with Dungeons and Dragons. I get that because it's this low fantasy with like horror underneath. I really enjoy your third season. I know you say it's like more high fantasy, but it's I think it's because I've been along for the really since the beginning and seen like this change in style, and I I like how you've you you flipped that uh because it is the change from the ensemble cast to the the solo protagonist. Um it's I think as a long time listener, I I wasn't like, oh my god, what's he done here? It was like, oh, this is interesting, let's see, let's see where this goes. And I'm sure that's the the feedback you've had. I think people enjoy the fact that it's not just this never-ending saga, it's like you have these defined start and end points of we're gonna do something new now, yeah, and that really works well. I also loved what you you said there about uh people dying. One of the things that's beautiful about your podcast is there'll be characters that people get dearly attached to, yeah, and then they die in usually horrible circumstances. Like I still remember the very first time someone died in your first season, uh-huh, and it was a character I really liked. I'm like, oh my god, he just killed him. I remember it too. I remember that. Killed them, yeah. And what's that like as a writer when you've um created those characters that presumably you've got attached to, and then you're like, oh, I'm gonna have to write this guy's death scene.
Jon:It's I think there's a couple of things that I could talk about there. One of them is that it's the same feeling when you make a character at a table game and you bond with them, and if they die, you you mourn them. It's it's very real. That feeling of loss and and that feeling of worry when you might lose them, and then you do. And then you almost kind of you're in denial for a moment. You go through all the all the classic sort of stages, right? Oh, there's the bargaining. Oh, maybe I maybe I can juke the numbers, so that didn't happen. But if you want to be honest with yourself, then you have to accept it. The second thing to say is, and again, I'm gonna say this is like game like a like a table game, because because my show is in many ways, I don't know about most, in many ways, it is like a table game. The death of a character makes the the larger picture so much more effective because now it is understood there are stakes, there are there are things that could be lost, and so now there's real tension, there's real excitement. It's something that I feel is missing from some of the more some of the games that I've tried since coming back to the hobby. I I keep talking about 5e, and I don't mean to cast a lot of shade on 5e, but for me it just feels it's just not dangerous enough. For for me again. Uh I want to feel those stakes. Um, that's why I do gravitate towards uh the OSC or you know Cthulhu, which every time I've played it, it's always been like, you are going to die, but let's try and make it so cool and make it make the story a better, richer thing. Whenever it happens in in Manticore, I feel that morning, but I also know that it's going to make the the show better.
Iain:Yeah, you're absolutely right about that um aspect of character death adding to stories. Like I I enjoy DD fifth ed, but I feel it's very insulated against death. Like you have death saves. Yeah. Like you lose all your hit points and you have like three chances to get out of jail. Right, right. And you know, if your party hasn't come and rendered you know first aid by that point. So it's very, very hard to die in it. But I've always I run games more than play them, but when I've played games, I almost take a perverse satisfaction in my character dying in a way that facilitates narrative. I remember a game of Legends of the Five Rings that I played years ago, and my character and my amigos were in the Shadowlands, which is Legends of the Five Rings kind of kind of hell realm that exists next to the main setting, and we were like desperately trying to get back to um the Empire to warn them of this big threat, and we're getting chased by this whole big horde of nasties, and it was evident that the nasties were gonna gain on us, and I was the only character with a horse, and I think there was a bit of well, maybe he could ride ahead and get help. And I turned around to the rest of them and said, Right, go, I've got this. And I said, Okay, I turned my horse around and I gun it towards the you know the the enemies. So the the GM took me aside and he's like, Okay, what was your plan here? I'm like, I'm just gonna go out in a blaze of glory and buy them time. It's like your character will die. I'm like, I don't care, right? It's just like a samurai drama that's giving his life. That's great, and it was one of the coolest sessions because he's narrating what's happening, and the rest of the players are like, they don't know that my character's going to die. So they're all like, yeah, he's doing all this stuff, and then he dies. Right. And they're like, wait, what? And suddenly hit them like he's given his life that we can escape with this message.
