Jim – Yes, THAT Jim

(The audio of this interview is available at the bottom of this post!)

JR: I am talking to author and game designer Matt Forbeck. Hello, sir!

MF: How are you doing, Jim?

JR: Good, good! Good to have you on here.

MF: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it!

JR: Of your many projects that you’ve got going on, something that I find particularly interesting as a writer is this 12 for 12 project that you’ve got going. For anyone who’s not familiar, why don’t you tell us a little bit about what that is?

MF: Sure. It’s this crazy idea I had last summer. I thought, “Hey, I write pretty quickly. I bet you I could write a novel a month.” (chuckles) Which is like this insane bar bet. And you know, it may have come up at Gen Con, actually last year – the gaming convention.

JR: Oh yeah?

MF: And I looked at it and I thought, you know, I’d love to do that, actually. I think it’d be a lot of fun. I think I could certainly do it. The trouble is that I also have a lot of other gigs that I do as a freelance writer. Like I write the Magic: the Gathering comic book for IDW. And I have a few other things: computer games, toy work, a novel – Carpathia – coming out at the end of the month here from Angry Robot. So I didn’t think I could give all that up and I didn’t want to give all that up, right?

JR: Yeah.

MF: So, I thought, “Let me trim this down a little bit and instead of writing like 80,000 word novels, which is what I usually go for, I’ll try writing 50,000 word novels, which will give me a little bit more breathing room.” And I decided to launch that program back in last November as a Kickstarter and said, “Look, hey guys, I really want to do this but I need to be able to eat so I’d like to basically take preorders for these books. And we’ll do some special editions. There’ll be autographed and hard covers and soft covers and things like that for people who are interested, and you can sign up for a high pledge and get your name in the book or create a character or something like that.” And it did pretty well. It started in November and ended on December 4^th and we ended up racking up something over $13,000 for the first three novels. And I’m currently – just about a week and a half ago, launched the second Kickstarter for the second trilogy of novels. And that’s already up just shy of $5000 at the moment, I believe.

JR: That is awesome. As someone who has tried NaNoWriMo and just sitting there – and I’m still at like 30,000 words from last November…

MF: (chuckles)

JR:  …when I saw this project I was like, “Is he insane?!” (chuckles)

MF: Well you know, I’m a full time writer, right? This is my day job. I look at my daily word count and I know I can do this, right? Back before I had a whole bunch of kids as a full-time freelance role-playing game designer I would write regularly 5000 words a day. Since the kids came along they cut into my writing time a little bit so I’m down to about 3000 words a day. But on good days I get to the 5-6,000 words.

JR: That is very cool, and I think anyone who’s aspiring towards being a writer full time is definitely going to try to hit that goal.

MF: Well, now if you’re getting paid by the word, generating more words helps. They all have to be quality words, mind you.

JR: (laughs) That’s true.

MF: They have to be publishable words. But being able to generate them quickly – and after you’ve been doing it for some 10-20 years you do get quite a little bit quicker at it.

JR: Very cool, very cool. So the first trilogy you already mentioned is already funded.

MF: Yes.

JR: And that was for your Brave New World novels.

MF: Yes.

JR: And why don’t you tell us a little bit about those?

MF: Yeah, that’s based on a role-playing game – not the Aldous Huxley novel. The original quote for Brave New World comes from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” actually, where Miranda, who’s the daughter of the wizard Prospero, sees a man washed up on the shore of their private island – for the first time in her life she’s ever seen anybody but her father. And she looks up at this handsome guy who’s about to become her love interest and she says, “Oh brave new world, that has such people in it.” And I thought that was perfect for a superhero role-playing game. So, back in 1999 I came out with a superhero role-playing game called Brave New World through Pinnacle Entertainment Group and it was later published by Alderac Entertainment Group, or AEG. And it’s been basically lying fallow for the last ten years or so. We did about eight or nine different books in the line and then cut it off. But we’ve had some people over at Reactor 88 Studios working on doing an independent film based on it. And I said, “Geez, you know, we’ve got this good fan base of game players out there and we’ve got a lot of people who are interested in my writing. Let’s see what happens if we cross the streams and combine them for this first set of trilogies.” And so far it seems to be going pretty well. For me it’s a lot of fun because I get to return to this world that I spent a lot of time and effort creating a dozen years ago.

JR: Yeah.

MF: And the fans seem to really be enjoying it so far, too.

JR: Can you actually tell us anything about how the movie’s going?

MF: Yeah. It’s currently on hiatus. We got a proof of concept video made which is about five to eight minutes long – I forget. It depends on which edit you look at. And basically the first eight pages of the role playing game are a comic book, and we took those and filmed those. And then we have a screenplay that follows it off after that and tells you what’s going to happen in the world. But we filmed the proof of concept hoping to go out and find funding for the rest of the movie. The problem is that being an over-the-top, high-action role-playing game with superheroes in it, this is not a cheap movie to make, right? (chuckles)

JR: (chuckles) Yeah, I can imagine.

MF: So, you know, we went back to the – well I mean we actually are now working on a couple of different movies, one of which is InSpectres, which is based on the role-playing game by Jared Sorensen.

JR: That is such an awesome game.

MF: Yeah!

JR: I really enjoy it.

MF: Oh, we got a kick out of it. We love that stuff. I love Jared’s stuff from way back, actually. And so we have a screenplay that I and a guy named Jeff Dohm worked on that actually was shot last year and is currently in post-production, so that’ll be out some time later this year. And the idea there again is to prove to people with money that we have a team of people who can make these kind of movies and make them do well. And then hopefully use that as a means of leveraging funding out of people so we can make a bigger movie later on.

JR: Excellent. I wish you the best of luck with that because I really want to see these movies! (chuckles)

MF:  The InSpectres one is a boatload of fun and I honestly think this kind of slacker ghostbuster thing is a lot easier to shoot on a shoestring budget than you would expect.

JR: Let’s move on to your second trilogy, which is – as of this recording – still being funded.

MF: Yes.

JR: So the Kickstarter is still open for it. That’s the Shotguns & Sorcery novels. And why don’t you tell us a little bit about those?

