Intro
My guest this time is Paul Ligorski, also known as Heart of Arcana. Paul has written quite a few advenuters, not only for Draw Steel, but for D&D 5e, Mausritter and Cypher. He also runs a local game night multiple times a month. We talk about writing adventures for different systems, which TTRPG systems work well for teaching new players, how interacting with gods is different in Draw Steel, and how watching Draw Steel being designed has made him reimagine what can be used for inspiration.
I'm Jon de Nor and this is Goblin Points.
Interview
Jon: Welcome to Goblin Points, Heart of Arcana.
Paul: Thank you so much. Happy to be here.
Jon: Tell us a bit about yourself and how you ended up in the Matt Colville / MCDM community.
Paul: Of course. So, hello everyone. My name is Paul Ligorski. In the MCDM community as Heart of Arcana. How I got involved in the MCDM community? I think like many fifth edition dungeon masters, I was tryna make sense of how to be a good DM, improve, and luckily stumbled upon Matt Colville back in 2018. That was my entry point. In fact, I looked it up before and I found the specific date: I searched for Matt Colville in August of 2018.
Jon: Wow.
Paul: I started playing D&D proper in 2016. Started with fourth edition, quickly devolved into fifth edition and then... But also from the very beginning I was hooked and I knew that I wanted to run games and I think, as a devitable person who's on YouTube a lot, found Matt Colville. Whether the algorithm suggested it and I went down a rabbit hole or indeed it was just that first search in August 2018, that was it. I was off to the races immediately once I discovered Matt Colville.
Jon: Interesting. I also started DM'ing in 2018.
Paul: Nice.
Jon: And I stumbled upon Matt Colville, mostly by accident I think.
Paul: Yeah.
Jon: I wanted to ask actually, just right off the top: Heart of Arcana, where does that name come from?
Paul: That's a great question. No one's ever asked me that question before. There's not a creation myth to the name. I just came up with it and was like, 'That's a really cool name,' and I did a search to make sure. I don't want to compare myself to Paul McCartney of the Beatles, but one time I think he heard the song, or he dreamed the melody for Let It Be or Hey Jude or something, I'm sure someone will correct me in the video, but he went around to all his friends, was like, 'Hey, is this a thing that already exists?' And so I did a deep search to be like, is this something that already has been claimed? Did I see it somewhere? The only thing that I could find was there was this Japanese, or like a JRPG called Arcana Heart.
Jon: Yes.
Paul: Yeah and so now I get Google Alerts, because I have a thing on Heart of Arcana, and I get Google Alerts. It's always just for Arcana Heart, it's never for me. But yeah, that's just the origin. There was no specific source of inspiration, it just popped into my brain and I was like, 'This is it. I love this immediately,' and took that ball and ran with it and designed a logo and made it the name of everything.
Jon: It's a really great name-
Paul: Thank you.
Jon: ... which is why I asked.
Paul: Thank you very much. Audio listeners will not be able to see this, but my favourite thing was designing these little logos, the heart inside the icosahedron, the D20.
Jon: You've written a lot of adventures. I looked up your itch.io history and there's a lot of adventures there.
Paul: Thank you, yes.
Jon: You've written adventures for Mausritter, the Cypher System, Draw Steel, Ivy, I think?
Paul: That's right.
Jon: It's kind of a two part question: Why so many RPGs and-
Paul: Let's, yeah, we can start with that first question. Yeah, why so many RPGs? Well, thanks for looking me up. This is kind of a long... I don't know if it's a long story, maybe it will emerge that it's a long story. This was years ago: I was watching the D&D live supported streams for the release of Descent into Avernus and I was like, 'This is so cool!' I've never run an official Wizards of the Coast adventure supplement before. I love the concept of devils and demons, the Blood War. I loved the idea of going to hell.
So, I was super stoked, super hyped up. I bought Descent into Avernus and started running that adventure for my friends and hit immediately... Anyone who's run that adventure, you probably know the experience that I had, which was unfortunately that of great disappointment. I did not find that it flowed well. There were really big missed opportunities that we don't need to go into detail right now but, very briefly, the beginning of the story is the fall of this great city that gets transported to hell. Which I was like, 'Why didn't they put that in the adventure? That's so cool.' Other people since authored it. It's called The Fall of Elturel.
Anyway. So I was reading that, watching these streams, I was like, I think I can do better. Or maybe, maybe I can do better. I want to try to write an adventure proper and put it out. And I was very daunted by writing something for fifth edition with no practice.
And this is in the midst of the pandemic and so I was spending a lot of time online looking for TTRPGs and stumbled across Necrotic Gnome. Many folks in the OSR community might know them as the publisher of Old-School Essentials, many other OSR titles and Mausritter was one of them. I was like, 'What is this?' My kids were a little bit younger at the time, and so stumbled onto Mausritter and it was just incredible. I love the Redwall series by Brian Jacques where the main character is this warrior mouse. Folks might know of the Brambly Hedge, which is this really cute iconic, I believe British, illustrated children's book, basically. So, I was a perfect customer for Mausritter and it seemed so simple to design for compared to 5E.
And there was also, very similar to Draw Steel, the license was so open and straight forward, maybe only two or three paragraphs of text to read and then the license itself was like five... I'm exaggerating here, but only a few sentences. And so I felt way more a sense of ease to design for that system. I just put something out. One page. It was terrible, but I did it. I put it out on itch. And the support from Mausritter for third party products is, at least back then, was wonderful. Isaac Williams, the creator, would put all these things up on his web page and I was getting a lot of site traffic from that so I was really bolstered by that. Went on to write two other Mausritter products.