Jon:That's story, man. That's where story lives, right?
Iain:Exactly, and that's what it is. And I don't care that this character was like a two-year-old character with loads of experience points. I get to play something else now, but it was silly. A great part of the and it's when I used to see players getting bent out of shape when they lost a character, saying a vampire LARP that I ran, and I get it because people are invested, but at the same time, it's like your if your character's demise contributes to the story. Ultimately, this is pretendy fan time games, yeah, so you can do something else, right? So don't take it out on the you know, don't try and get the player who took out your character, he's still acknowledged that they played well and then play something else and move on. But I could rant for hours about that. I used to see that so often in those games. People, I'm gonna get him. Like, why? Why killed my character? Your character your new character doesn't know that. Your new character is a completely different person, be an adult. Absolutely.
Jon:Yeah, I I think that the thing to fear is not a character death, it is a character ignoble death. You don't if you if you die by you know from a giant rat, that's that just sucks. I think there's no way around it. That just sucks. Or if a kobold kills your character, that just sucks.
Iain:Mind you, at the same time, I run more Hammer Fantasy roleplay where you can literally die of the cold. You know, you're out in the rain, your character starts getting the snippels, and oh yeah, he's dead. Sorry, because socialized healthcare doesn't exist.
Jon:That one's still on my list.
Iain:That's good, yeah. Well, I I I will have to run a game of it for you sometime. It's it's a lot of fun. If by fun really being in the mud in this kind of low fantasy vibe, is your thing. That's where I thrive. Anyway, speaking of low fantasy vibes, there's another thing you do as well as Tail of the Mantico, which is why I wanted to get you on today. Yeah, you've got a little game of your own called One Shot in the Dark. Now, I've had a lot of fun with this, but rather than have me gush and fanboy all over it, tell our listeners what one shot in the dark is and where they can get it.
Jon:One Shot in the Dark is a solo one-shot fantasy game. Um, so it can be played with up to four players, but it's really designed for one. But but that's it, it does work for up to four. It's a fantasy game where you draw cards which give you a prompt, you draw a map, and you move four classic trope characters, fighter, cleric, mage, thief, through three levels of a dungeon to fight the big boss, which is also randomly determined at the end. The selling point is that it's a one-shot, that's really a one-shot. It really takes about between an hour and an hour and a half to play the game, and it has replay value because there are so many random elements. I'm always doing a terrible terrible job at explaining what it is. Uh the other feature of the game, really, my elevator pitches need work. The other, I guess, feature of the game is that it takes an idea from The Quiet Year, which is a game where you also draw cards with prompts on them and develop a map, uh, kind of freeform. And and this does the same kind of thing. So you don't draw, you know, um, dungeon tiles which build a map for you. It'll just say something like large cavern, two exits. You draw it, it's gonna look different for everybody. And and even even some of the enemies are, you know, the thing in the pit, uh, what is that? And then it's up to you to come up with these elements as as you play.
Iain:I'm gonna use a very pretentious term here, but the thing that I loved about it was the emergent narrative aspect of it. Yeah. Like this whole theory about RPGs that you know the story isn't what you as the GM writes, it's what emerges through gameplay.
Jon:Yeah, the byproduct, yeah.
Iain:Yeah, whenever players talk about like sessions I've run, I'm always happy when they're not actually talking necessarily about things I've written, but I remember that time where you know John did XYZ, that was really cool. You get that with this, because as you said, the prompts are not specific. Yeah, they encourage your imagination. And one thing I love about solo RPGs, and it's probably the frustrated writer in me, is that creation aspect of taking those prompts and saying, Okay, what does that actually look like? Uh-huh. Because what it looks like in your head is way cooler than anything that could be written down in a prompt, and it's similar to again what you see when you run an RPG, that's how players envisage something in their head is usually far better than you as a GM could could ever describe it. It's like one of the reasons I like doing in games if people are on their journey, like from point town A to town B, I'll often say to my players, Describe to me what happens in the 3D journey. Tell me what happens, yeah, and what's in their head is far better, and you get that with this game. Like I was I remember when you were first making it and you said, Hey, do you mind checking this out? and I had a look at it. I think I told you at the time I get kind of obsessive about the map making making aspect of it, uh-huh. Like drawing these maps that the came even my party died horribly on like the first level, it was just seeing this map come to life for this blank piece of paper, yeah, and suddenly you've got this whole story told out there that you know they went from here to there to there and then died to the thing in the pit. But it's it's very good for for prompting that. And in terms of playing it, you just need a deck of cards, right?