MF: Yeah, people have until March 11^th to get in on this Kickstarter. And just go to kickstarter.com or go to my web site at forbeck.com and you can find out about it. But it’s based on a setting called Shotguns & Sorcery that I originally developed as, again, a role-playing game setting for Mongoose Publishing back in about 2001. But then my wife got pregnant with quadruplets and that kind of shattered everything to hell as far as getting that done. (chuckles) So I never actually got very far beyond the notes and selling it to Mongoose. And the rights reverted back to me. I said, “Geez, I’ve had this idea sitting around for a long time. I’d love to get back to this! It’s a lot of fun.” It’s kind of this noir-ish fantasy setting in this city called the Dragon City which is on the coast of this continent that’s basically overtaken by undead and other types of zombies. The city basically has a dragon emperor who controls the entire place and protects the people from the dead. But it’s striated – as you go up the mountain you get more and more powerful people. Like the orcs live at the bottom and the humans and the halflings live about a quarter of the way up, then you have the dwarves, then you have the elves, and then you have the dragon, who sits up top. So it’s got this great Chandler-esque, Hammett-esque kind of noir going on, but in a fantasy setting, right?

JR: Yeah, that is very cool. I really love that mashup. I was actually just last night – I was looking at Goblintown Justice, the short story that you’ve put out.

MF: Yes, that’s available for free for anybody who wants to read it, of course.

JR: As soon as I got to the part where you’re using flying carpets as taxis, I was totally sold on it.

MF: Yeah, I think that’s such a great image, you know.

JR: Yeah!

MF: It’s like I can flag down a flying carpet, you know. “Oh! Yeah, okay!” Suddenly you know exactly where you are – even if you’ve never seen this before.

JR: I love both genres and just the whole mixing of them – the sweet and sour effect – is very cool there, I really like that.

MF: Thank you.

JR: So folks again have until March 11^th if they want to get in on that.

MF: The way it works is – what I did was I set a very low goal for the first book in the trilogy and then we try to see if we can hit stretch goals where we can unlock the second and third books in the trilogy. So right now we shattered the first one very quickly, I think in 32 hours. And now we’re stretching out to see if we can get the second book unlocked and then the third book unlocked. And usually this has me chewing my nails right until the last second. (laughs)

JR: (laughs)

MF: But it’s good fun and you know, usually what happens is you have this big spike at the beginning, and then it kind of levels out in the middle. And then in the last week everybody says, “Oh! Oh! Oh! I’ve got to do that or I’m going to forget it!” And then it spikes up again. And you know, the trouble of course is during that middle period you’re always sitting there going, “I hope the spike comes! I hope the spike comes!”

JR: (laughs) Yeah, totally! Totally. Well, let us hope that that happens! Can you tell us anything about the remaining two trilogies you have planned?

MF: Well, I can tell you a little bit. The fourth one I’m not quite sure about yet. I’m actually contemplating a set of thrillers for the next one that are more modern-day stuff. And for the fourth one I’m thinking either science fiction or maybe some combination of three individual one-shot books. So I’m going back and forth between them. Those are still a little bit off for me. Actually I have a really good idea for the thrillers that’s going to set them apart from everything else but I’m not quite ready to announce it yet.

JR: Cool, well we’re looking forward to that, then. And just looking over your Coming Soon list on your web site here, you’ve got – to put it mildly – quite a few plates in the air.

MF: Yeah.

JR: But I noticed that you have here – and you also mentioned that at the end of the month you’ve got a novel called Carpathia coming out. What’s that about?

MF: The 100^th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic is coming up on April 15^th and the ship that picks up the survivors of the Titanic was called the Carpathia. And the Carpathia, of course, is also named after a set of mountains that ring part of Transylvania and is actually the mountain range in which Castle Dracula sits. So the connection here is: what happens if the ship that picks up the Titanic survivors is actually full of vampires on their way back to Europe?

JR: (laughs) That’s awesome.

MF: What kind of hell comes out of that? (chuckles)

JR: (laughs) I think that qualifies as irony.

MF: (laughs) Yeah, I mean my publisher is like, “The lucky ones went down with the ship.”

JR: (laughs) Yeah.

MF: You want to be respectful because this is a real disaster, right? I mean, it’s been 100 years, so that means we can play with it a little bit. But I mean there were a lot of people who died in this, but I’m taking care to be very respectful of the actual real-life individuals. And I concoct a lot of – obviously – fabricated vampires and such to battle it out with each other. So it’s good fun.

JR: That’s excellent. Is there anything else you’d like to mention before we go?

MF: Well, I do also have the Magic: the Gathering comic book I’m doing for IDW, and that’s coming out. The next issue will be on February 29^th.

JR: Is that based in like their core world or is there a separate world?

MF: It kind of jumps around. It starts out in Ravnica. They don’t have really one core world, but the first issue starts out in Ravnica and from there it goes to Innistrad, which is where the current block is. It’s a kind of horror-themed block. And from there – I shouldn’t probably reveal where it’s going to go from there quite yet.

JR: Okay.

MF: But it’s a four-issue miniseries for that. And then they just announced that we’re going to be doing a second four-issue miniseries starting in the month after that.

JR: That sounds like a lot of fun.

MF: Yeah, let’s hope we can keep rolling on with them.

JR: Well, now if folks want to find you online – you and your various projects – where should they go?

MF: Go to forbeck.com. That’s F-O-R-B-E-C-K dot com. And I try to keep it updated fairly regularly.

JR: I’ve been there. There is a lot of stuff on there and it is all very awesome. Thanks very much for talking to us!

MF: Thanks for talking to me, Jim. I really appreciate it!

JR: Thank you, take care.

MF: You too.

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Music by Kevin MacLeod

One day I found myself sitting in a movie theater watching something abysmal.

I can’t remember what it was, exactly, but a moment of inspiration came to me as I found myself almost about to fall asleep for the thirteenth time.

“You know what this movie could use?” I asked no one in particular. “Godzilla.”

I realized that if Godzilla had been in it, it would have been a much better movie.

It was then that the seed of the Godzilla Theory occurred to me. It goes something like this:

Sometimes I have trouble deciding on whether I think a movie is bad or good – and to be clear, I’m talking about the subjective definitions of “bad” and “good” that refer to my emotional reaction to a film, not the technical definitions used in art appreciation classes. So, when I want to be certain about how I feel, I just imagine what the movie would be like if Godzilla were in it.

If the inclusion of Godzilla would actually make it BETTER, then it’s a bad movie.

