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Scott Sigler Slices: SLAY Season 3DEEP CUTS Episode 3: The RPG Books That Kicked Off Scott’s Writing Career
Scott Sigler Slices: SLAY Season 3DEEP CUTS Episode 3: The RPG Books That Kicked Off Scott’s Writing Career
DEEP CUTS Episode 3: The RPG Books That Kicked Off Scott’s Writing Career
DEEP CUTS Episode 3: The RPG Books That Kicked Off Scott’s Writing CareerUpdate: 2024-06-11
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Description
Scott’s writing career began by writing roleplaying game books and articles for the games Champions, Silent Death, and Dungeons & Dragons. Scott and ARealGirl Herself look back on this exciting, breaking-into-the-business time of Scott’s 20s.
- Created by Scott Sigler and A B Kovacs.
- Production Assistance by Allie Press
- Copyright 2024 by Empty Set Entertainment
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Transcript
00:00:00
My family has worked the land for generations,
00:00:10
my grandson says the island does not belong to us, but we belong to the island.
00:00:17
And we must be ready for a great evil is coming.
00:00:22
Hey, what's going on,
00:00:32
y'all?
00:00:36
Welcome to Deep Cuts, the bonus episode of the Scott Siggler's Lices Fiction Podcast, where a sci-fi author and an audiobook narrator discuss all the hot topics you can't find in a mole.
00:00:46
I'm Scott Siggler, sci-fi horror author known far and wide as the Future Dark Overlord.
00:00:53
And I'm A.B.
00:00:53
Siggler, audiobook narrator, and on this Deep Cuts, we continue our discussion about how D&D and role-playing helped shape Scott into a number one New York Times best-selling author.
00:01:02
As a reminder, these are bonus episodes, not part of the current story that's going on in the Scott Siggler's Lices feed.
00:01:09
So listen, if you like, we'd love to have you, but there's nothing in here you need to hear to keep track of the current story.
00:01:16
We are going to continue the discussion we had last week.
00:01:19
We did get a whole bunch of great suggestions for future episodes.
00:01:22
We're going to talk about that at the end of the episode.
00:01:24
But if you guys want anything you want us to talk about, just drop it into wherever you're chatting and we'll take a screenshot of it and maybe do that.
00:01:31
We've got a couple for moving forward that we'll talk about later.
00:01:35
Last episode, we talked about playing D&D and how that informed my storytelling choices, how it taught me to better understand what the people consuming this story,
00:01:46
back then, game players, now readers, taught me to understand what hit emotionally, it taught me timing, it taught me pace, taught me how to ration out the emotions so you can get those big beat moments.
00:01:59
And how to pivot sometimes.
00:02:01
And how to pivot sometimes once was just not working, how do you immediately switch something else?
00:02:05
All of those skills that I developed, role-playing with Dr.
00:02:09
Dana Baker, PhD, and Rob Otto back in the day, those parlayed into my first actual published credits.
00:02:17
I worked really hard and a bunch of all my weight class went out and found the game publishers and was a brash 21 year old and just saying, "Hey, I'm going to write for you guys,
00:02:27
what do I do?"
00:02:28
And fumbling my way through the publishing system within the gaming world.
00:02:33
And how did that work out?
00:02:34
It started in 1990, yes it did, with White Wolf magazine, the first thing I ever commercially published.
00:02:47
And this was an episode called Seed Shire.
00:02:49
Look at the cover price.
00:02:50
What's that cover price, babe?
00:02:51
Can you see that in a print?
00:02:52
About $2.95.
00:02:53
That magazine used to cost $2.95.
00:02:55
Can I ask a question?
00:02:56
Sure.
00:02:57
Did you get paid?
00:02:58
Oh, yeah.
00:02:59
I got paid.
00:03:00
Oh, good.
00:03:01
I may remember.
00:03:02
Thirty bucks tops.
00:03:03
Now, all of you out there, if anyone can find this original piece of art, I've been hunting for the original piece of art from White Wolf magazine episode number 21 from 1990 for a very long time.
00:03:16
If you find it, let me know.
00:03:18
I won't say price is no object.
00:03:20
I will say I'm willing to spend some money because this is a gorgeous piece of art.
00:03:23
Those of you listening at home, it is a Bronisaurus, a foreground with a baby Bronisaurus being held hostage by a couple of dudes with rifles and giant machines in the background harvesting Brontosaurus,
00:03:34
and it is absolutely spectacular.
00:03:36
So this was a mentally proud moment for me where I first moved from wannabe pro writer to technically a pro writer.
00:03:45
Did you feel like that at the time?
00:03:46
Did you know it?
00:03:47
I was over the moon with this shit.
00:03:48
Yeah.
00:03:49
I remember robbing over the moon and Rob was way more pumped up than I was about it because I robbed.
00:03:54
That's my friend Rob.
00:03:55
That's exactly how he is.
00:03:56
Pretty typical style of rob relationship.
00:03:57
Rob, Scott does not understand.
00:03:59
He's a huge bad.
00:04:00
Scott's mad about some.
00:04:01
Scott's mad about some.
00:04:02
So Rob was super pumped up about it and Rob Otto has that magazine.
00:04:07
So next, I then did a full adventure, one full adventure for Iron Crown Enterprises for the Champions Royal Playing Game.
00:04:18
And this was called Spectrum.
00:04:20
And so what they used to do is they would sell one adventure book or one module that had three separate stories in it.
00:04:26
So you got the biggest bang for your buck.
00:04:29
And mine was called Spectrum and this was actually a campaign that Dan and Rob played in.
