Listen to this episode here.
Hello from the between-season malaise! Today I'm joined by Aaron King, back again, who interviews me about my new zine Dice Forager: a 50 page collection of games, manifestos, and mini written-out episodes of Dice Exploder. We talk about how setting goals is great and people should do it for, what counts as a manifesto, and how making art meant just for your friends can be just as if not more rewarding than for any other reason.
Preorder Dice Forager now! (if you live in the US, otherwise DM me and maybe we can work something out)
Further Reading:
Dice Exploder blog: Hospitality, Safety, and Calibration
Traffic Lights are Communication Tools by Meguey Baker
World Ending Game by Everest Pipkin
Your public library
Socials
Aaron King on itch and the RTFM podcast.
The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com
Our logo was designed by sporgory, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.
Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!
Transcript
Aaron: Hello and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Every week we take a game rule and refract it seven times seven times through the diamond of the azure bear. I'm Aaron King, you just heard Walter, my dog, and my co host today is Sam Dunwald, host of the Dice Exploder podcast and author designer of the new book Dice Forager, a heady collection of manifestos and mini games.
Sam's here to talk about my favorite RPG rule, which is make cool RPG stuff you Sam, tell us about Dice Forager.
Sam: Thanks for having me, Aaron. First of all it's, it's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, I made a, I made a little zine. I made a zine. It's a little too big to be saddle stitched, so I don't know if it still counts as a zine or not but we don't care about semantics on Dice Exploder,
Aaron: I don't know. I know some of your guests and some of your listeners do care about semantics.
Sam: Listen, there are a lot of people in the world who care about semantics, and uh, we're gonna call this thing a zine. It has, inside of it, four of the games that I have made since, I think the earliest in here is 2021. No, actually, this thing contains the first RPG I ever made. Which was a For the Queen hack that I've mentioned in passing on the show a couple of times back in like 2019 even. I made it really soon after I played For the Queen for the first time.
Anyway, it's got those, it's got a bunch of like designer commentary, a couple essays and stuff. We can talk about all that stuff too. But it's here, you can pre order it now, that's why we're doing this thing, so that I can tell people about it and then maybe you'll pre order it. But even if you don't that's fine. I'm going to order some of them and then hand them out to my friends. That's kind of the sentiment I'm coming into this with.
Aaron: What's the uh, pre order website?
Sam: So if you go to diceexploder. com, there's a button that says Zine pre order at the top.
Aaron: Easy enough.
I am excited because it starts with manifestos. Well, it doesn't start with manifestos. It starts with agenda principles and moves that the reader can make, which is kind of a manifesto.
Sam: I would call it a joke, more than anything else.
Aaron: I mean, you would call it a joke, but maybe that's to avoid the seriousness of the content.
A request to the readers.
Sam: like, the very first thing in this is a really, really heartfelt introduction from my partner which I felt mildly embarrassed to put into the book, but how could I not after I promised them that I would do so?
But after that, yeah, these agendas principles, and moves, like, there's this conversation that happens sometimes about, like, is reading a novel a game? Because, it's like the end point to a conversation about whether reading games is an act of play. And we're quickly getting into semantic territory that I as previously discussed don't really care for but I do think, you know, it is fun when you read a game to imagine what the story you might tell by playing that game is. And taking that to its logical extreme and committing to the bit is something that I really enjoy. And I thought it would be funny to throw in agendas, principles, and moves to make it clear what school of design I am coming from and also what I think of that conversation.
Aaron: Yeah. Whenever someone is like, I like when an RPG starts with what is an RPG, someone will come out and say like, no novel has a what is a novel section at the beginning? And it's like, well, novels are taught in school. We have to know what a novel is. One. But two, like. Sometimes an intro in a novel is nice, especially if it is not from your time period or not from where you are and lending some context to that can help.
And I think that is similar to what this is. I mean, you know, it is a joke, but it's good. It's truth.
Sam: I am becoming increasingly fanatical let's say about the benefits of stating your goals or even just understanding your goals before you do anything. Like anything that feels higher than the barest minimum of stakes, I feel like, really being clear about, like, what your goal is, what you want out of the interaction, like, what you're trying to do is so helpful. It's just so good at making sure you actually maybe get that thing. And then, you know, engage in the practice of, like, self reflection at the same time, which I find really useful to do.