I can call it a theory because I tested it out multiple times back when it was but a lowly hypothesis. And it seems to work. Now, granted, it largely only provides a decent barometer of MY opinion of a movie, but I’m sure there are some folks out there like-minded enough for it to work for them as well.

The only kinds of movies this test doesn’t seem to work so well with are… well, giant monster movies. Because, honestly, what giant monster movie WOULDN’T be better with an extra dose of Godzilla in it? But all other movies are fair game.

For example, think about the two Schumacher Batman films. You know, those two movies that I keep trying to forget ever existed and which seem to occupy a category of suck all to themselves (and which are the subject of an entirely different theory of mine that I might talk about some other time). Wouldn’t they be INFINITELY better if Godzilla were in them? Because, heck, if they’ve decided to throw causality out the window anyway they may as WELL get a giant monster with atomic breath involved.

Star Wars, however, would NOT work so well with the addition of Godzilla to the cast. True, they had a similar character in Return of the Jedi, but the Rancor’s method acting manages to sate my desire for giant monster mayhem in that regard. I mean, when you can eat an entire Gammorrean raw in every take and still manage to hit your cues on time, that’s quality. (And on a side note, from what I understand, the Rancor and Godzilla briefly studied together at Juilliard.)

images courtesy of Wikipedia

But what about the edge cases? Say… Jurassic Park?

Well, it seems to me that in the first and third Jurassic Park movies Godzilla would probably be redundant, so in my opinion they qualify as “not too bad.” The middle one, though? Yeah, it’s true they made a Godzilla joke in it, but it only reminded me of how badly I wanted to see the real Godzilla turn up and show the T-Rex who was boss. Plus I sometimes find it difficult to stare at Jeff Goldblum for more than a few seconds at a time without wishing for a giant monster to come along and eat him. (Sorry Jeff, but if you’re out there reading this, they tended to leave the camera on you for a tad too long whenever you were doing the “intense staring” thing in that movie.) So, I’ve got to put it in the “bad” category.

Similarly, some Jane Austen films pass the test and some don’t.  Of course, I’m slightly biased in that I’ve always wanted to see Godzilla turn up in a Jane Austen movie. (“Is that rather crude gentleman known to you, Mr. Darcy?” “Which one?” “That tall, green one out there on the croquet lawn.” “The one engaged in fisticuffs with the giant moth?” “Indeed, sir.” “Certainly not, madam! The unruly cad has disintegrated your potting shed with his atomic breath and, what’s worse, he’s trampled your flower garden. I would never associate with such an uncouth misanthrope!”) I can only hope that one day the film adaptation of Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters will be half as riveting as the image I’ve built up in my head.

So, if you’re not sure how you feel about a movie, try adding a dash of Godzilla and see how it looks then. If it doesn’t work for you, then no harm, no foul. But if it does, you may find that there’s nothing more valuable than the sense of perspective you get from a giant lizard.

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Music by Kevin MacLeod

(The audio of this interview is available at the bottom of this post!)

JR: I am talking to Eloy Lasanta of Third Eye Games and we’re going to be talking about his game Part-Time Gods. Welcome, sir!

EL: Hello everyone!

JR: First off, for anyone who might not be familiar, tell us a little bit about the game Part-Time Gods.

EL: The game Part-Time Gods is where you play characters who are just regular people who have been imbued with the powers of gods. And you are given this huge amount of divine responsibility that you then must go and enact. And there’s a certain amount of juggling that has to be done – as in, you have to juggle your real life versus your divine responsibilities, and going and trying to obtain power is actually the same thing as leaving your mortal life behind. And it’s a fun kind of balancing game that Part-Time Gods has become.

JR: Let’s talk a little bit about the Source. What’s that?

EL: The Source – oh, the Source is the entity within the setting that has released the energy that then produces what a god actually is. Way back in the day the gods actually sealed it away and found a way to kind of siphon its power and it has now recently erupted again and it’s trying to escape. And that’s why now, in the game, there’s a big surge of a lot more gods popping up in the modern day – very suddenly, and it’s because the Source is trying to come back. So you might just be walking down the street – all of a sudden, you get hit with this immense power and you find out that you’re the God of Sidewalks or whatever. And then all of a sudden you have this giant Cyclops coming after you at that point and it’s like, “Wait! What’s going on here?!” And it’s very much about that. It’s very much about a regular person – what if a regular person was put in these types of situations?

JR: So I guess the primary conflict… well, it’s that you have two different layers of conflict, which – let’s talk about that a second. I find that very interesting that you’ve got both the supernatural conflicts and then the mundane conflicts that you have to deal with. I’m curious how you weave that together in the game.

EL: Well, very… very awesomely, I’d like to think.

JR: It sounds it!

EL: (chuckles) The divine conflicts are mostly between the gods, themselves. So a lot of it is god-on-god. You and your other people in your group – they are the pantheon that rules that area. And a lot of the game is contingent upon the pantheon getting along, maybe doing things to countermand each other – kind of like how gods used to be back in the day. Also other gods coming in to try and take your territory or even if you and your group want to go and try and expand into other gods’ territory, you can do that as well. But the way that the game works and how it kind of interweaves the mundane and the divine is you create what are called Bonds during character creation for your character. And these are the things in their life that link them to their humanity, which link them to being a regular person. And as these things come under fire or get damaged, they then start to take on some of the worst aspects of humanity, basically. And then they start to kind of drift away from being a regular person and more into becoming a god. The reason for this is because it’s more to reflect kind of what the gods of myth all kind of represent. You know, and it was Hera – at one time – was a very motherly deity.

JR: Yeah.

EL: And then she was consumed with jealousy and hatred and all of these things, and these are very real things that can happen to your character – where, you know, it’s no longer the love of your wife that starts to motivate you, it’s the hatred for this thing. And it starts to become a balance of you becoming less caring about the things that a human would care about.

JR: How do you set up the mechanics in a game like this? What are the mechanics like?

EL: The mechanics for this game actually follow the DGS Lite, which is a slightly lighter version than the classic DGS – Dynamic Gaming System – which I created for my other two games, Apocalypse Prevention, Inc. and Wu Xing: The Ninja Crusade. And this one is broken down a little bit more, but just like the classic DGS it only uses a single d20 and it uses difficulties from 10, 20, 30 and up to 40. And you can go higher as you get more and more powerful but 40 is usually about the max that a starting character can actually get to. It’s a simple – roll a d20, add your attributes plus skills plus applicable modifiers and see what you roll and then see what happens. It works really nicely and the playtests for Part-Time Gods have come back and everybody’s very happy with the results so far.

