Classic City Vibes
Classic City Vibes Podcast - Conversations with people in the Athens, Oconee and surrounding communities who help make this such an amazing place to live. Learn what is going on in one of the nation’s most famous music, film and art scenes, learn about some of the amazing opportunities around us where you can be active and interact with others who have similar interests. This podcast is put out by the Athens Regional Library System where we are committed to helping build strong communities and celebrating our diversity. Engaging Communities, Exceeding Expectations.
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Classic City Vibes
Game Designer and Author Caleb Zane Huett
Meet Caleb Zane Hewitt, the creative force behind Triangle Agency, a groundbreaking tabletop role-playing game that's redefining how we think about narrative control and power dynamics at the gaming table. In this wide-ranging conversation, Caleb shares how his unexpected journey from theater kid to professional game master to acclaimed game designer has shaped his unique creative perspective.
Caleb Zane Huett is a game designer and author of several books including TRIANGLE AGENCY, TOP ELF, BUSTER, and the IRONSWORD ACADEMY series. He is also the creative director for Haunted Table, publisher of Triangle Agency and other tabletop role-playing games.
You're listening to Classic City Vibes. I'm your host, zach Wilder, and with me I have my friend new friend in the RPG space that I'm so excited to have here on the podcast Caleb Zane Hewitt. Hello, haunted Table Games.
Speaker 2:Yes, how are you doing?
Speaker 1:on this Wednesday night.
Speaker 2:I'm doing very well. I've had a nice busy day. Since we're talking Classic City, I went to Big City Bread today. Oh, Big City Rules Amazing Barbecue tofu sandwich with an olive tapenade.
Speaker 1:That's right, you're also vegetarian.
Speaker 2:Yes, but anyone can have barbecue tofu. No, you don't have to be vegetarian to choose a barbecue tofu sandwich Meat eaters keep eating.
Speaker 1:No, actually join us. Actually I was going to make a joke, but I would much rather just go on the record saying Caleb's right, join us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then I practiced. You know my line dances.
Speaker 1:I'm going to be honest, I have been watching that on Blue Sky. It's incredible.
Speaker 2:Well, apparently many people have followed it and very few people are giving me positive feedback as a result. What?
Speaker 1:Well, today, People are critiquing your line dancing.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no critiques, oh okay, what I'm saying is I post about line dancing, I get like four or five likes. I posted about a nosebleed today and got 15. That is the difference. That is the difference.
Speaker 1:Well, I am delighted any time I see any of your posts, no matter how mundane they are no matter how mundane they are. So kind. Well, you have a very strong writing voice, obviously from background, but when you have someone who is good at writing, in whatever circumstance they're in, even the mundane stuff can seem fun and interesting. So that's, I don't know, maybe that's why I love the line dancing stuff.
Speaker 2:You should get into it. They're open every weekend.
Speaker 1:The Dukes and Dots you know, I bet my wife would be so thrilled to do something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so maybe the reaction you just gave is the reaction I've received from like 90% of the people I've brought it up to, the sort of like fading into fear. Someone else I know could do this. Oh, you could do it. I believe in you, you're probably right. You don't have to throw someone in front of you like a, like a protective barrier.
Speaker 1:No, I'm just saying that she's probably a lot more. It would be more interested, yeah, in the, in the concept of line dancing. Maybe maybe it's because I, like, I have my, I have a very like prominent and strong way to engage with, like my rhythmic impulses as a musician, yeah so it's like dancing to me is something that I do, like messed up at Dragon Con when I see someone who is like dressed as the Ice King jumps in the ring and I'm like, oh, I gotta dance Ice King, like that's but like I don't think I've ever considered like going out and learning a dance style or a dance discipline in the way that I it seems to me you're doing with line dancing, yeah, at the I.
Speaker 2:It's interesting to think of it that way. It is kind of that and it is for me. I was a. I was like a theater kid for years. What I know, can you believe it? It's a podcast and my voice alone. But I was a theater kid and did musical theater, so sure, it was kind of going to be my life from the time I was like 8 to the time I was like 22.
Speaker 1:And then, pretty abruptly, when I graduated, you were hit by a TTRPG meteor.
Speaker 2:Right, I pretty abruptly stopped, but I stuck around here in Athens and now, 10 years after that, I'm realizing that there's this whole chunk of my life that I haven't accessed in a long time and you're tapping back into it yeah. When I started doing the line dancing, it's like oh right, I know a grapevine, I can do a box step and, as a result, I now have something to do every day for an hour.
Speaker 1:That's good for you. Yes, because it's movement, that's a huge part of it, it's joy.
Speaker 2:Yes, I have always notoriously found any kind of exercise I have to do over and over really boring. Oh yeah, the fact that I can do this and not get so bored and can change what it is whenever I want has been huge. I know that we're not here to talk about line dancing, but unfortunately you're getting the experience that every single person in my life is getting.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately, you're wrong friend. This is the best kind of podcast episode for me. I always try to put that out there into the world, even on the podcast or behind the scenes. I have questions over here, but I could burn this in an instant. I don't care, put that out there into the world, like even on the podcast or behind the scenes, like there is.
Speaker 1:I have questions over here but like I could burn this in an instant I don't care like, like I'm here to talk about you, with you, because you're a fun person and you put stuff into the world that I like and I want to celebrate that. That's what this podcast is about, well thank you, yeah, um, and I could, you know, go full npr on you if you wanted me to. But, I've been told that's kind of intimidating.
Speaker 2:No, I'm just saying that like for the same reason that the line dancing posts got so few likes. I'm like who knows? But since this is a local thing, I feel like I should say like oh yeah especially over the summer.
Speaker 2:Right now, Dukes and Dotties downtown, which does line dancing on Fridays and Saturdays and occasionally Thursdays over the summer, is like a really light crowd. They have the first hour, they're teaching basic dances every time and there's no cover unless you're under 21. So it's totally worth just going and seeing if you have a good time. Oh, wow, Okay, yeah, and I want more people to see it and enjoy it. The place itself is not my typical vibe.
Speaker 1:It's like very country right, it's a country bar. That was something that I one of the last videos I picked up on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I don't think that it's like a super intimidating place. I tend to feel like especially old and gay and tall there, but the Don't Great Right Check, check, check, gay and tall there. But the no great Right Check, check, check, right, right, I know, for many environments, for many environments, very good, for this particular environment it is a little bit complicated, but I think like I've had some fun with that and I've talked a little bit lately online, as you've probably seen, about how, like I'm from Texas and a huge portion of this is stuff that I grew up being kind of like cynical about.
Speaker 1:Like kind of. I was sort of raised with a feeling, and part of it came from being gay.
Speaker 2:In that environment of like all this country stuff is like not for me. It's incompatible with your identity. Yeah, like I was raised by like a very nerdy guy who kind of considered himself to be set apart from that, despite being from like the literal smallest possible town you could be from in Texas, in the middle of nowhere, and I was very much kind of taught a feeling of country as a thing to be sort of like both afraid of and kind of haughty about.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:And it took until I was like older to realize, to kind of haughty about oh okay. And it took until I was older to realize, to kind of reintegrate some of that stuff. And this has been part of that process for me. I had to go buy boots. I had to go buy boots so I could dance in them and that feeling of doing that Incredible experience. It's great so having a blast.
Speaker 1:I actually identify with that experience a whole lot, but in a much nerdier way. I have gotten back into card games in a pretty big way. We were talking about Final Fantasy at some point.
Speaker 2:A dangerous path to go down. If you're me and you spent any money on Final Fantasy Magic the Gathering this month, oh, did you?
Speaker 1:I did A dangerous amount. Oh, I did too.
Speaker 2:Did you?
Speaker 1:get any of the Commander decks.
Speaker 2:I got them all.
Speaker 1:You got them all. I got all of them, but the 14 deck.
Speaker 2:No, I got them all Because I'm not familiar with 14. 14 is the one I know the most because I played a lot of 14.
Speaker 1:Oh, I have played zero.
Speaker 2:I left my raiding group to make Triangle Agency Like that is what happened there. I was like, okay, so we're definitely going to have a circle. No, no, no, no, don't apologize, this is the hard-hitting journalism that I'm here to do. No, I was joking today that I'm busy trying to build the most confusing personality a person can have, Like I just have all of these little things all wrapped up.
Speaker 1:People contain multitudes.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:People contain multitudes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, people contain multitudes.
Speaker 1:I love it If you listen to my voice on this podcast and you come away with nothing else. Just know that people contain multitudes. I played competitive card games when I was really young. You know like saw the OVA, the very first OVA of Yu-Gi-Oh, like live on TV Right and caught the bug, yes, but was actually surprisingly really good at it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in a way, that really good at it. Yeah, so did you actually do competitions when you were younger?
Speaker 1:I got an invite to Nats at nine years old yeah.
Speaker 2:And when you were nine that would have been like two or three sets in to Yu-Gi-Oh right, it was when the Gravekeepers came out. Yeah, not far.
Speaker 1:Not long, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I played Yu-Gi-Oh in that first wave as well, but I was very casual with Yu-Gi-Oh in that first wave as well. But I was very casual with Yu-Gi-Oh in a way that I wasn't with Magic. I started Magic when I was like nine, so I was really into Magic and then Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon were kind of my like collect them and watch the show, kind of thing.
Speaker 1:It was reversed for me, but it was only because, like my best friend, who I did not realize, realize we were essentially two gay boys who just didn't understand that that was. We were like orbiting around each other and just didn't understand that we had feelings for each other and we're like we're just gonna put all that weird like homoeroticism into cards.
Speaker 1:Many such cases, yeah, yeah, um. He, he was like a phenom when it comes to like competitive games and that like rubbed off on me, um, and I stopped doing that to uh take music seriously, uh, and now that I have uh not not necessarily like given up on that, but like I settled into the reality of living in a material world with many, many, many challenges that are more important, uh, I've found the space for card games again super weird and what.
Speaker 1:Definitely Final Fantasy has a lot to do with it, because die die hard Final Fantasy fan. But I need to know about this quitting Final Fantasy XIV kicking a bad addiction, a bad habit to do something productive with your life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Like start a tabletop game project, right, well, so, um, they were not so much closely related, but I'm thinking actually about its connection to card games. My first like step back into the world, um, when the pandemic, like when we had vaccines and when there was like the possibility of going out and doing stuff in a way that didn't feel immediately threatening and immoral. Yeah, I was going to Dragon Star to play Digimon, oh my.
Speaker 1:Right when the Digimon card game was dropping. My apologies for whatever experience came from that.
Speaker 2:Well, honestly, it was amazing, and part of it was because I again was like stepping into the world for the first time in a couple of years, and so I had this like very emotional reaction to interacting with people at all, and playing Digimon at all was a big part of that, and I had and during this time I was working as a professional GM I was mostly with kids, working with a bunch of kids who I had found as clients when I worked at an after-school program in New York City as a professional GM for D&D here. Well, when I was in New York, and then I kept all of those clients when the pandemic hit and they all went online.