So that's how things got started with fifth edition. And then I went on to write and design my own fifth edition product. There are a lot of other things that I have written since, many different systems, and we can talk about why if you're curious, but yeah I think that answers at least part of your first question.
Jon: Yeah. I am also curious about the Cypher System. I've only heard the name, but I don't know anything about the actual system and how it works or what kind of play it encourages. But I get the impression that it's very different from Mausritter.
Paul: Very different.
Jon: So, I'm wondering what made you jump all the way from Mausritter to Cypher.
Paul: Yeah, a little system jumping. Well I think like many, and probably many of the individuals in your audience, those of us that are Draw Steel evangelists, I think have had the same experience where we feel the frustration with fifth edition or Dungeons & Dragons in general and are looking for something to fill that void where we run out, or like, I want to be able to tell a different story.
And I love science fantasy and stumbled across Numenera. So all by Monte Cook Games... Numenera uses the Cypher System, but the way they did it was that Numenera was released first and then they were like, 'Hey, wait a second, there's an underpinning system here and Numenera is the highly specific set and setting for Cypher System'. It's the sci fantasy, far future setting with very specific class archetypes, specific titles, et cetera. So I stumbled across Numenera, fell in love, and then was like, 'This is so cool'. I think I have this thing where I really love homebrewing material and wanted to try and run an adventure, write an adventure formally for the Cypher System, and did.
I think it might seem like my systems are all over the place, but each system is able to tell a different kind of story. So, Mausritter is super chill, super simple. It uses inventory management as your class, which is really fun. So, do you wanna spend these inventory slots to have a two handed weapon or do you want to spend inventory slots to have better armour? Do you want to spend inventory slots to have a runic tablet so that you can cast a spell? They're all critical decisions that you make that have huge impacts on the way you play your little mouse.
Yeah, Cypher is just... This is a different kind of story. It's about exploration, at least the way that I think about it, but it also can be about so many things. It's a really blank slate for story telling. It uses a very elegant system and was very, very different than 5E. So, I think it was scratching an itch that I had of I want to run a system that's different and I also want to present something differently to my players, to my friends so that we can experience a different kind of story together. And one thing I should say about Cypher System specifically for those, you know, yourself and listeners, is that the GM doesn't roll dice.
Jon: Okay.
Paul: It's a diceless system for the GM. And that enables a wholly different experience running games. You can totally focus on the narrative, on the game. It's a very different experience from any other system I've run. I mean, I love rolling dice, but it's really special.
Jon: Interesting. Speaking of the adventures, I've noticed what I think is a theme and, let me know if this is too close to anything-
Paul: Okay.
Jon: ... but it feels like your adventures have a religious theme or, not necessarily-
Paul: Tell me more. Tell me more, please. Expand on that.
Jon: Well, I looked up your games, or your adventures, and they're all set in, like it's the Tomb of the Crescent Moon and the Sunken Abbey and the Bat Cultist Lair. I don't know if this is just what dungeons end up being, where it's always a cult in a dungeon-
Paul: Right.
Jon: ... and you have to defeat them, but it felt like all of them had a kind of religious or belief system undertone to them. Is that something that was intentional or is that just-
Paul: That's so insightful, Jon. Thank you. That's something that I'm just realising now myself. It certainly was not intentional to have them all have a component of divinity or religiousness. So for me, when I'm a player, I always want to interact with the gods. One of the most exiting things for me when I'm playing a tabletop roleplaying game in a fantasy setting is that, hey, the gods are explicitly real and a source not only of truth, but of power. That's so exciting, because in our world... I mean, I know many religious individuals be like, 'That's true here too'. I don't necessarily believe that personally, or at least not yet. I haven't been able to wield a divine energy and smite my foes yet in this reality.
Jon: Let's not rule anything out.
Paul: That's right, thank you, yeah. Yeah, exactly. The multiverse is vast and infinite, so there's still a chance. But yeah, I guess that subconsciously that interest has bled over as well. I also just think it's really fun and uniquely interesting to present that for players. And with Draw Steel, I really love everything Matt has put together for the pantheon. I think it's so interesting. I'm using that term, that word a lot, but it's true, it's honest of how I feel. I'm captivated by all the stories and myths that exist.
And it's such a playground for the director. So, the adventure that so far I've released for Draw Steel deals explicitly with a saint of Salorna, one of the human gods. I see Salorna as this maternal goddess of the harvest, of bounty and, yeah, really lean into that in the adventure with the symbolism and iconography. That's a great question.
Jon: Speaking of the gods and the divine creatures of Orden and the timescape, I guess, do you think there is a meaningful difference? Because in for example D&D lore, or at least the Forgotten Realms, which is the one setting in D&D that I'm most familiar with, the gods aren't only real and present, but they're also very much in... They're able to affect the world very directly, while in Orden and the timescape they've been forbidden from interacting with Orden directly and they go through their agency saints-
Paul: Right.
Jon: ... at which the humans call them. Do you think there's a meaningful difference there or is it just flavour?