Jon:Deck of cards, set of dice, polyhedral dice, and a pencil and paper for your map. And that's that's it. It's extremely rules light. I think I call it like a rules ultra-light. The instructions, I think, are about a dozen pages, and then there's an example of play. I think the whole booklet is eight, seventeen or eighteen pages. It's been a while, but it's really brief, but but all by design. Like, I don't want someone to have to study this thing in order to play it. It should be like look, understand, pick up and play, and you're going. You should be able to, within five or ten minutes, be able to start and know exactly what's going on. And as you play, that sort of like reference back should be minimal, if if at all. After you've played it a few times, you don't have to reference back at all. Uh, but that's the idea, that it should be like fast, light, and also complete in a short amount of time. That was that was my that was sort of one of the raison d'etre of the game, is that uh it's so rare to find a one-shot that is one-shottable. And so I thought, oh, there's a niche for this because that doesn't exist as much as people think it does. Usually things get chopped or you know, it the story doesn't end, but this one is it very much can be done in an hour and a half.
Iain:One of my favorite games is the alien RPG. I love the whole alien universe, the alien franchise. In the start set, the posit the adventure there as a one-shot, it's easily like five sessions of play. Yeah, I mean it happens all the time. Yeah, and you hear that on online when people are like, oh, this is a one-shot adventure, and I'm like, but why would you be eight episodes out of the the one-shot? I know that when we were doing paranoia, I specifically made every adventure. I mean, paranoia is very easy to make a one-shot because everyone dies. Yes. But I lose interest in the never-ending story. These these things that go on forever. It's it's why I think if you look at episodic content, like TV series, etc., they go over certain several seasons, but every season wraps something up and you start something new. And I think it's why we've gone down to like this 10-12 episode format for seasons. If you remember back in the that the early 2000s, which was the height really of like the big box set type TV series, uh-huh. Each season was 24 episodes.
Jon:That's like Sopranos and stuff, right?
Iain:Yeah, yeah, right. So much of it was filler. Like I've started I do this every couple of years in a slightly autistic way. I rewatch the X-Files, but I love the X-Files. Wow. But you realise how much of the X-Files is padding, especially like in the later seasons, where they're just like, oh man, we've really got to get a whole season out of this. Well, you know, I guess they're gonna go and find Nessie in this episode. Like, come on, guys. Right. That's what that's what happens when you have these huge episodic formats where you you know you just can't fit it all in, and having something that is you know, circling back to what we're talking about there, that is a genuine one-shot, that is just a story you tell and that's done. That is, I think, one of the appeals of this game. And I remember when you were first positing it, and one of the things you did ask me is what you said there is can you sit down and get started with this like quickly? Yeah, and yeah, you you can, it's like super simple. There's no it's not like you need to have the player's handbook next to you or you know the some other rule book. It's as you say, incredibly rules light, yeah, but also fun with it. Like a lot of rules doesn't necessarily make a game fun. I'm a big fan of incredibly complicated war games. Right. Some of them on their own that I've never actually played to fruition because I'm like, I I'm not really that interested in tracking how oil moves across the Pacific in 1942.
Jon:And the buy-in. You gotta not only you have to learn the rules, you have to convince other players to learn these and let's just be honest, when you're an adult, your your time is at a premium. I don't know about you, but my interest in reading a 300-page rule book is low. Well, when I was a child, yes. Yes, please. As an adult, I just kinda want to get going. It's what it's one of the beauties of paranoia, is like, boom, you don't have to read I never read a book. You just go. You just go.