Speaker 1:So then we moved back here.
Speaker 2:That makes sense. Uh, we moved back here where I had gone to school and uh started. I continued running games for those same kids and some other clients and some business clients, uh, for a while about four years total, I think and then the I started playing this card game. During that period was developing a lot of thoughts around games. I released a couple of middle grade books that were also kind of about trading card games as well as a bunch of other stuff, and I hit on like really wanting to be designing and really wanting to be in like a sort of like collaborative working environment, and the first thing that came through, that kind of like hooked me in that way, was Final Fantasy 14, which is that a bunch of my friends were interested in getting into it at the same time. And as like a quick summary for people who have no idea what that is, it's an MMO. Uh, it's a lot of the same design and I mean honestly, that's the main draw.
Speaker 1:No, I laugh because I am on that side. Right, the Final Fantasy game looks nice.
Speaker 2:It looks nice. You don't have to feel like you are playing a game from like 2004.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, even with the whatever update skin.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it has so much mess to it. It's really really long and dull, but it has a like. It has a depth, of character and story that it's one of those things that really hooks people, because there's so much to think about. Even if the stuff individually is not amazing, they pile on so many cool things that you eventually, and over such a long time too, right?
Speaker 1:Yes, because there's so much content.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I mean that's true for all Final Fantasy games. I would describe them all kind of that way, where they're like any individual piece not so amazing.
Speaker 2:But on an MMO level, an aggregate is great, yes, but the MMO has like over a decade now of stuff, and at there is this thing called raiding, which is a term that's used across MMOs and in this case means there's like especially difficult boss fights or dungeons that require a team of four or eight or 16 people to be working together and acting very perfectly in a way that, for people who don't know at all, I would describe as being very similar to marching band there is a where you, where you are, what timing I got you.
Speaker 1:It's like how you stand, yeah, where you are, what timing I got you.
Speaker 2:It's like how you stand, what rhythm of your abilities, what are other people doing and can you adapt to that and everybody has to be focused and on it all at the same time in order for it to work. So for the actual demographic of MMOs, which is like a bunch of nerdy gamers who are often playing solo games and and for whom mmos are sometimes the only real experience, like this, raiding is a like team sport that can create some pretty powerful emotions. It's like a very complicated and weird.
Speaker 2:That is a very generous way to put yeah, a very positive way to put that well, I think it's like, uh, like anything where some people have uh, some people have power but there isn't a lot of structure around that power, or like where people are kind of competitive with each other but are theoretically cooperative. Like that brings out some of the same human feelings all over the place. But then you combine that with like the low level of actual physical, real life feedback you're getting from the game and I think it can be especially psychologically challenging. But I loved it and I was. I was like so deep into it and like planning and thinking about it and figuring it out. But I hit a point where I was like I am spending like three or four hours a week like sitting in a room doing the same two or three minute thing until I get it perfectly so that I can have like a new horse to ride on.
Speaker 1:You know to put it, to put it in the summary and that was a little bit.
Speaker 2:That was a little bit frustrating for me on a zoomed out level. I think a lot of things we do as humans are like this, so I don't actually think it's that big of a deal, but it was like making me a little frustrated. I tapped into triangle agency, started poking at this idea that I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about and, uh, hit a point where, like, I very smoothly swapped the level of focus I had been giving to rating like directly into that work in a way that was like, um, not something I've ever really accomplished any other time of like basically right, like able to keep hold of that brain. That was like I'm managing all these people, I'm trying to accomplish this thing. It's going to require focus on a level that is like that requires me to believe that this thing matters. In a way that's very silly and I feel like I very smoothly swapped over into that. So that's kind of how that happened.
Speaker 2:And then later on my friends were who stayed in there, who still love it. We we're joking about, like you made a tabletop game and we finally just now got through all of the fights from that patch and that feeling was like a very funny like punchline on it for me, but I still would do it again. I don't think there's anything about it that's actually like bad. It that's actually like bad. I think.
Speaker 1:It's just that I specifically felt very happy that I was able to transition it into something that was channel, that that mattered to me, that that drive, uh, did do any have any of the people that you that used to raid with play triangle agency?
Speaker 2:oh yeah, I think so. Um, or at least they've read it um, I don't know if any of them have played, played, but I know that you should absolutely oh well, any of them have played, played, but I know that they've read it. You should absolutely run. Oh well, one of them definitely has, because she was involved in all the PlayStation things. So, yes, oh, okay, one of them for sure, and then the others, I'm pretty sure, have read it.
Speaker 1:I wonder what that experience is like for a person who is like party, literally party to both of those contexts of your creative and you know your drive.
Speaker 2:Well, I also think they're related. A lot of what I was thinking about altogether was like the interesting power dynamics at play when you're like a group of people trying to accomplish something like that, and at the same time I was, I see it.
Speaker 1:Just saying that one thing I see it yeah, Because it's about office culture Right.
Speaker 2:And I was also trying to run D&D for children, which required there were a lot of things layered in that book that is so difficult. I think it is yes, well, when you're running it for children and as a paid DM who was running it basically like for their parents, right, like not really for them. In the same way where, like, I'm doing something that is intended to be a like a performance slash, like curated social event for kids, it adds a texture to tabletop role-playing that is actually not supernatural to it.
Speaker 2:it's like, ideally, to me, role-playing is very much a collaborative event and it's a thing that everybody is like really opting into in this like intentional way that that, I think, becomes a little less play when work is uh put into it, sure, sure and so a lot of what came into triangle agency, this, this game about paranormal investigation in this like kind of warped corporate culture, a lot of the game design was really me poking at ideas around like what are the power dynamics at play in casual settings like gaming and role playing that are, you know, that could be more examined or that are fun to examine, like fun to poke at and fun to like, like pick at um, and so a lot of the way that I designed triangle agency was about playing with like what are we doing at the table and who has control over what we're doing and how do we decide who has control over that? And that's jumping so deep for this game. So I know again, people here might have no clue we're talking about at all.
Speaker 1:Let's hit question one on the sheet. That sounds good. Oh, for those uninitiated, can you give us an elevator pitch of the hit game Triangle Agency, and how does that interact with Haunted Table? Yeah, did Triangle Agency happen first, or did Haunted Table happen first?
Speaker 2:So Triangle Agency as a game is a paranormal investigation and corporate horror. Role-playing game, tabletop role-playing game. I love the term corporate horror, that's just life, baby. Yeah, I think that, to go all the way to basics, role-playing game, tabletop role-playing game Dungeons Dragons is a tabletop role-playing game. It is a game where you sit down with your friends and you tell a story together using a book that has a series of rules in it, that sort of guide, the way you tell that story. That's like what a tabletop role-playing game is.
Speaker 2:The thing that is, I think, unique about Triangle Agency is that the book itself has an extreme amount of influence over the way that the game is played and the way you are guided to play doesn't follow a lot of typical role-playing game patterns, or, when it does, it's like trying to make sure you notice them. So, for example, when you're playing Dungeons and Dragons, there's a thing I think almost everybody knows about called the dungeon master. The dungeon master is the person who is expected in Dungeons and Dragons play culture to create the world, to prepare everything they can ahead of time so that the players are able to be main characters in a universe that feels real, that the DM is responsible for almost entirely Of, like being the wall that you crash against. That can be a really rewarding job. It can be a very difficult job and historically, it can be a very interpersonally complicated one.
Speaker 1:Oh, you're so good at that. I shouldn't expect anything less of someone who wrote an entire book called Corporate Horror, but the way that you're able to take these really tricky concepts and spin them in a way that doesn't sound horrifying to someone who's listening to you is very impressive sound horrifying to someone who's listening to you is very impressive.
Speaker 2:Well, what's is referencing is that there's lots of horror stories about um, bad dms, difficult tables, um, a combination between player and dm that doesn't really work, and tabletop role-playing games broadly have a really interesting um crisis is like a dramatic word, but has have a like scene wide challenge that the way people play at the table is extremely influential on how the game itself is played. But we don't have a lot of language or history or guidelines for how to change the way people approach games at the table. So you might think there's all these rule books. If you sit down and read the rule book at the table, so you might think there's all these rule books. If you sit down and read the rule book, you at least know how to play. But the but the truth is that rule books tell you how to play with a lot of assumptions about how players are even supposed to be.
Speaker 2:Thinking about what a role playing game is, and I one way I would I sometimes think of it is like imagine if every time you sat down to watch a movie, you also had to be taught how a vhs works or how a dvd player works, or like how to run the projector yourself, that, like the actual every movie theater you go to might have a different brand of projector. That is causing a slightly different outcome, and we have like the actual fact that their technology to regulate how that works. But in a tabletop role-playing game sense, something as simple as like who talks when, is an undefined and like inconsistent issue across different games. So so that's like a silly thing to say that. All of that, to say that dungeons and dragons, even the most well-known one, even the one that seems like it's the most like, um uh, iconic and consistent, often creates really uncomfortable experiences because people don't even really know how to sit down and play it.
Speaker 1:I, yeah, I think about it in the terms of, like, just regular relationships with people. Um, I maybe this is a perspective I have from playing like can lead to some of the most like explosive like uh, personality clashes and a bunch of repressed nerds doing that. Like it, can, it, can, it can be real. Uh, scary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it can be Well, especially when you're talking about young people playing like a lot of people in those environments are playing to have those social interactions and explore them, explore identity and and experience itself.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, and a lot of those people, probably not having a lot of experience in any of those.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, it takes time and I think, like one of the great things about games is that it provides that backdrop to have make those mistakes, um, in a way that's low stakes and that doesn't require you to be like losing your job or like losing all of your friends, that you can like confine that to a specific place, figure it out and kind of practice failure. I know that I did a lot of that, but anyway, all of that to say, triangle Agency is a game that makes that much worse intentionally and it gives you a weird gun and it tells you to go out and capture something that you can't even quantify.
Speaker 2:And it tells you to go out and capture something that you can't even quantify, right, yeah, and it positions your GM, in this case your general manager, rather than DM.
Speaker 1:I love that we're trying to reclaim GM in different ways. I love it, I'm so here for it.
Speaker 2:The general manager is positioned as kind of like a boss within a company, and the game itself is a, is a, um, a job initiative. It's an initiative at a workplace that you have been hired to role play for, basically, and so what I'm hoping the game does through like a fun sci-fi, modern sci-fi, like uh, exploratory, um storytelling game where players and the gm actually have a lot of shared power we poke at and tease and play with like what does it mean to be in charge of a story? What does it mean to control how a story is told? And the book itself complicates that by often taking power away from the GM also.
Speaker 1:Or taking the power away from the voice of the book. Like the information being presented is being the power of presenting that in the book is being taken away from some other agent in the book.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Which is genius, by the way. Thank you. Pure genius. Every time I see that mentioned on like a forum or people are talking about it, that's like the number one thing they jump to immediately is they're like how has no one in this industry like figured out that they can put multiple voices?
