Role Playing Games - Rob - Unfolding the Soul (OlOIP48U-dM)

https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=OlOIP48U-dM

Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Unfolding the Soul. Today I have Rob as my guest. And he’s going to have the first repeat topic. So that’s going to be really exciting to have some contrast there. Rob is going to talk about role playing games. I’ve met him when he came into the Ferfeki server, trying to figure out a bunch of stuff, I think, with the idea of developing his game in the back of his mind. I and Mark ended up willing to assist in this project. So we’ve been meeting multiple times, giving Rob suggestions and putting him in a maybe a state of disorder, trying to re-figure what’s going on in the game. Yeah, that’s how I know Rob. And I believe that Rob has actually a good thing going with his role playing game. And I hope he can bring it to a nice finish. So, Rob, role playing games. What are they to me? I could start with, I could either start at the beginning or start at the end of that idea. Like to me, in a sense, they are the gateway to the divine. Because they enable connection in ways that very few other experiences do in a consistent way. I think for people that are really inclined towards a group experience and have been reason or another with other inclusive group. How would I say it? Practices. Practices, but I want to say religious practices, but bracketing the word religion the way Verveki uses it with religio, reconnection. Containers made for intimacy. Yeah, right. Exactly. Social intimacy. When they’re working the best. Yes. So to the extent that they do that, I’m pleased with them. In my experience, very few games actually encourage that. And the games that do encourage that I feel they do so in a way that doesn’t often meet your normal role playing game guy where they are. And I say guy very specifically, because I find often that it’s men that have real trouble bridging the gap between each other when it comes to expressing themselves. We’re very guarded and oftentimes quite insecure. But in space. And also probably oriented differently, right? More oriented towards the utilitarian aspect. Like how can I make it work? Like how can I hack the metagame? Right? Yes, there’s that. There’s this element. I got to beat this and we get locked in that modality real fast. So yeah, let’s go to the start. So at the start, yeah, so I started playing RPGs when I was eight. A friend of mine in, I guess it was third grade, got a bunch of us together and said, well, we’re going to play a game and you’re going to have a character. And he made the character. And we kind of directed like, hey, what do you want to be? You want to be like a whatever ninja or a wizard or something like that. I picked a ninja because that sounded cool to me. And we gathered his place and proceeded to play our first role playing session without really knowing what was going on. Like there wasn’t a preface to, like, hey, we’re all playing pretend and there are rules and stuff like that. He just started and like laid out a scene and told us what we saw. And then we sort of said what our characters did. It was moderately confusing. The first time I missed an attack. That was the thing I remember. Like, wait, what do you mean I missed? Because the dice rolled poorly on my first attack roll. And like, how did I miss? I have this giant thing. He’s right in front of me. I’m just swinging as hard as I can. What do you mean I missed? Like something else happened. And that was, that was my first session and also my very first design disconnect. Because it was like, that just disrupted the story for me. In a way that I didn’t find interesting. I’m fine with interesting disruptions. If it was like, Hey, you hit the guy and it claimed off his armor and it broke a part of your thing. And now it’s harder for you to hit him. That might, might’ve been interesting, but a simple you missed was like, that wasn’t enough. There was, it was so denuded the meeting and context that it was confusing to me because like all my other experiences playing pretend up to that point, there was a natural flow of story. And you know, when you’re playing like when you’re eight and you’re playing with GI Joes or star wars figures or something like that. Yeah, the stormtroopers miss, but it’s so they can be defeated, right? There’s like a plan in the narrative for them. And to have the hero miss as a result of something random felt like off putting it weird immediately. And I didn’t realize this until much later, right? This was became, you know, once that happened and that was integrated into the greater experience, then it wasn’t weird. The next couple of times it was explained. Like if you roll over this much, it means you hit and if we’re rolling this much, it means you miss. And you know, this number changes based on what you’re attacking. So like a guy who’s naked has is really easy to hit and a guy with a shield and full plate armor is really hard to hit. And that was like, Oh, okay. That makes sense. So it’s not really hit. It’s like, do something to, right? I have, have effect upon and not hit so much. And so like that, that idea has informed so much of my design because it’s moved away from the, uh, the default engagement, which is generally attacking something in RPGs to, you know, having that as part of the array of the engagements, but that’s, you know, that’s not particular to my game. It’s just something that I, that appears to overly influence other games. When you have one tool and your toolkit, then inevitably players will reach for that tool no matter what the situation. So, yeah. So a couple of things spring out there to me. So first it’s immediately into the mechanics, right? It’s like, okay. And secondly, uh, seeing the mechanics be constrained upon you. I think that’s like the first time that popped out the aspect of constraint. And then I felt like you, you needed a justification for the, an acceptable justification for the constraint in order to participate. Yeah, that sounds right. Yeah. There was, um, it, like I said, it was, didn’t have any meaning to it. There was no, like something I could, I could say why this happened or how it was just a fact and there was no, no additional scaffolding whatsoever. So it didn’t, it didn’t feel like anything had actually happened. It just feels like there was an arbitrary decision. And that’s oftentimes with the Dice are their arbitrary, they’re making an arbitrary decision for somebody. Uh, and you know, I think that’s fine. And, but I don’t, I don’t, I feel like you can do more with Dice than just have them be an arbitrator. I think it’s, I think the idea of using Dice as, um, as an interpretive seed is much more interesting. Like there are games that use symbols on their dice and they have you sort of interpret them, um, or use the numbers in slightly different ways and have interpretations based on that. So like something simple would be, um, if you’re in a system where you’re rolling percentile dice and you’re getting a number between one and a hundred, the relative distance away from your target number, good or bad sort of allows the player or the GM to interpret that result as larger in scope or smaller in scope, right? So like, if you only succeeded by a little bit, then you know, you needed a 50, you rolled a 51, well then, you know, the narrative might be, oh, you just scraped by, whereas if you rolled a 95, then the narrative might be interpreted as that, that role might be interpreted as driving the narrative to a place where you smashed whatever goal you were trying to get through, right? Similarly, if you were, uh, if you missed, you rolled a 49 instead of a 50. Well, like the, whoever’s narrating that might say, oh, they barely missed it. Maybe there’s a chance to recover or something like that. Whereas if you miss it by like you roll a one or something like that, and then you can narrate that as, as, uh, like, well, horrendously your character’s dead or whatever, you know, um, but the idea of the idea being that’s, that’s an interpretive, uh, mapping that, that the game is, is, is asking you to do, but it’s, it’s introducing, uh, the human interpretive structure on top of the, on top of the mechanic. And that’s, that to me allows for more unpacking of meaning, right? So, and, and, and adding more meaning to whatever just happened with the dice roll that just happened. So for me in design, I try, I, I like games where the dice rolls are consistently meaningful, meaning the game isn’t having you roll just to track something or do the equivalent of narrative accounting where it’s like, well, how long did it take you to get from here to here? Because we need to know the time and we need to know, like in stories, the time is essential only when it matters to the plot, right? Like we don’t count hours between chapters or whatever like that. And so when we’re creating a story between each other and RPGs, like I find that the moments where the game forces you into accounting mode kicks you out of the story to one degree or another. Yeah. And on the other hand, right? Like you, you had to have been in it in the first place, right? I think the complaint that you had about guys playing role playing games is that they’re never in the story, right? Like the story scaffolding for rolling dice. Yeah. Well, and that’s fun too. Like I’m fine with that. If you, if the game is like, let’s just see how many orcs we can kill before we die, which is what D and D sometimes is. And that’s a, that’s fun. Like I don’t want to, I don’t want to take away anybody’s enjoyment of that particular experience because I’ve enjoyed that and it’s great. But once you’ve done it enough, then I feel like there’s very little to graduate to. You know, games like four blades in the dark apocalypse world. Games like a quiet year where it’s, it’s, it’s bracketed, you know, it’s going to end like, you know, like most of our RPGs, D and D included are typically structured open-endedly, so you get to the end of the story and then you immediately go on to another one or have some downtime, whatever like that. But in some games, there are, you know, it will say you’re going to be done at the end of the session, it’s going to take two hours, three hours like that. And at the end, here’s the ending, like your settlement dies. That’s the end. Like we know that happens and then tell us the story that goes up to that, right? Like what went wrong. And then say there’s a, there’s a narrative unfolding of, of, of how this settlement goes, you know, is extinguished. Um, and it forces you through that constraint, right? That’s a, that’s an imposed constraint, but it’s imposed from the beginning, not during the course of the game. And so because the players are aware of that constraint, well, then it becomes like any other imaginative exercise where you have a sandbox to play in. Suddenly you can bounce, you know, what you’re, what you can’t include. And so that becomes now a more fertile ground for picking ideas out of, you know, what, what becomes inspiring. Yeah. So let’s go back to his eight year old kid with his first trauma. So, so yeah, what was it traumatic? Like, what was it dis dis enchanting in, in a sense that you’re like, Oh, I don’t want to do this anymore. Or were you like, no, it was confusing. It was confusing because I didn’t understand why mechanics should have an influence on the story at all. Like it seemed like they should be doing something else. I’m not sure exactly what I didn’t have. You know, it was eight. I didn’t know any different, but there was something that felt off. So, um, no, it was an enjoyable experience. It was so enjoyable that I, you know, like a significant chunk of my life is devoted towards improving it, you know, like I want to make it better. That’s the whole point. Like, so, but so few games do what I want that I’m in the position where in the position of being frustrated most of the time when I’m, when I’m doing something that I am supposed to be enjoying, like, like the last, I would say five or six times I played D and D it was like, Oh man. Um, I don’t want to say it wasn’t fun because there are fun parts, but like, I really noticed how badly the game got in the way, you know, and it was like, this isn’t helping. Like we should be doing something like we should be using another system at least. And, you know, this kind of story this guy’s trying to tell, like is actually being hurt by the fact that 90% of our tools are used to do damage. Like we’re, we’re helped. We’re supposed to be like helping people recover from an attack and then, uh, like, well, if one session we were just handling a survivor, like that was the whole thing, like there was a battlefield, he was a lone survivor. He was traumatized and like, as D and D characters, your only options to, to affect the story are role playing and skill checks at that point, you have no mechanics in your class, very few mechanics in your class to actually like help a traumatized person, unless there’s a spell where it’s just like heal trauma. Restoration, you know, take your pick. Um, but it’s just like, I want them done, right? You just check the box next to the thing. It’s like, oh, then we solved the story. And well, no, you didn’t. There was no, so you’re, you’re talking about a change in, in, in your modality of playing and maybe that that’s nice to keep in the background of the story. Like what’s, what’s the modality that you approach the game from? So you start out as this kid just being excited, right? I’m trying it out. So yeah, what’s the first significant thing that, that you encountered in relation to role play? Hmm. First significant thing. You mean like a really significant experience or, um, memorable, right? Memorable experience. Uh, let’s see. Hmm. It was, it was this, the mainly, I would say the memorable thing was the sense of regular inclusion. And so that’s, that’s the thing that is, has sort of focused my aim the most is, um, to allow RPGs to be, or not RPGs, but my RPG, you’d be more inclusive of more different kinds of stories happening at the same time. Uh, because I’m not assuming I try not to assume, or trying to scaffold the system that does not assume, uh, the players are necessarily interested in the shame shit all the time. I’m interested in, um, uh, an RPG that allows you to tell a story and scaffolds your ability to tell a story that’s similar to something like the game of Thrones novels, where you have disparate characters, you know, you have having their