Paul: Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I had that same thought. Like, 'Hey, wait a second. Why is it that the gods are removed and as a director or as a player I can only, my permission slip only gives me the opportunity to connect with these saints.' And at first I was really disappointed. I was like, 'Man, I want to talk to the gods. What the heck?' But I think it adds a layer of really curious narrative potential because, this isn't explicit but as a director my thinking or my thought process is, 'Okay, if my player, this hero wants to interface with one of the gods they've got to go through this medium first and maybe prove themselves. They have to interface with this saint first and foremost. They are in fact the conduit of their divine power and that saint is holding space for that god here in the material manifold.' At first I was like, 'I don't like it' and now it makes me really curious, because I think it's really challenging to roleplay a god, or you can try and it's a unique challenge, but I think there's more access to roleplaying a saint and perceiving them.
Yeah, so I like your question. I think it is a meaningful difference as opposed to like, 'Hey, these are just now the de facto gods that you have to deal with'. I think having this layer, this one step removed hierarchy, if you will, has the opportunity for more interesting stories to unfold. Because then I think too there is a chance, and I think we'll probably see this unfold when the game is fully released and people go through campaigns where they get all the way to level 10, they can potentially ascend and become saints themselves. And that's a really interesting potential too of like, 'Okay, cool, your character retired, but the reason they retired is because they ascended into the domain of the sun and now they're a saint of whomever in Orden'.
Jon: I hadn't really considered the fact that you don't really, as the director you don't roleplay the god itself, just the saint and they've been elevated from normalcy to a saint position, which means they're also not infallible; they're very much just very experienced regular people. Which as a director, to me at least, it almost feels like it's easier to roleplay them, because they don't need to present this facade of being so divine.
Paul: Right, yeah. No, indeed, there's a humanity to a degree that they represent, where you can play an imperfect entity as opposed to, 'I am the domain of fire and everything about me is fire and me fire and I burn'. And it's like, okay, it's a little bit more nuance that you can present too. I am the avatar of the god of fire and I really love fire, but I also really love something else, right. And now you can have a conversation, you have a relationship with that individual as opposed to... Can you really have, again I'm sure some people would say yes, but can you really have a relationship with the divine that is immortal? Interesting.
Jon: Given you've written so many adventures, and I have to confess I haven't read through them all, I was presented with a question from one of my patrons-
Paul: Awesome!
Jon: ... whether or not the adventures are very much standalone or if there's a grand masterplan that you have to connect them all into a coherent, either a campaign trail or sequence of adventures, or if they're all interconnected in some obstruce way maybe?
Paul: Interesting question. Thank you, Goblin Points patron. Yes, join the Goblin Points Patreon. You can ask questions to people that come on the interview here. Short answer: No. There is not at least an intention for them to be connected. And one of the things I really, really like doing is exploring different flavours of myth or different geographical locations and settings in each one of my adventures. That being said, I think for Mausritter I could see all of them being connected, that you start here and it's an easy... You can string them together without issue. For Cradle of Fire, I mean that's the only, well, yeah... I guess, again, short answer and also long answer: No. But, because our fantasy tabletop roleplaying games often exist in worlds where there's such vast different cultures that there wouldn't be an issue for them to be connected. But in terms of the intention, no and it's really because every time I write a new adventure I want to explore a different idea.
Jon: Right.
Paul: I want to present a different setting. I get really, not antsy, but I get bored of one theme if I'm in it for too long. And I feel the same way about system, that I get bored of running just a high fantasy, western system for too long, and it's like, 'All right, change it up'. So, what I had done for a while is like, 'All right, I'm play 5E for a while and then switch it up a little Cypher System'. And now I pretty much am exclusively running Draw Steel and have yet to get tired of it. I'm sure Draw Steel is a very good game, but it's not the only game and there. Thank god it's about something.
Jon: Right, yeah.
Paul: It's about cinematic heroic fantasy and it's tactical. Hey, I might not always want to run a tactical game. No problem, go run one of these million different games. But you want some tactics? You want some explicitly designed combat? Hell yes, go run Draw Steel.
So yeah, I get that fatigue, for a lack of a better term, both in system and theme, and so that's probably really why, more than anything, my adventures are all over the place.
I guess I should say this too: If anyone runs one of my adventures, please let me know. And I think this is true of all designers, all we want is for people to run our stuff, but it's also so hard to get feedback or just someone being like, 'Yeah, I ran it. It was cool.' You're like, 'Awesome. Thank god, please.' Yes, wonderful, that's all I want to know. Or even you ran it and you didn't like it. Okay, cool, tell me why. Help me understand why it didn't work for you so I can do better next time, or I can go in and go back into that adventure, nothing is set in stone... Not to say that any input is going to make me reconsider everything, but I wanna know did it work, did it not work. Bottom line: If you played it, please let me know. Thanks so much.
Jon: An apropos running games, I guess, it looks like you're putting on something called Tales from the Tavern.
Paul: Yes! Thank you for bringing that up. This is something really, really near and dear to my heart. So, there's a story here and it has to do with system so I'll try my best to tell the story in a straightforward manner. So, it was Gen Con 2022. I had been working on my Cypher System adventure called Eltanin Gamma Draconis and I reached out to Monte Cook Games and said, 'Hey, can I run this in your space for Gen Con?' And they were like, 'Yeah, go for it. Sounds great.' They reviewed the adventure first and then were like, 'Yeah, cool you can come and run the adventure for us'. So I ran the adventure for them, had this incredible experience at Gen Con and was like, this is so cool. There's such a huge community of people supporting tabletop roleplaying games. There's got to be people like this back in my community.