Speaker 2:a lot of people have. There are lots of games that have voices. I think the like no, I mean like multiple ones that are fighting. Yeah, I think the fight is the thing that has been. Uh, a really, really fun and surprising thing for people is that the game to summarize again, the game starts by presenting itself as a work document from the company given to all the players, and then, when the general manager has their section to read, a different voice takes over and has some competing ideas for how to run the game that the players are not even initially told. So the general manager, who is supposed to be crafting the story for the players is, is effectively given a different job, like told to do something else, and that is represented through a character that fights with the original voice of the book.
Speaker 1:I'm so surprised you're giving away this secret sauce right here on a podcast.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's part of the appeal.
Speaker 1:I think it is too honestly.
Speaker 2:And the thing that I am most excited about with that, and the thing that I think we play with the most successfully in this game, is about like having everybody at the table unable to leave the game without having thought about, like what is the purpose of what we're doing, like what is the?
Speaker 2:What is the actual story we are trying to tell, what are the dynamics between us at the table and how do we feel about them. And also silly stuff Like the game invites you to be, like tattling on your friends and having them get demerits, and like doing things that you might find evil in pursuit of rewards, like monetary or commendation pat on the head kind of rewards, and a lot of that stuff is stuff that's just assumed to be fine and positive in other role-playing games. So we wanted to play with like those assumptions and make sure that if you do come back to those assumptions, you're doing it intentionally, with an understanding that they are choices and not just like stuff that has to be default. And all that is a really a really silly, dramatic way to say that. It's like a game where you have a job for an evil corporation and you're chasing monsters.
Speaker 1:And it's presented in this absolutely big, beautiful hardcover book with these incredible illustrations Shophauntedtablegames.
Speaker 2:This is a good moment for it.
Speaker 1:Nail it.
Speaker 2:Do it Part of the reason we do. This is a good moment for it. Yeah, nail it like do it this, this part of the reason we do this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, part of the reason we do this is an advert. Um speak haunted table. Speaking of, oh yeah, the original. Uh what, what came first? Uh, triangle agency or haunted games?
Speaker 2:yeah, so um, triangle agency came first and haunted table was created as like a publisher to hold it. Basically, sure, initially me and my co-writer, sean ireland, who is the other designer on triangle agency, created the company together and then after a certain point, it became like my full-time job and it became the company that I'm running, and he stepped away from running the company but continues to be working with me creatively as a writer, and so haunted tableunted Table Games right now really is it's Triangle Agency. It's keeping that published. It's like making sure that we are like marketing it and keeping it alive and holding the like rights and being able to like use the company as a way to pass out royalties to people and like do IP rights and translation rights and everything through a face that's not just me, which was always a little uncomfortable, has been really great and soon it will be more, hopefully more stuff than just Triangle Agency.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I know you've we've chatted about some other ideas you had that were all very interesting, thank you, so I'm looking forward to seeing.
Speaker 2:We'll see when any of them get done. Right now I'm being very slow, but it turns out, after you work on one giant project for like three years in a row, you can potentially be a little bit burnt out, just a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you're dancing it away. Right, exactly, you're line dancing it away.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:It's all part of the process. The creative yeah, the um, the corporate horror to line dancing pipeline exactly yeah, so nearly two years have passed, uh almost to the day uh, since you launched the I would think very successful um kickstarter campaign.
Speaker 1:um, there's so much stuff like retroactively um that I have learned about the process, I guess, of the game being made, obviously from the kickstarter and all the hands that have been on it truly impressed by like how many people, uh, in some form or fashion, are like like interacting with, like the game and putting it out there or making content for it or even crossovers it's pretty sick. Love anything Claymore does, fist rules.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, that's the most, that's the closest to being done, of all of our like. Supplemental material is something that Claymore wrote. That's a fist module, that's a crossover triangle agency and it's so fun and cool. I'm getting close to being able to play test it really.
Speaker 1:And that'll be. I feel well like knowing I I I haven't played fist, but I've read the definitive edition, whichever, whatever the box set was I have a pdf of that ultra, ultra, yes, um, I've read that and just from like understanding the vibes of what fist is trying to evoke makes it seem like the like those that in luminal Horror 2, they all could literally just exist in the same world. It's so sick that they're all that close in tone and vibe.
Speaker 2:Well, it's funny, fist actually already has a force in the universe. That's a lot like Triangle Agency called Cyclops, and so we had to sort of do some fun narrative work to talk about like, okay, triangle Agency is what's there when Cyclops. And so we had to sort of do some fun narrative work to talk about like, okay, triangle agency is what's there when Cyclops isn't. And in various realities there's different versions of Cyclops, and triangle agency is a version of what like fills that void if there's no Cyclops, and but it's very. There's a lot of really fun um texture to having fist agents who are themselves like a very progressive unit think like metal gear solid mercenaries who are uh extreme, like uh queer freedom, fighting uh energy far beyond what Metal Gear Solid is doing, even Not hard to do that?
Speaker 1:Yes, right.
Speaker 2:And so they are able to look at Triangle Agency for really what it is, which is this scary, villainous kind of fascist organization Overall, I see.
Speaker 2:And so they are able to. Claymore has been able to put a really strong and funny voice to a lot of Triangle Agency. Is this double language this place is getting to? Claymore has been able to put a really strong and funny voice to like a lot of Triangle Agency. Is this double language? This place is getting to speak to you and sort of pretend that it's something that it's not, by being very nice, and when Fist shows up, true to their name, it's very much like smashing straight in and being like all right, hate these guys.
Speaker 2:What do we do? How do we tear this down? And it's a really, really cool system. It's going to be a card crawl, which means it's a you create the dungeon you play through by playing, uh, cards from a deck that are shuffled up in different ways, and it is a repeatable mission that changes over time, based on you draw different cards. Yes, that's um, yeah, and there's a really really neat kind of looping story that we're working on for it. That, I think, is going to be really exciting to people who like Fist and who like Triangle Agency, I think.
Speaker 1:When I saw that mentioned as a collaboration on the Kickstarter page, I was just immediately like, oh, that seriously does seem like the perfect kind of crossover, because Fist agents would, I imagine, get a lot more agency than folks from triangle ages I promise I wasn't trying to make a pun there.
Speaker 2:No, we already did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I imagine, like the being able to explore those same ideas through the lens of like the different, like kinds of power that you get from like triangle agency or fist, would really affect what you get to, what your, your character gets to learn. Yeah, yeah, right, the scope of that's so sick. So again, two years away from the Kickstarter, have you? Are you done with fulfillment completely? We're done with all the physical fulfillment.
Speaker 2:The only stuff that's hanging over is stuff like this there were a couple of different crossovers and like additional mission things that we were hoping to release that basically it's completely my fault, but they have been held up because I took over fulfillment and managing that and managing everything about the company after the Kickstarter was done and, as a result, a lot of this stuff is just kind of in a queue waiting for me to have enough time to work on it, and then the other thing that I've talked about a lot is like I, you got kind of sick of it.
Speaker 2:Like I worked on tranquillity for so long it's hard to keep it up but, um, but it's all starting to move again. I spent probably the last year, you know, eight months of it mostly focused on fulfillment and running a convention booth and like doing all this stuff for the game to kind of help it keep getting off the ground. And now that we're about a year since the digital version of the games launched and about six months since everybody got the physical and it started being in like stores oh is it that Wow, wow, wow, wow Okay.
Speaker 1:The digital it's been on my radar for a minute. So, like I'm surprised.
Speaker 2:I know I only got the book from you, like you know, a few months ago, but yeah, and that was only a couple months after it really started being available, um, physically and the. So we're still in like a zone where a lot of people are still engaging with it for the first time and we released with it 12 missions, and anybody who schedules tabletop games knows that like 12, is a lot to get through, so there's a lot.
Speaker 2:I think we're just now bumping up against people really running out of stuff to do, um, and I uh, so I'm trying to make sure we get stuff out for them, but, um, the for the most part, I've been really trying to be patient to see how does the game like. What does the game become now?
Speaker 1:that people have it, and how does?
Speaker 2:that change the way you approach it. So like a lot of the mission stuff I'm releasing soon is going to have like a different structure than we started with, because I've started seeing the flaws and the structure we had before. Yeah, um, but I mean all of that is like a really nice face and true stuff, but is also like attached to the end of like I was really tired and like it was really burnt out and and it was hard to work on it for a long time.
Speaker 1:So what does that look like now, working, as I imagine, single person operation? You're like doing a lot of database management and probably like website stuff Ideally. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:What does it actually look like? Well, I just mean, ideally I keep up with stuff like that, but for the most part, like my work has been, it's been customer service emails. It's been making sure like we have a fulfillment company that has all of our stock and is sending them out to people. But I'm kind of the person who answers all the emails about that and like who makes sure that stuff is getting fixed when there's problems those customers?
Speaker 1:are they, uh, individuals buying the item or folks that you're like sending a few to like an LGS or something?
Speaker 2:That's mostly people buying it, but we also have been, through a distributor called Modiphius, been selling to retail stores.
Speaker 1:Oh, yes, yes, Okay yeah.
Speaker 2:And that has been has made that very easy for me, which is really nice. But I but yeah, I've been doing a lot of poking at different projects and, because we were successful enough to have the ability to kind of take our time, I'm really trying to make sure that whatever we do release next is up to a level that I'm excited about Got a lot of eyes on you. Yes, that's how it feels. That's a good thing, though.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's well-deserved. Thank you. I don't think people would be talking about Triangle Agency the way that they are if it wasn't such a breath of fresh air and basically all of its design principles, like the way that it's presented in the book, the actual mechanics of the game itself and the way that it's trying to break down maybe some more rigid hierarchical structures that have been passed down through nerd culture and it's just kind of congealed and we have to deal with like these guys.
Speaker 1:It's, it's obviously like from me reading it. Uh, I I see the, the, the analysis that came from your experience of all the things you mentioned at the beginning of this episode, which is all of these different ways you have experienced and observed the way that the actual play structure works when you get people around the table, and I think that that is, I think that's resonating with people in a way that they were not maybe expecting or like prepared for, because so many games don't think about any of that stuff at all. Most of the games are like all right, you're due with sword, now here's your other sword well, I think the thing is, I think most games are thinking about it.
Speaker 2:they just it's, there's a, there are a bunch of different solutions, and I think like part of what we're doing with the comedy of the game and with the structure of the game is not so much proposing solutions, we're just making sure that it's like really forefront, right, right, like we're playing with it, we're like putting it in front of people and and making sure it's very difficult to dodge, which I think creates a different texture.
Speaker 1:You have such a positive outlook on this whole thing.