Iain:You're not all you're not allowed to know the rules for paranoia.
Jon:That that game is a wonderful thing, by the way, and I have to say thank you for introducing me to that.
Iain:Paranoia is a ton of fun. One thing I love about paranoia is that when you write a scenario for paranoia, so I I've done a lot of convention games of Paranoia, and I write a scenario for it, and I play test it with my like my group, and it always goes completely differently from how the group that I run it for the convention runs it, and then if I run it as an actual play, it goes completely different again. I'm like, I don't actually need to write an adventure, I just need to write six dysfunctional characters, put them in a box, and talk to them for four hours and watch them try to kill each other in hilarious ways. There was a game I ran. Once where I've been running it with my my group like on a sort of weekly basis, and then I ran an adventure, and it's one of actually the longest paranoia adventures because it's not a one-shot because it's deliberately designed that way. It's in there's a paranoia adventure book called WMD, and I love this adventure. One day I'm tempted to make it an actual play because it is very, very dark, it's called Hunger, and it's basically about failing upwards. And in this, the players get rapidly promoted, basically through incompetence. It's almost like a comment in corporate America where everyone's invested in their own success. And if it means that lying about the success of a project to promote themselves, well, so be it. So the players rapidly, rapidly get promoted in clearance, and they got to a point where they're in charge of this project and they're assigned a team of red troubleshooters, and the true horror of the setting hits them when they realise that they, as the higher-ups, have no idea what they're doing, and that them as the lower downs have no idea what they're doing, but they're armed with high-tech energy weapons, so they give them busy work to keep them out of their hair. And one of my players had the awful realisation of oh my god, this is why every paranoia adventure happens, isn't it? Yes, that's the true horror of the setting. What you say about the rules is correct. I've found it before, and again, it's not to bash in DD Fifth Ed. I genuinely enjoy DD Fifth Ed and think it's done a ton in terms of visibility for the hobby. One of the criticisms some people have of DD Fifth Ed is oh, it's fun time story games, but I've never really had that experience with DD. Like, World of Darkness games are very much what I call story games, it's about who your character is, they're in a struggle, blah blah blah. DD, my experience of Fifth Ed, most of anything else, is a lot of people treat it as a very simulationist game where the need to like maximize the efficiency of the like the t the term that drives me wild is when people are like, Oh, the action economy for my character, like it's not a video game, right? And you see that like there's interactions I have with players where you get to combat and they start coming out with all this stuff. I'm like, I don't even know what half of this stuff is. Yeah, and people start telling me, Oh, your character could do this and your character can do that. I'm like, can he? I I didn't know we can't. Oh well, if you do X, Y, and Z, that means you can then Okay, um, I backstab him.
Jon:Yeah, that's I think we're of yes, we're of the same mind on that one. Yeah, I think it comes down to in a world where everything is special, nothing feels special. And so when your first level character can fly or fling fire bolts and do misty step or whatever the other things are, it I just don't I have a hard time understanding like who okay, who is this character? How did they how did they achieve this level of power? Why will they have farmer up until 5e? Right Yeah, but but I think maybe maybe it comes down to people enjoy the dopamine hit of imagining their character doing the heroic thing, and when they put together 5e, they just sort of listened to the public who said, This part is fun for me, and then they did more of that until it became what it is. Uh again, no shade, it's it's all taste, it's all taste.
Iain:Some of that can be fun, like sometimes it is fun to be you know Aragon from Lord of the Rings who can just you know take everything like a champ and be super heroic. But again, there's I don't know if it's a masochistic part of me, there has to be some element of risk. It's one of the reasons I hated the Hobbit movie adaptations that they made. There was never any moment in those where I ever felt that the main characters were in peril. Uh-huh. They were not going to die, nothing bad was ever gonna happen to any of them. And yes, if you've read the story, you know that's the case. So, however, if you're a new person coming to the movie, you might think that these characters and situations, and in fact, to take another level, it's something that put me off House of the Dragon. Like I love Game of Thrones, but there's an episode in the first season of House of the Dragon where one character basically storms the beach on his own. Yeah. And the only reason he succeeds is through the incompetence of the bad guys and the fact they attack him one at a time.