00:04:35
And I was able to play test the whole thing with them and then write it up and publish it.
00:04:40
And this was another, I was see so 1991, I would have been 22, was 22 years old, got this thing published.
00:04:48
So the time between when we role played it, we were all 16, 17, 18, and then learning to write, learning to submit, learning how companies worked and submitting it and actually going to GenCon and talking to these guys at GenCon was quite a process,
00:05:01
but it was another gorgeous glossy, it was a glossy cover.
00:05:05
This was the stuff that we saved up our allowance to buy at stores.
00:05:09
And I got to actually write one.
00:05:11
And to this day, I'm still giddy when I look at this shit, I'm like, I can't believe I actually made this happen.
00:05:16
I have a serious question.
00:05:17
Shoot.
00:05:18
Did you ever consider being a paleontologist, considering how much dinosaur is factor into your fiction?
00:05:23
Dinosaur wasn't my story.
00:05:24
It was three separate stories.
00:05:25
Okay.
00:05:26
A hundred percent I'd consider being a paleontologist.
00:05:28
Okay.
00:05:29
That's what I was hoping.
00:05:30
Paleoac theologist, to be exact.
00:05:31
What?
00:05:32
Paleoac theologist.
00:05:33
Really?
00:05:34
Yeah.
00:05:35
That's what I was going to go to.
00:05:36
It's going to go in marine biology, theology or paleoac the biologist.
00:05:39
So yeah, Rob's in the chat of Rob's in the chat room saying, Scott, use this.
00:05:43
Yes, I did.
00:05:44
Yes, I do.
00:05:45
The weird thing about this is I have hardcover novels out from random house.
00:05:49
I have hardcover novels out from Del Rey.
00:05:51
I've gone on fucking world tours for books.
00:05:54
I don't get the same feeling from those books that I get from this goddamn book.
00:05:59
And I do get great feelings from the books, but I was much more.
00:06:02
This was just one of those more, this was much more of a coming of age thing.
00:06:06
Learning that I could actually do this.
00:06:08
I could get paid to write a book.
00:06:10
I could write a book very well.
00:06:11
And I could make the end consumer, the company, the end consumer, super, super happy with the product.
00:06:17
The next one was, I am immensely proud of this.
00:06:20
I think if I could ever turn this into a graphic novel, this is one of my absolute favorites.
00:06:26
This will come into play at some point in the Cigar verse.
00:06:30
Hopefully if I live long enough, this was shadows of the city.
00:06:33
Yeah, we talked about this last week.
00:06:35
Did you talk about this last week with the pack?
00:06:37
The pack was another role playing group that I was in and play tested.
00:06:42
And this was a Daredevil Punisher-esque vigilante group that was out there doing nefarious acts.
00:06:49
And those were the existing characters in the book.
00:06:52
And then the role players who would buy this book and the game master would run them through it were supposed to go up against the pack.
00:06:59
And it's just a absolutely wonderful story.
00:07:02
The cover art rocked and I was completely over the moon.
00:07:04
This came out in 1993, so I had been 24 years old and working, I was still working for hometown newspapers at the time.
00:07:13
So I was a beat writer, sports beat and a local beat writer for- This was the local crime for a chain of six newspapers.
00:07:22
This is when we were covering a serial killer who tore through our entire coverage area and learned- that's a topic for another time.
00:07:31
But the papers coverage of the serial killer completely changed the course of my life.
00:07:34
And you've talked about that a handful of times.
00:07:36
I think we are lucky as junkies that Scott was a local beat writer because it changed his perspective on writing truthful things and starting to write fictional.
00:07:48
Yeah, I'm not that good, a truthful tragedy, real world tragedy and fictional strategy- I fucking hit my stride dog, that's my shit.
00:07:57
So that was shout out to the city in 1993.
00:07:59
And then I keep- this is not trying to choose between you children.
00:08:03
Which child is your favorite?
00:08:04
Which child is your favorite?
00:08:05
This is what all time fucking favorite.
00:08:08
This is Adventurer's Club issue number.
00:08:11
Can you read that?
00:08:12
Issue number four.
00:08:14
This is Iron Crown Enterprises who's out of business now.
00:08:17
They did champions, they did a couple other games, and this was their monthly magazine.
00:08:23
And in this magazine, I wrote a superhero version of the movie Bloodsport.
00:08:28
The adventure is called the Kumite.
00:08:30
And the Kumite, all of your martial arts characters that are in your campaign- remember, the Champions is a superhero role-playing game.
00:08:39
All your martial arts characters went, got kidnapped and got put into this Bloodsport tournament.
00:08:45
And dude, we- oh my god, I got little canvases, little jessowed canvases from the art store, put the canvas down, we built the little arena round us, we had the little miniatures on the canvas.
00:08:57
Wait, wait.
00:08:58
Was this in the antique store that was once the autos?
00:09:00
Oh.
00:09:01
No, we did not.
00:09:02
That was not played.
00:09:03
This was mostly played at my mom and dad's house.
00:09:05
But everybody would come over and we had all these characters, we had a full-on tournament because we're all- everybody in our role-playing group was sports nuts.
00:09:13
Crazy sports.
00:09:14
We were sports nerds, very jog nerds, very small Venn diagram group.
00:09:18
And we would get out the red marker when somebody got cut- okay, you got cut, we would actually draw blood on the little canvas.
00:09:25
So by the end of the tournament, the- I think it was a 32 fighter tournament.
00:09:28
By the end of the tournament, the mat was all covered with blood, it was so great.