And I live in the Monterey Peninsula region in California, which is not necessarily a nerd haven but I was just convinced that, number one, there would be a space that could be created here. Then there were some other goals, which I'll get to. But I approached a local brewery. They said, 'We've literally been waiting for someone to come and offer to run tabletop roleplaying games for us'. Yes! Awesome! So it's slowly started to gain momentum. It was just once a month at first and then it started to go two times a month and then it was three times a month. And that's been since November, December of 2022, once a month usually, sorry three times a month since then we run tabletop roleplaying game events.
Jon: Wow.
Paul: The goals of these events are... There's layers. One goal is to expose people to more games than just Dungeons & Dragons. It's certainly true, and very true here, that the tabletop roleplaying game that most people know is D&D and I want to shift the needle a little bit, expose people to different games. Second goal was to give dungeon masters, GMs, whatever, directors the opportunity to play.
Jon: Nice.
Paul: To give those forever DMs that Matt talked about in his recent video the opportunity. Hey bro, hey dude, whoever you are. Just come and take a seat. We got you. We'll run an adventure for you. Sit down, relax, just have some fun. And I know then after this adventure, after this game, you will then go back to running games for your friends, but at least for this one night you get to be a player.
And then third goal was to create community; to create a community in this space. I think it's something many individuals are starved for, certainly true for me, and so that was the final goal: Create a consistent community of individuals that can come together, play tabletop roleplaying games, have fun, try to tell stories. Yeah, we've been doing it. In fact, I have an event tonight where I'm running Draw Steel.
Jon: Wow. How big is the events now? Because I've looked at some pictures on your Instagram and it looks like you're a pretty sizeable bunch.
Paul: So, that's a good question. We're limited by space, because more people is not necessarily better. Number one, it's always a unique but lovely challenge of getting people who want to run games and I'm very grateful that I have a great cadre of GMs who are excited to run games every month at our different events, but it's then also trying to find the sweet spot of how many players at the table and then what are then also the acoustic limitations of the space. It's really important to me that people have a good time in terms of sonically, in terms of sound, that they can hear the person who is... If the GM is gonna whisper something I want them to be able to have a positive experience. And then also, we're lucky in that pretty much every event we get someone who's brand new to tabletop roleplaying games-
Jon: Wow.
Paul: ... and so we want to be able to shepherd and steward them and that means, of course, you're going to be explaining system. So, right now we've hit a sweet spot of three tables and at each table it's six players and one GM. Sometimes that fluctuates, but we never do more than three tables right now. That's really the max that we can possibly sustain. If there were bigger space, oh my gosh yes, let's have as many tables as we can possibly fit but, yeah.
Jon: Do you have any preferred games to run for new players that are completely fresh to TTRPGs?
Paul: That's a good question.
Jon: Or do you just, 'Here's fifth edition, let's go'.
Paul: Right. So for people that are brand new: Mothership.
Jon: Oh, nice.
Paul: Oh, yeah. Mothership is so much goddamn fun.
Jon: Yeah.
Paul: It's so easy to learn. It's so easy to start playing within five minutes. Matt has talked about this and love this idea, that if you're a casual gamer saying D20 doesn't mean anything to you.
Jon: Right.
Paul: What the heck does that even mean? Mothership does a great thing where they're like, 'This yellow thing, this is your Panic die,' which is the D20. And in Mothership, if you're rolling the D20 something bad has happened so they call it the Panic die. And so we're like, 'Okay, cool. Here's your yellow die. Here's your black dice. Whenever you do this...' The hardest thing to teach a person with Mothership is how to read a D100.
Jon: Yes.
Paul: That is the hardest thing in my experience, in my opinion for Mothership, is teaching a person who is uninitiated how to interpret the numbers of a D100. So Mothership is great. Cloud Empress, which is a hack of Mothership, deeply inspired by Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Studio Ghibli-
Jon: Okay.
Paul: It's so beautiful. Yeah, I highly recommend both of those. I'm getting ahead of myself; recommendations come at the end. These are not part of my planned recommendations, by the way, they're just emerging.
But I would say also it's really easy to learn fifth edition, but it then does depend on the GM I think. Fifth edition as a system, if you have a good and patient dungeon master, is easy to start playing. The key being just give your new player a pregen that does not cast both cantrips and leveled spells. Just be like, 'Cool, here's a monk dude or here's a rogue, and just sit down and start rolling'.
Jon: Interesting. When mentioning the difficulty of reading D100s, personally I also struggle with that, mostly because I haven't played any D100 systems in person. I played some Mothership, but that was on a VTT so I didn't have to parse the dice.
Paul: That's right, it did it all for you. That's wonderful.
Jon: But I just wanted to show you my D100 die.
Paul: Oh my god.
Jon: Which is horrible to roll, because it rolls forever because it's so circular, but it gives you... The 100 is actually just a hundred.
Paul: One of the fun things we do at every one of my Tales from the Tavern events is do a giveaway at the beginning of each session.
Jon: Oh, okay.
Paul: We have people bust out their D20s and they roll their D20s and if they rolled a natural one or a natural 20 they win. It might be that you have multiple people that roll a nat one or a nat 20 and then you all come together and do rollies, like a roll off, and then whoever gets the highest result wins. But sometimes people will be like, 'Hey, I don't play TTRPGs anymore. These dice are just collecting dust. Do you want them for giveaway?' It's like, yeah, cool. I'll take them.
Jon: Awesome.
Paul: The ones I cannot wait to giveaway are the single D100 tennis balls that roll for a million years, roll off the table, you need a dice tray with big side walls. I have strong feelings about the single D100 die.