JR: Okay, that’s very cool. And part of what I guess I was wondering when you were talking about that was if there was any sort of mechanic that had been put in there specifically to represent that whole balancing act.

EL: You know, when you get your Bonds, you have to have actually built them and they get numbers to represent the strength of the Bond. And these numbers are counterbalanced with the strength of your divine Spark. And the more powerful that your Spark becomes, you’ll eventually have to start giving up some of your Bonds or weakening the ones that you have.

JR: That is very cool. I really like that idea because it’s just so often that you see in RPGs where people seem to have superpowers of some kind with absolutely no consequences for wielding them.

EL: Exactly.

JR: That is very good. So where did you get the idea for this game?

EL: It came from me watching a TV show called Dead Like Me, and I was watching the show I mean, like, “You know, that would be really interesting. What if it wasn’t just grim reapers? What if they were just a collection of gods? What if they were a pantheon who sat in a coffee shop just talking about baseball? It kind of became the idea of these very mundane things where basically being a god isn’t what it’s really cracked up to be.

JR: Yeah.

EL: Being a god is actually more of a hassle than, you know, “I’m a divine person and I ought to go on mythic quests!” No, sometimes it’s like, “You know what, I really would just like to go home and eat dinner with my wife but I can’t do that because I have to go get this goblet from the Fire.”

JR: (laugs) “Sorry, I’m going to be late for dinner, honey. I’m fighting Titans this evening.”

EL: Exactly. That’s kind of where the humor of the game also comes out. Anything that I write has to have at least a little bit of humor. I don’t have it in me to write a completely serious thing. So yeah, it has to have a little bit of humor and that’s kind of the tone that Part-Time Gods is taking.

JR: There have been one or two other games that try to do something similar – I believe Scion is one of the bigger ones – and so the question would be what really separates Part-Time Gods from something like that?

EL: When you play Scion, first of all the power levels get ridiculously wonky as soon as you are not like a starting character. And so, I mean, there’s that. The whole thing about Scion was you aren’t really a regular person. You’re the child of a god and you have to go and you fight things that are just destroying everything and you are super-powerful and you eventually become a god yourself and travel and will join the pantheon and stuff. And Part-Time Gods actually leaves a lot of what you would expect from a quote-unquote “god game” behind and I’m trying to really kind of take a new angle at it. The other game that tried this was Nobilis, but then Nobilis is more of a – like you are a concept. Like you’re not a God of Death, you ARE Death. You’re not a God of Enlightenment, you ARE Enlightenment. And that’s why there’s no dice and whatever.

JR: More sort of anthropomorphic personifications rather than gods.

EL: Yeah, yeah. Like it gets kind of weird. And what I tried to do is I read up on both of the games and I’m trying to hit a nice balance between the two. When I say that you can be the god of fill-in-the-blank, you really can.

JR: Whenever I actually get around to playing this game I now have a terrible urge to play the God of Fill-In-the-Blank.

EL: “I am the God of Mad Libs!”

JR: Yes! “I can take any concept and replace it with another concept!”

EL: You know, if I was actually going to be the God of Mad Libs I would just make it sound like you’re saying ridiculous things.

JR: Yes, exactly!

EL: And you have no clue you’re saying it, but everyone else is hearing you saying ridiculous things.

JR: That would be so cool.

EL: It would be hilarious. I try and gear people away from that sort of thing when in the character creation (chuckles).

JR: (chuckles)

EL: You know, there really should not be a Goddess of Cheese or Jeff, the God of Tacos. There really shouldn’t be these types of things. Gods should be like big, mythic, flashy things. You know, like you really don’t need a God of Sidewalks.

JR: Well, the sidewalks aren’t going to go on existing by themselves, are they?!

EL: I mean it’s gonna happen, but I’m just saying… (chuckles)

JR: (laughs)

EL: I try to give people a way…

JR: Doing what tiny amount of damage control you can get in at this point?

EL: Exactly. I also give tons of examples so I try to cover all my bases and – giving lots and lots of examples of different things that you can do with the power sets and stuff like that. So, I’m hoping it goes off well.

JR: One of the interesting things about this project is the way that you’re funding it. You actually have set up a Kickstarter campaign for it. So what led you to decide you wanted to do that?

EL: You know, I actually hadn’t heard about Kickstarter until a friend of mine actually mentioned it and they said, “I saw this kickstarter for Do.” And I’m like, “What’s a kickstarter?” So, they sent me a link to this game called Do and it’s pretty cool, and I went ahead and contributed to that and I started thinking about what I could do. And I like the setup. It reminds me of back in the day when the kings would become a patron to an artist and would take an artist under their wing and pay their room and board and make sure that they had all the materials they had and everything. Then like the king gets to say, “I found this artist and look at all of the wonderful things that I have allowed him to do!” It kind of reminds me of that, only instead of a nobleman, it’s all of the fans. All of the fans get to let me make a game for them. It’s a really fun concept and a fun way of approaching it versus the, “I’m going to release a game and I hope people like it.” You know, it’s more of a, “Hey, here’s what I’m doing! If you are interested in this type of thing, preorder.” Because basically I’m using it as a preorder but I’m also giving lots of incentives, T-shirts, stuff like that. Trying to make sure that anybody who does give to the kickstarter is gonna get their money’s worth for helping up front.

JR: It’s an interesting thing because you feel kind of like you’re a part of the project…

EL: Yeah!

JR: …when you contribute to it.

EL: And I’ve even gone through and I’ve started taking some chances on a couple of smaller projects to see if they go through. You know, and that’s kind of the thing, is – Kickstarter isn’t guaranteed. If you don’t make enough money then…

JR: Yeah.

EL: …it all kind of falls through and then whatever. But if you hit your goal, then it’s awesome!

JR: As of this recording, you’ve still got a bit over a month left if anyone wants to go on and contribute to this project. I think it’s really cool and I’m looking forward to playing it – I really want to play this game. So I really encourage folks to do that. Before we sign off here and we give information for people who want to go and check that out, is there anything else that you’ve got going on you want to give any quick little plugs for?