00:09:33
And this is before the UFC started.
00:09:36
This is literally five, six years before the UFC won, I think.
00:09:40
So we had- and this is all based on the movie Bloodsport.
00:09:43
Okay.
00:09:44
So basically when the UFC came around and like, shit dog, we already did that.
00:09:46
We already did that shit right there.
00:09:48
It was wonderful and spectacular and we had a great time with that.
00:09:52
We were able to sell that one off to the Adventures Club.
00:09:55
And then that was- so that was 1994, then in 1997, figured our shiases.
00:10:02
Vikings and space, bro.
00:10:03
Vikings and space.
00:10:04
So I have to ask.
00:10:05
Figured was not your title.
00:10:06
Correct.
00:10:07
This was a pre-existing- which totally works for you.
00:10:10
Governmental group in the Silent Death Universe.
00:10:13
And Silent Death is a tabletop- it's a tabletop game where you take space fighters like Balsar Galactica and Star Wars and Battle of the Stars and there is a rule system where you get into giant dog fights.
00:10:24
It's magnificent.
00:10:25
But I think this is the one where we start to see the beginnings of the GFL show up.
00:10:30
When you are writing the systems and stuff, there's some- whoa, there's some- there's some familiarity.
00:10:35
I'll say it's not the GFL, but it's this same, there's a science-based, there's an ethics-based, there's a magic- there's things like that.
00:10:45
Yeah, this was a real-world-based house and I'm not gonna lie.
00:10:48
I can't believe I got this job because in my early 20s, I took it upon myself to write sternly-worded letters to all the publishing companies.
00:10:59
Why am I not surprised?
00:11:00
To say, hey, great game.
00:11:03
This is so- Thank you.
00:11:05
Don.
00:11:06
I was like, I remember- Hmm.
00:11:08
And nothing is changed.
00:11:09
I remember.
00:11:10
Oh my God.
00:11:11
I looked back now.
00:11:12
It's crazy.
00:11:13
I sent this letter to me like, okay, you guys, your game rocks, but you're not gonna get Viking in space.
00:11:18
This is so dumb.
00:11:19
This is dumbest shit I ever saw in my whole life.
00:11:20
You should change this.
00:11:21
It's really fucking dumb.
00:11:23
And then three or four years later coming back, like, hey, I'd like to write for your game now.
00:11:28
What's up?
00:11:29
I was gonna say in the chat room, in Facebook, Rob Otter says, and then he all took it to Jencon and he ran one.
00:11:35
Yeah.
00:11:36
We took it to Jencon and we ran one.
00:11:37
And yes, Steve the Espoir Grieker in the chat room says, Scott Karen, Sigler, 100%.
00:11:42
I was a Karen for a long time because it- and this will sound grandiose, but I'm like, why would you put something out that's dumb when you could put something out that's smart?
00:11:51
Like, the bonds of what you have are so good.
00:11:53
Yes.
00:11:54
It sounds like it.
00:11:55
It sounds like it.
00:11:56
It sounds very much like you.
00:11:57
Kareny.
00:11:58
It sounds like I should have a whole Elon comb over going over.
00:12:00
Definitely.
00:12:01
This definitely sounds like you.
00:12:02
He actually does this very infrequently today.
00:12:06
The Kareny?
00:12:07
Why wouldn't you just write it real?
00:12:11
But it did take a while.
00:12:12
It did take a while.
00:12:13
And you know what?
00:12:14
Thankfully, now that I've gotten over my Karen bullshit, that's why we get slain.
00:12:16
I'm having a fucking great time.
00:12:17
It's like- I know.
00:12:19
It means- Sigurd Archdiocese was 1997, so I was getting into my late 20s very old now.
00:12:25
And very proud of this book, it started to publish her's Diamond Crown Enterprises to send something like the fiction in this is fantastic, because you've got these little sidebars on the side.
00:12:35
So these little two, three, four hundred word, these little mini stories, they run the sidebar.
00:12:39
And that's where I really started to come into fruition.
00:12:41
The other super effin dope thing about this, the dopest thing that you can get is I got the design, the six new fighter craft that were introduced in the game and they made miniatures based on my drawings.
00:12:57
I drew the upper outline and then turned to the pro artist who hand sculpted the molds that were then used to make the minis.
00:13:05
And somewhere in our storage unit, I have a whole fucking fleet of Sigurd Archdiocese ships.
00:13:09
I did not know that.
00:13:10
And there is something charismatic about I made this ship- Oh my goodness, of course.
00:13:15
And as far as editors go, the guys, Aaron Alston and the guys at Iron Crown Enterprises, they were like, ship looks great.
00:13:22
Let's make it work.
00:13:23
And I could not believe- I still can't believe it.
00:13:26
I couldn't believe that I got to draw a thing that they then turned into an actual miniature that I could go buy at the store and paint up and play a game.
00:13:35
I'm just doing a half decades later, just to smack by that.
00:13:38
Yeah.
00:13:39
Which now, of course, now that we do with Hollywood on a semi-regular basis, these guys were much better than Hollywood.
00:13:44
These guys look like, "Looks great, bro.
00:13:45
Let's make it work."
00:13:46
Okay.
00:13:47
So that was Archdiocese.
00:13:48
And then the final one- First we're going to take a little bit of commercial break.
00:13:50
Okay.
00:13:51
Yeah.
00:13:52
We're going to take a quick commercial break.
00:13:53
After these words from our fantastic sponsors- And we're back.
00:14:21
And we're back.