Speaker 2:I love it. Well, I just like I find it really hard to be negative about role-playing games because I think the challenge having made one, the challenge is already. It's really tough. Trying to communicate how to play a game to a group of people is already really challenging.
Speaker 1:And for the most part, we don't like, we don't need these games to be perfect, to be good, like pretty much all around For sure, and like most of the stuff that's most like I'm just laughing about like how everybody has a game they love because it's good, because there's some like visceral flaw with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, well, and I agree and because, like, we just need enough games that are trying things, that let our brain take different shapes, that let us, like you know, challenge ourselves to be thinking in different ways and like even a game that's the most you know like raw and like dangerous and causes a lot of bleed between player and character, like there's stuff to learn there, as long as we are like, like broadly learning how to be like cautious and safe and careful with each other. And so I guess all of that to say, like my, my opinion on games is that it's very hard to do them wrong like it's. It's there's a lot of ways to think about them and there's a lot of ways to talk about them and there's always room to make them better, but I think it's very difficult to do a game that's bad.
Speaker 1:Then maybe what I should have said is that what you have brought to the tabletop community with Triangle Agency is that transparency of your observations, like the experiences that you've had in doing GMing professionally and thinking about the way that, uh, we have games literally happen between people and that is, uh, that is a very like strong forefront um aspect of triangle agency and I think that's resonating with people yeah, that's awesome, and I think a huge part of that came from like with me at least.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm glad. I think a huge part of that came from like sean and I worked that uh, that jamming job at the board game cafe together.
Speaker 2:My co-writer and had very different experiences with work outside of that. Like sean worked for a lot of larger startup-y clients and firms and more corporate-feeling things, and I had a lot of local business experience with Avid Bookshop here and had been working for myself most of the time I had been working as a writer and we had very different opinions on work. And then we both kind of approached these same topics together of like how do games work? How did the how does the power dynamic at play change when you are so like physically and emotionally and age-wise separate from your players and you're also given this like babysitter role over them, like what happens there and the two of us getting to sit and talk about that every single day for like six months. Then you, you know, percolated for two years and kind of became this game Became a ripple gun yes, exactly.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and so there are real ones, right, yeah, yes, that's so sick. A local artist, cute Monster Props in Atlanta whose name is Kyle, who is a also works for Vulpen Props, which does a lot of eSports trophies and stuff like that, oh, okay, yeah. And is an incredible cosplayer, an incredible prop maker. I had known from seeing that he was Atlanta local and made a bunch of prizes for AGDQ, the speedrunning video game, speedrunning thing. So I reached out to him and was basically like I know you're local.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's where I know the term cute monster prop because of Gameston Quick. When you said the name, I was like that pinged somewhere in my brain and it was 4am on my couch.
Speaker 2:The Link's Awakening Whale was the big one, like the last year that's incredible. Shout out to cute monster props, yes, so recommend checking that out, um, and so yeah, that's like, yes, there are real ones.
Speaker 1:That's the ripple gun, and and I think a lot of it came from my conversations with sean looking back, uh, to those conversations and the percolation process before that like after that, did you have any idea the success that you would have in Triangle Agency?
Speaker 2:No, but I could tell when it was working, like I could feel part of why I threw so much into it was because I hit the point with it where I could really tell like this is becoming what it needs to be to be sellable and like to to hit with people.
Speaker 2:And that feeling while it was like well, that's always a dangerous feeling, especially for an artist, to like get too obsessed with an idea because you think it's all, it's all going to be perfect, to like get too obsessed with an idea because you think it's all going to be perfect. I have like a pretty good like inner audience, like member for my work, where I'm pretty good at like putting my own brain away and looking at something again fresh. That's like one of my skills, I think, and the like I was able to keep redoing that and like reinvesting in the project and the parts that I could see were were really working for me. And I have like a like a silly superstition. Basically, that is like nobody is so unique that there aren't 150 other people that are basically them like oh yeah, so I, and it hurts when you, when you meet them or you see them.
Speaker 1:It really does right.
Speaker 2:So I'm always like there could be way more than that, but I always rely on like even my like least my most confusing and complicated and bizarre impulse. I know there's 150 people out there for whom that will hit.
Speaker 1:They're all on tumblr yeah, exactly yeah, so I'm I, I always rely on that.
Speaker 2:And then a lot of my conversations with sean were about basically like what is the absolute maximum we can do to give this thing a chance, um, and how much can we prepare for it to succeed? But we also like I mean, you also have no clue, you just have no clue, especially on a crowdfunder, especially with how that stuff goes um, but we could feel it and we were feeling really confident and like a huge part of feeling confident was that, like my husband is a really amazing visual designer who works for um, a lot of like, um, like, uh, app developers and marketing companies and is like one of the best people in his field and has like such a strong sense for how things like look and how to make things look polished and professional. And I trusted him. So when we had stuff, when I was working on something visually, it was very easy to show something with to him, talk about it and feel confident that if he was telling me it was good, then it was, oh, was.
Speaker 2:And I had a couple of friends like that for different things. You know, like people who I knew had really were really smart about games, people I knew were really smart about writing and every step of the process I was like is this as good as I think it is? Like is this working the way I think it is? And and tried to poke at that long enough that when we did release it to people, I felt confident that it wasn't nothing.
Speaker 1:I had a feeling that it could be big and just did everything we could to sort of make the snowball as big as possible before we had to push it down the hill. And did you feel like, when you did push it down the hill, that it was picking up a lot of mass without you putting a lot of force behind it at that point?
Speaker 2:No, no, no, I mean, it did really well, but I do feel like there was so much work involved.
Speaker 1:Oh, that was not meant to underplay the moment.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, I don't think so.
Speaker 1:Truly. There is obviously a lot of work involved.
Speaker 2:No, truly there is obviously a lot of work involved. No, it's just like the. So let me think about it the hardest. The biggest surprising juice was through advertisement, which is not something that I have a lot of experience with. I had never tried to advertise anything online.
Speaker 1:but we worked with Backerkit, which is a crowdfunding support website. Does it own crowdfunding now? Yes, so it does both now yes.
Speaker 2:Okay, so they do advertisement, they do crowdfund and they also do the management of your backers post-campaign.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, okay.
Speaker 2:But we were doing our campaign on kickstarter but we were talking to back and get about advertisement and we had we basically ended up commissioning them to run our like online ads. Um, and even that process was like meant that throughout the whole campaign, I was like ready at a moment's notice to make like a bunch of new assets out of the stuff that we had, or like to create new little squares of pictures from the book to show people online. And that was a huge part of our success was that those advertisements went really well. They hit really well. We had these like 3D models that Michael made that looked really pretty and we had like a lot of really good buzz around that. That helped us a lot really good buzz around that. That helped us a lot. And that was the most like who could have seen this work this well kind of thing where the advertisements just like worked and they don't always work right, yeah yeah, um, so we had hit something really lucky there.
Speaker 2:And then the rest of the campaign, um, like you gestured to having like a lot of people, uh, involved. We, I worked to sort of tap people for our side stuff like our store, like the stories, the missions in the book and um, and then to work with artists who were both in the tabletop space and outside of it, and even within the tabletop space were from very different parts of the scene. So the hope was not so much that that would magically create an audience, but it would help like make sure that a bunch of different domains were getting tapped a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like there's a cross-pollination between different sub-scenes. Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 2:And a lot of those creators also because Triangle Agency is a really flexible setting were able to bring whatever their skill set is into the game and Triangle Agency is pretty good at absorbing it.
Speaker 1:Like an ultra fist yeah.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Or a liminal horror Right.
Speaker 2:And then those crossovers were a fun thing.
Speaker 1:It was very energizing.
Speaker 2:I would imagine they were really fun because they were, in a way, they were about me wanting to make sure that, especially because some of those crossovers we sort of figured out after some of the momentum was getting built was like I wanted to make sure that, as we were doing well and kind of coming out of nowhere, that a lot of the stuff that had inspired me and that we're already in the scene doing similar stuff, that we were still kind of paying our dues there and like communicating with them and like trying to show, like this is where we fit into the space, like we are not trying to become the game that overtakes all this stuff.
Speaker 2:We're trying to have our niche within it and, to even make that so clear, we're going to give you those games before ours and we're going to, like, show the differences by putting them literally next to each other was kind of the goal I I like the way that you're framing that as paying your dues because, as as a career musician, that's usually wielded like a hammer right uh, I like that it was.
Speaker 1:It feels like a constructive way to, to, to also still get across the same point that, uh, to be a part of a scene and to be a part of a community, you have to contribute, uh, and you have to be uh cognizant that there are other people in said community that also have their own needs and their own spaces, and that there is a way to like synthesize those things and not have them be like destructive. I feel like almost every time I've heard the term paying your dues, it's been a destructive use.
Speaker 2:Like a patronizing thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that you're right that the big difference there is that it's not something that anybody was forcing on us. It's not something that anybody was saying like how dare you. It's more like I think I wanted to make part of our story, part of what we were saying about Trianguliancy, and that I really believe, is that it's a game that you're only supposed to play for some of your life. It's a game that is only intended to be something that you have for a year or two, I see.
Speaker 2:And I had no interest in even implying that we were a game that was going to become anybody's everything game.
Speaker 1:Everything game. You can do anything in this game. Look, you have stats and those stats you can roll checks for anything. Right, oh?
Speaker 2:man, and so that was also part of it was like we were showing you know not we're so not worried about that that you should go play these other games, like you need to play them, and they're going to give you something different. And I, I, I think like that, other people who really like triangle agency and the people who who have more trouble with it, I think, are both reacting to that often the like, the fact that it's a game that is supposed to be one specific thing for a specific period of time and after that you know it's you are supposed to walk away eventually yeah eventually, the game is intended to like kind of put you in a position where you're forced to um and I uh.
Speaker 2:So that was a big part of why we were collaborating with people. And then, on the other other end, it's like, as we got more successful, I wanted to make sure that more people were getting to like, uh, enjoy some of that. And our, our, our system is that everybody who was involved in any way now, um, depending on which project they were in the vault or the, the core book, uh, each of those has like a pool that gives an equal amount of royalties to everybody who touched it. So it is like an equal payment that I send out to everybody on that team, um, lately, yearly, but hopefully eventually more, if there's, if it starts so sick, um so unbelievably sick.
Speaker 2:I imagine it was that hard to like set up in terms of like automation or like it's me, it's not automated, it's just me doing the math and I then sending it out, but that's probably why it works yeah, and eventually it's going to be tougher because if we have more projects and we try to keep that up, it's going to be hard. But I at the time it was like again, we didn't know how well it was going to do, but we hoped it would do well. I wanted to make sure that everybody involved got paid their rate ahead of time and understood that if it hit and if that was because of them or because they had put their name on it or because they gave their time, I wanted to make sure that nobody was under the impression that it was going to like leave them behind, I guess.
Speaker 1:But that's incredible.