EL: Yeah, most definitely! The newest sourcebook for Wu Xing: the Ninja Crusade, my second game line of warring clans of ninja, just dropped its first sourcebook and it already has a 10 out of 10 review. So if you guys are waiting for a review, it’s got a perfect review on RPGnet so yay! Just got that today – so happy about that. And the newest sourcebook for Apocalypse Prevention, Inc., which is Demon Codex: Spectrals just dropped a couple of months ago. And it’s getting also very good reviews, so if you’re a fan of Apocalypse Prevention, Inc., don’t forget to go get that thing.

JR: Cool, awesome. I actually have some friends in a gaming group that I think are wanting to try out API sometime soon, so there may be more of that happening.

EL: (chuckles) Well, and we’re also working on an API: Savage Worlds Edition.

JR: Oh, cool!

EL: …which I’m really, really hoping that I can get out by GenCon. I’m REALLY, really hoping that we can. (chuckles) It’s hitting all of its playtest marks so it’s looking like there should be no issue, however it COULD not make it, but I’m really, really hoping it does.

JR: Nice! Me too, that sounds great. Savage Worlds obviously being a system I’m a lot more familiar with, so… (chuckles) That always makes me happy.

EL: Savage Worlds is a setting that I kind of fell in love with from the first time that I played it. And you know it has a different flavor from the Dynamic Gaming System that I designed, but both are really fun ways to play. So, API: Savage Worlds Edition – we’ve been working really hard to make sure that it keeps the feel that the DGS has, but reflecting in Savage Worlds rules and it’s coming along VERY nicely.

JR: Yeah, Savage Worlds is moldable enough that you can do a lot of different things with it.

EL: Most definitely.

JR: So that’s always very cool that that’s working out. So if anyone wanted to go online to find you or your site or the Part-Time Gods project, where would they go?

EL: Well, the Part-Time Gods project is primarily on Kickstarter. If you just go to search and hit “part time” it’s gonna come up, it’s gonna be the first one. Our web site is thirdeyegames.net. I also have a blog and that’s eloythesaint.com.

JR: Excellent. Well, I urge everyone out there to go and check it out. And thanks very much for coming and talking to me. I appreciate it!

EL: Thanks, Jim.

Click below to hear the interview:

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Music by Kevin MacLeod

As you may have noticed from the audio of the monologue at the end of my previous post, I’m a fan of caffeine.

The problem, though, is that the further I creep into that thing which, for the sake of argument, we’ll call my thirties, I find that I’m becoming more a fan of the IDEA of caffeine than the actual caffeine itself.  As I get older I notice that caffeine has a much subtler but more pronounced effect on me than it did in the past.

Back in the good old days when I was ridiculously young and agile and crazy like a jackalope, I would guzzle down caffeinated beverages like there was no tomorrow.  Back then the only real work I did was for a theatre company and the rest of the time I was a professional wastrel. I’d usually stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning regardless of what I’d been drinking that day.  Even so, I’d be able to go to bed mere seconds after I’d had caffeine and not have the least bit of trouble getting to sleep.

While cola, tea and the like were staples for me, they seemed to have little or no effect. But coffee was a different story.  One sip of java and I’d be bouncing off the walls.

Nowadays, if I drink ordinary caffeinated beverages, I seem to get very little in the way of an energy boost from it.  To all appearances, nothing significant happens… until I try to go to bed.  If I’ve had more than, say, a couple of thimblefuls of caffeine in the last few hours, sleep is utterly IMPOSSIBLE.

But one thing has remained consistent, and that’s my reaction to coffee.  One sip of java and I’m bouncing off the walls.  Okay, maybe it takes TWO sips these days, but the effect is the same.

This is how I eventually came to admit to myself that my reaction to coffee is probably a placebo effect.  I came to this realization not too long ago when I guzzled two frappucinos in preparation for participating in the morning show that’s produced at my broadcasting school’s radio station.  The idea that coffee can turn me into a wired and witty cartoon character is so powerful to me that when I drink the coffee, that’s what happens.

But sadly, it’s naught but an illusion.  The truth is that caffeine doesn’t really GIVE me energy.  It just changes WHEN I have it.

Does it matter, though?  We do all kinds of crazy things to motivate ourselves – you only need to see footage of any random sports rally to confirm that.  So why not let me have my fantasy of a magical concoction that throws my personality into overdrive?  If it amuses me and helps me get things done at the same time, I call that a victory.

What this really means is that while I’m not drinking nearly as much caffeine as I did in the old days, I’m more determined than ever to harness my power of self-delusion and use the resulting tide of caffeine-inspired wackiness for the greater good.

So don’t kill my buzz, man!  Don’t rain on my parade!  Don’t repossess my euphonium!  Lest my army of encaffeinated ninjas descend upon you!!

Er… or words to that effect.

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Music by Django Reinhardt

Hey, folks!

I’m making a little entry here to let you know that I have a book coming out and it has just gone into pre-order! The book is called Abduction Etiquette and it contains about 50 or so monologues that I wrote to perform at open mic nights at coffee houses and the like. They’re all very short pieces and I have performed each and every one of them in public. So, these all come pre-tested for audience reaction!

I am incredibly excited about this. Right now it’s looking as though the publication date is going to be some time in August, but that may be subject to change depending on the number of pre-orders we get.

Now, the cover price of the book, when it’s published, is going to be $14 (plus S&H) but right now there’s a pre-order sale going on! Anyone who pre-orders the book right now will be able to get it for $9 (plus S&H).

Now here’s where I’m going to ask for a little bit of help.

If you’re interested in ordering the book, by all means, feel free to do so. I’ll be more than happy for you to. If you’re not so sure, then that’s okay. BUT I’d appreciate it if you let anybody that you know – who you think might be interested – know about the book. So if you have any friends who are into acting or comedy or who like strange poetry, people who are involved in theatre or in university theatre departments, actors, acting students or folks who just like silly character pieces, I would very much appreciate it!

Before this book can come out I’ve got a target of at least 100 pre-sales I need to make. If it doesn’t make 100 by August then the publication date may get pushed back. If, on the other hand, we make 100 pre-sales well before the publication date, then it may come out early! And of course nothing would thrill me more, and I’m sure anybody else who actually goes in and pre-orders it would be cool with that coming out to them early as well.