Jon:Yeah.
Iain:And I'm like, you're not making him heroic. He just happens to be very good at one-on-one fighting. Right. If he was actually rushed by an army, he'd be dead. And it's why I fell out of love with the later series of Game of Thrones. There's that. I think it's the sixth season where like Jon Snow faces down a whole army on his own, and it's like, yeah, he's obviously not going to die. Oh, look, another army rides in to save him. He just lot lost that appeal. Um to circle that back to your podcast, you never get the feeling your characters are safe because there'll be characters who it's not like they're running around with one arm hanging off, and you're like, Oh, poor old fella looks like he's got to come in from there's characters who will be completely healthy and will end up dying in ignoble ways, yeah. Because the as you say, the the dice happened to go and up today is your day to die, and I think that's very refreshing because a lot of actual plays it is main character syndrome for everyone who you're listening to, yeah. And you know, nobody can nobody can possibly die. And again, to go to paranoia, it's one of the reasons I think people enjoy paranoia, and I've seen it especially with people who are longtime fifth-head DD players, they take almost glee out of the fact that everything is so fragile. Uh-huh. If you remember our very first actual play we did, nobody died for a while, but then when the first character died, it was almost like someone had ripped the bandage off. Yeah. Cool, it's open, and suddenly people are dying later.
Jon:Now we're rushing like lemmings off a cliff. Yeah. Oh, this is how it's supposed to be done. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, we're supposed to spend our lives frivolously.
Iain:Let's let's go, let's go. So to take it back to your to your one shot in the dark, where can people get hold of this delightful game?
Jon:It's available only on drive-thru rpg. Uh, however, there'd been some developments since um since since you saw it last, maybe. It grew some legs and and sort of found its audience. Uh stran strangely, one of the ways that it landed was people would use it to teach their kids how to play, like, as a as a sort of bridge into role-playing games. And so it found an audience with kids, which is so strange because my podcast is so absolutely not for kids. And One Shot in the Dark was not intended for kids despite being simple, but it did find a home there, and people would constantly send me pictures of them playing with their kids, or the map with the scary monsters on it that their kids made, and genuinely very heartwarming for me and amazing experience. Not the least because it was so completely unexpected. Besides that, the original game and all of this stuff is on Drive-Thru RPG, and I'm gonna add for extremely cheap, it's a buck fifty for the core game, and all the other things are 99 cents, I think. I decided if the game sold enough copies, I would make an expansion. And so there is an expansion now. It's called Return to Dwarivar, and it it sort of um taps into a story thread from season one. A kind of an unresolved story thread of season one. Uh, you don't have to have ever heard the podcast to play the game, by the way. Um so a bit of a bit of fan service and fun for me to explore that, but uh again, you could play the game without knowing a thing about that lore. Uh again, the the load on the player or the listener is is very, very light. Uh, and then I also put out, because a lot of people had made um expansions like one shot in the dark but only goblins was one, there's one shot in the snow, there's one shot uh cyberpunk, there's like fan-made expansions, and so I thought, oh, I'm as long as I'm making an expansion, I'll put out a uh expansion maker kit for free, and it just basically has some advice on how to do that and maintain a balance for the best chance for a satisfying game. I'm saying it that way because because there are so many random elements involved, sometimes you play the game and it's a cakewalk. Sometimes you play the game and it's impossible. The goal is to have a game where there's real danger and a real chance of failure, but if you are a little bit lucky, you could pull through in the end. That's the ideal, but it's too swingy for me to guarantee that kind of experience. There's a calculus kind of in designing the uh number of encounters and and how tough they are. Uh that might optimize the chance for that experience. Yeah. Uh so that's kind of what goes into that maker kit. Oh, and also there is very recently One Shot in the Dark original, now in Portuguese, which is really fun for me.
Iain:Wow. Do you speak Portuguese or no? I think Brazilian person do it.