own stories and then meeting each other and having moments of significance during those intersections. And so the intersections are where players will, will meet each other and encounter, uh, moments of crisis and, uh, things of that nature. And then, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, things of that nature. And then when they’re not doing that, they are, they’re, they’re kind of engaged in their own story, pushing the, the narrative along in their own way. Um, but they’re not, but since like the table time of that is sort of minimized a little bit because it can be handled, um, as you can unpack it to the degree that you want as a player. So if you’re not really interested in the, how you got there, you’re just sort of interested in the, uh, what it cost me or, you know, to have this goal achieved or something like that. Then you can do that very quickly. And it doesn’t take up a lot of table time and the players that aren’t interested in your accounting, don’t have to deal with it. It’s one of those sometimes like I’ve been in sessions that become very frustrating because it feels like there’s six different sessions, but they’re all accounting sessions. They’re just trying, we’re just trying to like, get all our numbers on our sheets, like kind of like in the right place to like have the fun next time. And it’s like, well, I mean, I enjoyed hanging out with you guys, but there was no movement, there were no narrative movement and it’s like an episode of TV where the characters in the exact same position at the end of the show, they were at the beginning or a filler, right? Like a filler show. Like you’re just like, Oh, this is a clip episode. Fuck. Like, so, um, so, so let’s go back to, to, to the start again, right? So, so you have a real life coming together of narratives multiple times. So was this a group with, with the same individuals or did you have like a rotating? Yeah, it was generally the same. There was, there was a core, there was like three or four of us that stayed consistent and then like one or two people would rotate in and out like as, as stuff people joined and stopped coming or whatever like that. But, uh, yeah, there were, there were, yeah, three or four of us that stayed pretty consistently, uh, week after week. Yeah. Um, and, and there was, there was a sense of acceptance, uh, social acceptance there. Um, so how did that manifest? It was bigger than that. It was more like a sense of we could, we, it gave us space to try out stuff that we couldn’t ideas that we couldn’t ordinarily float in school or in friend groups or stuff like that. Like playing with, with, um, like adult themes and adult storylines and stuff like that, where like, oh, we want to get married, marrying the princess. Okay. Well, what happens after marrying the princess, right? Like what if the princess doesn’t want to stay married? Like there was, there was something that happened like in our, in one of our early games like that where, um, uh, and then that princess became the focus of the story for one player and he ended up playing that princess for a good chunk of it, like totally forgetting his main character for a while. It was really interesting. And so like that, that’s another thing that I’m interested in supporting because there was such a, there were, there were, there was enough play space that we, we, we weren’t constraining each other. There was a lot of like, oh, you want to do this? Cool. Let’s figure out how. And they’re like, like for that, for that game, we were the game master was using GURPS. I don’t know. So GURPS is, uh, the generic universal role playing system. And what that is, is, um, a generic game that allows you to, uh, basically create characters from scratch and sort of dramatic, um, with dramatic flaws and advantages and stuff like that. And they have a skill list and, um, it’s sort of bare bones, but you can create just about anything if you go through character creation, like, uh, you know, cyber samurai or like a wizard or, you know, take your pick. It’s, it’s, it’s pretty good at that. It was a complicated system. I didn’t understand it at the beginning. Uh, but, uh, playing it was fairly easy. That was the upside. So, um, the, the main thing about it was that we didn’t confine ourselves just to what was in the rule book. Like if we, you know, if we, as players wanted something, then the GM would try and make that happen to the best of their ability. And that was the kind of, like, I want to be able to scaffold that kind of game. So you’re saying that the, the game allowed you to do something that wasn’t possible for you in any other ways. Do you think you wouldn’t have found a different way of trying that when the game wasn’t there? I think my natural curiosity would have found some sort of expression anyway. Um, or it just wasn’t there. Anyway. Um, or it just would have been really frustrated and acted out in some, you know, acted out in some way. Uh, but I found the outlet super useful. And then I imagined the value that you see in a role playing game is, is, is that it’s giving the scaffolding for the interaction. Um, so, so in, in some, yeah, like I, I imagine that in some sense, they takes away the responsibility for you to take care of it on your own. And maybe that’s the enabling factor. Yeah. For, I think for, for kids who are socially awkward, the, the knowing, knowing the rules of interaction is super useful because you’re not one, it creates a space that, uh, where most ideas are okay to float and that’s, that gives you a certain sense of security. And then it also gives you, um, sorry, I just, I just heard some noise. Uh, sorry, ask the question again. Security. Yeah, there’s security and then, um, nope, lost it. Okay. So, so there, there’s a sense of security in the familiar aspects of, uh, Oh, the rules, right. Uh, it removes, it removes the potential, um, the potential misstep, right? Because you know how to go from what we’re going to do this. And if this goes well, then we do this. If it’s so badly, we do this. Right. So in your mind is like, well, you know, the two possibilities already and you’re comfortable with either one, right? You’re living in a closed world. Right. Exactly. It chops off a ton of the possibilities that you would otherwise be confused by or something like this. And so, um, because those, those, those interactions are bracketed inside that space, you don’t have an end because, and because the space is already friendly, right? You’re, these are already your friends. This is, you, you’re kind of already have each other’s backs. There’s not, and it’s non-competitive. That’s the other thing. It’s different from a sports, uh, experience or another board game because it’s inherently cooperative. And so you’re all like, none of you can win this thing. And so it’s, it’s the, it’s the challenge of imagining something together and allowing yourselves to share that and be influenced by it at the same time. And so there’s a, there, the, the exchange is of ideas and energy is so, um, it’s so easily facilitated in that space. And, you know, there are practices I’ve done where, where, um, that kind of facilitation is more direct, like, like in circling practice or in, um, other therapeutic practices, but you know, the, the segment of the population that voluntarily engages with those practices as low and the second of the population that voluntarily engages with games is very high. And so, you know, and RPGs are like perfectly positioned to have this sort of encouraging community built in from the beginning, it’s not always the case you hear horror stories of, you know, fucking assholes on power trips. But to the extent that, uh, to the extent that it allows people the, uh, the, the it enables the experience to meet people where they need to be met in that, in that, so, because it can be quite scary to go into a group of people, uh, and with, with, with the title of, oh, we’re going to have an intimacy experience or something like that, right? Yeah. Right. So you just go, what, what does that mean? Uh, but it’s like, Hey, we’re going to play a game together. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, like it’s, it’s, it is interesting. So I’m wondering, like, what’s, what’s the social interaction? What was it actually cooperative or was it just a bunch of individuals within the same arena? Ah, good question. Uh, it was cooperative. That was the thing. So we were, because the, um, because I noticed the story was unfolding, uh, in such a way that each of us was having an influence, right? It wasn’t just my story, my story, my story. My story was our story right from the beginning. And in those early games, we didn’t, you didn’t split the party up. Basically it was too hard to handle the narrative if people went off in their own directions, uh, the game is generally not set up to track that at all. And it becomes quite challenging to, to jump from one, one, uh, encounter to another. So, so, yeah. Well, so you’re not as good. Uh, like, did you have that social interaction outside of the game or was that unique to the game? No, I did not have much social interaction outside of the game. It was, there were a number of factors that made much of my childhood quite isolated. And so when I had that, that bracketed group interaction, it was, uh, quite impactful, you know, cause there wasn’t, there wasn’t a chance for me to do that. Um, yeah, ordinarily. It, you know, it’s the other thing it’s like, you don’t have, because I lived in a different neighborhood from my school. Now, essentially that’s what it was. We lived about half an hour away from everybody that was, that was my age and my friend group. And so I had some, there was a neighbor kids where I lived, but that was a different, you know, I saw they were, they were, I had weekend friends and I had weekend friends essentially. And, um, the weekend friends didn’t share any experiences with weekend friends at all. So it was like, I had, I had, I was in two disparate circles from the beginning. And so like having, being able to interact with my school friends in a place that wasn’t school was really good. You know, um, forget the question. That’s, let’s, let’s move forward. So yeah, like, like what happens next? Like, there’s this kid. Uh, what happens next? Well, uh, what happens next is I, I designed the first gaming experience that I ran for friends about two years after that. So I was 10 and I basically took, let me see, or we’re in junior high at that point. No, maybe it’s before that. Anyway, it was, it was, I basically took the, I used fantasy star two as the world and converted all like the, the, what I could detach from the mechanics into dice rolls essentially, and, uh, brand my friends through that and allow just, just, that was my first jamming experience too. So I didn’t pick it. I didn’t know how to pick a game off the shelf. I didn’t know where to buy them. Like my friend had a GURPS book and his sister had played D and D and that’s how he knew about it, but, um, these things were not for sale in 1990. So there was like, like you, you had to go to a specialty bookstore or you had to like go to a bookstore big enough to have a section that had D and D stuff in it. And there wasn’t really one anywhere within walking distance, uh, or even driving distance of me at that time. Um, so yeah. Uh, so I, the only thing I could think to do was create my own thing. And so that’s what I did. So that was, that was fun. It didn’t go very far, um, because like, I didn’t have the space to, to have to run it regularly, right? I was going over to a friend’s house. And so, you know, when you were at that person’s house, that person ran the game. That was just sort of like, that was a weird gentleman’s agreement that existed. I’m not sure why that happened, but they just naturally became the case. Um, after that, um, grade school. So after that, like, I think we stopped playing like in fifth or sixth grade. So a third, third to fifth grade was like one thing. Um, so that was like two years of, you know, many after school weeks, I would say probably like 20, 20 plus sessions. So 40, 40 or so sessions, I guess, all together or something like that. Um, uh, and after that, I got into a different group, like junior high. Wasn’t really doing it. Uh, it was sort of hormones that started to kick in. And so there was just like your biology just had, just forces you to have other interests at that point. Um, and then, and it was also just tumultuous family death and a whole bunch of other shit. Um, and so, uh, we moved also. So it was a big thing. Um, and then in high school, I got back into it, uh, basically playing groups again, um, and running it from my cluster of friends every day after school. Like, like every day. So I’d run it from three to five, you know, four days out of the week. So, so how did you get back into it? Like, like what went through? Um, I just found, I found another cluster of people that were into a high school was a bigger pool of people. Uh, so there were a couple of us that were slightly older. Um, so we have, you know, there, it was just, there were more, there were more nerds, so like you, you found. The nerds were there and you joined them or did you take initiative? Yeah, there were, there were clusters of nerds that hung out with the sign in the science and biology, like department area, like during lunch. And that was like, and what, you know, so it’s a couple of my friends from grade school were already in there. We’re already hanging out. Like, so it made it pretty easy. Like people I know. And so we all had sort of similar interests in computer games. We’re starting to be a thing. The internet was starting to be a thing. So this is like 95, 96. So game companies were just starting to have websites. Um, you still had to order, you still had to order books by catalog. So game company wouldn’t have a listing of their books online or an online store or anything like that. You would just send them an email and they would mail you a catalog. Like a paper fold out catalog. Like I still have some, like they’re pretty cute. Uh, and, um, so we played, that was, that was the big, so that, because, because we were playing every day after school, I was running like 10 to 12 hours of games a week, um, for, let’s see, I would say end of freshman year, sophomore, junior. Yeah, I would, yeah, something like that. I weren’t really doing it senior year. Somebody else took over senior year, but like that was, yeah. So like three years, like 12 hours a week, roughly. Um, that’s, and