Speaker 2:That's genuinely incredible, uh but I hope that it's. I hope we can keep it up, we hope we can keep making enough money that it's valuable.
Speaker 1:I think you can. I think, look, I mean I'm ambient on Blue Sky, just kind of like getting vibes on how the community is doing and what people are doing, like I see the name In many places, I see people running live streams of it or actual plays. I get the sense that it's one of those games where it's like, now that it has been established, in that its identity is so strong that when people think of that genre of game or that genre of fiction, it is one of the the like short list of this is this is the uh, one of the games that you do to get that experience? Um, I think you're not. I don't. I think it's the line's still going up fam, that's what I what I think from an outside perspective.
Speaker 1:It seems like line's still going up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it feels that way. So what's next for Triangle Agency? There's a couple different things. Like I said, we're still trying to finish up some of those promised missions that are taking longer, because I'm trying to make sure that they're done in a way that reflects what we've learned about the game. I didn't want to rush them out.
Speaker 2:There are a couple projects that Sean and I are working on together that are intended to be some pretty, pretty big like RPGs, um, if once they're finished. But those are at very early stages and currently the thing I think I'll be getting out the fastest is actually like very barely an RPG. It is a solo game, uh, solo game that I think will have a place in almost anybody's home, but it's very new, so I don't want to talk about it too much. But, yes, there'll be a solo game that we're hopefully producing that I'm working on with a smaller team that I think shares a lot of the joy of Triangle Agency the parts of how can we make you look at your life through the lens of the game in a different way.
Speaker 1:But is this the one that you've told me about? I don't know. I don't know. That's awesome. I don't know what I've told you. Well then, we can't. It will be discussed somewhere else. Right Off mic, yeah, but we'll get but that's for the Patreon.
Speaker 2:No, I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. There is no Patreon. We make no money from this. We're a library, please, no. And then I'm looking at potentially working with some people as kind of their publisher.
Speaker 1:Okay, sick.
Speaker 2:Because I have a little bit now of a team of people who I know can help produce something pretty quickly. I'm talking to some people about potentially helping get their projects to a larger audience after they've been kind of through the polishing process. That we could do, that's awesome. But that is so early and it'll depend on if any of that even works.
Speaker 1:Right, so we'll see. Well, it's cool that it seems like there is more on the horizon for Haunted Table than just haunted agencies companies, right.
Speaker 2:Hopefully very different things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, speaking of very different things, just keeping up with your post on Blue Sky, I'm interested in, like your Land of Eem Eem, am I saying that?
Speaker 2:right oh the campaign.
Speaker 1:Yes, how's that going? Oh, it's great. Is it Eem?
Speaker 2:It's Eem, yes, yeah okay, oh yeah, that's so fun. I'm just a couple sessions into a campaign of a role-playing game called Land of EME, which is by Ben Costa and James Parks and a wider team of artists who based it off of their own comics and graphic novels and books that you can probably find at this library that are really, really fun. They're for a younger audience, like a middle school-ish age audience primarily, I believe, and they made a full fantasy RPG setting in their world which I would describe as being very like Cartoon Network feeling it just looks like Adventure Time to me, which I'm so stoked for network feeling.
Speaker 2:It just looks like adventure time to me, which I'm so stoked for. Yeah, it's very. It's like their log line, for it is um the muppets meets the lord of the rings oh, I think I have read that, which is a really good piece of marketing. That, I think, is how has that?
Speaker 1:not happened yet right, I know, yeah, like what is. Like, what is the slam? That is a. I think it's just the labyrinth, right? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the dark crystal.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I think they're not wrong about the tone overall, but I think that describing it as kind of Cartoon Network is more appropriate. Based on what I've seen, the Muppets just have such a particular. I don't even sure how you would really roleplay the Muppets, but something we're doing in our campaign that is like playing with their marketing more than the game itself is. We are really leaning into the idea of the Muppets by describing our setting as being a like puppeted space.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, so part of Like Paper Mario, like when we feel like it, we do describe what's happening to them as if it's being shot for the Muppet Show.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, for example, my like silliest thing that happened was they met a character who didn't have a portrait in the sandbox, who was a human woman named Tabitha, who had like a lot of like confidence and like roguish power, and as soon as they started role-playing with her, it was clear that there was like a she had a very high status, which is like a term we use in theater a lot, but the she like she had a lot of power that she brought to the conversations. It was very difficult for her to lose an interaction and she was introduced following a series of failures by these other characters who were like trying to steal things, and she was able to see them every time. So then at the table we joked like the reason she has this much power is because for this session she's the human guest star.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's like she's not a Muppet Right, I got you and so then all of a sudden, the person she's talking to, we are then picturing him as like the puppet she's able to totally like manhandle and like move around and have no issue with and we no issue with. And we've been loving that because, like and I think it's funny that I don't want to distract from the game the reason I'm talking about this is because it's been one of my. It's a revelation related to what we talked about earlier, which is like how much what you do at the table changes what a game actually is. But because their marketing involved the idea that this was muppets and because we're really excited about that, when we got to it, we're like the game itself doesn't necessarily hand us muppets, but what does that mean if we want it to? And so we've started, whenever we have the chance, like joking about, like okay, well, this big monster is like, he is a puppet. That's got like four people underneath and we can see the like, the pit that they're all working in.
Speaker 2:It's so great um incredible and having the shorthand of like this is the human changes, what's happening in the scene in a really cool way, cause everybody treats that character differently?
Speaker 2:Yes, like just oh okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, and you're able to we're able to, like play with uh this is me sort of riffing, more than it is the actual things that have happened at the table. But, um, the imagining like, uh, we have a failure state and a character drops an item like that doesn't have to literally drop on the ground, that could drop off the stage right, and then, if it's off the stage, any character who's currently not on stage could come pick it up, like you don't know that's in my back pocket as a GM.
Speaker 1:It's like what happens if this?
Speaker 2:this like bad guy who is technically a hundred miles away, gets your orb because he is sitting in the audience. He's like ha, ha, ha, right, yeah, yeah, I got um and something that happens in tabletop games that people might not know if they haven't played a lot of them is that it's pretty common for people to use um cinematic language to talk about their play standard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, for sure the camera pans across um I don't think it's bad, but I think the like. What I think is fun about this is I had never really put much thought into like, oh sure, what happens if you stop doing that? Like what happens if you change the rules, even if it is something that we're filming? What happens if you change the budget? Like what happens if you change who's cast? We've got one camera Right and so like, can you make your game feel more like a sitcom if you demand that every scene?
Speaker 1:has to happen.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, okay, okay. Or if you demand that it always has to happen in one room, like any action we have can't break the line of the camera.
Speaker 1:Like, how does that change the? Yeah, it gives you like a set of thematic, not like rules, but like it sort of gives you boundaries that are intuitive to the folks who are familiar with whatever that framework is. So anyone who's familiar with Muppets or like a sitcom or a soundstage, any of those things, would implicitly understand that the item going offstage is just gone and then would immediately understand and accept the villain just pulling it out of their pocket right a million miles away.
Speaker 2:That's yeah, that's awesome and that, like that, is my, so that's my favorite part of our particular land of beam campaign so far. But but the game itself is really, really good. The thing that I find most impressive about it is that it has a sandbox setting with this huge map of this whole, basically, continent and your characters can move across it and their sandbox book is like 400 pages of like.
Speaker 2:It's monsters yeah, it's huge. It's like of characters that are in every city, of story hooks and quest hooks in every place, and then that's combined with an additional many, many, many pages of random tables to roll on any hex that you don't have something already there on. All of those are like bespoke encounters you can have. There's like a side book that has a thousand additional encounters you can run into. You can run into and ttrpgs, uh, are already hard to make and making that much of a setting and making it that easy to play and putting that much like just straight up content and making it cohesive. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just hard. It's hard. It's a lot of writing and they have a lot of art in there. It's uh, there's portraits of almost every npc. There's like uh, and so when I got it, my first reason I was engaging with it was sort of as like a publisher of like how do you even do this? Like, how do you even accomplish this?
Speaker 1:Because really there's two writers. You're in your kitchen trying to reverse engineer.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I was like, well, I have to play it, and so we've been playing and I, honestly, they have a campaign right now. Another thing I like about it is that I think it's very approachable for kids and they're releasing an additional, like extra tutorializing, even younger version for it. That I think is going to be really great for even the kids that are slightly younger, where they take their resolution system and make it a little easier. They've taken all of their like character sheets and monsters and everything and turned them into very like approachable cards.
Speaker 1:And then that could be like a formative memory for a kid who comes to tabletop for the first time yes and is able to look back at it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, incredible uh, and so I think I think that's really nice. I think the tone of it is really intentional. I talked about it being cartoony, but I think what I find most compelling about that is that a lot of tabletop games assume the comedy that comes from play because comedy is just going to happen in play games.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and this has a very intentional tone and style and voice to it that makes you really feel like you're in a specific place. I I've talked a little bit about how it feels like you are playing in a show with a really deep lore bible that, like, has all of these rules that it doesn't even have to tell you Cause it's guiding you through them so smoothly. Um, it's really really well crafted.
Speaker 1:Everybody who's not here Miss that. Incredible like uh, almost mudra. Oh, just did like guiding them, just cast a spell, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:It's somatic. The uh, but you just cast a spell at me, just kamehamehaing you. Oh yeah, it's somatic, but I recommend it a lot and there's a campaign going right now. I don't know when this is going up, but probably pretty soon.
Speaker 1:I will try to get it up ASAP.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Especially because I knew that that was going to come up and that we'd want to at least shout them out a little bit yeah. There's a crowd option perfect for the environment that we're in at the library, like if you're running for folks and you have to keep things on the level and you have to make sure that the the content that is being presented is appropriate and safe for everyone involved. Right Land of Eam Home. Run for that.
Speaker 2:Yes, I wish I'd had it when I was playing, like when I was dreaming for kids, because like it would have made my job so easy. I got that sense just reading your Blue Sky messages about it.
Speaker 1:I just immediately was like oh yeah, Caleb knows, because Caleb's worked with kids.
Speaker 2:Right, so you can tell worked with kids right, you can tell I was like my life would have been so much easier if I had access to this man.
Speaker 1:It's just an alternate timeline, how? How do you feel like uh home games, like your land of eam campaign?
Speaker 2:uh, inform your game design, like for your you know, professional work yeah, well, I mean, it's just because if you aren't doing that, you're not really thinking about games like live, and I think that just having that time to sit and think about them is the main thing. I don't know that my home games are have been my main source of like fuel exactly, but they are like if I wasn't running this one now, and part of why I started running it was because I was like I needed an excuse to have three hours a week that I am just like thinking about game you know, like this is just happening for sure, and I'm going to be playing it.
Speaker 1:Are you?
Speaker 2:getting weekly sessions in Bi-weekly now with that, but I play a lot of games online with my friends as well, but those are usually one shots. This is the only campaign I'm in right now.