Jon:I had a Brazilian listener reach out and and offer to do it, and I said, I said, oh yes, please. Actually, there's a Danish version and a German version in the works. But because this is all volunteer stuff, I never sort of nudge them and say, hey, how's that coming along? It just feels uh inappropriate. So hopefully uh there will one day be a Danish version and a German version.
Iain:I love that there's this community around it. And when you mentioned it being popular with people wanting to use it as a vehicle to get kids into role-playing, I was honestly not surprised. I saw you posted some stuff about that. Yeah. That didn't surprise me in the slightest because it actually. You know, you've got these archetypes, yeah, they're going off to just slay the bad guy because he's bad. You know, there's no more complex story motivations like we're gonna go get a bunch of treasure and kill the bad guy, and that's sometimes all you need to get people introduced to the hobby. And I know that when I've run games before for my kids, like I ran a bunch during COVID, and I kept them super simple along those lines. Right. It was you know, you're going to get a bad guy in his lair, and you know, that's it. There's nothing more complex than that, and there's things to fight along the way, and my son's case, things to make friends with on the way. Right. And um you don't need it any more complex than that. And I see it sometimes where I've talked to people both in like face-to-face but also online about it, where they're like, I want to get my eight-year-old into D D, and um, you know, I'm thinking of starting with and they list some module for fifth ed. I'm like, it's way too complex for them. Yes, they will not understand it. I mean, what you what you want to do is almost have this like little buddy system where you give them a bit of paper and like three numbers that they roll on, yeah. So you can have the adults playing and casting their spells and doing this, and you give them like a fighting number and a magic number and a luck number, a bit like fighting fantasy. Exactly, right, right, and you you roll those three things, yeah, and they would have a great time because they don't need to look at this hugely complex web of numbers and know what their their various skills are, they just want to roll the dice and participate, and that's how you get people um involved in it rather than giving them some huge 300-page rulebook.
Jon:Yeah, something funny happened. Uh, this last summer I ended up playing One Shot in the Dark with my nephew, who is 12, and he he I think he came over to use our pool, like three or four times, but we we had some like spare time that we needed to kill, and my wife said, Hey, why don't we try one shot in the dark? I've never I don't have kids of my own, and I've never played one shot in the dark with any of my family or friends. It's just not something that we all do together. So I was a bit reluctant, but I thought, okay, sure, why not? We'll tr we'll try it. And so we did, and it was a hit, and the next time he came over, he wanted to play it again, and that happened again and again. We I think we played it four times over four weeks, which blew my mind because I'd been told that kids that this game works with kids, but I hadn't actually seen it and experienced it, and when I did, it was kind of like, oh my god, this really it really does. Um, not that I doubted anyone, but it's different when you see it. What was interesting to me was that because of the effect of DD and other role-playing games on video games over the decades, kids are pre-packaged with a knowledge they know what hit points are already. You don't have to explain that. They understand even like you know what a hit die is in some cases, and so the mechanics, and and of course the tropes, you know, the fighter, the wizard, even a cleric, which I thought might be esoteric for a 12-year-old. Nope, not a problem. They got it, they understand what that is already. They show up knowing what these things are, and so the game which I'd heard was easy to explain to kids, actually turned out to be even easier than I thought, because they already know because of the ubiquity of RPG tropes in culture. Amazing.