that’s where I honed all of the, I guess, the storytelling stuff that I needed because there was, I had like nothing to work with. So like most of the time, like the game, it was GURPS, right? So it was a dimension hopping game as well. So anything that I had watched in media, like recently read about or anything, it would just be included automatically. Like it would just show up. And so, so it was just carte blanche to introduce and slam together all kinds of weird shit. So it was fun. It was a crazy, like it was Douglas Adamseek. That’s what it was like. It was like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but with, but with guns and cyber swords and all kinds of fun stuff. So, so do you think your orientation was different? Was, was this more exploratory in, in the sense of excluding, including the media that you were consuming or? It was, it was more exploratory in the sense that I had to learn how to lay track as fast as the players were going down it. Like that was the thing that I was doing. It was just like, oh, we do this, we do this. I’m like, okay. Uh, well this interesting thing happens. And then this thing, and then, you know, because you did this, this happened. It was just keeping track of it in my head. Like at one point they crashed the moon into the earth. That was a story point. Like we, we killed the pilot of the moon. The moon had a pilot. We killed that guy, crashed the moon into the earth and, and that started the holy war because some prophecy and it was just bananas. Like it was, I don’t, I don’t think I could tell the story of that campaign coherently at all. It was so all over the place. Uh, I don’t remember how that even resolved. I know they became leaders of these two, these factions at some point. Then they got sucked into some other realm when somebody else took over the game for a while, cause I got, I got other shit I had to do or wasn’t other shit I had to do. My, my, my score was failing so badly, uh, that I really wasn’t allowed to see my friends during the senior year. Oh man, that was pretty rough. So, so that sounds like escape. Sorry. That sounds like escapism or at least from my parents perspective. Yeah. I know a hundred percent was escapism. Yeah. No high school was terrible. It was a terrible, I mean, apart from meeting, meeting the woman who eventually, I eventually married, uh, years later, um, it was rough. It was just not fun. So I, yeah, I disassociated into a family of two. Yeah. I disassociated into a fantasy world pretty consistently just to, just to not deal with the pain of my actual life. And that continued for a while. That’s one of the things that really bothers me about, um, modern gaming culture is that so much of it is dissociative. Um, so when I was gaming, I, I had this thing that the classroom was all about what was going to happen in the game. Uh, was that a thing that also was true for you? What do you mean? Well, that, that, that all the talks in the classroom with my friends were anticipated about what was going to happen later in the day. Oh yeah. Yeah. I like, it would just be either we would actually start, we would play the game at lunch and then pick it up afterwards or like to talk about like, oh, we do this. You do this. It’s nice. Yeah. It would be a significant portion of our non-gaming time was spent thinking about it, I would say. Yeah. Um, or at least for me, right? I can’t speak for the others, but yeah, at least a couple of other people had it, the similar vents and proclivities. So, um, yeah. Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe it was just me. Who knows? Well, yeah, I, I know it wasn’t just me because I talked to other people and they, they talked to me. So yeah, but yeah, like there, there’s some, some scary aspect where it can just take over, right? Like it’s, it’s just you at that point where like that’s what you do. Yeah. And then you, you swap campaigns like, or you swap games effectively, but like you’re still in the same holding pattern where, and then yeah, school, school’s giving in. So, so did, did, did actually stopping, uh, the, the, the prohibition of your parents, was that actually fruitful in, in your school performances or? No. No. No. So, so how, how did, how did you deviate, uh, or deviate, um, relocate your, the time expenditure? At that point, like how did you fill up the gap? Masturbation. Two hours. Oh yeah. Oh, one kind or another, either playing video games or actually drinking off, like what, you know, just really just filling the time with myself one way or another, like no, with no fruitful. I mean, I don’t like to think of any time is wasted, right? Like all of that stuff pointed me in a direction that I’m eventually going. But, you know, from the perspective of what I have rather spent my time doing something else from this point. Yeah, sure. That’s okay. You know, there’s not, there’s not a, there’s like making peace with that part of my, myself has been a pain in the ass, but it’s what it is. The computer games that you were playing with those also role playing games or did you have a, uh, yeah, I guess some of them, like, um, Diablo two was a big one. You know, that was one of the ones that was, that was really a time killer. Uh, later, some of the animals, I never really gotten to warcraft. Um, but some of the other ones like city of heroes was pretty good. Uh, but yeah, uh, that one was better because the, once they, once the games became a little more social, there were there, you actually felt like you were doing something positive because you were having interaction with other live people and it wasn’t just, you know, dumping your time into the void. Um, and so, so how does that feeling manifest? Uh, when you’re talking to other people online? Yeah. Like, how do you decide what’s positive and what’s dumping? Well, if you feel good at the end of it and you’re like, I got something. I have a deeper relationship with that person, even if it’s just about this one subject, this one game, like this person and I are closer together now because we, we, we went through a challenging experience or we had fun or we laughed together and now we have like this in joke, the shared vocabulary. And that’s, that’s where it becomes worthwhile. I think. Were you actively seeking that out or was it just something that was happening? No, I was not. No, I was not. I didn’t know to actively seek it out. It just sort of happened. I didn’t know you could push for that. Like I had, you know, they’re part of, part of the, the lack of socialization is, uh, for me is not, not being assertive and asking for things. So I’m not, I don’t, you know, I had to like learn more step by step. Like what internal feeling I have and then not rejecting it and then voicing it for someone else to, you know, accept or something like, but I would self reject a lot, you know, and just, uh, minimize my own experience or my own feelings when, when something came up. So, so the question I have there is do, and did you know what to ask for or, or did you just not even get there? No, didn’t even get there. It wasn’t like, because I would go, I would go on the forums occasionally and just not engage, you know, it would just be like, well, this person’s opinion is dumb and then that was it. Like, I don’t, I’m not, I’m not engaging beyond that. I have no, I generally like, if I find somebody on the internet and I don’t like their opinion, I generally just tune it out. I’m not, I don’t, I don’t find it’s fruitful to engage most of the time. Um, so yeah, that they did. I didn’t find community there. It was very strong. I had good experiences, but not a strong community. Um, then my regular people I play with basically my brother and, uh, a couple other friends, but there wasn’t, we didn’t branch out. Um, you know, I know people that, uh, met their spouses through that game. Like there were, there were a couple of in-game weddings because, you know, that’s, that’s how they met and like fell in love and met in real life and got married and all, you know, so, um, I never got that level of engagement from that. So, yeah. When I, when I think about my experience with Fora, it’s, I really had a hard time dealing with them, like, unless there was a reason for me to be there, right. Because there was organization or something, right. But like, I never went voluntarily there because I guess the, yeah, there wasn’t something for me there to find, like, like, is that a sense that you had as well? Yeah. Well, it’s not that I went there. It’s not that I went there and didn’t have a sense. It was like, I would skim it and then not, yeah, exactly. There was just, there’s nothing. I don’t think I’m going to get anything back. So there’s no reason to put anything forward, you know. Um, yeah, I would say that’s the case. Yeah. It’s just, I don’t think there’s anything here for me. So why spend the energy, right? Did you, did you change in that sense? Like, do you think, have I changed from then until now? Yes. Yeah. Now I’m much more willing to throw the energy of something, even if I don’t think it’s going to work with, uh, with engagement, uh, other people. Yeah. Cause more often than not, I find that I, the, the mode of my engagement is less about me achieving something or getting something out of it and more about forming a connection with the other person and learning something about who, who they are or how they experience their internal world in ways that I don’t. And that’s, that’s fascinating to me just on the surface. So now I go into social interactions with a different frame. And so that’s been, that’s been good, but some of that’s come from, from RPGs and just, just noticing what, what works and what doesn’t. So, so we’re leaving high school. Uh, so big change. Change. Yeah. Well, actually, no, it was, uh, there was a, it was a brutal holding pattern for awhile after high school. There was a lot of wheels spinning. Well, not wheels spinning there. I had no idea what I wanted to do. There was, didn’t seem like there was any avenue viable for me to go down, uh, and have both a enjoyable life and productive life. I could be productive and I wouldn’t enjoy it, or I could have an enjoyable life and not be productive. That’s those looked like my two options. And so I was quite depressed and quite, uh, uh, quite dissociative from my normal life, my, my, my day-to-day life and most of my twenties, uh, you know, certainly my early twenties for sure. Um, and there was a lot of, there was a lot of gaming in there, like a ton. And, um, no role playing games. So I got back, I refound, uh, I got another friend group in sort of the community college and a university after that and had, had good experiences, made good friends. Um, but it was a lot of, it was a lot of just trying not to deal with my day to day, you know, trying to check out with my day to day. Um, and that, that, that continued for a while. We played a lot of different games. Uh, you know, we were, we were fairly, there were two, there was me and another guy that were in volunteer to GM. So having two GMs in a group and sometimes a third and fourth. So occasional, uh, people in the group would occasionally run something, but there were two of us that were enjoyed it quite a bit. And so we would trade off. And so when one guy got burned out, what would happen is either the campaign, we get handed off or we started a new game. And we avoided by handing off the role backwards and back and forth for years. We avoided the normal group burnout that typically happens when a GM feels like it’s all their responsibility to keep it going, you know? Um, and so because of that, uh, we had game that lasted, you know, like years, years, like one, one campaign of D and D we took from, I joined it when the, they were at first level. And so I joined her like the third, third session and they just hit third level. So, um, and we played that all until all the way to 21st. So we actually took a game of third edition D and D from first to 21st level. And, uh, it was, it was a massively epic campaign. It was, you know, huge, like, uh, world spanning all the, all the good shit that you hear about the D and D. Um, and after, after that, what we do, we did a bunch of other stuff. We just played different games. We ran game of riddle of steel for a long time. Um, let’s see. Vampire dark ages, call of Cthulhu. Uh, so what’s the purpose of swapping games? Good question. Guys, were you guys looking for something or was it just like, Oh, we need to switch it up. Well, uh, yeah, mostly it was a, let’s explore different, different things. Uh, you know, knowing that the game we’re playing is going to facilitate a particular experience, let’s try a game that purports to facilitate another one. Like we’re going to play call of Cthulhu. And the point of this game is we’re not heroes. In fact, we’re probably not going to survive the adventure. Like somebody’s going to go insane or die before the end. And that’s what we’re here for. Here. It is like, kind of put these characters through the meat grinder and enjoy, and enjoy like they’re, they’re inevitable destruction at the hands of the story. And it’s like, well, that’s sounds fun. You know, if you have that kind of, that, that, like, you know, that, that group, uh, a number of us were really into like, uh, love crafty and horror movies and stuff like that. So like in the mouth of madness with one, like John Carpenter’s in the mouth of madness and, um, uh, event horizon. And, uh, I really liked the hell raiser movies. And so there was a whole bunch of fodder that we had in common, uh, in terms of liking the psychological horror and, uh, cosmic horror and all that kind of stuff. So, um, that felt like that just sort of naturally happened for the early 2000s. Yeah. So we started branching out and doing different stuff, not just, not just the NDL at the time or groups. I was at our game, but like that group didn’t like groups at all. So we didn’t do that one for the most part. So I’m thinking of this psychological profile and what it says about you. Like, keep going. Well, like there’s, there’s, there’s this liking of this existential horror. Right. So that speaks to, to somewhere inside of you. So you were working through that. No, it’s true. Yeah. I, I, I even recently something I noticed, like even last week, I was talking to my wife and said, like, you know what? I think I act, I actively seek out being in pain sometimes just because I know I’m going to grow from it. And it was one of those moments where I was like, shit, that lines up to so many points in