Jon: I haven't run Mothership, but I have played in a Mothership... Well, we managed to get through well, one adventure and one... It was basically a one-shot if I remember correctly. And as a person that's not really played as a player that much, I've mostly run, and most of my experience as a player comes from Draw Steel, because I've played so-
Paul: Congratulations, that's wonderful.
Jon: And that's really fun. So, shout out to Cameron of Rise Heroes Rise-
Paul: Whoop whoop.
Jon: ... for letting me play in his games. He's basically my main director, because he's the only one I play with as a player. But back to Mothership, as a player it's also really interesting you mentioning that it's a nice RPG to start out with for new players, because you don't really roll that much and when you roll it's usually a bad thing so you actually try to avoid rolling for anything, because then you realise, 'Oh, no, no, no. This is gonna end badly.'
Paul: Yeah, that's right. It's so different from D&D where it's more rolls equal more fun.
Jon: Yeah.
Paul: And rolling in Mothership is super fun too, but it also, I think it teaches good lessons to players where it's like, your rolls have consequences. Your mortality is... Life is cheap in Mothership. If you get into a violent encounter, there's a really good chance you're dead, you're donezo immediately. Which is cool. Roll a new character, jump in. Which I think is a different lesson that fifth edition, at least in my experience, teaches, that it's like, 'No, we're meant to win. Therefore if we die it was a mistake.' As opposed to no, that's part of the narrative experience as well. Death is just as valuable, especially in a high stakes story.
I would say too though for Mothership, know what you're getting into because there are intense themes in Mothership.
Jon: Yes.
Paul: There's a lot of really intense, mature themes in Mothership and that's not everyone's cup of tea. So, at least know your players. People sign up for the table; they RSVP for the event and then they can sign up for the table. They get to read an adventure description and if we have any content warnings we make sure to put those right up front so there's no surprises, that people know what they're getting into. Yeah, Mothership is great.
I would say too we haven't run it, but Mausritter would be a good system to roll. But anything that's similar to Mausritter, which would also be Knave, right. Knave would be really good. Oh my gosh, what are all the others? The other systems that are D20 roll under. Into the Odd I think is another one. Anyway, there is a whole domain, bunch of these OSR adventure, systems rather, that are really easy to run. Oh, and I would also say any Blades in the Dark system. Anything that uses Powered by the Apocalypse as its core system is really easy to pick up and start playing within five to 10 minutes. Choose your character, bunch of pregens, and then you're in.
I will say for an individual who has never played a tabletop roleplaying game before and coming into Draw Steel, that is a steep learning curve.
Jon: Yeah, I can imagine.
Paul: Similarly with fifth edition too. I mean, learning action, bonus action, movement, cantrip spells, leveled spells, class features, et cetera, et cetera, and then all the different kinds of spell effects. Yeah, it's wild. Draw Steel is a lot to learn, but it's all serving the same goal. Clearly I watch a lot of Matt Colville's so I'm using language that he uses, because probably your listeners are also, we're all in the same boat, but he says all pulling in the same direction. So, all the rules and all the little nuanced components of Draw Steel all serve the same purpose. Whereas, at least in fifth edition, that is not necessarily true. You're learning things, but they don't have anything to do with this other thing. In Draw Steel it's all together, it all makes sense together. So, it's a heavy lift to learn, but I think it's a easier experience than 5E.
Jon: I think never underestimate the work to actually understand how spellcasting works in D&D. It seems easy if you're used to it-
Paul: That's right.
Jon: ... but as a new player it's so confusing.
Paul: Oh yeah. 100%. Absolutely. And then also figuring out dice mechanics. I remember one of the very first times I played I didn't know what character optimisation was like or anything so I played an Eldritch knight, because I wanted to be a gish. I wanted to have a sword and cast spells. Classic fantasy archetype. And for some reason I had a D8 and a plus two to my D8. I was probably wielding a rapier, probably had really low strength or something. And I was like, 'Oh, a D8 plus two, that actually means I roll a D10'.
Jon: Oh! Yeah.
Paul: And then also, no one was holding my hand through character creation so I didn't know any better, but then my DM saw me rolling a D10. They were like, 'Don't you have a rapier? Why are you rolling longsword, two-handed?' I was like, 'I have no idea what you're talking about'. They're like, 'You're cheating'. I was like, 'I don't know how to play the game. Like, what?' So, yeah, dice math and dice mechanics are really weird at first if you have no context.
Jon: Yeah.
Paul: I'm curious, because you said you've only gotten to play a few times and it was Rise Heroes Rise. Shout out Rise Heroes Rise. So good.
Jon: Yeah.
Paul: What ancestry, what class did you choose for your Draw Steel hero?
Jon: For some reason the time raiders have captured my heart.
Paul: Oh, yeah.
Jon: I always play time raiders.
Paul: Awesome.
Jon: I'm actually gonna play this Sunday, which will be the exception, because it's one of the pregens from the Delian Tomb adventures.
Paul: Oh, fantastic.
Jon: So I'm playing a polder then, mostly because of the class, but usually I play time raiders partly because I just think they look cool. There's something-
Paul: They're super cool.
Jon: It's Cyberpunk, 80s, punk in general look. I don't know, it really captured my imagination, I guess. And I also like the fact that they're not of this manifold on Orden so I can make them as familiar with Orden as I want to. Rise Heroes Rise run shorter, just basically short adventures, so I get to play a lot of different characters and some of them are really familiar with Orden, have maybe lived there their whole lives, and some other character might be recently landed in Orden and do not understand-
Paul: Oh, cool.