Iain:Yeah, it's it's insane how it's informed the mainstream. I talked about that way back in the Dungeons and Dragons episode, but most of the things that you see in modern video games can be traced back to LDD. Absolutely. When you think about the Holmes Red Box edition that was released back in 82, 83, whenever that was. Is that Alina? Yes, yes, right. Yeah, I think it is, yeah, yeah. And yeah, there's a wizard you have to go and kill. Burgle. Blah blah blah. Yes, all the old cobwebs are coming off there. But that has set the trend for your levels, hit points, and a tutorial level to get you introduced to games. That's where that all comes from, is that concept. Because somebody in TSR was like, What's the easiest way to learn our game? Well, play it. Yeah, well, what what what if someone's buying for the first time? Well, they the books, the gamesmaster for them, they just play through it. And I saw it recently in our last episode we talked about Pendragon, yeah, and in the sixth edition Pendragon starter set, which is one of the most beautiful RPG products you can ever buy. If you want character sheets that look like illuminated manuscripts from the medieval times, that is of course I do that. That's your game to go to. But it's Pendragon's a fairly not complex, but it's a very esoteric system in terms of how it runs, it's a very clever system, but it comes with a choose your own adventure style game that teaches you all of the basic mechanics, yeah, and it's such an interesting way of you're gonna run that game. I hadn't looked at Pendragon probably coming up for like two decades when I got this um starter set through, and as I was running through this, I was like, oh, I remember this, I remember how to do this. But I think as a new person, you'd also get it very, very quickly because it's spelled out very easily for you and it's it just does all the mechanics.
Jon:To bring it back kind of full circle, those examples of play, even more than the sort of solo adventures that they would that they included, but those examples of play, uh, do you remember like Black Dougal? I think that's in A D 1E. Uh like are we gonna kill the gobliners? I forget exactly what the situation was, but I do remember as a kid really enjoying reading those as a kind of different style of fiction. And those little actual plays, because really they were the proto-actual plays, I think that they they're one of the things that super informed the the podcast that I do now. It's it's I'm trying to regain that feeling of vicarious play.
Iain:Two of my favourite because I used to always like those sections and books, even though I know how to play an RPG, it was always interesting to see how people did it, and there have been some fantastic ways over the years. So, for example, Werewolf the Apocalypse, they did, and also uh Wraith the Oblivion did this as well because White Wolf were very kind of creative in how they did these things, uh-huh, they did their actual plays as a comic strip in the book, but one page had the comic strip, but the other page was almost like showing the working of these things happen. Like that's great to this, he rose these dice, but then you've got this story playing out. But my two favourite ones were one is more recent, it's Mothership, uh-huh, and in the Mothership RPG, the actual play reads like an actual session complete with the players like arguing with the GM over stuff, but there's also one in the first edition Slay Industries rule book where it reads like an actual session, yeah, because there's even bits like the players groaning at the GM's attempt at an accent for one of the characters, and those really help bring it to life because I think one of the problems that newer players coming into the hobby have is they're often introduced by watching an actual play online, and that doesn't often give you the real experience because you've got a bunch of actors who are very polished, yeah, who are in a high production studio, and that's their job. And it's a performance with an audience in mind, which is a different thing, which is very different from a game, yes, and there's not the sort of nonsense and visceral reality of actually sitting down playing it where somebody forgets the rules or needs the GM to explain something, and I think a lot of people come into it now with that experience if it's all gonna flow very seamlessly, and everyone's gonna be incredibly creative and know how to act, rather than it being a bunch of people saying, So what do you do? or I roll my dice and do this, that, and the other. And there was a discussion I actually had online recently with somebody on Threads, and they were asking for advice, and they said, How do I help shine a spotlight on a player who's very resident to take part at my table? And all the other players do X, Y, and Z, but this player doesn't. And I'm like, Maybe they don't want the spotlight. Yeah, maybe they they're fighting. I said, Are they enjoying the game? They're oh yeah, they'll they contribute in combat, and like when they're they're talk to they talk back, but they don't like essentially method act, sure, sure. They're having fun. Ask them if they're having fun, if they're having fun, you don't need to change it. I've had players before who have been there and they like being there to do the game stuff, they like being there to roll the dice and see the character do awesome things, but they don't necessarily want you to engage on a one-on-one. Like some players are absolutely 100% in it for the character interaction and being that other person slipping into their mind and yada yada yada. Some people love that, and I I love that, you know. I'm an extrovert, that's kind of my my thing. But some people are content to be there to be the strong, silent character who comes into their own during combat, yeah, and that's fine as well. There's not this not everyone has to be a prima donna when they when they play, and the the game is made up of both types of players again. You see this action this interaction online where some people rage against people who actually like to roleplay, and they're like, this should be a simulation, this thing, and blah blah blah. It has its roots in war gaming. You're like, can everyone just have fun? Yeah, yeah, but not everything needs to be one thing or the other.