my life where I was just throwing myself into a meat grinder for, I don’t know what reason, you know, and then afterwards I’d be, I would feel good about the experience, but I didn’t know why or how those things related, it just felt like I was just torturing myself for some reason or another. So yeah, existential dread that’s in there. So yeah, existential dread that’s in there. Right. In a way. Yeah. Um, so, so yeah, like you’re, you’re in the holding pattern, uh, it’s applying a whole holding pattern, uh, it’s doing therapy, uh, implicitly. Yeah. Yeah. I guess so a little bit, like it was, it was self therapeutic, right? Cause I was, it was basically group sessions where we get on packer bullshit every week. Um, and talk about whatever was fucking with us. I mean, not in super open terms. That was the kind of thing that group never really achieved like a level of coherent, uh, connection that. That I found with, with, with friends and other spaces later. So I felt there was like a certain depth of connection because of the amount of time and the amount of, uh, how well I feel, I understand how they think and where, what kind of stories they like and how they, how they feel about themselves and what kind of proclivities they have. And then on another level, like it’s still difficult to have open conversations there about life challenges, for example, or things of this nature or like, like even, um, just what’s going on there. Just wasn’t a lot of like back and forth sharing of inner worlds. And that’s something you are ready for that. That’s the thing. I don’t think we were see, but like there wasn’t any way to become ready for it or learn how to do it. That was the thing. I think there was, there was a desire there for all of us. That’s what I feel we were looking for in some sense, you know, showing up at week afterwards, but, um, cause it wasn’t just the story because the story would stop and start and the games weren’t the same. There was, there was no other consistency, but we liked each other, you know, and so there was, um, so I feel there was a reach towards that, but I feel the reach was frustrated because there wasn’t, there wasn’t, the game wouldn’t show us how essentially the game did not contain that kind of scaffolding. It contained a different kind. And to the extent that I think a game can do both, I think games can do both. And I think it’s worthwhile for a game to attempt to do both. I’m not sure a game has ever really tried to do both explicitly, but I’m not really trying to do both explicitly. I’m just trying to put tools in front of people. Um, cause I think that’s all you really can do. And then, uh, what happens after that? It’s not, not on me, but I feel like there’s just been, there’s just, there’s just, there’s just a lot of clunky tools. Yeah. I just imagined this group of nerds. Uh-huh. They’re all projecting the psychological problems onto the game. Like, like, so, so, so these, these nerds, like, were they aware of that? That was happening. That there was this projection, like, like, was there this thing that, that you could actually see or was it just happening and nobody saw the elephant? That’s an interesting question. I feel maybe some of us are kind of conscious of it. And I think, I think some of us were kind of conscious of other people doing it, but not conscious of us, of us doing it. You know, like there were times when I would be like, yeah, that guy keeps doing this thing, like over and over again. And it’s like, and I was probably like this, right? You probably like had this experiential where about it and I would not, and not self-apply or not self-reflect and not know to like take the projection and then just turn it back on myself and see what I see. Um, so that wasn’t, that wasn’t present as a tool and I didn’t know to do that. Noticing that I was projecting stuff onto the game. It’s actually, it’s fucking with me to go back and think about it. It looks like me that there’s this whole layer of reality there and the layer of reality sometimes then like pops into awareness, like, like a needle prick, right? Like through the screen. I just, I just see these, these guys like, well, maybe even like, like drunk and stoned rather than just riding these waves and they have no idea about what’s actually going on. We didn’t, we didn’t use any substances. So we weren’t, none of, we were, we didn’t drink. We didn’t do, none of us did any drugs. Um, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was um, it was, oh, it was looking back on it. Like for D and D players was actually particularly weird. My experience. So, so was, was it tried? Like, was, was it like, like, did you have a night where you did drink for example? Nope. No, like never. Never. Like, was that an unwritten agreement? Like, like what was. You just didn’t do it. And were these individuals also not drinking outside of the, uh, maybe half, maybe, maybe a couple of them. Yeah. Half of them were, but like not yet during the game. No, just wasn’t a thing. I mean, we would later. Yes. During those years. No. Interestingly. So, yeah. So with, with the later as, as a comparison, like, like, what do you think the drinking and the, and the smoking and stuff, like, how does, how does that affect. Experience? Um, I don’t know for, because like we would show, we would show up to the early games where there was, there was no drinking, there was very little actual socialization. There was like, the game was the focus there. There was socialization by proxy, but the game was the focus in later. Uh, the socialization became a bigger focus and the game became one of the reasons to get together and it was not, not the sole focus. So, so I’ve been going to yoga lately and like this, this really awkward atmosphere, which, which I’m really uncomfortable about for some reason, but it’s like, people don’t really talk to each other, right? Like, like there’s no relationships and I’m. Yeah. Did you have that as well? Like the fact that there was, you just came there and it was like all, all, well, when are we going to start? Right? Like that type of conversation. Yeah, that happens sometimes. Yeah. It was like, you know, we were just waiting for people to show up and then we would just go. So basically until everybody was there, it was like socialization time when the last person got there. Maybe we do five, 10 more minutes of talking and then was like straight in. Um, because we were all there to, to, to get through it in a sense. Like we were there to, you know, have, have the experience. We were, we were all showing up for, which was to have like, you know, to, to, to smack our characters into the world and use our, the things that we had collected over the sessions and in creative ways and unpack the story that way. But there, you know, only, only later was socialization like, like sort of encroaching. So I would say that happened more in my thirties when there was a, so I sort of returned to gaming with it, with them, with a half the same crew and then like half new people and then the new people were much more in the, we are gathering to socialize with the game being, uh, slightly secondary, I would say. And that’s where, that’s where it was more so like we would get together. We would order dinner first, um, you know, before in like earlier, it would be like we would get fast food and then eat it before the game and then not be eating us, you know, or we eat separately or bring me whatever, like one guy would have a sandwich and nobody else be eating whatever it was. And then in my thirties, it was like, we get together, we eat, we, we, you know, we have beer or whatever like that and, um, relax because we all had more stressful jobs, right? So like there was, uh, the, the, the focus of the, the activity shifted from one where we were showing up to, uh, move through the story to one where we were, we were using it as an excuse, not an excuse, but half of us were using an excuse to socialize and then the other half were interested in the game. And actually that same sometimes cause problems when like we’d be, we’d be there for an hour and like, you know, at least two people were kind of starting to get visibly antsy, uh, and. You know, fair enough, right? Like they’re showing up to do something and they’re not working, you know, nobody else is doing the thing and they’re like wondering why they’re spending their time doing the thing they’re not, they don’t want to do. So what was that change? Something that was facilitated by the new people or was that you entering a new phase in your life? Both. Yeah, both for sure. So, uh, I would say that people sort of, uh, uh, catalyzed that change, but also like, that was a part point in my life where my life had become relatively stable day to day, you know, I was just working, coming home, watching TV, working. There was no, I wasn’t going to school. I wasn’t, uh, uh, making art. I wasn’t, you know, writing anything. And then it was that way. It was in that time that I started like taking game design more seriously. As I was, um, we had played a bunch of games and I was like, you know what? Like there’s some games that I don’t really do anything that I would want to do. I’m trying to use hack all these things together. It’s not quite working. Maybe I should just like really seriously figure out like what pieces will work together and, and, and build something. Yeah. And I did that. Um, like most of my stuff at that phase were like mashups where they would, I would take one part from one game and then carve out a bunch of it and take parts from another game and just hack them together and write like a Google doc. And here’s like, here’s how we do this. And you know, I had some pretty good sessions, like that pretty good, some successful games where it was just, uh, um, you know, those kinds of things or conversions or, um, stuff like that. And then I started writing, um, what would become the main game I’m working on now, and that started out as I want to do, I want to do D and D but easier and everybody has their own adventure party. That was, that’s the main thing. And, and you could, and the idea would being like big fights would be like, uh, a war hammer fantasy battle type event where you would have like a captain who’s your main dude and then like a squad of guys and then every, every player has that same thing and you have, you’re fighting like a small army. That’s, that sounded cool to me. So that’s where I started with that idea. And then, uh, I wrote, let’s hold on here for a second. Right. So, so you, you, you now, so you started as a player, you upgraded to DM and now you’re in, in the designer seats. So how does the designer seat change your experience of playing? Uh, good question. Uh, putting, putting on designer goggles, makes games frustrating because you, you, you know, the thing that jumps out to you the most is not how much fun you’re having, but how much fun you’re not having, you know, uh, and you go like, well, why, you know, I just did these three things in a row and I could have skipped all those things and gotten to the exact same point. And why did, why did the game have me do this? And it’s just because, you know, the designer wanted to show how clever they were or, you know, there’s, there’s something like that and it’s like, that’s fine, uh, but you, you know, you made me go through the steps and I don’t want to go through the steps. So I started, you know, hacking stuff apart and being like, well, this game works fine, except for this part doesn’t work all that great. So let’s just do something about this part and you know, use the rest of it. And I was rewriting all the games we were playing basically, like, uh, world of darkness had some stuff in it that I didn’t really like, um, the magic system and riddle of steel was, uh, imminently exploitable in certain ways, uh, and not really fantasy feeling, um, there were, what else was I working on? So, so yeah, all kinds of stuff at that point. So were you starting to be intentional about how you were playing from the designer perspective, right? Like, so it was like, oh, like I, I want to do this specific game in this configuration because I want to test stuff. Yeah, I would do, I would do that with running games. Yes. I would like, let’s see if this works. Let’s see if this works. You know, how do we do, how do we make it so that, um, the group itself has character, you know, so not, not just the individuals coming together with, with their own individual characters, but once the, once the group is coherent, does the group have its own character and does the character of that, that community advance, right? That’s, that’s interesting. That’s an interesting question to me. Um, I did that with a mage in world of darkness. So like as, as they started, uh, getting more into the politics, then I, we sort of changed speeds a little bit and their, their, um, I can’t remember what they call it in the age, but anyway, their, their cluster of people had its own. Like bylaws and the things they cared about in the city and what they, what they were supposed to be responsible for. And, you know, the, the, the abilities of their sanctum and the resources they could marshal as a group were different than the resources they could marshal together. And that was, that was interesting to me. And then blades in the dark came out and sort of did that with the crew. So as, as players, you choose a playbook, which has your archetype on it. And then as a collective, you choose a character sheet basically for your group as well. And that would be selected from something like, uh, this is a game where you’re playing scoundrels in a vaguely fantasy city. And so like assassins would be one kind of crew or thieves, shadows, I think they call them would be another kind of crew and smugglers would be another kind of crew. Um, so, uh, doing that gives you different abilities and lets you earn experience for doing different things. And so the idea that you’re going to have, you play this game a couple of times and actually have different, with different crews and even playing the same playbook, you’re going to have a totally different experience for the game because the crew character sheet matters as much as your individual sheet. And so that’s interesting to me too. Like the idea of communities gaining their own attributes independent from the individuals that make them up, which happens, right? So, yeah. So, so where are we at in your life though? Is this, I’m in my thirties. I’m working, uh, working at the family business where