Speaker 1:The myth of the weekly game.
Speaker 2:My theory about that is that I think weeks should be 10 days long. I think if a week was 10 days long then weekly stuff would be so awesome.
Speaker 1:But I think because you have to invent three new days?
Speaker 2:Yes, but I think because there are only seven weekly feels almost like Sisyphean for anything Like.
Speaker 1:I don't want to do anything in my life.
Speaker 2:Weekly because the week needs three more days to it, but Because the week needs three more days to it, but 14 is too many. So biweekly, by the time you get back to something you're like I've never done it before in my life. But if you were doing it every 10 days I think it would be perfect and this is a really strong opinion I hold. Okay.
Speaker 1:Is there a word for half a fortnight? Right, yeah, whatever that is, you've just invented that. Well, that's a week?
Speaker 2:yeah, no, it's. I thought a fortnight was 20 days, no, fortnight's 14 days is it?
Speaker 1:yes, I feel like you just made that up.
Speaker 2:I've I'm like so confident. I wish that were the case, because if there was a fortnight then I would. I, if that was true, then I would say, yeah, we're doing this twice a fortnight and then I would make everybody go on that schedule. I really have thought about it, but the problem is everything else won't line up with it. So then if you're like, okay, this week it's Wednesday and next week it's Saturday, that's going to cause problems for their scheduling. So I've never been able to really pull it off.
Speaker 1:Oh, I see, Okay, you lost me so quickly into this, oh sorry.
Speaker 2:Well, if the rest of the world were to follow me, then not only would what I just said have been really followable, it would be very possible, and everybody, I think, would find that their lives improved.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I mean yeah, If we restructured the way that and no additional work days.
Speaker 2:It's 10-day week, but the same five-day work week is also a key part of this. I want to live in that beautiful fantasy you just presented, presented to me. I think it's actually possible if we could get the right policy through.
Speaker 1:I think we could make it happen again. That just sparkling optimism coming from you. I gotta I whatever, whatever you're selling, I'm buying like, is it? If it is it triangle agency? Is it some weird solo game you haven't finished yet. I'm there for it, I'm there for it. I've got some other questions on here. Yeah, what's that? I don't like one of the topics like do you want to talk about favorite games or not?
Speaker 2:Sure, I could hit them quickly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you have a short list of table topics oh nice. Oh, if you wrote them down, we absolutely have to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I was making sure, because every time I get asked like what are your three favorite, whatever, I forget. So Land of Eem is on my list right now because it is like it's one of my favorites at this moment. Special mention Land of Eem, yes. Then the other two I want to highlight. One of them is called Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast. Actually, that's a very similar theming where it's again, the premise of Yazeba's is that it's like a role-playing game tie-in for a cartoon that never existed, and it is an unbelievably good role-playing game for basically every single reason. But it was a huge inspiration for me while I was working on Triangle Agency. We ultimately released it very similar times, but Yazeba's had been in development for a while prior.
Speaker 1:Did you play it before?
Speaker 2:I had read the sample and then I didn't get to actually play until after I had written triangle agency yeah, I remember reading an ash can copy what feels like years ago, but I haven't.
Speaker 1:I haven't gotten the actual game in front of me, despite, like literally asking for it for every single gift from my wife for the past, like four. Well, it's hard to find right now but it.
Speaker 2:But you can find it digitally. I totally recommend it. The main thing is it's called yazeba's bed and Breakfast. It's about a bed and breakfast run by a witch full of a rotating cast of characters. That is sort of like a set that you pick from every time you sit down and play and the book is full of stories that you open up. They're like episodes that you. They're called chapters but they're episodes that you open up and read a brief thing at the table. Everybody gets a role, Everybody gets goals and like a little mini game that they're doing. And then you role play out an episode in probably less than two hours most of the time and it's just beautiful. It grows over time. It's intended to be played and replayed and to revisit episodes you want to revisit and to swap characters around constantly.
Speaker 1:That's the thing that interested me most is that it seems like it was encouraged for you to not reprise your role and it's one of those games that's like even the pitch doesn't encompass how much.
Speaker 2:It just works, like it's there, like it's just like works and every bit of it fits together and every time you sit down to play it you're going to have a good time. And I've been able to play it with people of all sorts of skill levels and like in games, and I think it's like just one of the best games ever.
Speaker 1:I could see that being like currently. My introducing people to tabletop is His Majesty the Worm, but I could totally see Yazeba's being that.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it would depend on the tone that they wanted. But yeah, his Majesty the Worm is also amazing. I think it depends on whether they are people who are big, mega dungeon people or people who want a short episodic.
Speaker 1:No, I mean, I'm getting people who have never played a tabletop game and are barely familiar with the term D&D yeah, and I'm getting them to play with tarot cards Well, that's ideal, honestly. Yeah, from the beginning.
Speaker 2:But yeah, his Majesty the Worm is amazing too, and that's one I that that would. That is like on my list of like one of the best things that's come out in the last year. Um, I guess it might have been more than a year by now, but I think it's about a year I got I.
Speaker 1:Whatever, their first hardcover printing through exalted funeral was I.
Speaker 2:I have that copy yeah, I think that was like at most a year and a half ago. Okay, um. And then the other one I want to highlight is very different, um, it's called Moonlight on Roseville Beach.
Speaker 1:Have you seen this?
Speaker 2:No, no no, no, that's one I'm unfamiliar with. So it is a game about kind of being an investigator of the paranormal, sort of by accident.
Speaker 1:Oh, you like those.
Speaker 2:On an island that is basically a vacation island for gay and queer people, so in the sense of like a fire island kind of environment and the whole place. Why fire island.
Speaker 1:Huh, why did you like gay and queer people Fire island?
Speaker 2:Why that? Well, because I think that's one of the closest analogs in real life for like a place that you go I mean I would also compare it to like Provincetown like that kind of energy of like a small coastal area full of primarily gay people and the. It is about like paranormal things that happen there and you as kind of like a Scooby-Doo gang of people who end up seeing that stuff happen who all live there.
Speaker 2:And the thing that I found most exciting about it at first, it has a couple of really great resolution mechanics that I won't go into, but the setting itself is so perfectly realized that like you could open that book and like crack open that setting for any game and just like slap it down and you have this like beautiful, um, uh, setting that I and honestly it's just rare for a tabletop role-playing game to have an in-depth setting that is so like deep down in its bones, queer, um, there's like lots of, there are lots of games now that are I mean, yusebas is another one of them that is like this. But, um, again, talking about like land of ebens, sandbox, the kind of legwork that comes down to like we are making characters and we are making a place and we are making it a place you can explore, is just really hard. And when you, when we have someone willing to do that, and not only that, but do that with this really particular lens, it's amazing. So would really recommend Moonlight on Roseville Beach.
Speaker 1:Moonlight on Roseville Beach.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and since we talked about Land of Eam, now I'm like, do I need to mention something else? But we've talked about Liminal Horror, we've talked about Fist, we haven't talked about the Company, but that's kind of an alien.
Speaker 1:I mean, this is not the first tabletop creator episode we've had on ccv, but I think this is the most games we've talked about, right, yeah, for sure, for sure, uh, uh.
Speaker 2:So that's like those are my, those are my big ones. I have like I could keep going forever and like I uh I would sit here and listen to you, for what about?
Speaker 1:okay, so did you write down favorite video games too?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, Because this is like it's funny. Video games definitely were like my first big game connection growing up Miraculously.
Speaker 1:We haven't mentioned Control yet.
Speaker 2:Oh yes, yeah, well, it's because I've spent so much time talking about it. Yeah, control was a huge inspiration to this game because it was a really really successful and cool video game. That was in this corporate horror well, not corporate horror, exactly, government bureaucratic horror vibe. That part of our big spin was taking what is typically in these kinds of fictions a government operation and making it a private organization. But Control is amazing. Absolutely like everybody on there should play it and play alan wake 2 and and every game like that. It's so good, so moody and does some really fun stuff.
Speaker 1:Uh, with what is the, what is the team behind this sam lake, and what remedy remedy? Remedy, entertainment they're making, they're like working on the max pains remakes now I think, which is just like that. That is the most sam lake thing, I think, ever. Yeah, it is to make a game about, about how uh weird it is to live in a reality where, uh, your game franchise was taken away from you and taken to a place you would never have taken it, and then you're given back control like that is so weird.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it and I love, and I love. Yeah, controls are hugely recommended. It's actually not on my list of favorite games.
Speaker 1:I didn't expect it would be. I was trying to be.
Speaker 2:I was trying to be honest and I was like this is such a silly list. But okay, dragon Quest Builders 2. Okay, this is a game that I think everybody on Earth would enjoy pretty much. Dragon Quest Builders 2, it is the sequel to a game called Dragon Quest Builders. That, like taken most cynically. When you look at it, you're like this is Minecraft but it's Dragon Quest.
Speaker 1:I think there are a lot of Dragon Quest spin-offs?
Speaker 2:Yes, I actually had to choose between this and Dragon Quest Monsters because I was like I can't do two Dragon Quest games on my favorite list. But Dragon Quest Builders is a game about building communities and like putting together a space for people to live, and it's like very cute, it's very fun, really well done story. On top of being a place that allows you a lot of creativity, there's lots of fun stuff about it that sort of feels really good too, like the only currency is the appreciation of the people in the towns where you live, and it's just beautiful. It's also just like really cute to look at. You can spend that current?
Speaker 1:Oh, that's cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then throwback. Big one, just because it's always been big for me Sonic Adventure. Big one, just because it's always been big for me. Um, sonic adventure 2 battle. Okay, this is when I have to go into, like the the truth of my favorite games have to be the ones that are most formative to me, but like the theme song of this game right, well, those were my, my husband's, wedding vows.
Speaker 2:Was we read uh city escape lyrics? It was kind of a joke but the like. But that is our that that, no, that is.
Speaker 1:Oh, that is actually adorable when we first met.
Speaker 2:when we first met, our first conversation on a dating app was realizing that we both had the same Sonic the Hedgehog tank top and then kind of communicated through that.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. So one of you was wearing it on a picture on the app On a picture. Yeah, oh okay, yeah, that's like the platonic ideal of how that happens. Right, exactly, immediately had to put a ring on it, right, okay, yeah, okay, yeah, you know you're like, that's just what it is.
Speaker 2:Immediately have to put a ring on it. Right, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, and we so. That was like a big part of my life and it was just like. I have so many good memories of that game. My uncle owned a very tiny movie theater in this little town in Texas. It was like an old old able to bring my GameCube and plug it into one of those projectors and play Sonic Adventure 2 on the big screen.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:That's like a key memory, sure. And then that's like literally so many children's dreams Right, yeah, right.