With your help, I think we can definitely pull it off.

The pre-order deal is currently available at:

http://www.mainstreetrag.com/JRyan.html

This is the first time I will ever have an actual book out. I am ridiculously excited about it and I thank you very much for having the patience to let me ramble about it a bit.

And now, if you’re curious about what kind of monologues these are, there are three samples on that site, but I’ve also recorded one  for you and will be putting it at the end of the audio file for this blog post.

Thanks again and I hope you enjoy it!

The monologue, Kingdom of Java, is at the end of the recording! Click below to listen:

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Music by Dave Girtman

I’ve been playing a ridiculous amount of World of Warcraft lately.

I’m sure if a cyber-cop pulled me over on the Information Superhighway and gave me a virtual breathalyzer test I’d be several points over the legal WoW limit.

Why am I so captivated?  What is it about this game that’s got me wondering if I need to join a 12-step program?

When he's not busy fighting for the Horde, Gorbirian likes to kick back and do some bass fishing.

Is it the Immersion?

Have I begun to slip heedlessly into a fantasy world and lost all sense of reality?  Nah, probably not.  I’m more of what one would call a “casual gamer.”  I understand the fear of entering a game world and feeling as though one is more a part of it than one’s own life.  That’s often the kind of problem one sees in science fiction stories about people entering virtual reality and losing all sense of self.  But the truth of the matter is that World of Warcraft is pretty cool, but the Matrix it’s not.  Heck, even the Matrix MMO wasn’t.  Besides, I don’t have all that much of a sense of reality to lose in the first place.

Is it the Simplicity?

World of Warcraft is very easy to play.  The controls are easy to learn.  There’s very little in the way of resource management (aside from how much space you have in the bags you carry around to stuff quest items, fishing poles, alchemy bottles and magical pairs of pants into).  You receive instructions, get pointed in a direction and usually go off to either kill things or pick things up off the ground – sometimes both.  Not a lot of thought is required.  If you want to interact with other players, you can, but recent updates to the game mean that you don’t really have to socialize if you’d rather go solo.  I must admit that the game’s convenience factor is a pretty big deal.  The fact that I don’t have to devote a lot of time to it means that I end up… devoting a lot of time to it.

The world of Azeroth. As you can see, there's a high pressure system currently moving in on southeastern Kalimdor and a Level 6 Maelstrom in the vicinity of the Lost Isles, so goblin commuters are urged to proceed with caution.

Is it the Potential?

One of the major draws for me with games like World of Warcraft is not what you can do with it, but what you COULD do with it.  Azeroth is a huge, new, shiny, undiscovered world (okay, maybe a bit less shiny since the Cataclysm) and I haven’t visited every single corner of it yet.  I’m one of those obsessive bastards who tries to see ALL of a game’s available content.  Some of it – like, say, any given dungeon – requires you to team up with other players, which is something I don’t usually have a lot of time for, but I still feel a need to keep quests involving said content on my to-do list.  Even though it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever get to them.  If you add to that the fact that they’re regularly updating the game with MORE shiny, new things, you can see that this game may be holding my attention for a very long time.

Is it the Adventure Gaminess?

Back in the crazy, carefree days of the 1980’s, we had these things called “adventure games.”  Among my favorites were the games in the Quest For Glory series.  These were games in which you had a character with RPG-like stats and the freedom to have him wander around, fight monsters and explore different plot threads.  The developers at one time had an idea to make it into an online game, but that plan never came to fruition.  World of Warcraft seems, to me, to be the closest thing to what they had been hoping to do.  So maybe I play it as a way of trying to recapture my youth – which I’m told is much safer and cheaper than the usual method of buying a muscle car and treating every road as though it’s the Daytona Speedway.

But, anyway…

My gnomish wizard, Map. He's currently working on a degree in Engineering.

I think that if I try to be brutally honest with myself, World of Warcraft – or any other MMO, for that matter – is, more than anything, an excuse to listen to a bunch of podcasts.  I like the game music and only listened to it while playing at first, but as soon as I got comfortable enough with the game that it didn’t require my full concentration, I started playing podcasts in the background instead.  MMOs and podcasts can make an awesome combination.  I’ve already blogged about my deep podcast affliction, so I won’t go into detail about it here.  But I think it’s interesting that I’ve essentially got two addictions that feed into each other.  If one desperate need wanes, the other will always be there to drag me back to my plush Obsession Suite in the Junkie Hotel overlooking Dependence City.  Lucky me.

All kidding aside, though, I’ve gone several months at a time without playing WoW, and if my schedule requires it, I’ll go cold turkey once again.  I’ve done it voluntarily before – most recently when I hit a point in the game at which I felt I couldn’t progress further on my own and decided to just park my characters in a corner and wait for the Cataclysm.  And, lo and behold, when the Cataclysm happened, there was enough new content to pull me back in.  I’m not sure what it says about me that it takes a near-apocalypse to garner my interest these days, but that’s another topic entirely.

To return to somewhere in the general vicinity of the point, I’m sure that what with all the various things I’ve got going on my life, sooner or later I’ll need to take another break from WoW.  It will be a sad day indeed but I’ll find some way to survive.  After all, there’s always City of Heroes.

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Music by Kevin MacLeod

I was going through the contents of an old disk and stumbled across some answering machine messages that I’d recorded and done some audio editing on back in the 90′s – sort of an early example of me playing around with audio from some of the earlier strata of my life. And I thought it would be amusing to play them for you.

I’ve got two answering machine messages. The first one used samples from Young Frankenstein and the second used samples from Return of the Jedi. And I know I have a couple of friends that I had told about these messages and they were wondering if they’d ever get a chance to listen to them.

So here they are, guys. Be kind!

The messages are at the end of the recording! Click below to listen:

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Music by Dave Girtman

(The audio of this interview is available at the bottom of this post!)

When I went to ConCarolinas this year I got a chance to sit down and talk to Joel Kinstle, VP of Pinnacle Entertainment Group, the makers of Deadlands and Savage Worlds.  The interview was for one of the shows I do on War Pig Radio and we talked mostly about the Savage Worlds Showdown rules – and tapioca!  Here’s the interview in full.

JR: I’m here at ConCarolinas and I’m talking to Joel Kinstle, who is Vice President of Pinnacle Entertainment Group!