I’m, where I’m still working right now, um, and not having a good time at life, generally speaking, just going, moving through it day to day and having enjoyable experiences, but I am not fulfilled for the most part. Uh, it’s just, I wasn’t, I wasn’t getting to express myself creatively or, or. Feel like that, uh, the expressions I would be making would be valid if they were expressed. Oh, that’s fascinating. So yeah. Do you unpack that? Yeah, sure. So I knew it was just the idea of like, like writing an RPG was not something that you could do that I thought I could do as a career move, like writing games. And now it’s like, you can, you can, there’s so many avenues to make money doing it. If I had just started putting stuff out when I started writing, like I’d have, you know, a 12 year catalog at this point, but I realized that I don’t, I’m not really interested in making products. That’s that doesn’t fascinate me at all. Um, like I, I don’t know. There’s something, there’s something I, I don’t, I don’t know if it’s just sour grapes in that regard, where it’s like, well, I haven’t, I haven’t published a game where like have like a hard copy of a book I’ve written or anything like that. So I don’t really want it, but at the same time, like, I just don’t feel anything. I, I, I’ve put out merits that. Yeah. You’re not worthy. Yeah. Exploratory face. Yeah. But even the stuff, you see, the thing is, is like, there’s so much out there. That’s like, I read it and I go, why the fuck is this person charging for this? Like, this is a sketch. This is like, this is, you know, you’re asking 15 bucks for this PDF and it’s 10 pages as like, I appreciate there’s some work went into this, but this is not. I don’t, I don’t feel like I’m going to get the value out of this. And I don’t believe like more than a month of days went into this. And I, it’s probably more like 10 hours. Um, and the games are. It’s like a scatter shot of indie games where, where you can have a meaningful experience with some of these games. Cause they’re very highly bracketed. They’re like, here’s the exact scenario you’re in. Like, yeah, here’s, here’s one. Uh, you play a 16 year old Polish kid during world war II entering the war and by the end of it, you die. Like, and then it’s just a, like the game just does damage to you. And eventually it sucks. Like that’s, that’s the whole game. And it’s really just to have that sort of experience of like figuring out what you’ll sacrifice for what, uh, during the course of the story. Um, and that can lend to a very meaningful experience for, for that one and a half hours for somebody, because, uh, it can drop you in to that space quite quickly, my issue with, with something like that is that it doesn’t lend itself to the long game. It can’t do a campaign or something like that, where you can show up and have this communal, uh, narrative told over like, you know, the course of a year, let’s say there’s no games that I know of that try to do that bracketed, meaningful experience in a way where the players are also partially in charge of creating the brackets where, you know, like, okay, you want to play it. Here’s a game that’s the 16 year old kid in world war two. Well, what if you want to play the 30 year old who’s already been to war and is in another war and it’s just like, I don’t, it’s a different narrative, right? Like this is a person who’s weary. They’re not scared. They’re there. It’s a different thing. And so like the idea that you can create your own brackets and then use that to have the meaningful experience is something that I’m trying to figure out how to outline. Mm hmm. Yeah. So yeah. And I heard an aspect of your, you’re also trying to mind, find meaning for yourself as well as create the meaningful experience. So like, I assume that’s where you, where you started to get into the corner of the internet as well. Right. So yeah, as, so as the game, I, so the game started out as a cold war mage. It’s very generic or they just needed a generic title for it. So, and you were just a wizard that has a squad of guys you were with. And as the game developed, like, first of all, I wanted like a more interesting setting for everything. And so I started looking into real world history and mythology because there’s always like the craziest stuff in history is stuff that you would not, you would disbelieve if you read in fiction. Right. That all that’s always the case. They like that one, the blanking on his name, but there was a Chinese, the story of the Chinese general that he knew the enemy army was encroaching. And so he just went outside the gates and sat in front of them playing a loop. And he was known to be a wicked strategist. And so when the enemy scouts approached, they relayed messages back to their commander saying the general’s just outside the city with the gates open, playing a loop and all the, it sent the rest of the enemy generals into a total panic because they were like, okay, he’s got like, I don’t know, we can’t find anything that he’s got. We know he’s got something up his sleeve. He can’t just be sitting there waiting for us to take the city. That can’t be the case, right? He’s going to fuck us up. So, so, and they left, but that was exactly the case. He had just, it was a total bluff, total bluff. And there’s a, there’s a, and there’s a saying, there’s an idiom in Chinese that comes from that story. It’s like, this is a general something’s castle and means like we got to the party and the party sucks, basically it’s like, this is an empty, this is an empty part. And so those kinds of moments, I pay attention to those in history and then where the fulcrums of history were like, where, where the generals, prophets, queens, even, even normal people that just did something really strange and changed the course of history, that became sort of the focus and like, what would it be like to sort of be that, know that you were going to be that person? Like if, if at the start of the game, the game like, here’s something about the game, games that don’t, that generally they don’t say, um, by virtue of the fact that you’re the only people in the game world that actually have autonomy as players, you’re by default, special and separate from everything else. Right. So the idea that, that somehow in the narrative you’re chosen by fate and to, to be, uh, you know, one of these fulcrums of history is an idea that’s interesting to me, like you’re just, it’s like you, the game just says like a priori, like you’re here because you’re here, the narratives are going to revolve around you, right. And you’re going to have this thing. You’re the only moving piece. Yeah. Yeah. In a sense, right. Like you get to decide what that means too. Like, do you want to be the only moving piece that sits in a cave for 30 years being a hermit and then comes out at the end of that with some, some insight like that, that should be, that should be something that the game could handle. In my opinion, like, what would that look like if you just, all you did in the game world was just explore the inner world forever, like for a bunch of years. And, and then you come down out of the mountains with some insight and you can fix society, but then your problem is like, nobody will listen to you, right. Because you, you’ve just been up your own ass for 30 years. Never heard that from. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, so you’re looking for history. And where do you end up next? Well, that takes me into a very strange place. I start looking because I’m looking at history, I start looking at mythology and archetypal mythology. And then, and magic, I had taken anthropology of, of in college, a number of anthropology classes. It was like, I think it was like one class away from a minor. I just didn’t want to do the extra class forever. But I took, anthropology of religion, witchcraft and magic, central America’s Pacific islands. Like, I was fascinated by, more primitive cultures that have survived into the modern era and their practices and what, how their beliefs were structured and how the beliefs were structured of people who lived in. Dynastic Egypt and who lived in biblical times who lived through, you know, like Babylon and Sumerian, all these, like, how, how did these people think? Why did they, you know, what would their met if let’s let’s and then the idea was like, let’s assume magic was real. And then civilizations developed it. Right. Would it, what would happen? Would we, would we get Babylon again? Would we get Sumeria or would, would, would something else happen? And that’s where the idea of, I started researching ancient magical practices, ancient religions, and I started finding an upsetting amount of overlap between the most modern physics, what the most modern physics were saying, and what the most ancient mystical traditions were saying, and so that started me on a journey of exploring modern, the modern occult, the modern mystics, people that are really trying to do this thing have intense connective experiences with reality, fundamentally, whatever they’re calling it. And so that has, that has driven the game into this, this, this new spot where I was reaching for some framework to encompass the kind of stories I wanted to tell where the players were explicitly in charge of making their own meeting. And when I stumbled onto for Vakey’s awakening from the meaning crisis lectures, I was like, Oh, this guy’s on the same track. Like he’s, he’s interested in like how civilizations go sideways, essentially. Like what, why, why do individuals in a civilization stop attending to the civilization? You know, that was interesting to me. Um, because, and then the game, the game ashes of the Magi is about this sort of thing. It’s like, what, what happened such that all these people in charge, the wise, right, let everything go to shit. Why is society on fire? If all the people at the top are supposed to be our best people. Um, and so born out of that idea, I started looking into what it would be like to have a game where you’re waking up in the middle of the apocalypse and you don’t know what’s going on. But, but, but you know that you can fix something. That’s, that’s the idea. You’re, you’re specifically chosen. You’re because you’re in the game. The narrative centers around you. And so now you have all the decisions you make affect something. Right. And you know, they do because when you wake up from the apocalypse, you can start seeing the threads of faith and you know, you can, you can inspect your own impacts and that’s something, you know, humans can do that, but it takes a minute for us to, depending on who you are. Yeah. Depending on who you are. Sometimes it takes all your life. Um, so, so you, so you’ve made a big shift there, right? In some sense where, where you’re in some sense, letting go of, of the repackaging of different aspects of, of other games and, and you’re trying to put forward something while that is worthy, right. Um, cause, cause I think, I think that’s the big shift that you were making there. Yeah. Um, and, and, um, yeah, I don’t, I don’t know if we were there yet, but like coming to these people on the discord server, um, they, they, they come up with these ideas and they’re aligned with your ideas, but like they’re, they’re pushing somewhere else. So, so what, what was that like? That was so like, I would say the, the last version of ashes that I wrote where it was. So I play tested a version of it where it was still very much mechanically, like, you know, I’m trying to, I’m really trying hard to make an elegant system, right. Which it looks different from actually making an elegant system. So that, that bird, that game, um, ended up being playable and fun. And I ran it for a crew for five sessions, four or five sessions. And, um, it was basically doing everything I wanted it to do. And I was pretty happy with it. And, um, it was, it was doing the things of allowing, uh, it was broadly allowing them to choose their own path, but it wasn’t asking them for, to provide a lot of bracketing in the, in the sandbox. And that was something that’s always frustrated me. It’s like, well, I want to kind of decide what the adventures I want to go on are. And so like, why can’t I have a little more say in like what my character cares about and then why can’t the game care about what my character cares about a little more? So, uh, as I started writing the GM section for that version, I was like, okay, so here’s how I want to go on with players to give. So you look at the players, the stuff on the player character sheets that they’ve already told you, and you kind of pull, pull from that and plug it in like this. And then I got obsessed with like, okay, well, how, okay. So I know how the game is going to run. It’s going to run like those five sessions I just did. And, uh, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s working and it’s kind of doing what I want. Okay. So now I need to write the GM section and I need to write the, uh, I want to write an opening so that the players can go through, um, character creation as, as a game, right? They can kind of like pick up the game as they’re playing it by, by going through character creation as a, as a sort of gamified, you know, what’s the And so as I started working on those in those two directions, uh, both on the GM section or what would ultimately become like the guide section and, um, the opening, uh, I noticed two different things happening. One, both, both of those things were completely intertwined in ways that I didn’t understand before. And, uh, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, uh, this was going to be much harder than I initially expected because the ideas I were playing with were at the level of, of archetype. And in order for those ideas to be executed properly, you, it really helps to understand them at a deep level and understand archetypes at a deep level takes a fucking lot and it’s a pain in the ass. And, uh, I’ve read a bunch of stuff that has radically undermined my worldview. Uh, in the last three or four years. Um, and I’ve, I’ve also had, because, because the game is based on, um, sort of encouraging the players to seek out their own mystical practice, like having done that myself and having experiences that I can’t otherwise categorize as rational, I’m, I’m also in a spot where I’m like, well, I don’t want to make sense of this shit now. Uh, so the game is trying to do that as well. Um, like where do you, like, once you have some of these experiences, how do you slot in to other