Jon: ... most of the stuff that's going on. Actually maybe my favourite example, which came spur of the moment when we played, was we were in a tavern and one of the other players could turn into a bear and they crawled over the bar and grabbed a jar of honey because they wanted to eat the honey. And me as a time raider-
Paul: Classic bear move.
Jon: Exactly. And me as a time raider, I'd never seen honey before. So, I'm like, 'What is this thing that you're eating? This very sticky liquid.' And they're like, 'What? You haven't tasted honey? It's literally the best thing you can eat.' And I'm like, 'Okay, I'll try some.' And then I eat some and, 'This tastes good'. And I ask a follow-up question: 'So this is made from people?' And they're like, 'Wait, what?' 'Because I've heard people referred to as honey and this is made from those people. Is it not?'
Paul: Yes, that's awesome. That's so good.
Jon: And I just, I don't know, I just find that so entertaining. At least, to myself.
Paul: I love that. No, I love time raiders too and that's why in my Draw Steel adventure, Tomb of the Crescent Moon, they are the number one villain as well; a faction of time raiders. So, it's time raider dense. That's cool.
Jon: Do you have any favourite monsters to use when you run Draw Steel, or any other RPG for that matter?
Paul: For Draw Steel so far I think my favourite enemies to run have been really all the different flavours of elves.
Jon: Interesting.
Paul: I love running evil elves. So, I run a bunch of adventures, I keep on 'adventures' but sessions that didn't necessarily go anywhere, with shadow elves as the villain. So cool. I love shadow elves. I really loved Dusk and so I was so excited that... I mean, number one, I really can't wait until, I think it's going to be called Crack the Sky.
Jon: Crack the Sun, yeah.
Paul: Crack the Sun, yeah. So I can't wait for that adventure. I really hope they make it. So, yeah, shadow elves are super cool and just immediately so sinister and evil and twisted and you can, kinda similar to your point about a time raider, you can roleplay them with having this on the surface level comedic, but really unique misunderstandings about the way the world works. Similarly with shadow elves, because they're from a separate manifold of Dusk. And so it's really fun to imagine how the world works for them in that manifold. But then also, I love running high elves and wode elves. I will say too, some of my greatest fun in recent memory was running Cthrion Uroniziir. The great onyx time ender dragon. I ran a level 20 one-shot. I got to run it multiple times and Cthrion Uroniziir was the baddy. And, man oh man, so cool, super fun.
Jon: You mentioning a level 20 adventurer-
Paul: Yes.
Jon: I watched a recent video of Mystic Arts... I assume you know of them.
Paul: No, please tell me more.
Jon: Mystic Arts on YouTube. They're a Icelandic couple-
Paul: Oh, cool.
Jon: ... that's had a blazing start to their YouTube channel from the past half a year, year or something. But he actually does have some pretty good videos that are... They're a bit Colvillian in that they're not about building characters or drama, they're more about here is how to run a better game, basically. But he has a different style and he has different points from Matt, so.
Paul: Good.
Jon: He mentioned running for level 20 characters and how he feels it's over dramatised how difficult that is. He's run a campaign from first level to twentieth and he said when he started a combat, the final combat, level 20, you just need to one shot someone, just bring them down to immediately die, because they've got the spells to revive them in combat. So you've just gotta hit them hard with everything you've got.
Paul: Yes.
Jon: Don't be afraid to kill players, or rather kill characters.
Paul: I mean, you know.
Jon: If that's what it takes.
Paul: That's right. It's level 20 we're talking about.
Jon: But he's like, don't hold anything back; use everything you've got.
Paul: Yeah, I agree.
Jon: Use the worst stuff you can find in the book, because they are so powerful. And he boils it down to it can actually be fun, you just need to... Don't pull your punches in any way.
Paul: I totally agree. Yeah, I mean, that was certainly my experience running level 20 that it's like, because level 20 characters are so complex it's like I'm never going to be able to learn everything they can do ahead of time or even during the session so I just have to trust in the design of the monster. I've only run level 20 games using Flee, Mortals or MCDM-designed foes-
Jon: Okay.
Paul: ... because I was like, I know... The MCDM guarantee is that this has gone through layers of testing and so when they say CR whatever it's probably accurate that this entity can hold their own amongst those level 20 players who, again to your point, can shape and alter reality on a whim.
Jon: Yeah.
Paul: So you've gotta bring the heat. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to that fourth echelon of play for Draw Steel. The highest echelon I played at, I think I did... Sorry, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven... Yeah, I played echelon three. I had a one-on-one session with a friend who played a level seven wode elf tactician and that was super fun, being able to throw some higher tier enemies. I used the rivals and then I also used the dragon... I'm getting the name wrong, but they're not dragonborn. Draconians, I used the draconians. So fun.
Jon: I played a level 10 Talent in one of Rise Heroes Rise games.
Paul: Oh, awesome.
Jon: It's just been published actually, the first episode-
Paul: Really?
Jon: ... where I play the Talent Bestemt and-
Paul: I'll have to watch that.
Jon: ... one of the features that you pick up, I think it's at level 10 or at least one of the higher levels, as a Talent is that first your range basically... First of all it extends to one mile.
Paul: Oh my god.
Jon: Everything within one mile is basically within range for you to talk telepathically to.
Paul: Woah.
Jon: But then, at level 10, it extends to the whole manifold you're on and all your ranged abilities have the same range so you can target anything. As long as you've seen it once, you can target it-
Paul: Okay.
Jon: ... anywhere on this manifold.
Paul: Incredible.
Jon: Which is... You're so powerful.