Speaker 2:And then near Automata is my last one, or near Automata, whatever, okay, however you say it Automata, automata Near a tomato. This game is just like unbelievably cool fun, like robots in a post-apocalyptic future talking about what it means to be a human and what it means to be at war in quotes. Really, really fun game, really beautiful music made by one of the certified freaks of video games. Oh yeah, and I think that it's not one that everybody would like, but it is one that I think is like. I just remember everything that happens in that game. It stuck with me forever and it's going to continue to, and I just love robots, so I think about robots a lot.
Speaker 1:Do you like action RPGs a lot?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean honestly, I love video games, so I play everything. There are very few types of game that I'm not going to play Now. It's just mostly hard for me to get into an MMO again hard for me to get into anything that feels like it's going to take a lot of my time, but I play, I'm constantly playing games.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, as any good game designer, it should be.
Speaker 2:I agree.
Speaker 1:That's a great list. I love the breadth of style, I guess, and I think that feels probably intentional on your part.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had to think about it, because my first version of this I was like I have put three JRPGs on this list.
Speaker 1:Like we are talking Kingdom Hearts. What were they?
Speaker 2:It was like Kingdom Hearts 358 over two days.
Speaker 1:That's the one you chose 358 over two.
Speaker 2:Wow, yes, I mean, I think it is the best of them, but I mean, I think it is the best of them, but it's also one of the only ones they didn't remake, so no one will ever know that is a genuine hot take.
Speaker 1:That is a genuine hot take. Every time I've ever heard anybody try to talk about that game, it has been super negative. Oh my God.
Speaker 2:Well, okay, here's what I'll say about it. That game contains all of the payoff for everything stupid that happens in every other Kingdom Hearts game. Even retroactively, yeah well, it's like we absolutely do not need to go on Again. This podcast is like sorry, because not a single person has made it through this podcast, with their interests all connected. But the Kingdom Hearts Wrong.
Speaker 2:My wife specifically my wife, square Enix and Disney. Making a game about being a teen who's walking around Disney Worlds is like the core idea of it, and also Cloud Strife and Sephiroth are there. However, because it's Tetsuya Nomura, it also has to be like defeating itself at every possible turn and the like. Like intentionally. That's just how that guy seems to make games, but they're always fighting themselves and their ability to be understood. So he has added in this like super bizarre cosmology and takes like the fact that you have Disney and the fact that you have Final Fantasy and decides. Actually, wouldn't it be more fun if there was a cast of like 10 randos that we decided to focus on, who have like a completely bizarre relationship to reality? Starts dealing with stuff like cloning and bodies getting split into multiple pieces and what it means to be 10 people.
Speaker 1:that are the same people. Everybody's wearing hoods and you don't even know who's talking.
Speaker 2:Yes, and that in most of the other games doesn't have a payoff.
Speaker 2:It's just part of the texture.
Speaker 2:358 Over Two Days is a game about that side of the world completely.
Speaker 2:It's about taking a chunk of Kingdom Hearts 2 that you don't get to see and like really showing it to you and really taking all the stuff that's the worst stuff in the other games and digging way deeper into it but as a result it actually tells one coherent story about that stuff in a way that makes it so much more legible elsewhere.
Speaker 2:So I think it's one of the most interesting and I love games about being a bad guy and you're playing as like a kid who is being taught to be kind of villainous and is being experimented on and doesn't really know it, and the whole story is just like really interesting and it's kind of like a cipher to uh unlock all of the more uh, what other people maybe would describe as heady ideas going on through the hearts, like people right the folks who were like really into it and they're like no, you gotta play every, every game in between two and three right yeah, well, and I it's so funny because it's the one they chose to not remake when they did a big project where they remade a bunch of the games, that's right.
Speaker 2:They turned that one into like an incomprehensible movie. Um, and I find that crazy because it it does so much. He did that with Final Fantasy 15 as well, right yeah, king's Road yeah, I, um, yeah, I have. So I have so many complicated things to say about Kingdom Hearts, but that definitely would have been my favorite pull, in part because it got that reaction right.
Speaker 1:Well, if you ever want to start a second, if you want to do a podcast, we can dig into Nomura's work.
Speaker 2:No, no, I would not survive, I would not survive.
Speaker 1:Complete topics work. Oh, do we want to do books while we're here? Yeah, that's, oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:For recommendations. That's usually the last thing we do, but yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh wait, I can wait. No, no, no.
Speaker 2:I don't want to ruin the rhythm. Rhythm, are you kidding me? The podcast has a rhythm and the books will come at the end.
Speaker 1:Okay, hey, he said it, so it must be. I just wanted to touch upon the fact that you have a career as a children's book author that rules rhythm and the books will come at the end. Okay, okay, hey, he said it, so there it must be. Um, I just wanted to touch upon, uh, the fact that you have a career as a children's book author that that rules that slams like. Um, how did that happen and how does that do you feel like that informs or interacts with your game design at all sure?
Speaker 2:um, I uh. How did that happen? When I was in school for theater, I started writing plays as part of a class in school and part of my journey as an actor when I thought I wanted to be an actor in school was kind of looking around and realizing that all of the other people who wanted to be actors were taking it much more seriously than I was and were working much harder than I was, and that kind of led to me having a revelation that it wasn't really something I necessarily wanted to do. Around that same time I was writing for this class and it came very naturally. There was a sort of a revelation through these courses like oh, I actually know what I'm doing here, and it had been kind of potentially obvious because I had been a reader my whole life. I had been doing text-based role play for like a huge chunk of my childhood, and so I had a lot of practice writing. And it wasn't until I got to college that I kind of made a couple of complete packages and was like, oh, these are like working.
Speaker 2:Then I got a job at Avid Bookshop after college here in town and while I was working there, or right before I got the job. I got a play that I had written in college picked up for a workshop in Atlanta. There was a workshop with a theater in Atlanta that basically gave me access to a very, very smart dramaturg who helped me through the editing process and then to a cast that would do a reading at the end of it. Partway through that reading, david Levithan, the author who would eventually become my editor, came for an Avid Bookshop event. I met him while he was working that event and he was editing a book of one of my co-workers, will Walton, who has this really great book called Anything Could Happen for the YA audience. Conversations with Will and with David led to David being like oh, can I see your play that I was in progress with? Because David was, there was a very. There was a very lucky thing happening, which is that David was writing a book at the time that was in play format because it was about a kid who wanted to be a musical performer. So he was writing a book in play format, having never written a play before, because he was thinking about plays. He was interested in looking at mine and then, when he looked at it and talked to me about it, gave me some feedback. I edited a lot based on his really really good advice. He's a brilliant editor talked to me about it, gave me some feedback. I edited a lot based on his really really good advice. He's a brilliant editor.
Speaker 2:Then, a short while later, having known that I was like struggling monetarily because Avid Bookshop was an amazing job that is still, you know, a local business that was paying close to minimum wage at the time basically was like, okay, I can't just like give you a job, but we have this process at Scholastic that basically is um.
Speaker 2:We have a set of um book topics that a group here kind of puts together and realizes that we need, like we need to have a book that has this kind of thing in it. We need this sort of like chunk and we let like less experienced authors kind of pitch ideas based on those to give them like a chance to be making something that's like very specifically to what we need. So at the time he gave me the chance to pitch my take on this like Christmas competition book, which would become Top Elf, which was my first book, and the cool thing about that program was that it was like IP work, sort of which I do a lot of, but it remains your book and your rights and your royalties. It's just like two spec, basically. So I did that for them and that was the first book that I wrote. It was, I think, I wrote, something much bigger and ultimately that hit a little harder than they expected, and so from there I wrote a couple more for scholastic, and now most of my work in the kids book space is for penguin um, working on minecraft books, chapter books yeah, I think I remember you mentioning me to the, mentioning that to me, and then me immediately wondering oh yeah, that's where all of them come from, that we have right it's gonna all come from caleb right because
Speaker 2:we have, we have many yeah, so I so I'm working on Minecraft chapter books and hopefully some other stuff for them eventually, but I haven't written.
Speaker 1:Have you done like an, like a, like an event release or like author, like signing for any of these?
Speaker 2:I did at Avid for the, the, my three books that came out through Scholastic. I haven't for the Minecraft books and, to be honest, it's because I really like them and they're fun to make, but I don't make royalties on them, so I'm not going to go out of my way to spend money to prepare events for them.
Speaker 1:Well, if you get to a point where you do want to do something like that and you want another location to do that at the library would be excellent for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you, and I definitely need to be working harder to boost my book career separately from my IP work, but a lot of that energy has been going into games.
Speaker 1:I mean we could same thing, but with games.
Speaker 2:Yeah, same exact thing.
Speaker 1:I mean, we did what we did at FanFest, which was thank you very much for coming out to that. By the way, that was a very last minute. It was so fun, Thank you, thank you. I had a panel in mind and literally everybody canceled. And I'm talking like two weeks before the convention. That's so wild. That's just my life, fam. That's just my life. I don't know what it is about me that causes these kinds of things to happen, but they just do Well.
Speaker 2:I was so glad to be there. It was so fun.
Speaker 1:I really appreciate you coming through on that. I was so glad to be there, it was so fun. I really appreciate you coming through on that no-transcript, and that moment is 100% why I get up in the morning and do this. There's no way that all of us librarians who work in this field and all the tangential fields what keeps us going through the circumstances we'll say, is seeing the genuine spark of creativity and joy in someone's eye and being like, yes, humanity is worth so much. Please walk away with this book. I really appreciate you being a part of that and we can do stuff like that in the future. Uh, if you're interested. Um, so we've touched a lot about your history in these multiple uh disciplines, uh, specifically my favorite being line dancing. Well, uh, do you have any like future goals as an Any new mediums you want to tackle? Because you've worked in a few different kinds of things, it seems pretty successful to have this many disciplines under your belt.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I want to write a book for an adult triangle agency's not a book for an adult, I mean like a fiction book. So I want to do that at some point.
Speaker 1:Or write a novel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then there are lots of types of game I want to make, so there are more frontiers than just TTRPG. Oh yeah, sure, but for the most part I'm getting very happy with how stuff is settling. I'm glad that the TTRPG work hit well enough that now it can kind of be my job alongside my IP work. I really have no problem and really enjoy making the books for like really specific requirements, like the Minecraft books, and it's a nice, like regular, consistent work which is hard to get in writing, and so I'm really happy with how my life is settling. I really like being here in Athens and I like the stuff I have. I'm trying to become really good at line dancing, so that's going to be my thing for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 1:Could you see professional line dancing? No way. Is that a thing that happens? No way, is that a thing that happens? No way.
Speaker 2:Not only no way, but yes, there are competitions and stuff, but I think it would kill it, I think I would die.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:I would lose the reason I'm doing it, you know?
Speaker 1:Oh, it would kill your passion for line dancing yes. I thought you meant it was going to kill you.
Speaker 2:Oh no getting stomped.