00:14:22
And then finally, and this completes- The circle.
00:14:27
The circle is complete.
00:14:28
The Oral Burrows is eating its own tail.
00:14:31
Oh, no.
00:14:32
Here we go.
00:14:33
The ASP technology.
00:14:34
This was an existing house for silent death, but it had almost no supporting material whatsoever.
00:14:41
So this was the first thing I really got to put my imprint on.
00:14:46
And this- Eventually, the basic content of this eventually became the League of Planets.
00:14:51
And the Galactic Football League series.
00:14:53
Oh, then I'm wrong.
00:14:54
I thought it was the other one.
00:14:55
I thought it was Sigurd Archdiocese, but this one- I'm so sorry about that.
00:14:58
Sigurd was in a way a little bit silly and fun.
00:15:01
This to me ASP technology was serious hardcore sci-fi.
00:15:05
And again, for any of you that are completists- Hey, John Bivens- This particular role-playing game book is somewhat available on the internet.
00:15:14
If you Google it and eBay it and you will read what looks just like the League of Planets.
00:15:20
You will read familiarity into what you guys know if you were fans of the GFL, all of that stuff.
00:15:28
This is so interesting.
00:15:29
And I was still a fan.
00:15:30
I was just getting caught up on all my sigler stuff.
00:15:35
And I got this because I thought it was a novel because I didn't know anything about role-playing games.
00:15:40
So I was like, oh, this is- I don't know what to do with this, and I don't have friends to play.
00:15:43
And we still- We have it because of that reason.
00:15:46
Are you showing it?
00:15:47
I will show it in one second.
00:15:49
But that is the arc, the six product arc of my role-playing writing days.
00:15:56
And just taking a moment to say to- Rob, you might remember the name of the guy at Iron Crown, I'm drawing his blank right now.
00:16:03
He's not Aaron Alston, the other guy.
00:16:05
But the entire team at Iron Crown Enterprises.
00:16:07
And eventually I didn't get paid for this because they went bankrupt and I went through my first experience of not getting paid for my writing.
00:16:17
And really I went after it.
00:16:18
I went after it.
00:16:19
I went after it really hard because I'm like, this was like $2,000.
00:16:21
It was like a significant amount of money for a guy in his 20s.
00:16:25
And they- Now I know they didn't have the money, they went out of business.
00:16:28
But an immense thank you to anyone from Iron Crown Enterprises who was involved in this.
00:16:34
This was incredibly formative, incredibly positive in my writing career.
00:16:40
I'm not sure I would have the career I have without Iron Crown Enterprises.
00:16:43
I loved every fucking second of it.
00:16:45
The only part I didn't like was trying to go after people who get paid.
00:16:47
And they didn't have money to pay me.
00:16:49
We still paid that.
00:16:50
Spectacular.
00:16:51
And that was the beginnings of Scott's professional writing career.
00:16:55
Learning to work with editors.
00:16:57
Learning that maybe I'm not the smartest guy in the room all the time, maybe just most of the time.
00:17:02
And every now and then maybe you got to listen to somebody else giving you feedback on your writing.
00:17:06
Learning to control my fucking little man anger, which was super prevalent back then.
00:17:11
And actually writing, getting paid, getting published, getting to go to a store.
00:17:16
And seeing my name on a product in a store.
00:17:20
Absolutely spectacular.
00:17:21
I owe so much to those guys.
00:17:23
And that's it.
00:17:24
I'm done.
00:17:25
I love it.
00:17:26
You want to go to questions?
00:17:27
Yeah.
00:17:28
I have a handful of questions.
00:17:29
First one.
00:17:30
These are from last week.
00:17:31
Steve Long.
00:17:32
Steve Long.
00:17:33
That was one of them.
00:17:34
And a missing one in a mad because I'm actually friends with him online.
00:17:35
I can't remember his name right now.
00:17:36
Sorry.
00:17:37
So I'm going to ask some questions from last week.
00:17:38
You guys can absolutely add questions about D&D.
00:17:40
This is the last episode where we're going to talk about that.
00:17:43
So add them if you have them.
00:17:44
And next week we'll talk about something else.
00:17:46
So if you have something you want us to talk about, please just add them in the comments wherever you want.
00:17:50
On YouTube last week, Artificial Selection asked, "I would love to hear what if any communications God had with other writers in the same RPG when he wrote source books.
00:18:00
Did you share notes or is there a setting Bible or is it just a solo thing?"
00:18:07
There was a setting Bible.
00:18:08
So the main silent death book, which probably haven't stored somewhere, that contained an overview of all of the different governments that you were allowed to play.
00:18:18
I don't think there was a lot of communication between writers.
00:18:21
I don't think I exchange information with anyone at all.
00:18:25
There's a lot of things working with the editors who are the source code managers.
00:18:29
And I believe back then, in the 90s, it was you calling them, you meeting physically with them.
00:18:37
It's a good question.
00:18:38
Or you faxing them.
00:18:40
Honestly, I don't remember.
00:18:43
I think it was the early days of AOL.
00:18:44
I think there was some online communication.
00:18:46
I tell you what, honestly, don't remember.
00:18:49
So it was sort of '94 to '98, then we were going through an absolutely revolutionary change in the human species at that time in history with the advent of AOL and accessible internet.
00:19:01
But it's really hard to remember.
00:19:02
There was a lot of printed manuscripts sent back and forth.
00:19:05
I believe we were sending Microsoft Word documents though.
00:19:07
Really?
00:19:08
Some degree of email.
00:19:09
Yeah.