Paul: Wow.
Jon: When we're in combat I mostly just hid in a corner because whenever something spawned in, as long as I had line-of-sight at some point, they were always within range.
Paul: You're good.
Jon: And all my allies had, I have already been within range so I can always target them with healing or whatever they need, what kind of buffs they would need. Even if they hide, they're still within range for my abilities.
Paul: Wow. Level 10.
Jon: Yeah, it was insane.
Paul: Sounds awesome. I can't wait. I've only gotten to play Draw Steel. And I will say that I'm really glad that I have, because it gave me an appreciation for how many things, even at level one, a player is juggling - not just your three cost, your five cost, your triggered actions, your free triggered actions, your manoeuvres, how do you gain your heroic resources (is it D3 or is it static two?) and then how do you, not just at the start of your turn but then what's also unique feature where you gain your heroic resource in the midst of combat so you've got to pay attention. I've only played as first level. I can't wait to play more.
Jon: Playing as a player in Draw Steel is really, really fun so I'm really looking forward to being able to switch my regular game over to Draw Steel, from 5E. Just because it's so much fun to play. And one of my players, we haven't talked about it but I get the feeling that he really wants to play a necromancer. And he did play a 5E necromancer and you can spawn a couple of skeletons.
Paul: Right.
Jon: When I saw the playtest for the summoner and, I mean, then they did the write-up of the summoner on Patreon, and I'm like, this class alone is going to convert... That one player is just gonna want to play Draw Steel just because of the summoner.
Paul: That was an incredible write-up from Willy.
Jon: Yeah.
Paul: So going back to something that I said earlier about why I started writing adventures, where I was like I read Descent into Avernus and I was like, 'I think I can...' It might be ego and false confidence, but I think I can do better. Seeing that behind the scenes insight from Willy on the Patreon about the summoner... Number one, it was incredibly inspirational, but number two, it was like, oh my god I need to... Well, I mean, it inspired in me a ambition for game design that did not exist previously, because he rolled out this incredible set of ideas that were present behind the design of the summoner. That it wasn't just like, 'Yeah, you get some bad guys at the start of your turn,' but I think he used the analogy of a deck of cards in your hand, playing a deck of cards. It was so brilliant and I really had to confront my limitations as a designer, because I'd never thought about anything that way in terms of game design. It was like, okay, no, I am well within the boundaries of this system and I know how to operate within these walls, but that... This is such a silly thing that we say all the time, but it's like we're playing checkers, he's playing 4D chess, but it totally felt like that. It was like, woah! Willy is like on another level and so I was like, okay time to get working.
And then also to, I think just in support of the question that you asked at the very beginning, that trust of MCDM. It's like, 'Oh my god, they've got people like Willy working on this game? Incredible.' And he's mostly the dude who, or the person who's working on the monsters.
Jon: Yeah.
Paul: Incredible. Great. Here, take all of my money, please. Yes, yes, I want everything that you're talking about.
And so exciting that we get to see that insight. I think that has also been incredibly inspirational and being part of the Patreon and seeing the deep layers of insight and thoughtfulness that go into each layer of designing this game; that it wasn't just, 'Yes, we want to make a fun game'. And there's all these layers of thought and planning and process and careful execution and testing and conversation that are going to prove out why... On a surface level a person just sitting down and rolling dice, they don't see the vast landscape of experience that's gone into the design behind it. They're just like, 'This is cool. This is fun.' And that's okay, right. That doesn't cheapen, because in order to execute something that's so fun to play and not weird where you think you're signing up for fun but then it's like, 'Oh, it's a little bit of fun, but a lot of the time I'm kind of bored,' or something like that.
Yeah, it's so inspirational and I feel really lucky and galvanised to be part of the community at this moment in time, that we get to be part of this cohort, individuals that are being witness to this creation. I also want to say I think it's really important that we don't... There's a verb for what I'm afraid to do, but it's like I don't want to put Draw Steel too much on pillar.
Jon: Yeah.
Paul: Right? I don't want to elevate Draw Steel so much that it's like, 'This is the only game that will ever be necessary'.
Jon: Yeah.
Paul: No, Draw Steel is a game. It's a really good game, or it will be a really good game when it's fully out. It's already fun, it's already breaking barriers and molds. I think that's important for me to be like, 'Okay, hold on a second. The people working on this game are just people. They have the same desires that designers do, which is we want people to play our game and have fun.' And I think then at the same token it has the potential to really shift the conversation in the tabletop roleplaying game space. That like, yes, it is just a game and also it does have this vast opportunity to shift things in a interesting direction. At least, that's my hope.
Jon: I wasn't really aware of Willy more than I think I might have noticed his name in one of the Arcadias, but I wasn't really aware of Willy before he started at MCDM and I've been really impressed with his work as a designer. And also, I really appreciate how, just where his mind goes for some of the designs. It might be something I see as a flaw in myself, but I really appreciate how his mind just cobbles together these strange ideas that he has and he actually brings them together into something that really works.
Paul: Absolutely. Yeah, it's remarkable.
Jon: I was just reading his clown-
Paul: Oh, yeah.
Jon: ... supplement just the other day for the recent news episode and it's just, I don't know. It's so funny and fun and fantastic. I mean, I never thought I wanted to play something clown related in a TTRPG, but his designs, I don't know. It just looks fun.
Paul: Yeah, I'm delighted by the irreverence that exists. That it's like, hey, yeah, we're taking this job really seriously, but also we don't take ourselves seriously. And so therefore we have this freedom to be able to be like, 'Yup, we put the clown out'. Squeeze your nose for recoveries or something like that, I forgot exactly what the mechanic is, our saving throw.