JK: Well hello, folks!

JR: Greetings, sir!  And the specific thing that I wanted to talk about today is the Showdown rules, skirmish rules for Savage Worlds, because I don’t think that gets very much attention.

JK: Well that’s kind of sad.  They’re actually very nice rules and, special bonus: they’re free!

JR: Yeah, that’s always the really awesome thing.  You guys are giving things away left and right.  It’s like, every time I go to the web site, they’re giving away more stuff and I’m like, “I hope they can stay in business!” (laughs)

JK: That’s because we love our fans so much and are such foolish business people that we’re desperate for milk for our children.  All donations are welcome!

JR: (laughs) Awesome.  Just for those who may not be familiar, how do the skirmish rules differ from the regular RPG rules in general?

JK: The skirmish rules differ from the regular RPG rules in general in that they focus pretty much on the mechanical aspects and tabletop use.  All the Hindrances and most of the social Edges that you might run across tend to be washed out or transmuted into something that would apply on the tabletop.  Some of the Edges that tend toward being social or like a quirk that may be in how you play a character get defined mechanically in a way that you can repeat on a tabletop setting.  That doesn’t really make for a good role playing experience, but the role playing experience does not translate at all directly to a pure minis game.

JR: How many different Showdown settings do you have out right now?

JK: The Showdown rules, themselves, the 2.0 version, are somewhat recent.  Probably out for about five months or so…?

JR: Okay.

JK: But, my brain’s something like tapioca, so you’re gonna have to take that with a… well, grain of tapioca.

JR: I know the feeling.

JK: (chuckles) But, what we have out right now for them is… we have a couple of scenarios that are not really so much setting-specific on the web.  We have Raid on Fort 51, which is a Deadlands-specific scenario.  It’s really more of a mini-campaign.  It’s a series of engagements that things change for one engagement based on what happened in the prior engagement, and the force makes changes a little bit as the story unfolds and that’s a product for sale on the web site.  We’ve got a Weird War II scenario that will be coming out on the web site hopefully soon.  I’m not sure what will be the next piece out but it can be easily suited to any of the settings.  If you could’ve played it in Savage Worlds, you can play it with Savage Showdown.

JR: That’s cool.  Now, I remember Rippers started as a Showdown setting, didn’t it?

JK: Well, for the history of Showdown – for those folks who remember The Great Rail Wars, which was the minis version of Deadlands – Deadlands Classic – that was the game that’s kind of turned into the Savage Worlds game itself.

JR: Yeah.

JK: And so, distilling it back down to minis only wasn’t so tough since a lot of that had really already been done.  But with prior rules and trying to get everything balanced out there was still some work to do to it.  So, the minis game that came of Deadlands Classic turned into Savage Worlds, which produced, of course, Deadlands: Reloaded. (chuckles) So really, it’s all very much related.  There’s a lot of similarities amongst it all.  Rippers: The Horror Wars was sort of a Great Rail Wars or Showdown-ification of the Rippers setting.  There’s nothing out there right now for Showdown 2.0 that is in the Rippers setting, but that’s a setting that’s rife with stuff that can be turned into Showdown.

JR: Well, it seems to me that virtually any setting, because of how simple Savage Worlds is… and by simple I mean easy to play with!

JK: I know what you mean!

JR: (chuckles) It seems to me that any setting – any of your settings could easily be converted over to a Showdown setting.

JK: Oh, they really could.  But what you don’t tend to have is a lot of the social, discussion, investigation.  Because at that point you’ve turned it into a me-versus-you or us-versus-them fight game.  Which I’m not about to say is a bad idea!  There’s a lot to be said for sitting down and going, “You know, that boy needs to die.”  And putting him down.  There’s a LOT to be said.

JR: Well yeah, sometimes you’ve just gotta go bust some heads.  But, er… I know that there was probably another question in there… floating around in my melon and I… have to now fish for it…

JK: You may borrow some of my tapioca. (chuckles)

JR: Ah, thank you!  I appreciate it!  Mmm… delicious Brain Tapioca… (chuckles)

JK: For the younger folks out there, tapioca used to be a form of pudding that only old people like me and my father ate.

JR: (laughs) I remember tapioca!  We used to have that served to us in my grade school cafeteria, and that’s probably…  I’m going to try to blame the fact that I can’t remember my next question on the fact that I was served tapioca as a child somehow…

JK: I will admit that I’m wandering very far afield here, but when I was in elementary school our lunch ladies tended to like to make homemade chocolate pudding, which was great!  The pudding was excellent.  But they really did make homemade-cooked pudding, so they would always end up with this not quite inch-thick layer of skin on the top that they would pull off, cut into squares and give to children who wanted it.  And there were FIGHTS for that stuff, man.

JR: Wow.

JK: There is no accounting for the taste of children.  But since I never had it, in full fairness I can’t claim it was horrible.

JR: (groans) I can’t imagine – just the…  They get into fights over pudding skin in a school cafeteria… I think…

JK: I grew up in a rural area. (chuckles)

JR: Well, you know that actually…  You’re talk about kids getting into fights in a school cafeteria over pudding skins.  That… You may be coming up right now with a possible new Showdown setting.

JK: That could EASILY be a Showdown scenario!  Special bonus points if you dunk the nerdy kid straight head-first into the pot.

JR: That would be great! (laughs) Well, let’s see…  Is there anything that you can tell us that we might look for in the future at some point with respect to the Showdown rules?

JK: The Showdown rules are broad and kind of all-inclusive and occasionally when you try and use the building tools to simulate a specific setting very closely, you can run into a few points mismatches.  You can produce something that just seems like, “X seems more powerful than Y, but really, shouldn’t Y cost less, I mean something’s wrong here…”  They’re kind of rare, but when you’re trying to pin something down PRECISELY, if you’ve got that persnickety feel that you know exactly how that setting ought to go, it can go a little bit around it.  And one of the things we’re considering doing is making setting-specific packages for Showdown.  Like, perhaps – and this is pure speculation – perhaps repackaging an actual Great Rail Wars-specific set of Showdown bits.

JR: That would be cool!

JK: Or something like that for some of the other settings.  I would say the ones most prone to having so much combat that you’d want to do that for would be Great Rail Wars and the Weird Wars lines.  What I CAN promise, though, for sure, are more actual Showdown scenarios that’ll be up on the web site and maybe some more freebies for it as well.