00:19:10
What was the other, what was the other Microsoft or there was something else?
00:19:14
It was Word and something else, just like Betamax and Envy.
00:19:17
I can't remember, but it failed.
00:19:20
So I do have several questions that's come up a lot.
00:19:22
I came up last week.
00:19:24
It keeps coming up in the chat room.
00:19:25
I'll use Cobalt USA on YouTube who keeps asking about, or people keep asking about whether or not you would consider a mad and GFL or a mad or sorry or a GFL RPG.
00:19:37
Both of those are important questions.
00:19:38
They get asked a whole lot.
00:19:41
So a Claire's works.
00:19:42
Strong free diet got it, right?
00:19:43
Claire's works.
00:19:44
Great.
00:19:45
Let's answer it.
00:19:46
Word perfect.
00:19:47
Yeah.
00:19:48
Question in the chat room regarding a GFL board game, a GFL role playing game.
00:19:51
We have-- A GFL map.
00:19:53
A GFL map.
00:19:54
We have tried to develop a GFL board game a couple of times.
00:19:58
Many.
00:19:59
And we've gotten far along with it as a card game and as a tabletop game and eventually it just ran out of steam because it's-- dude, I don't think people are going to-- only people are going to like playing this.
00:20:10
It's too complicated.
00:20:11
There is a game in the works right now that I'm not going to tell you what it is.
00:20:15
But it's GFL tangential but it's not actually a GFL.
00:20:18
As far as the video game goes, yes, I have tried to find a way to pitch EA sports.
00:20:23
Now, EA sports is a giant orbital juggernaut right now.
00:20:27
Back in the day, it wasn't so much.
00:20:28
I did get through to a couple of people.
00:20:30
It didn't go anywhere.
00:20:31
The one I went after was-- I believe it was 2K sports and when EA bought out the rights to the NFL.
00:20:41
So no one else could do an NFL video game.
00:20:43
I went after 2K sports to try and do-- here's the super cool thing.
00:20:47
I'm writing these books.
00:20:48
Every brick brings in a new species, new plays, et cetera.
00:20:52
And I think I might have talked to a low-level guy there, like an early fan or something, but it's not able to get through them.
00:20:58
Because they can't make it cost too much to make a game in GFL, they're not going to sell enough.
00:21:03
And simple.
00:21:04
And for you guys asking, saying, yeah, it looks just like football because it is American football, you are correct.
00:21:09
100% correct.
00:21:10
The problem is you have to account for the different species.
00:21:14
And that turns out to be prohibitively expensive in creating that game and creating not just the skin, not just what the player looks like.
00:21:23
Because you can't do that.
00:21:24
You have to give the players, you have to give Squarno the ability to leap into the air like players can't do.
00:21:32
And that has hamstrung us several several times.
00:21:36
You're spot on, but you got to flip.
00:21:38
It's the physics of how high a person can jump.
00:21:40
That's a piece of cake in the game.
00:21:42
It's the modeling.
00:21:43
So because this is where-- because I made a game where the aliens actually looked alien.
00:21:48
Yeah.
00:21:49
Now, if my aliens had blue skin and bumpy shit in their nose, they could have done no problem.
00:21:54
But to go in and re-tool a non-human alien to play in the video game, that's big bucks, big good.
00:22:02
And being able to jump seven times the height of a human being right now, that is easy to program, but difficult to skin.
00:22:09
You're right.
00:22:10
I got it exactly.
00:22:11
You were right.
00:22:12
I got it exactly.
00:22:13
You just got to infer it, but you're right in spot.
00:22:14
Pam Weber on YouTube says, Montuidi would DM.
00:22:17
Oh my god, Montuidi would be the worst DM in the world.
00:22:21
And she would insist on doing that.
00:22:23
Get out of there.
00:22:24
Get out of there.
00:22:25
Get out of there, you know the rules.
00:22:26
What are you doing?
00:22:27
Okay.
00:22:28
So, we did look into those games.
00:22:30
There is a game in the works, which we can't quite tell you about.
00:22:33
It's interesting.
00:22:34
Will it come to fruition?
00:22:35
We don't know.
00:22:37
But to sum it up and to move on to the next question, a GFL video game is an enormously expensive operation.
00:22:47
If it's going to look like mad, it's just not tenable.
00:22:50
We don't sell enough books to merit that.
00:22:53
So it's never going to happen, guys.
00:22:54
It's never going to happen.
00:22:55
Also, a GFL anime, also a GFL graphic novel.
00:23:00
These are all the same things.
00:23:01
No, I don't know.
00:23:02
A graphic novel we could do.
00:23:03
It could happen.
00:23:04
If somebody comes to us and we're like, Hey, we love this property when we're at graphic novel.
00:23:07
That's easy.
00:23:08
That's easy.
00:23:09
The anime is, it'll never be, GFL will never be live action, GFL will never be a big video game.
00:23:15
It could be an anime, if somebody from Japan goes, I love this, I want to do this Mike Pro.
00:23:22
We're listening and it could be a graphic novel.
00:23:25
We've actually tried a graphic novel at one point didn't turn out.
00:23:28
Last week in the Facebook chat room, Xavier Howard asked, can being a D&D dungeon master help get into the voice over industry?
00:23:38
You know what?
00:23:39
It's interesting that you asked that because I just had one of my college friends, Ross the boss Howard texted me today, he said, Hey, check out my son being a dungeon master on YouTube.
00:23:52
What do you think?