Aaron: I know you've talked about this specifically. in like, why are we having this discussion? Not in an aggressive way. We shouldn't be having this discussion, but like, are we chatting for fun? Then I'm going to say a different thing than if we are trying to pass on information or if we are, if someone is trying to prove a point. Like if one person's trying to prove a point and someone else is trying to catch up, some people might go away from that conversation less happy than if everyone's on the same page.
do we jump into manifestos?
Sam: Yeah, let's do manifestos.
Aaron: manifestos and the agendas and principles are, like, all pretty short, and so I don't want to spoil them, you know?
Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Aaron: What, what drives you to write a manifesto?
Sam: Well some people I think don't like the idea of manifestos because I think that they create a lot of arguments. I think some people are writing manifestos to be like, this is the way the world works and everyone else is wrong. And I don't really like that kind of thing. Actually the first manifesto in this book, we'll spoil one of the four manifestos here, it's called, What's a Manifesto? A Manifesto. And it reads, A good manifesto isn't hard and fast rules, it's strong but loosely held beliefs spoken clearly and with confidence.
And that's what I like. Like, I want more people to explain themselves and their goals. Like, I want to know the context around what people are making. Like, I really, sometimes, you know, you watch a David Lynch movie, and then you ask David Lynch afterwards what the deal was, and he's like, No, I'm not going to elaborate on that. Right. Like there's that famous YouTube clip. And I think I respect the hell out of that. And that's great. And some are, I think really benefits from that.
But also like, when I go to an art museum, I love that art so much more after I've read the plaque. Like I want to know the context that the art exists in. I want to know why the artist was doing what they're doing. I don't really believe in death of the author. Like I think if you want to kill the author and go off and like do your own interpretation of some art, that's totally valid.
But I think that art means things and artists mean things when they make the art. And like, I want to know what that stuff is. Like, I just want to know what people are thinking when they make this stuff. And by this stuff, I mean anything. And so I like the idea of manifestos. I like the idea of people starting their work with their goals. And that's why I included a bunch of manifestos.
Aaron: Good answer, as they say in Family Feud.
Sam: Yeah.
Aaron: Yeah, I, there's absolutely a place for mysteries, like you were saying. And I do love stumbling upon some weird thing. You know, when I was a child, pre streaming to like find a movie 10 minutes into it on some weird channel late at night and have no way to hit like, what's this movie, please show me and just kind of be swept along in it is a really cool feeling, but it's not always a feeling that I'm prepared for and it's not always a feeling that I want to engage with. And sometimes I do want something right up front that tells me if this is gonna be my jam or not.
Sam: Yeah. And especially, you know, I laid out my goals for this thing in those agendas, right? Like, I'm not trying to make a David Lynch here, I'm not trying to like make some opaque thing for you to have an uh, emotional reaction to. Like this particular zine is being made with the intention of being an extension of this podcast, right? Like I want to make a document that is some sharing of my work with people, but also made in the spirit of let's take this stuff, let's break it down, let's analyze it. Like I love the idea of being able to take this thing and hand it to an early designer and be like, hey, I've sort of like given you the beginning of a treasure map to like do some analysis here and like learning how I put these pieces together and how this stuff works.
But like, I've given you a push and now you can swing for yourself, right? Like you can get out there and go do the rest of the journey to get to the treasure.
Aaron: Or you can disagree and write a response, like, that is such an active part of so many artforms and I think it's a little harder to do in RPGs, or less common. I mean, I know that people are often driven by, like, I hate Dungeons and Dragons, I can do better. But you don't see it as much.
Well, I don't know. I mean, you see a lot of kind of response games that are like, this new system excited me. I want to do something with it.
Sam: yeah, I was about to say I completely disagree, right? Like what is the OSR in all modern elf games if not exactly that thing as a response to D& D, right? And like many, many PBTA games feel like, Oh, I like this thing, but I want to do it my way. And that's a whole conversation that's happening all the time.
Aaron: Diss tracks. RPGs as diss tracks.
Sam: Totally, yeah, I do think there are versions of that kind of conversation that are less common in RPG making, and it might be more fun if they were more common. I, I could go for RPG diss tracks more often, but uh,
Aaron: As someone who has written at least two games out of spite, I get it. I support it.