things, right? Now that you, you can, you can take a non-dual perspective in certain places. Um, what does that mean for the rest of how you do realize reality? Like there are, there are questions now that arise that only have paradoxical answers, uh, and that’s informed the game design to a large extent. So now the book itself is much more like a grimoire of like, here’s, here’s how you get these results, right? Here’s how I get it. Here’s how I get it. Here’s how I think you could try it. And then it’s also strongly symbolic because that’s, that’s the level which I, I think the game works best. Like when the symbols are coinciding and you know, the, the hero is facing their nemesis and the thing that the hero and the nemesis symbolize are actually at odds. And it’s not just the bad guy tying the princess to the railroad tracks, right? Like there’s a, you know, when your character stands for something and then that thing is actually challenged and not with some dice rolls, but with, uh, the fact that your character might not be right. That’s interesting to me. And so the moments where you can either break from your previous self or reinforce a, a, a belief, uh, or, or a position that your character like sinks into. You know, it was taught as like one of the things that really helped from the verveky stuff was the idea of the reciprocal narrowing and the reciprocal opening, right? And so in, in, in ashes, reciprocal narrowing, like has it, when that happens, there’s a mechanical impact on the rest of the game, right? So like when you have a character that, uh, does something and gains despair, if they game enough to spare that despair starts overflowing into their community and then it starts overflowing into the greater world. And so, um, similarly when you have, when you start repairing that in, in your own character, you can then have the ability to repair it in other places, right? And you can expand other options and give yourself more options. It’s so like the structures there, interestingly, are already inherent in RPGs. They’re just not mapped properly. Generally speaking, they’re, they’re not mapped with that, with the knowledge that the structures are there, they’re, they’re trying to, they’re attempting to unpack something they’re not quite like, equipped to unpack. You’re making it flat. Yeah, it’s making it flat, right? So like you can, but the reciprocal narrowing is like your character dies at the bottom of that in most games, right? So like you lose resources, you lose resources. It’s harder for you to gain resources. Oh, you lost. Oh, you died. Opening is like reciprocal opening is gaining experience and gaining levels, right? That’s how it’s conceptualized in most games. Generally, it’s not. It’s always exponential both ways, right? It’s, it’s really hard to balance, uh, the growth because like more options is more potential for more options and well, that’s the reciprocal aspect, right? And, uh, so, so in a sense, it’s really true. Like both directions, but it’s not, uh, good for the game experience, right? Right. I mean, so the problem is like, so what do you do when your character dies? That’s an interesting question in a game, right? Like, well, how does the game handle it? Um, for me, like I like the idea, uh, of, of in ashes, when your main character dies, you don’t stop playing, but they’re still dead. You don’t resurrect them or anything like that, but the, what they embodied continues to live on in other characters. So you can start playing other characters that are, uh, that were all already knew your, your, your main character, cause you have a squad, right? So you have, you have a, um, a community built in. And so you pick up somebody from that community where you can, you have the option to do that, or you can just play the community and you don’t have to select out another individual. You can just like, say like, well, I’m going to spend, you know, the community is going to have its own thing. I’m kind of done with the individual part of the game. Like that’s not interesting to me anymore. Um, and now I want to do, you know, like, and you, yeah, your community will still have a face that’s necessary. There will be an individual that, you know, sort of represents the community in the game, but you won’t, you don’t necessarily have to play them as an individual character after that. It’s a, there’s a, you can have, you could, there’s, there’s modal shifts built into the game based on how you want to fuck with an area. Yeah. All right. Um, yeah, I want to go to the level of motivation, right? Cause you, you, you’re doing this for multiple reasons, right? So one is you want to actually have a role playing game. Yes. The primary reason I have a game I actually want to play. Uh, but, but, but I mean that there’s actually role playing instead of that. You’re, you’re acting out this structure, right? So that that’s an aspect. And then you also want to facilitate, well, the way that you introduced it to me is psychological, but like you’re also calling it spiritual development, right? So, so in a sense, you’re, you’re creating a sandbox where you can create grounding for your experience. Um, is that the correct description? Yeah. Um, and, um, the third aspect is you, you’re picking up the challenge of, and this is a really big deal. And I hope you make it work, but you’re picking up this challenge where, where it is a responsive game engine that allows that dynamically adapts with, with the story of the players, whether they’re in a group or, or as an individual, which that’s like a really high bar. And when I, when I met you, I was really skeptical. Um, although, uh, I think I kind of see where, how it might work. Um, yeah. So you, you want to, you want to take it, uh, into the present, like connecting to the present, like, like what, what, what is, what is happening right now? So what’s happening right now in the game? So I’ve been, so one of the things that was really instrumental in the development of the game that I want to mention was the podcast that I do, uh, call flail forward. That is a game design podcast that has been going for, well, we’ve been doing it for four years, I guess now. And that was, that was like, I guess my graduate program, I would say. In game design. Um, it like big partially due to that, I actually, I’m, I’m a certified game designer, I have a certificate from the university of Washington now, uh, that, you know, I went through their program, um, to learn to do it at that level. Um, and that was due to interviewing Jonathan Tweet, who wrote, uh, D and D third edition, one of the writers of D and D third edition. And he was teaching the class. And so that’s why I found out about it. And so I pursued it, uh, you know, uh, seriously. Um, and, um, that, that podcast also enabled me to talk to a lot of other designers and enabled me to bounce my ideas off, um, other amateurs, uh, two of which have had, have, have published games since, since we started the podcast. Um, and that all that being able to like really dig into people who loved dismantling the ideas I was bringing up. Super, super helpful. So the, like the president has gone through this meat grinder, uh, of, of critique and feedback, you know, I put, I put it in front of them a couple of times and they’re like, yeah, no, or like this part, good, this part that doesn’t make any sense, you know, and there, there is great because they, they, the, the, the feedback I get is honest and directed, which is really hard to find, right? Like, you know, um, usually you’ll get one or both, but not this, not at the same time, usually you’ll get like, yeah, this is shit, but it’s like, nobody tells you how to fix it or, you know, somebody will say like, oh, you could do this. It’s like, yeah, well that fucks up three other things I, I’m relying on. So you don’t know what you’re talking about. Um, so having, having, having experienced feedback and good, good feedback has been really instrumental. Um, where it’s at present is I’m still pulling teeth on getting the opening all done, uh, getting all the concepts introduced in, in order that makes sense to players and gives them usable tools as soon as they get handed the tools, basically. So like, as soon as you get handed the tool, there should be an opportunity to use the tool, right? Like that reinforces, like, this is what it’s for. Um, I, the last, so I ran it for someone, the opening part for about a 45 minutes to an hour, uh, beginning of May and it went really well. The feedback was good. He said, he said it was a really good, really great experience and, um, he would be interested to do it again. Although at that point, like where I was running it, um, I was essentially doing something that you and market suggested I do in one of our, our back and forth sessions, which was just, um, take the script and run it through. And there, there were a couple of like particular bullet points that, uh, you guys had suggested I should put earlier. They’re really like, I was like, when it worked, it really worked. And I was like, okay, great. That, that really helped out. Um, uh, and so, so it’s just, it’s a matter of just like tuning, tuning that at this point, um, and then once that’s done, that gives me the, the, so the, the major challenge I’m sitting in right now is how to get the guide. To run the game based on how I’d run it, except that I have to be flexible enough for the way I run it to fail gracefully and for the game to catch people. So like, because my, the way I’m going to do it is not going to be the way somebody else is going to do it. Um, I want to make, I mean, the goals are like, it just, it only tracks the things you need to track. That’s the really, that’s the fuckiest part about RPGs is like, the game tells you to track certain shit and then, um, doesn’t make those things useful at all. Right. And so it’s really, it’s really like asking the players what they care about and then letting them care about those things and then only interjecting the disruptions at the appropriate points. So it doesn’t feel arbitrary. So it feels like a legitimate story reaction to something they did. So yeah, you’re right. It’s a pain in the ass to write. Uh, but it’s, it’s fun. Wow. No, actually I’m at the point right now where it’s, I’m just, it feels like I’m punching a brick wall. Like it fucking sucks actually. Uh, Well, I was searching for a specific answer. I kind of get the question now because like the sessions that you did with me and Mark were like really like in, in the archetypical realm, right? Like we were like really trying to get, to get the structure and we overhauled like multiple things and like you said, we changed the ordering of things and, and in, in order to make a progression. So, um, like it’s, it seems to me that you have to reshift your thinking and conceptualization like multiple times, right? You come in from this, oh, like we’re just doing a cut and paste. Um, I’m, I’m designing my own paste into, okay, like there’s something going on. I need to capture the thing that’s going on and then find a way to express it and hand it over to other people. Uh-huh. Yep. Yeah. So I’m in the middle, I’m in this, this weird intersection of art and writing and like design and the UI, that’s the other thing, like the user interface, right? The user interface is so important. Um, and, and when I, when I had the insight to make this a journaling game, like make a journal, like one of the biggest pieces of kit that really opened things up because then it was like, ah, now I know how to, now, now I can get out of my own way a little bit because I can rely on the players to track the things they care about in the journal because I don’t need to tell them what’s on the character sheet, right? I can put the stuff on the character sheet that the game really cares about. And the game is going to use pretty much no matter what. And then I can create so much sandbox space for the players in the journal that it kind of takes care of a bunch of my problems all at once. Um, and so really it’s the, the opening now is, is part of it is instructing players how to use the journal to, to, to play the game. Um, and writing that part is also a challenge because it’s like, I want to make it evocative and also functional. Um, you know, yeah. When you say that, like a bunch of ideas already come to my mind. So that, when you’re inhabiting the same space. So, so yeah, you’re hitting this brick wall because like, in some sense, you’ve been leveling up, right in, in the arena that you play and it’s like, well, yeah, you could, you could make something worthy in the arena level down, but like the test is other arena, that’s better. Let’s just play there. Yeah. That’s right. That’s, that’s the driving force. It’s like, fuck, I can see, I can imagine. I can’t even see it. I can imagine the flow of something like this. I can imagine. Like getting into it and the peak moments that happen. And so I’m taking the peak moments and working backwards basically. And so it can produce the peak moments with a greater degree of consistency because D and D produces peak moments too. It’s not that it doesn’t. It’s just that it makes it wildly inconsistent because so much of it is based on actually so much of the peak experiences in D and D are based on which rules the game master is actively ignoring. And so that’s not a lesson you even learn until you’re, you hate it a little bit. It’s like society, right? Like some. There you go. Yeah. And those, those are the things that are not enforced is what distinguishes you from the other people, right? Yeah, that’s. Yeah. So, so, you know, getting to a place where the, like, I can picture the peak experiences and then like, oh, you know, we want to defeat the bad guy, but the bad guy has to mean something really shitty, right? He has to, he has to represent something really fucking awful. And so you have to give the players the opportunity to tell you what they find really awful in order for them to, to, in order for you to grab them by their motivation and, and, and. The, you’re, the thing is, is like, I want the guy position in ashes to mostly get out of the way and just like set, set a scene, but the player run through it, the player then tells you what they want to have happen after that. Then you set another scene basically. So it’s, it’s less about you putting out story points before the adventure for the players to hit along the way. And like, you know, there’s going to be a boss fight here and there’s going to be blah, blah, blah, and then the village is going to burn down. So why the village burned down? Does that, did they give a shit that the village burned down? Maybe they hate that village, you know, maybe like, who knows? Right. Um, so the opportunity to, I want, I want, I want the game to create the opportunity and it does this. Well, to the extent that it works, um, tell the, tell the game what you want out of it, you know, like you’re going to answer the question that the game is going to give you a feedback loop. The feedback loop is going to be not what you expect, but it’s going to, it’s going to ask you questions, the answers of which you can’t help but care about. Yeah, that’s what it is. So it’s, uh, it’s also like a magic trick. That’s the other thing. It’s like stage magicianship. It’s like, like this, this will work on somebody. I mean, but when they know the trick, they’ll know the trick, right? So it’ll be like, then, then, then they can suspend disbelief and sort of go through the game as like, well, I can tell the game any choices I want now and play a character that’s wildly different from me and have, you know, take them to their logical extreme, but the game by default sort of like assumes that you’re going to be answering based on your own proclivities from, from the start. Um, and that’s a kind of constraint, right? Yeah. Yeah. But once you know, and also, right, like you want to have it in, in like a psychological therapeutic context as well, right. Which would require it to be close to you instead of getting too far away. Cause then you’re just avoiding dealing with the things you have to deal with. Um, yeah. So, so you’re working on this game. Um, everything’s kind of leading up to this in, in some aspects, or maybe you, you take everything that you have and you combine it into, into the game. Um, so looking forward, all right, like how, how do you see the game in five years? Do you think it’s recognizable from what you have now? Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think, I think this is, I don’t think there’s a form beyond that. Beyond where this thing is reaching. So it’s, it’s like, in some sense, story doesn’t exist above the archetypal layer. Right. Once you get into like the realm of pure abstraction, um, there’s kind of a linear narrative, but like it’s one plus one equals two, right? Like that’s, you need archetypes in order to have any kind of story content. Like even if it’s boy meet girl, like that’s, you have, you have to, you have to archetypes right there. You kind of like there’s a story already. Um, uh, but you can’t, you can’t get simpler than that. So like, for me, like ashes is at the point where I’m dealing with the simplest building blocks of what this could touch. And so like anything that comes out of this is going to, you know, my version of what comes out of dealing with these simple building blocks is going to be totally different than whoever comes after me and it was like, Oh, this guy’s doing an archetypal game. Well, I can do an archetypal game too. It’s kind of different. Um, but that’s that doing it at that level, it means that I, I, I am trying to do something that is, uh, not a product of its era, right? I’m trying to do something that would, would be something that you could have seen in 1500s Renaissance, right? It was just like, Oh, here’s, they built a story engine. It makes stories. It didn’t use dice. Maybe, you know, you drew cards or whatever like that, but whatever it was, like you, you can see it’s like, Oh, it’s the only the same archetypes. You have the Kings, Queen death, uh, you know, society crumbling, uh, people’s individual bad decisions, uh, the influence of greed, you know, all of these archetypal human experiences. Um, and so I think when you’re dealing with those things, if the games actually knows it’s dealing with those things, then there’s no deeper for it to go. Story-wise you can get more detailed. You can get infinitely detailed. Um, and you can have infinite variation within that, but like, I don’t think research wise, I think I’m at the end. Like, um, only because like underneath this is just not dualism, which is where the game’s pointed anyway, but it’s, that’s the end point of the game too. Like, it’s not like there’s not another game beyond that. You know, I, I, I don’t want to be, uh, yeah, to, to disturbing, but I think that might be like beyond the archetype, but, uh, I don’t know if it’s relevant, but, um, so, okay. So yeah, fair enough. Like, like, uh, I think you’re functioning on the level that you need to function in, in the game design. Uh, although we might talk about this other layer and how that’s applicable to the game design, um, later. Um, so Dan, when, when you’re, when you’re done making this game, right? Like, like, like, how do you, like, what’s the ideal way of, of you finishing it? Like, like, what would you like the end product to be? Uh, the end product would be a physical copy, probably on Kickstarter, I would say. Um, I mean, I have, I have commissioned art already. There’s, or I’ve done for the game already. There’s, um, a considerable amount of writing I’ve done, although it’s also a considerable amount of writing I’ve chucked away, um, you know, and I put those archives up, so like, you know, if people are interested, like, you know, the version of the game that I, that I walked through and, um, wrote and put together as PDFs and, um, you know, did full layouts for, like, they’re all on the discord server that exists for the game, so I’ll provide a link. Uh, so, uh, yeah, they’re, they’re available. You can see like the, the course of the work, how, you know, even the Google docs have, have the original dates still on them, like, so, so you can see, like going back to like 2011 or where it was when I was first dicking around with the ideas, um, yeah, going forward, going forward, I, my, the last two months of my life have been just so tumultuous that I don’t, I was really planning on launching the Kickstarter this fall, but I, I don’t know if that’s going to happen. Um, you know, I was really hoping to have a fourth piece of art commissioned at this point, but I haven’t been able to, like the artist has a project that they’re working on quite furiously. That’s, uh, bigger than what I’ve got going on. So, um, there’s, there’s some material. Barriers and not really barriers, just challenges. Um, you know, I w I was really hoping to have a more finished. Script by the end of May for the opening, but just life has, has, uh, taken over in certain, well, you know, regards. And it’s lucky though, because I don’t have, I don’t have publishing constraints. I don’t have like somebody breathing down my neck to get this thing out. And, um, it’s also useful to, to be able to take my life experiences and digest them and question whether or not the game could handle it. Like I’m going through this thing, like, you know, what, what, what game mechanic is this actually activated? Like, is this, is this is, is, is, um, is this a result of apathy on my part? Or is it, is it creating apathy in me? It’s like, am I seeing something and then tuning out? Right. Uh, because like, I don’t want to deal with that problem. And that’s, that’s, that’s, you know, you can have certain amount of apathy is fine. Right. Like you can’t deal with everything, but when you build it up and build it up and build it up and tune out and tune out and tune out, there’s going to be a consequence and just the game, the game seeks now to track those consequences independent of independent of the guide, managing them, right? The consequences should just sort of accrue, um, and build. And, uh, uh, oftentimes I feel like it’s really hard to track story events and track like the greater flow of story. And so like to have, to have a system where, um, it cares about the archetypal nature of the events more than cares about the details is something that I’m also pushing towards. Yeah. So it sounds like you’re using the game to grant your own experience as well. Yeah. Yeah. And ground my own experience. Exactly right. Yeah. So it’s, it’s, uh, if it doesn’t work on me, then it probably won’t work. Yeah. Well, yeah, my mind went, went so many places that, but that’s, that’s almost like, like a worldview in some sense, right? Like you’re like that, that’s taking it one step further. I don’t know if you. Oh, yes. You know, you’re right. It is. It can, it’s, it’s, um, I want to say that, um, I think it’s, it’s, it’s, it can, it’s, it’s, um, I want to stop short at worldview and I’ve been describing it to people as an esoteric mapping technology. So it allows you to map your own inner experience. Um, and it doesn’t tell you what kind of experience you should be having with those landmarks. It just says like, this is a force. Yeah. You have to deal with this force. Uh, you know, how you deal with it is up to you, but like the force is going to have certain responses. Uh, so that’s, that’s what’s interesting to me. Yeah. So learning is like naming the, the, like what, like what force is coming up? I’m, I’m, I have, I have this outside experience. Um, you know, let’s say, let’s say my wife is yelling at me for, for somebody. I’m having this outside experience inside me. I’m having all of these extra things that are not going on outside, but like it’s turning into like, oh man. Should I care right now? Do I want to yell back? Do I want to shrink into myself and just sort of like a cower and let her have this moment? Do I, you know, what’s, what’s, is there a good response here at all? Or should I just shut the fuck up? Right. That’s another thing you could do. Like, so, so, um, allowing, allow it has to at least be able to account for the archetypal flow of story. That’s the thing. So like, what, what, like if the argument with the wife is like, okay, so now like there’s, there’s a moment of conflict between, between a couple, the archetypal flow of the story is, uh, the couple has an experience where they get stronger or the couple has an experience where this is going to contribute to the end of the relationship. Right. And so, so the framing of how, how the game will ask you to sort of take the experience of the, the, the, the, the, the encounter that in this case, the, the, the, the yelling match and, um, uh, put it in one of these buckets and, and align it with like, oh, I really learned from something from this or like, oh, this cost me a bunch, you know, and you, you’re allowed to frame it in whatever way makes sense to you, but it’s going to ask you that kind of, that kind of framing question, you know. I get the, the sense that I, I want to take it deeper, but that’s, that’s not appropriate. I, I do want to go back to this. Okay. So you want, you want to do a Kickstarter. So, so what’s your vision? Let’s say you succeed in implementing everything that you want. Uh, like, like what does, what does the game do? Like does, does gap, uh, appropriate it as an optional course in high school? Like, like, like how do you see, uh, the, the, the, my ideal, I think, well, I have, I have, I have like the big ambitious crazy like scenario, right? And then I have, okay. Well, the big ambitious crazy one is it D thrones D and D as the thing people do with RPGs basically, because it will, it will consistently provide a much superior experience because it will always be meaningful. Like you won’t show up to a session of Ash of the Magi and come away without one, at least one meaningful interaction. Hopefully that’s the idea. Um, and that the game really cares about you. Like it really cares. Like I really care. So the game is going to really care. Um, it cares about what the players want out of the game. And so, uh, and it also asks them to want better things out of the game. So, so, cause, cause you’re, you’re also designing it to, to provide something to, to the players. So what would it be providing? Like, like how that ideally looked like? Uh, it would be providing a set of tools and an array of practices that could be implemented outside the game, uh, such that the players have an overall improved life experience. So, uh, for example, one of the things that’s been very helpful to me is circling practice and that’s just coming to terms with yourself in a conversation over and over again, right? That’s the basics of it. Um, but the idea is that there’s a, there’s a, there’s a mechanic in the game that asks the players to do this as a matter of playing the game, right? You’re, you’re, you’re kind of interacting with other players. You’re in the sort of web of causality and anything you do is, is, you know, put every, every other characters is hypersensitive to, because you’re now inside this web where you’re all like causally resonating with each other. You’re all viewing the threads of faith. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You’re all doing the threads of faith at the same time and you’re like, ah, right. And so it’s, it’s, it’s total impact all at once. And so the idea is that the players learn to, um, discuss how their, their, their characters are feeling about a particular thing without actually, but only from the low, the local point of view without projecting. So, and which is a very helpful thing to do in a conversation when a conversation gets tense is to sort of drop back and like feel where you are in your body and feel like the sensations that come up and, um, uh, allow yourself to have more open perspectives to other people. And so to the extent that that can be practiced in a weekly communal meeting, uh, it’s my experience that that. The, the benefits accrued their, uh, bleed out. So that’s, that’s, that’s, so the idea is not to, um, one of the things, one of the things I see a lot on Instagram nowadays is like these personal RPG journals where it’s basically a journaling practice and, uh, it’s, it’s, uh, you know, level up your own life. And it’s like, oh, that’s good and shit, but like it, people who aren’t motivated to, to take that step, aren’t going to use that journal. Right. And so like where you have something where there’s a much lower buy-in, where it’s like, come to, come to a friend’s house and just have a fun time. Right. You don’t like ashes doesn’t ask you to buy anything expensive. Like it’s like, you can get like a really crappy little composition journals, you know, two bucks or whatever like that. Um, and so I think that’s, that’s a good thing. Um, even the, even the dice, I even start out with only six sided dice now, uh, and add dice as the game goes, because I’m, I’m, I don’t know. I’m going to try that as an experiment. See how it goes. Um, but the idea of the idea of being like, there’s not a huge level of. Buy-in at the start, there doesn’t need to be a huge level of buying. Um, I, I, in my experience, buy-in is created as soon as you ask, as soon as the players notice that the game cares about their answers, then they’re like, oh shit, we can actually move levers in this game. Like we can actually like, fuck with it. Let’s let’s, and then that becomes exciting. People would come in, like, that’s my experience. It will come inspired when they realize they can actually have an effect. No. So you were talking about practices and the game providing practices. Would I imagine that as, as like a website where there’s external resources that people get? I, yeah, I’ve been trying to figure out how to do that. I mean, right now, if the practices are part of the, um, what players decide on their magic beam. So when the player characters, uh, choose a schema for, for their magic, it comes with certain practices. So like, you know, uh, that are kind of tailored archetypally to where that is, although it’s not super tight. They’re all pretty similar. They’re like, basically you’ll have one that’s a meditation restorative practice. You’ll have some sort of movement. There’ll be some kind of, um, um, uh, some sort of study methodology, some sort of communal coming together practice. I mean, there’s a system of, of, of every Arcana will have these things because, um, the assumption is, is that each one of these Arcana had its own sort of society that, uh, was using it as a community that was using it before the apocalypse happened. And so like, there’s already things you can do to make it work. And so, um, I think that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s kind of like, you know, most of the things that you get is from kind of knowing about things you know about how to use it. And so those are the things that get handed to you as the player. Those once you choose an Arcana, then you get some things that get handed to you. And so things like that, you’re expecting the player to act that out in the moment. No, I’m expecting the player to notice that there’s an array of practices and the effect on the character is something that the player might want to enact in their real life. All again, all it’s doing is giving them like a pathway to use the tool. It’s really not like I’m not including a specific meditation practice in the game. So you’re intending to point out in ways like, oh, there’s an option here, there’s an option here, there’s an option here. Right, exactly. Because there’s too many options to include otherwise, right? There’s so many types of meditation practices that work for people, but just saying like, here’s the one, wherever your particular proclivity goes, then this is where you might find the most benefit. Or you could make it a live project in that sense, right? Oh, yeah. So talking about that, right? So you’re five years in the future, you successfully finished the game part. Like it’s defeated D&D. So what are you doing, right? Like what’s your relation to role-playing games at that point? Oh, they’re just playing Ash’s Magi with friends. Like, I mean, what do I, what the fuck do I need to do? Well, yeah, you could develop the site and the community around it. You could say, well, like, different game that I could design. You could go touring and inspire people to make their own games. Like there’s many avenues that you can take. Yeah, none of that’s fascinating to me. I think once it’s done, it’ll be done and then I can just tune out. Yeah, you believe that after years of struggle is like, okay, like close that door. Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. I mean, that’s, it kind of feels like that’s what’s happening. Like I don’t, I don’t know, man. It’s, there’s a weird, there’s a weird phenomenon happening in my life where I haven’t, I don’t feel pulled to play these games anymore. It, I’m not like, I’m not like, because most of the games are still strongly dissociative. Like I, and that’s not to say they’re wrong or bad. Like I, there’s a place for that. Like it’s great to have a place to go when you don’t want to deal with shit. Like, and if it’s a really low bar to entry and the effects of it are also, you know, in terms of other ways you could just be dissociating quite mild, you know, it’s certainly a shit load better than heroin. So I’m not, I’m not looking to like destroy the modality where people are just showing up to have fun, like just going to a movie, you know, I’m not, there was a point where in this exercise, where I was kind of like the asshole art filmmaker who was like, why the fuck are people even going to blockbusters, all these idiots, whatever. And now I’m like, no, no, no, that was just me rejecting me. That’s just me rejecting the fun, but I’m not, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not, I’m that I don’t want now, but for other people, it’s fine. Like I’m not, I’m not interested in shitting on other people’s experience. But what I am interested in is designing experience for myself that I find engaging consistently. And, you know, I don’t, it’s tough for me right now, because I don’t have a consistent gaming group. I don’t have that foundation. I don’t have like an audience to bounce this off of consistently that is not trying to critique it, but instead just trying to engage with it at the surface level, but at just trying to engage with the thing and not trying to pick it apart or talk to me about how it could be better. And so not having that group of people to essentially perform for has sapped a good chunk of the motivation from the project, because it’s just not as fun for me personally. And I don’t want to run online. Like it’s not designed to be run online. It’s designed to be run in person. I don’t, I personally don’t enjoy online games that much. Even though I played them and I still will, like I’m not going to say no. Like if somebody was like, Hey, let’s go play that. I’m like, yeah, sure. But I know that they’re not as fun. That’s where the audience lies, though. I know, right? And I’m sensitive to that. And that’s a, sometimes you need to tell the audience what they want. Yeah, not disagree. So, yeah, so back to you. So like, you just gave me the impression that in some sense, you’re outgrowing Roleplay. Right? Like, because you seem to have outgrown a lot of them by taking the design of role. And in some sense, you’ve also been replacing role playing with this horrible term, serious play in your life. So you’re playing life instead, in some sense. Right. And that’s the goal of the game as well. Yeah. Right. And so in some sense, you’re playing life again, together with other people. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we all have to go through. But yeah, it’s interesting that you’re you sense this, this matureization in yourself. And maybe I can put on some experience that I’ve been having. So I’ve been watching series. And like, I’ve watched a lot of series in the last years. And I’ve watched a lot of series in the last year or so. And so, I’m trying to understand I can put on some experience that I’ve been having. So I’ve been watching series and like, I watched a lot of series in the last years. And now I’m participating on the archetypal level, like in the series where it’s like, oh, they’re acting this out. And oh, like, they’re doing this with this and this and this reason. And I’m like, I don’t know of the people who wrote that, were actually aware of what they were writing. Like, I’m, I’m so it’s really, really, really fascinating to see that. And to also get sucked into that perspective, like that way of participation. And like, I even remember being kind of scared. It’s like, like, do I really want to, like, see the world like this? Like, this is. Oh, man. Yeah, like, I’ve had some experiences where I’ve, seriously considered whether or not I was having a psychotic break. Because it’s like that. When you sit in the archetypal view long enough, and like the connections between the archetypes become clearer. And you realize how you can’t disentangle any of them from any of them. And like, there’s a wholeness that pervades this, the structure that humans built to like hold all these ideas. Humans built it or it built us, humans built it or it built us, I don’t fucking know. But like, it’s so, it’s so big. And yet the, the, the, the, the, the influence it has, like, can be felt in detail. Like, it’s fractal, like, in both directions, like you were saying, like, it’s just the structure of it’s I mean, it was literally mind blowing. The spirit goes through the mind. Fucked up, man. Like, you know, I, during the, during the course of this game, designing this game over the, you know, in my life, at, at, at various points, like I’ve, I’ve been at the point where I was ready to kill myself, like really, like right there and didn’t do it. And that’s made it into the game. And then there’s the point at which I stopped considering myself an atheist, and that’s made it into the game. So I’ve had to include like these two intense, intensely archetypal experiences. You know, I had to reconcile them and, and, you know, I had to reconcile them and, and, and like you said, ground them in some way. And the only way that makes sense at this point is like these crit, these huge archetypes. And to the extent that that gives me the grounding that I find useful to make sense of the rest of it. Like, why would I not want to share that or share the way I got there or share something about that so that other people could maybe see something, maybe they, you know, they don’t know what to do with the experience of something like that. And just, there’ll be, if there’s one kid somewhere that goes like, oh, fuck this, I get it. This makes sense. Then that’s my job. That’s what I did. And I’m good. You know, like, and that’s already happened in a sense, like I already got that person. So like, I’m kind of like, my highest bar for the game has kind of been achieved already. Like it’s already worked once on somebody, it’s not me. And so like, okay, good. It’s functional at least. And so that, that, that means that that gives me more motivation to keep working on it when it feels like I, you know, it feels like I’m throwing my time down the drain sometimes. Yeah. So what that brings up in me is, is, is sort of an inevitability of the architect, right? Like, yeah, it’s the right layer, right? Like it’s, it’s where you’re going to end up whatever system, right? Like if you, if you’re going to keep up digging long enough, like you’re just going to end up with these, yeah, these abstract structures. Well, structures is not forms or ideas that, that inform you and inform humanity. Right. As, as the right level of exploration, explanation, right? And you said you can then go, go back down into this, to the details and the specific implementation. Right. Yeah. And that’s a really ambitious project. So, and that’s kind of why I’m also supporting it. Thank you. Completely insane. I mean, I acknowledge that. Like, it’s definitely insane, but I like insane people. Oh, good. Only the right kind insane though. I appreciate it very much. I appreciate the implication that I’m the right kind of crazy. So, so yeah, like, do you feel like you, you left something out in your story, like something you still want to highlight? I, there are, there are, I will say that there are parts of the story that have specific mystical content that I’m not including because that is. Now I see, now I’m wondering what my, what my hesitation is actually based in. And the talk about that. It’s fascinating. What was it that decision that you made in advance? What to talk about it? Or did it just happen? Decision I made? No, it wasn’t a decision I made. It was a moment of desperation. I was in and I sort of just sent a call out into the ether and something answered and that, that I don’t, I still haven’t resolved like what that means. How does that connect you to the game? Well, it’s been helping. Like whatever that thing that answered me has been specifically like guiding me to do the parts that need doing. Like it’ll, it’ll, I mean, it’s me, right? But it’s fuel. It doesn’t feel like me. It feels like, like, like a, a, a, a ton of like something that has insights that I don’t have yet. And it’s shoving me towards them. And sometimes it shoves really violently and it puts me in a situation that I’d really rather not be in. And then it asks me to be okay in the situation and then take it into the, in like, you know, how does this fit? Like, can you make this work? Does this work? Like it’s, it’s, it’s mean. It’s mean sometimes. And it also, it also deliberately withholds things, which is, I don’t know what to make of that. That doesn’t make any fucking sense. Like if I’m me, I might, I’m deliberately withholding insight from myself and prodding myself until what? Like, why can’t I just say it? Like why, what is the, what is, so this is another thing that I’m trying to figure out, like how this maps. So we’ll figure that out. I don’t know. Or I’m just crazy. Yeah. So it’s, it’s interesting that you know that it’s withholding like that. How do you know that? Well, because it taunts me. Yeah. Yeah. Let’s not go too much in the analysis, but, but, but it is, it is interesting that, yeah, like there’s a drive there that, that is pushing you forward apart from your other motivations. Let’s hope that it’s good nature. There’s, there’s bad stuff out there. Be careful. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Well, I mean, it is one of the, it is one of the gnarlier ones from what I understand. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. I don’t know what else is there to talk about after that. That’s a good note to, and on. So you have a discord server. We’ll be adding that in the details. There’s a website you can get. We’ll also be adding that. Yeah. For me, well, I already said it’s like bringing all of these things together. Well, there’s another thing that you’re bringing together as well. It’s been a fascinating talk. I would like to invite everybody to participate in the comment section, share your insights. So I think, yeah, please like other people to comment on his, his game. So I think that the avenue is also open. Like Rob, do you want to plug some stuff or? I’m good. I mean, the links will be in the links. So, yeah. Yeah. So thank you for participating in the unfolding of the soul. I would like to see everybody again in the next episode. Bye. Bye for now. Thanks.