00:23:53
And this young man's 28, his son's 28 smooth is so good, a good dungeon master voice low in the pocket all the time, talking like this, because you don't, the goal of the narrator,
00:24:03
I'm going to answer the question, the goal, goal being a narrative voice is to be oxygen.
00:24:08
You don't draw attention to yourself.
00:24:09
You just move in the pocket because then when you deliver emphasis and emotion in a character voice that pops out, then you go back being smooth as silken shit.
00:24:20
And this young man clearly has some innate talent and has clearly done the reps.
00:24:25
So the answer is, yes, being a dungeon master can absolutely lend itself to you being a voice over artist because of two things.
00:24:34
Number one, you develop the narrator voice and narrative voice is oxygen.
00:24:37
It's invisible.
00:24:38
There, but it's not there.
00:24:39
It's smooth.
00:24:40
It's butter.
00:24:41
It's butter on the toast.
00:24:42
And then your actual character voices, you develop thousands, I mean thousands might be much several hundred character voices, often on the fly where you have to keep track of them and remember them,
00:24:54
so when you give them to, when you do the voice for your players, they recognize who is talking.
00:24:59
That is a skill set that outside of actually going and studying acting.
00:25:03
I don't see any place else.
00:25:04
You can do that other than role playing games, but that's because I think in role playing games, you don't know it.
00:25:09
You don't call it improv, but it is improv.
00:25:12
You do that every single time and that's a huge toolbox for actor to be able to improv.
00:25:18
Even if you're trying to learn your character and stuff like that, you can improv with yourself.
00:25:22
Okay.
00:25:23
I have to be more vulnerable.
00:25:24
I have to be more angry.
00:25:25
I have to be more bitchy.
00:25:26
I have to be more whatever you can do that with yourself, which is what you do or you did when you were the dungeon master trying to entertain your friends.
00:25:36
It's improv.
00:25:37
It's always improv.
00:25:38
Now, you as a trained actress, do you think it would be a good deal?
00:25:42
I don't think so because I am also very fussy.
00:25:46
I think I could do it, but I couldn't if I was, I know you're laughing because it's true.
00:25:51
I am very fastidious and very particular and I would be very fussy if people didn't.
00:25:56
My problem would always be this.
00:25:59
It would be if last week I talked about the first campaign I played, we went to a county fair and my companion only wanted to do two games and then he wanted to leave.
00:26:09
He was also 13 years old.
00:26:11
The human.
00:26:12
And I was very fussy about it because I wanted to see all the things.
00:26:15
Okay.
00:26:16
And I think as a DM, I would be like, I believe you must continue to improv.
00:26:23
Yeah.
00:26:24
That's probably true.
00:26:25
That's probably true.
00:26:26
And you'd be like, no, I don't care.
00:26:27
Look.
00:26:28
Look at your feet.
00:26:29
And Keith would start to come together and you would realize the player that maybe we should go to the party.
00:26:34
Yeah.
00:26:35
There would be a lot of my players being like, okay, over or maybe we should do this.
00:26:43
Yeah.
00:26:44
I know.
00:26:45
I'm very fussy.
00:26:46
All right.
00:26:47
Let's get to the next question.
00:26:48
I know you got some other gems in there.
00:26:49
We have, do you think?
00:26:50
And I know we don't have this option, but do you think that as you grow and change in your life experience, do you add that to your DM?
00:26:57
And that's hard for you because you were a kid when you were a DM.
00:27:01
But it's not hard.
00:27:03
Remember when you are a teenager and shit about shit, but the shit that you do know about is so intense.
00:27:10
When you have your first significant other, no one in the world could possibly understand how deep you feel.
00:27:18
No one could understand the hurt you feel when that relationship doesn't work out.
00:27:22
No one understands that the principal is out to get you and make an example of you and why do you say to pick on you all of the time.
00:27:29
And when I think the most dramatic arc game master can make is probably from like 13 to 18 because every single thing that happens to you is the most intense thing that has ever happened to you being in the world.
00:27:43
And what I did is I rolled all of that into a role play.
00:27:46
Of course.
00:27:47
And every DM that played that grows up with role playing games does that as they grow up.
00:27:54
And I think that's beautiful.
00:27:55
I think that's a beautiful thing because you we all learn to manage the big feels that we will have in our life when they're not terribly big things that are happening to us.
00:28:08
And we're very first.
00:28:10
Oh, that's right.
00:28:11
Bab's Daniels in the chat room just came from her D&D game, popped in with us.
00:28:15
Yeah.
00:28:16
Sick.
00:28:17
On Facebook.
00:28:18
Thanks for joining us, Bab.
00:28:19
So there is a question I want to get to.
00:28:20
I saw Tan.
00:28:21
So let's go through the rest of the questions when I just tell me which one was my favorite adventure ever.
00:28:27
OK.
00:28:28
What was your favorite campaign and why is it curse that why is it curse of strad, which was last week, our good friend Jennifer on Facebook.
00:28:37
Hey, Jennifer, it was not curse of strad.
00:28:40
You know what I will tell you?
00:28:41
It is.
00:28:42
Why wasn't it to this day?
00:28:43
Pardon me.
00:28:45
The single greatest role playing module ever developed and that includes mine, which are quite frankly number two through seven of the single greatest role playing modules ever developed,
00:28:58
because let's be honest, I'm fucking good at what I do.
00:29:00
I'm good at my job, dog.
00:29:01
And number one, very humble, very humble, number one, the keep on the borderlands.
00:29:08
If you guys are playing D&T and never played the keep on the borderlands, if you are the DM, go get it.
00:29:14
If you're not the DM, don't you Google a God damn thing.