Jon: That's exactly the mechanic.
Paul: Yeah, okay. Yeah, like, honk, honk, okay. Incredible. So ridiculous.
Jon: Yeah.
Paul: But I love that. Yeah, there's space for that in this game.
Jon: We are coming up on the end of the interview and I always ask my guests for something they want to recommend or bring the listener's attention to. So, what have you brought for us?
Paul: Thank you. Okay, I have brought three things.
Jon: Nice.
Paul: I brought three recommendations. And I will say, I brought three recommendations because I listened to the two most recent interviews and they also brought more than one thing. So, recommendation number one... And I suppose there's a caveat with all of these recommendations, is that number one you don't need to go consume or purchase or do these things, especially if you're incapable of you're doing so. So, only follow this recommendation if you've got the budget and the means and the ability to do so in a safe and positive manner.
So, number one, my recommendation is a video game called Hyper Light Drifter. It's by the developer Heart Machine and the reason why I'm recommending it, I mean number one it's just... We've been talking about having fun this episode, but it's a really fun game. The reason I'm recommending it though is for its visual storytelling. Courageous story telling, in the sense... Not that the topics they necessarily cover are courageous, but the manner in which they present the narrative of the game is in a courageous, non-hand-holding way, but also in a way that's not abusive to the player. If you're like, 'What does that mean, Paul?' Elden Ring, I would say the lore is abusive because if you want to learn... I love Elden Ring, but if you want to know what the heck is going on in the world, you need to subscribe to all these other YouTube channels and learn what the heck is going on.
Hyper Light Drifter presents, yes they have depth that's challenging to, the depths are challenging to plumb, but they present the story, the narrative arc in such a visually compelling way that's really remarkable and I highly recommend that. And as a tool for story tellers, for GMs, directors, et cetera, to play and be inspired by. That's recommendation number one.
Number two is a book: The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin. Ursula K. Le Guin is my number one, hands down, favourite author, for those... You might be familiar with the Wizard of Earthsea-
Jon: Ah, yes.
Paul: ... that she wrote. Also, another classic novel of hers is Left Hand of Darkness. The Tombs of Atuan is book two in the Earthsea Cycle and the reason why I'm recommending her is for storytellers in terms of beautiful ways to reveal character. I don't think this is a controversial statement, but I think generally speaking in the circles of tabletop roleplaying games, the author that we most refer to would be Tolkien. And to shake it up a little bit, Le Guin offers a uniquely holistic and contemporary approach in her writing that does not exist in Tolkien... Not to say that Tolkien is bad. Tolkien is Tolkien and I love him and I love his work, but I think in a way that's very useful for the games we run, reading fantasy authors aside from him can offer great insight and opportunities, things to steal basically like how do you reveal character. Highly recommend. Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin.
Okay. Jon, my final recommendation-
Jon: Yes.
Paul: ... and I hope this is also not controversial. Again, there is a caveat here, which is only do this is you can and if it's safe to do so, but I wanna encourage people playing games to be holistic in their approach and that means, people especially... I presume probably the individuals watching or listening to you are directors and so in the online space for directors, for DMs, for GMs there is a lot, probably an overabundance of material about improving our abilities that focus exclusively on the mind. Honing the intellect, developing more practiced and refined mental skills like here's how to run more exciting combat, here's a new house rule that will engage your players.
I wanna encourage directors, and really anybody in tabletop roleplaying games basically, to move your body. Take breaks in sessions. At a halfway point get up and move around. Encourage your players to do so. But I think also... And I only say this because this has been my experience and this might not work for everybody. Again there's a caveat that if you can move your body like you should, if you can go outside and it's safe to do so and it's positive experience, you should. That's what I'm saying.
Improving my somatic, physical body improved my ability to run games. Sly Flourish talks about this sometimes, where he's like, 'Just take a walk. If you're stuck, take a walk.' And so I wanna encourage that. I think that's really what this whole final recommendation is boiling down to is take a walk outside. Leave your phone, go out into the world and experience it without filter, without interruption and do so on a regular basis and I think there... Don't do it just because they are rewards. There are rewards, but I think a more holistic approach to improving ourselves will result in better stories that we can tell at the table with our friends, whether it's virtual or in person.
Jon: Wow. Almost... Powerful stuff, basically.
Paul: That's my soap box.
Jon: Thank you so much, Paul, for coming on. It's been a pleasure to have you here.
Paul: It was my pleasure. Thank you so much, Jon. This a great interview, great questions.
Jon: Great answers. And great recommendations.
Paul: Thank you.
Outro
Again. Thank you so much Paul for coming on. I really enjoyed his insight into getting new people into the hobby. I, as probably many of you, want to share this wonderful hobby with as many as possible, and introducing them through using a simpler system might be what hooks them.
I want to thank Ananam for submitting questions for Paul. Paying patrons can submit question for upcoming guests. Link to join the Patreon can be found in the episode description.
If you want to be featured on Goblin Points, or know of someone else who should be, leave a comment on YouTube or Spotify, or send me an e-mail on [email protected].
Links to the MCDM Discord server, the subreddits for MCDM and Draw Steel, the YouTube channels of Matt and MCDM, the complete link section, and this script is in the show notes. It's also on goblinpoints.com.
Next episode is on the 5th. That'll be the roundup episode with everything that's happened in May. See you next time. Snakkes.