Speaker 1:It might. Oh my gosh, I've been wearing myself out, so it might. I seems like good exercise. Yeah, uh, cool, I, uh, I look forward to seeing whatever new, uh, text-based ventures, even if they aren't adventures they come from you, um, so I'm gonna.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna read the actual question the way that it's written on every single uh interview. Let's do it, yeah. Lastly, since we are a podcast representing the Athens Regional Library System, we always finish with the same question, which is hilarious because it has two responses either like jubilance that someone gets to talk about their books that they like, or utter horror, terror, that they're being asked about books in a library.
Speaker 2:I'm glad you told me ahead of time, because I would have reacted with horror just because of the speed you know that I would have had to put them together. But because I had some time I'm like confident, I just want one right, either what.
Speaker 1:What are you?
Speaker 2:reading currently One book. Well, I also read down three. I must not have read it right, no, no, no.
Speaker 1:Well, that's normally. What I'm looking for is what are you reading currently or what in the past has affected you as an artist? But give me your top three and then if you want to go deep into any of them, you can.
Speaker 2:What I'm reading right now is Moomin. I'm reading all the Moomin novels. I've become very obsessed with Moomin.
Speaker 1:Every young boy comes to a point in his life where he becomes obsessed with Moomin.
Speaker 2:I made myself cry the other day because I was like I need to be reading this out loud to a child. I was like losing my mind. Moomin is so good. Totally recommend it. I got the novels and the comics all at once because I happened to see a couple episodes of the anime on YouTube from the 90s.
Speaker 2:Which rules it's so good, it's so good, it's so good and it was so compelling that I was like this is going to be my next six months. I'm loving it. That's what I'm reading right now, alongside a book called the Well-Played Game that I really, really like. That is sort of a philosophical book about why we play games and what happens to us when we play them.
Speaker 1:that I totally recommend.
Speaker 2:Okay, I've been looking for a new game theory book to read, so maybe I'll tackle that this one is from either the late 60s or the early 70s and okay and is written in this really compelling voice that it was recommended to me by the designer of yuzeeba's bed and breakfast, um jay dragon, who like brought it up because I was bringing, I was lamenting some like experiences I'd been having in board game play Not so much really negative, but just like isn't it funny that people are like this kind of and Jay was like can I read you a passage from this book? And then the book had this this, the writer of this book basically like perfectly encapsulated the feeling I had been having um about like what is it about competition that infects what you're doing in a game? And like how yes, okay and what?
Speaker 2:how can you, how do you approach games if your goal is for the, the final product of the play you have done, to be good, rather than for you yourself to be aggrandized by it?
Speaker 1:and I'm having trouble teaching a pod of zoomers playing commander, that exact lesson, right? Why are you playing this weird janky control deck? This is because I'm trying to teach you a lesson and you still haven't learned it, right and I think, I think I, so I would totally recommend it.
Speaker 2:It's really good those. That's what I'm reading right now. Um, and then my top three books ever, and I'll do these. I'll try to be quick. Um, first one, these are all like sci-fi fantasy stuff.
Speaker 2:Um, the traitor barouk cormorant by seth dickinson is my favorite book of all time. Um, it is a uh, the first in what I think is going to be a four-part series, but currently has three. But the first one is totally great standalone and then if you read all three together, they're also really great. Um, they are feel bad, incredible fantasy nice about a?
Speaker 2:Uh, a girl who is, when she's very young, uh, part of an island culture that gets kind of taken over, like economically and um culturally, by this empire that sort of tries to destroy what's happening in the island and as part of that, she's brought into a school that is uh run by the empire in the way that a lot of um empires in our history have done, like uh, here in america or in canada have done to people. And she discovers very early on that she's very good with math and specifically economics, and it is a story about her as a 19 year old just graduated from that school being put in charge of an entire other country's finances on behalf of the empire. It is so crazy good and it has like a lot of writing about taxes, so it's informative.
Speaker 2:Yes, it is thrilling it really is. And even the tax chapter that's the most taxi is like, uh, like a page turner. It's like a huge. And even the tax chapter that's the most tax-y is like a page-turner.
Speaker 1:It's like a huge, incredible accomplishment. I am shocked that you, the creator of corporate horror, are excited by taxes In your fantasy, no less. I know, I know.
Speaker 2:It's so good it is absolutely worth reading and they're all really good Again. That's the Traitor Baruch Hormone by Seth Dickinson. Another one Ancillary Justice and the whole Ancillary series by Anne Leckie.
Speaker 1:I think we have that entire series here and it checks out very often.
Speaker 2:Yeah, everything that Anne Leckie writes beams directly into my brain with no friction. Nice, it's perfect, powerful. Something about reading her just feels completely comfortable and great. The thing I always say about that book is halfway through the book the book tells you what the series is going to be about, and it takes about to that point for it to really get going. And then, as soon as it tells you, what it's about it like sails for three books like nonstop Incredible.
Speaker 2:An artificial mind that used to be a bunch of connected minds in charge of a giant like generation spaceship that had not only all of its systems but also had, like hundreds of you know, humanoid people that it was piloting around. That, due to events, has been reduced to just one of those humanoid bodies and has lost connection to the wider body and is on a quest for revenge. When the book begins to get revenge on the person it sees as having done that to it. Unbelievably good story that, even though it has a lot of action in it, is also kind of about bureaucracy in some interesting ways, and culture.
Speaker 2:Um, I tend to like books about people sitting in rooms and like analyzing micro expressions, but it's uh, it's really really well done. And then my last one is the most different of these three, which is called the spear cuts through water by simon jimenez. Um, there's another book by simon called, uh, the vanished birds that I really like. That's more sci-fi, this one's kind of fantasy. Spear cuts through water is a fantasy story about these, um, two men who are on a journey to the face you're making right now, sorry.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm like, I'm like it's so. There's so much going on in that book that it's kind of hard to summarize. I would basically say that if you like fantasy at all and you also are interested in books that play with perspective in interesting ways, you should just read it. The Spear Cuts Through Water you should just read it. The spear cuts through water.
Speaker 2:Um, it is a like gorgeous, um, a gorgeous study of like what it is to tell a story in different forms and what it is for a story to be a fable or a theatrical performance or a thing you're experiencing, and it also has this like incredible, magical, gory adventure at the center of it. I also am realizing as I read this list that every single one of these series has to do with multiple minds being connected, which is funny. But I would really, really recommend that book and the Vanished Birds, which is a sci-fi novel that came out first. Both of them are like to me, some of the most like undersung masterpieces of the sci-fi and fantasy world of the past, like five or six years. So I recommend.
Speaker 1:Well, I can at least say that Ancillary Justice and the, its sequels or its other books in its series, they get searched here a lot. Yeah, we had to buy new copies because the ones that we had gotten originally were like these massive tomes that had like very flimsy jackets, and even though we hit it with the full laminar uh or not laminar mylar treatment, um, a couple years go by and those books were dogged.
Speaker 2:Those books are so funny because you can tell they were self-conscious. The publisher was self-conscious about making them look like quote-unquote, real sci-fi novels. So they're like made to be these big, really thick books. And then you crack them open and it's like big text, like oh yeah, okay because they're they're like very quick reads, they're super nice. But you can tell that the way they were packaged was a little bit self-conscious about like how, how can we make these look like really sci-fi? And they are really sci-fi, but they are like it's goofy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They're much less intimidating than they appear by the package.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're like we have to be the size of Dune, right, exactly, it's got to be that big Sorry.
Speaker 2:It's so funny, how much that does matter though 18-point font.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I totally recommend those, and I'm sure that you could find the Trader Brew cornbread in every little free library here, because it was a joke for a while that I sold it to everybody that walked in the door at Avid. Oh nice, there was a point where our sales rep for this region, like to Janet, the owner of Avid, was like, yeah, for some reason, the one weird outlier is that you guys have sold more of this copy than anyone else in the South, than this one book that anyone else in the South used.
Speaker 2:Any more of this copy than anyone else in the south, than this one book, anyone else and any individual story. And I was like, yep, that's because I really was pitching it hard. That's what it means to be an advocate yeah and a salesman. I guess the beauty of being a small bookshop you get to also kind of influence. I think probably most of those people did not end up reading it, but that's why I say maybe you'll find it a little free library yeah, just pop open a little, uh little door yeah you'll be brought into a land of mystery and intrigue.
Speaker 1:Um caleb, I've had such a good time talking to you. This has been so fun, thank you much much laughter, much laughter. Um, please, everybody listening to the podcast, go check out triangle agency. Even if you're not familiar with ctrpgs, I think it would be a very interesting experience for someone who, uh, is into books, as I imagine, probably the entirety of this podcast listener base is our book people to be able to experience something, uh, so radically different to what you're used to.
Speaker 1:when you crack open a book, I feel like you. You just have a, even if you have no intentions or experience of putting a tabletop role-playing game book to a table with people, I think it would be a very interesting reading experience and then also just play the dang thing. If you got it in your hands, just do it. I've got a copy. Come meet me up here at the library, I'll just hand it to you. We do try to make it really fun to read. I think it's very funny. It is. It is extremely funny, especially when you have multiple voices in the book arguing with each other. I think that truly is just genius and being able to represent that with different colors. And I'm giving away. Just go and get the book.
Speaker 1:You'll probably see my copy make its way into circulation here because a lot of my personal collection ends up in the library collection at some point and then sometimes ends up back in my collection. It's like, you know, let the people who are going to experience it experience it, and then it sits on the shelf and it goes back in my collection.
Speaker 2:That's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, if I get the chance to in the future, I'm definitely going to run that here. There is a little scene of people who come up here, folks who are younger than us mainly, and then a few people who are much older than us. But it's really interesting, the folks who come here to play games with me. They really do seem to put in the legwork to like understand the game before they get here. Yeah, and I think it would be interested, interesting to see that as triangle or how that pans out for triangle agency. But, uh, please go get the game.
Speaker 2:It's incredible, um shop dot haunted table, dot game shop local at haunted games kind well, it's kind of local in the sense that it's from me, but the yeah, that's what I mean. Yes, and sometimes we do have copies at game stores here in town. Level Up has been really good about stocking us so you can check it out there. I think last I checked they only have the mission book right now, but hopefully they'll have more soon.
Speaker 1:I remember just one little anecdote before we go. A friend of mine, wayne, who runs Kismet Games, was traveling recently, uh, and he said that he was in like I don't even remember what state, like colorado or something, uh, and he went into a random bookstore and saw the briefcase version of triangle agency and was like if I wasn't flying uh, whatever airline, he said, one that wouldn't allow him to take a lot of baggage, I guess, yeah, I mean it's like a seven pound box.
Speaker 1:It's heavy, he was if I wasn't flying home, I would walk out the door with that box. And then we had a little laugh about like the concept of him going to the airport and then, like his overhead luggage, is the Triangle.
Speaker 2:A to Z box.
Speaker 1:I thought you'd appreciate hearing that. No, that's awesome Well.