00:29:18
Watch your shitty little mouth, email your dungeon master and say, go find keep on the borderlands.
00:29:24
It's all I'm going to say.
00:29:26
It is a absolutely spectacular piece of fiction writing.
00:29:29
I don't know, wrote it.
00:29:31
Some of the chat I'm going to look up a rope, keep on the borderlands, but don't read about it.
00:29:34
Don't read about it.
00:29:35
That's a very difficult last.
00:29:36
You know what?
00:29:37
Pull it off.
00:29:38
Let me find a new phrase.
00:29:40
Hey, pull it off is not accomplished this.
00:29:45
There we go.
00:29:46
Also, that could be a phrasing thing.
00:29:47
But keep on the borderlands is, it literally changed my life because I thought I'm not going to let the story was so spectacular.
00:29:58
And it combined a chocolate and peanut butter element of genre that I had never, it never crossed my little brain.
00:30:05
Two great things that.
00:30:06
Two great things that taste great together.
00:30:08
Great.
00:30:09
I could not, I would, it's hard to put into words when there is an idea that hits you, but if you had lived your whole life long, you would not have thought up.
00:30:19
And when it hit, it hit like a wrecking ball, man, it was great.
00:30:23
So you guys Abraham Lopez says, yes, always infiltrated Facebook.
00:30:27
Hello, Abraham.
00:30:28
How you doing?
00:30:29
How you doing?
00:30:30
I thought you might have been saying a real quick with just a thumbs up.
00:30:33
Anyone in the chat room, give me a thumbs up if you played the keep on the borderlands.
00:30:37
And those of you listening at home, those of you listening at home, we do this live every Wednesday, 6 p.m., Pacific time, 9 p.m.
00:30:43
Eastern.
00:30:43
You could join us if you want to.
00:30:44
The world is in.
00:30:45
And in the chat room on Facebook, on Twitch, and on YouTube, there are people saying this model is a very Gary Geigaksy and model.
00:30:53
And so we have to talk about that.
00:30:54
If you guys are young enough that you are coming not into the first generation of D and role playing, Gary Geigaksy, Geigaksy, Geigaksy, Geigaksy,
00:31:05
was the sort of originator.
00:31:06
He is the oracle of D and D.
00:31:10
And there are several models that sort of work the same way that he worked moving into things.
00:31:16
And I also know that sometimes you played champions, that's a little bit different.
00:31:19
We have tons of champions, yeah, tons of tons.
00:31:22
And so it comes a different way.
00:31:23
And for me, as you all know, my very first ever game was, I think, in 2019 out of charity event, I played for 40 minutes.
00:31:32
I didn't know anything about anything.
00:31:34
And it was for world builders and we were sponsors.
00:31:38
And so I got to play and oh my god, I got sat at a table as a sponsor.
00:31:43
And never having played ever D and D.
00:31:46
I had 40 minutes.
00:31:47
And we were in a tavern.
00:31:50
And I kept wanting to know if there was.
00:31:52
Quick interruption, artificial selection says the keep in the borderlands was written by Gary Geigaksy himself.
00:31:58
Phenomenal.
00:31:59
Continue.
00:32:00
If you guys are just getting into role playing or your role playing, but you never played D and D for some reason, go and check that out.
00:32:08
But yeah, my very first campaign was 40 minutes at a charity event.
00:32:12
It wasn't really a campaign.
00:32:13
It was obviously just we were playing for fun.
00:32:15
Cobalt USA's laughing like 40 minutes.
00:32:17
Ha, that's just showed him on a time.
00:32:19
Exactly.
00:32:20
And I didn't know anything about anything.
00:32:22
And this one, who was a DM for years, didn't train me at all.
00:32:27
So I sat down at my table as a sponsor.
00:32:30
And we were in a tavern and we were just trying to find out what everybody's skills at was.
00:32:36
Oh my god.
00:32:37
You want me to tell everyone else?
00:32:38
You can tell.
00:32:39
40 minutes, which they extended 50 minutes, my then partner, now wife, and Trisha Narwani,
00:32:49
one of the top editors at Del Rey, we're in the tavern.
00:32:53
We leave the tavern and these two motherfuckers burned our entire charity time, which if you said it's been a lot of money to fucking sponsor,
00:33:03
trying to get a horse to talk.
00:33:05
A read.
00:33:06
Read.
00:33:07
A horse to read.
00:33:08
40 minutes of Trisha and A, wondering, hey, maybe this horse reads and we're and you can see the game is like the horse ate the oats.
00:33:20
Maybe you're done and they did not give up, they did not give up.
00:33:24
I know and love like she, we knew we were friends.
00:33:27
Sean says horses typically don't read.
00:33:28
You're correct Sean.
00:33:29
But I didn't know what I did know and I thought everything is magic.
00:33:34
Everything might be magic.
00:33:35
I might be able to get the horse to read.
00:33:36
And Trisha was like, apparently, A would like this horse to be more magical and I'm leaning in.
00:33:43
And what I should have had was somebody be like, that's just a horse.
00:33:47
But I didn't know what I didn't know.
00:33:48
It was insanity and I to this day, I was so mad.
00:33:55
I was like, can we get to a point where if I at least kill a goblin, something, Jesus, we literally never, we were never left the tavern.
00:34:03
And what am I going to do?
00:34:04
You can't get mad at someone at a charity event for D&D, which you sponsored.
00:34:10
So people are playing D&D because of the money that you made.
00:34:13
And number one, it was my business partner at number two.