JR: Awesome.  Well, believe it or not – perhaps it was the ingestion of tapioca, I don’t know – but my brain has returned to me the question I wanted to ask.

JK: Oh, so we’re getting to the ambush part of the interview, is that it?

JR: Potentially, potentially.

JK: You can’t prove I was there, I tell you!

JR: Ah ha!  I’d like you to look at these photos and tell me your immediate reaction…

JK: Never seen that girl before in my life.

JR: Wait… those are the wrong photos… never mind.  (chuckles) ANYWAY.  Well, one of the questions I wanted to ask is have you had a chance to play the skirmish rules at all at any point?

JK: A little bit.  I’ve honestly not played a whole lot of them myself because when I have gamer buddies handy, they tend to be handy in big “we wanna role play” clumps.  I don’t tend to have the occasional gamer buddy show up and just want to blow stuff up.

JR: Ahhh.

JK: If they’re mad, they just want to blow stuff up, they don’t come looking to me. (laughs) I’m not sure exactly what that says but it tends to be true.

JR: (laughs) Well, you know, yeah…  I was gonna ask what you think your favorite setting might be for use with the Showdown rules?

JK: My favorite setting…  One thing I’d really like to see done in Showdown rules which I think would be very nifty – and now that you’ve brought it up I think I may have to set somebody to it – is some material for Sticks and Stones.  Sticks and Stones had come out as a minis game a long time ago and we’ve reproduced it in a different format.  Last year it came out as a card game.  The actual role playing game is in the works.  So, yes, I’m sure somebody out there will have an “Ooga Booga” stat, but… (chuckles) or perhaps it’s a skill, I’m not quite sure.  It’s not finished yet.  But having some scenarios for Sticks and Stones I think would be a lot of fun.

JR: I’d love to see that.  That would be great.  If people want to come and find your products and they’re roving about online, where do they go?

JK: They would go to the Pinnacle home page, which is www.peginc.com.

JR: Thanks very much!

JK: Any time, happy to help.

Click below if you’d like to hear the interview:

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Music by Dave Girtman

I think I’ve just figured out why Doctor Who is so important to me these days.

I know, it’s shocking – a geek like myself being a fan of Doctor Who.  I’ve been one since I was about seven years old.  I’d been hearing for years about that odd, British, science fiction show about a dimensionally transcendent police box and a guy who can travel in time and change his appearance, and at that time I’d never been interested enough to look at it.  But then, one day back in the early 1980’s, I happened to catch part of a special early evening showing of The Five Doctors on PBS – not too long after it had first premiered in the United States – and thought I’d go ahead and give watching it a try.  After that, they showed the regularly scheduled story for that week, The Creature from the Pit.  By the time I got to the end of the evening, I was fully hooked and would never miss an episode if I could help it.

photo by Andrew Wong

The show was like a life-line for me.  It encouraged people to revel in being different – which meant quite a lot to me.  To say I was a bit odd as a child would be a gross understatement.  My horrifyingly bad grade school experiences kept beating the idea into me that being different was bad, but here was a TV show giving me a completely different message – and in a much more entertaining way than I’d encountered from the name-calling bullies on the playground.

I kept watching the show right up until it went on what we can now happily call a long but temporary hiatus in 1989.  Then there was a long dry spell punctuated only by an American TV movie and a few books from Virgin that I managed to pick up every now and then.  I no longer had Doctor Who in my life in a significant way (though I’d go back and watch episodes that I’d recorded every now and then).  But I was okay with that.

The dynamic changed again, though, when the new series started in 2005.  I put off watching it for a while, but then when I did I became utterly hooked on it once again, and was soon as deeply attached to it as I’d ever been.  The new series had begun acting like a life-line for me again.

I didn’t realize why that was the case until a very short time ago.  It wasn’t because of the whole “being different” thing – that’s pretty much a given at this point – but because of the struggle the Doctor goes through in the new series.

You see, for all practical purposes, my life pretty much fell apart in 2005.  It had started falling apart long before then, but 2005 was the year of the final collapse.  I won’t go into too much detail about it right now, but suffice it to say that I went through some very difficult changes that left me a depressed shell of a person for quite a while.  Eventually, though, I started learning once again how to interact with people and even how to trust them.

It’s still not easy, though.  I’ve gotten to the point now that I can behave as though I’m alive and can go out and do things with friends from time to time.  But there’s always a struggle to keep myself from sinking back into the abyss.

In the new TV series, the Doctor’s life has fallen apart as well.  He’s lost nearly everything he cares about.  And he’s always struggling to keep himself from falling into the darkness.  Since the premiere of the new series there have been three new Doctors, and no matter which one of them you look at, you can see that struggle going on.

Maybe it sounds a bit nuts, but it’s an interesting parallel, and nuts or not, it’s working for me.  After helping me deal with the pressures of early life, my childhood hero went away for a while.  But when I needed him again, he came back.

The Doctor has his ups and downs, but when it counts, he’s able to remind himself that he’s not alone.  Despite everything that’s happened to him, he’s continuing to reach out to people.  He’s trying to befriend them and learn to trust them again, even to the extent of taking on new traveling companions.  Even though he had to watch as so much he held dear was destroyed, he’s still trying to keep going – to get back to living his life.

And if the Doctor can do that, then maybe I can too.

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Music by Kevin MacLeod

Hey, folks!

Just wanted to let you know about a few things of mine that are seeing the light of day.

A couple of my monologues were recently published in Main Street Rag, which is a local magazine.  It’s the first time any of my monologues have seen print and I am very excited about that!

Also, the From the Dark Side anthology has just come out.  It’s a charity anthology benefiting Letters and Light – that’s the organization involved with NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).  So if you’re interested in helping support and encourage new writers, I suggest you check it out.  The anthology includes a short story I wrote quite a while ago called The Looking Glass at Lughnasa, where I kind of put a fey twist on a few of Lewis Carroll’s ideas.

You’ll see the links to both of those in this article and as a new part of the general sidebar on my web site as well.  It’s a really great honor to be included among the very talented writers in both publications and I’m really happy about it!  And I’d be very pleased if folks would go and take a look at them.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for now.  See you suddenly!

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Music by Dave Girtman