Jon:Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. Actually, you're making me think of my own games, my own ongoing games right now, and yes, we have both types of players, and and probably for myself, I'm probably somewhere in the middle. Sometimes I'm very methody in my character play. Other times I don't necessarily want to have the full live dialogue. I would rather just hand wave that and say, okay, we discuss the blah blah blah, and you know, tell me how does it turn out. Um, maybe I don't know if it's my mood or the situation, but yeah, you're right. There's both kinds of play. And and and it's a spectrum as well.
Iain:Yeah, and also that does happen. I've had it before where go to games and for whatever reason not been feeling myself or not feeling up to it. And that's when you're like, okay, I make a persuade roll.
Jon:Yeah.
Iain:The ref realizes, oh yeah, he's you know he's not in the mood. But we'll make it the persuade roll and see if his character can do it. And it's I think the gist of it is you can do what you want in the hobby and other people shouldn't yuck your yum. If somebody wants to count how many arrows they've got and that's their thing, then more power to the bowman guy, let him have his moment in combat. Likewise, if somebody wants to have a full-blown conversation with every NPC, let them do that as well, but just not at the expense of other people's fun. Anyway, John, we are coming up to the one hour mark. This has been an absolute pleasure. Oh, you've said people can obviously find one shot in the dark on drive-thru RPG. If you've not done that, you absolutely should give a chance. If you don't listen to Tale of the Manticore, you should also give that a listen to. It's a wonderful podcast. It's been going on for how many years is that now? Is it five years? Five years now, yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Give that a listen to if you don't. But is there anything else you want to pitch before we finish?
Jon:There's nothing else I want to pitch, but I need to ask for good luck because at the end of this month, October, for anyone who's listening to this, not in the time, it's released. Exactly. Um, so around Halloween of 2025, I'm attending a uh convention, and I am running a game I've never run before, and it's called Clay O Rama. I don't know if you ever heard of that, uh, but behind me there's a wall of uh a shelf with little tubs of play-doh on it. Uh, and the it's a game made by Zeb Cook, one of the original uh DD writers, and you make a little monster out of Plasticine and you have arena combat with them. And I'm nervous because I know this game is amazing. I played it as a child, the rules are fun. I did kind of mini-game it once in a in a DD session uh a year ago, but I've never played it as its own thing, certainly not as a convention with strangers who are unfamiliar with the concept. So I just need your thoughts and prayers as I uh tackle that. And next time we speak, I'll let you know how it goes.
Iain:I am intrigued by this. There better be video footage of this because anything involving little clay figures is sounds absolutely amazing. Anyway, John, it's been an absolute pleasure. Yes, sir. I will let you go. We need to speak again soon, if only to have a Cleo Rama update. In fact, I'm gonna put that in the calendar. You're gonna give us a play-by-play of how Cleorama went.
Jon:Yep, ma'am.
Iain:Wish me luck. See you later. Yeah. If you fancy giving one shot in the dark ago, we'll include a note in the show notes so you can find it and give it a try. Likewise, if you want to find the Tale of the Manticore podcast, it can be found on any podcast directory of your choice. As you mentioned in the interview, they're well into the third season now, so there's a lot of content there for you to binge. We're a semi-regular podcast on the history of RPGs. We've got over 70 episodes now, so if you're a new listener, please feel free to take a look at our back catalogue. You'll find all sorts of history episodes, interviews like this one, product reviews, and roundtables, and even some actual plays as well. If that's your thing. If you enjoyed us, please leave us five stars on your podcast directory of choice. It really helps us with visibility and it also assuages our egos and makes us want to make more of these. Until next time, if you want to get in touch with us, you can do so on email at roll.two.save.pod at gmail.com or on Facebook or Instagram by searching for roll to save. Thanks again for listening.