There is an essay in here as well, before the games. This essay particularly feels like a response to some discussions that I've seen in the Dice Exploder Discord, a collection of thoughts around a topic that has come up multiple times that people are pretty passionate about from all sides.
Do you want to tell us what it's about, how this
came about?
Sam: Yeah.
So this is an essay called Hospitality, Safety, and Calibration, and I wrote it right after a conversation about all those things in the Discord, as you noticed.
I have been thinking for over a year now that I am not against the sort of current culture of safety tools and safety as a conversation in the story game, RPG world that we run in, like where we're at, but I'm not satisfied by where we're at. Like, I think there are ways in which where we're at could be improved substantially.
And I've thought for a long time about, like, doing an episode of Dice Exploder about the X card, and maybe I'll still even do that, but I also know that there's a lot of really charged conversation to be had there, and I don't want to have that conversation in like short form, you know? I've been unclear how much I want to have that conversation in public because I really don't want to be misconstrued as saying that like safety tools are bad or some bullshit like that, right? Like that is, that is not what I believe.
But I, I think that there is a really nuanced discussion that I think we are just starting to maybe open the door on, on like how we can do safety, or as I prefer, communication tools, which is how Meguey Baker puts it in this piece on the Lumply Games blog called Traffic Lights are Communication Tools, that was very influential to me, or Calibration tools was the term I learned recently from Ellen in the discord. I like those terms better. I like the framing of the conversation around like hospitality more than safety. You know, something that I think basically everyone acknowledges is that no tool can fundamentally keep everyone safe.
And yeah, I just like sort of a reframing to bring it back to this theme of goals around what these tools are for, and I wrote an essay about it.
Aaron: It's a good one. And it is, you know, it reminds me of political arguments where it's like, well, I'm not a fan of Joe Biden either, but it's not because I'm a Republican it's because, you know, it's because he's more blah, blah, blah. But yeah, it is hard to quickly communicate that idea and not have it be something that is misconstruable.
And so. I think an essay, a manifesto, is a better place to do it, where you
Sam: yeah,
Aaron: put out the sort of, I'm not saying this, I'm not saying this, I'm drawing on these other histories of other people having similar ideas, and I'm being influenced by them all, and
Sam: And honestly, now that I've said like this much kind of vaguely about this publicly here, I'm gonna just need to publish this essay on the Dice Exploder blog. So that link will be in the show notes. You can go read the essay. Um, I don't want to sort of like be cagey about this either, you know?
Aaron: We're gonna get cancelled.
Sam: yeah, I don't wanna I don't wanna do anything like that.
The other reason this essay is here, actually, is that I didn't want to put a whole section on hospitality at the start of all four of the games in this book. I figured it would be easier to just do that once, and then I realized I had a lot to say about that, and so I just write a whole essay about it and put it up front.
Aaron: Which brings us to the games. Excellent. Excellent segue. Four games, right?
Sam: Well, it depends on how you count them, but there are four that are sort of sectioned off as their own
Aaron: Right. They are not long
games.
Sam: Yeah, the shortest I think is like four pages. The longest is more like 10 or 12.
Aaron: and there's,, I mean, there's everything in here. There's a For the Queen hack. There's a LARP. There's a kind of semi traditional RPG, but also one that breaks up GM responsibilities in a really interesting way. You know, they all feel explicitly like formalist not experimental necessarily, but just like, here is one thing that I want to break or twist and reassemble whether that is the GM responsibilities or scene setting, resolution, in space fam.
Do you feel like there's something that ties them all together?
Sam: I think that that's a really astute observation about they're all small and kind of about one thing. Because That's my taste in games. Like, that's the kind of game that I like to play. I like to play It's Dominion, but we changed this one thing. Or it's like, like Coup is one of my favorite board games where there's just one thing going on in that game. There's one mechanic in the barest minimum to sort of support it and built out around it. So you can like, really explore that one thing and go really deep on that one thing before you move on to something else or add another thing on top of it. There's a reason that like, that's the format of Dice Explorer as a podcast, right? Like,
So I think that's a really astute common through line between the games. But when I was picking what games I wanted to put in this, I did sort of pick for length, in part. I didn't put in my games that are, like, wholly original. I feel like I've done two games now, neither of which is really published at the moment, which are fundamentally built on their own bones. And they're both a little bit bigger. Neither of them would've fit here. Like I would've had to publish both of them, I'm working on publishing both of them, like as their own things, so just for space considerations, I think they would not have fit in here.