00:34:17
It was my fucking editor at Del Rey.
00:34:20
I'm not going to step in and be like, you guys are being dumb and shit.
00:34:23
Somebody said that.
00:34:24
You dumb and shit.
00:34:25
How about we just move on down the road.
00:34:27
Don't be trying to teach a horse to read that some dumb ass shit.
00:34:31
So Jennifer Hathorne in the Facebook chat room just asked, did we have fun?
00:34:35
And I will say, I had absolutely I had fun.
00:34:39
I didn't know what I didn't know and I do feel bad.
00:34:43
I'll say this, the first time I ever played Blackjack in Las Vegas, I didn't know what I didn't know.
00:34:48
And I bet when I shouldn't have bet based on the odds and everyone at the table was like, but I had fun.
00:34:56
And the same thing happened in that D&D.
00:34:58
I think Trisha was trying to support me.
00:35:00
I didn't know what I didn't know.
00:35:02
I had a ton of fun, but I don't think everybody else at the table had fun.
00:35:05
And I think that's important too.
00:35:06
I think we should all have fun once I know more that I know I corrected that in my first campaign in 2020.
00:35:13
I would like to point out that cobalt said, Hey, Mr.
00:35:15
Ed reference.
00:35:16
And I'm like, you know, what son, you're this close to getting fired, you've this close to getting fired.
00:35:21
Don't encourage actually is going on to play a D&D campaign.
00:35:23
I understand you.
00:35:24
Another D&D campaign coming up, right?
00:35:25
I do.
00:35:26
I hope so.
00:35:27
I'm my good friend.
00:35:28
I'm maybe excited about it.
00:35:29
Let's get through the rest of our questions and we'll finish up this episode.
00:35:33
So again, chat room, those of you listening at home, we do this live.
00:35:37
The next topic gets picked by the chat room with me as the overseer, if you will, to pick the next topic.
00:35:44
So chat room, let's go.
00:35:45
Start filling up.
00:35:46
What do you want to hear us talk about next?
00:35:47
Let's go.
00:35:48
We had a handful of questions.
00:35:49
We're going to figure that out later, but we do have some from last week.
00:35:53
One is from AI who is still tonight in the chat room on YouTube says, "Okay, here's a very nutty one.
00:36:00
Government stored cheese in caves.
00:36:02
I really wish I was joking, but the rabbit hole is too deep on this one."
00:36:05
And I looked it up and that is probably a future topic on that.
00:36:08
That's not going to lie.
00:36:09
Okay.
00:36:10
If you say so boss.
00:36:11
We can talk about it now.
00:36:12
And then Sean, Dyer, one of our lovely good friends on Twitch, says one of my favorite things to see in sci-fi is mechs.
00:36:19
Do you think that's something you could make a topic out of?
00:36:21
Yeah.
00:36:22
Mechs.
00:36:23
Oh, mechs.
00:36:24
Yeah.
00:36:25
We have a lot.
00:36:26
I think this is actually going to be our topic for next week.
00:36:28
I have a story I have tried to sell as a screenplay pitch and would love to get to in a short story or novel format.
00:36:37
It's called chariot and I've got a really detailed process for it.
00:36:40
And I've actually written, I don't have it in here.
00:36:43
I have written a short story on mechs called the lady and do you remember baby?
00:36:48
No, but you've written several.
00:36:50
The lady and the wolf, if you guys look up the lady in the wolf, that is a short story about mechs that I wrote.
00:36:55
It is as usual when I write shit.
00:36:57
It's not the thing you would expect.
00:36:59
It's mech pan gentle.
00:37:01
Super proud of it.
00:37:02
Love it.
00:37:03
But of course, we also have a good friend, Jake Bible, who is an author who writes a lot about mechs and did great work and mechs and zombies together.
00:37:10
What's up, Jake?
00:37:11
What's up, bitch?
00:37:12
And if you are fans, I know Sean, you know this, but I'm saying for everybody else who is listening or watching, if you watch or if you listen to the reporter, which is a GFL novella,
00:37:23
that includes mechs.
00:37:25
So Sean is saying I got this story wrong, but he'll tell me what it is.
00:37:28
I thought it was the reporter, but I also think this is an interesting story.
00:37:33
Oh, no, it's sorry.
00:37:34
It is the reef.
00:37:35
It is the reef.
00:37:36
Yes.
00:37:37
There's light, light max in the reef, not the big head, not the abbies, but light max in the reef.
00:37:41
It's spectacular.
00:37:42
I love it.
00:37:43
But somebody accidentally suggested a great topic that I think we will talk about, which is empty set, which is the two of us have a database of potential, singular stories that he might die before he gets to,
00:37:54
because it's about 100, 120, 352, oh my god, 352, so we may talk about that in a deep cuts episode.
00:38:02
That's a great idea.
00:38:03
It's a great idea.
00:38:04
Somebody suggested that.
00:38:05
That is it for this episode of deep cuts.
00:38:08
Next episode, we will definitely talk about the singular fiction database that exists at empty set.
00:38:14
Yes, ma'am.
00:38:15
Join us, and you all smell an awful lot, like flowers.
00:38:22
Contained herein are the heresies of Radolf Buntwine.
00:38:38
A swile monk turned traveling medical investigator.
00:38:42
Join me as I uncover the blasphemous truth of a plague-ridden world that ours is not a loving God, and we are not its favored children.
00:38:52
The heresies of Radolf Buntwine, coming January 2, wherever podcasts are available.
00:38:57
[BLANK_AUDIO]
00:39:07