But I also think that there's something different about them, that they, they feel of a different piece than this in part because of that, they are originals instead of twisting one way on a formula.
Aaron: And then the book ends. There is another set of manifestos disguised as games disguised as Dice Exploder episodes written down. The tweak one thing section is what I'm talking about. It's really good. I love SillyCairn.
Sam: Thanks.
Aaron: I also love roll under systems though, so we're enemies now.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know that I actually want to play Silly Cairn. That's not true. I'd probably do want to play. So, Silly Cairn. So people know what we're talking about. Cairn is an elf game and in the game you have three stats, strength, dexterity, and charisma. And when you need to make a saving throw kind of thing, when you need to roll dice, the DM picks a stat for you, and you try to roll under the stat. And if you roll under the stat, you succeed, and you do the thing.
And it's really simple, it's great because you don't have to do any math, right? You just compare the number on the die to the number on the stat, and like, a high strength is good.
But the problem with this is that many people I know, especially like, when I've tried to use Cairn as a way to get D& D people to like, play something a little more simple, is they're like, well, I want the number on the die to be high. The high number good, high number good on die. That's just how it's supposed to be.
And I like basically everything else about Cairn. I just don't like low number on die. So I was like, we should do this thing where you flip the stats. So the stats are low, but then you get high numbers on dice, and you rename the stats to be bad things. Specifically, feeble, clumsy, and spineless. And then you're trying to overcome your feeble, you know?
You're trying to not be clumsy, and roll above it, and overcome your flaws. And, that's Silly Karen. What were we talking about?
Aaron: SillyCairn
Sam: Yeah.
Aaron: I unfortunately, when I have nothing to do, I read the RPG subreddit. And so I am familiar with people saying like, I love everything about this game, except I, you have to roll under. So I want to play an entirely different game. And it's tough for me to see that. Cause I always just want to go just get over it. Just, you know, it's like going to a restaurant and be like this food is weird. I'd, the meat goes on the bread? I don't think so. And it's like, just try it. Just eat a sandwich is fine.
But also if you can take that dislike and make something like Silly Cairn, I'm back on your side. You've drawn me back over, like use it to be productive. And you know. It's kind of poking fun at yourself and your extremely niche preferences uh, but it also, like, gives It's a good idea, right? Like, we've seen a number of games lately that are like, what if a game was all saving throws? Here's what a saving throw actually means.
Here's what it means in regards to a character's competencies and like a GM's responsibilities to describe dangers. And this contributes to that discussion in a really silly way.
Sam: Yeah. I love it as an example of just how deep and considerate you can go on the, like, tiniest, most bullshit kind of decisions in your game.
And in the one hand, stats and, like, rolling under stats is sort of, like, the heart, mechanically, of how Cairn works. But also, like, Cairn itself fundamentally doesn't give a shit about rolling dice. Like, like, Cairn is, like, I want the minimum amount of rules and, like, framework for games so that you can go just free form play your way through fantasy modules. And that's really what I want to be doing, right? Like, I just want to get out there and start playing free form through fantasy modules. That's fun.
And I think in that context, like I'm kind of on your side of just like, just get over it. Like, like if you don't like the die roll, that's actually a good thing because like, who cares about rolling dice? Like, let's go like talk to some people instead.
But I also think a lot about one of the best episodes of Dice Exploder I think is the one I did with Mikey Hamm about exploding dice and how much he was like yeah, but like, sometimes you just want to roll dice because that's cool. And like, I respect it, you know? I respect it. Sometimes that's what you want to do. Rolling dice is cool. High number big. Like, it's fun to make the number go big. It's fun to roll the dice around. They're cool.
And I don't know. I think it's just all of that's true at the same time, right? This is why we have a million different elf games that are all actually kind of basically the same game. It's because everyone likes to do their thing a little bit differently, and that's fine.
Aaron: The final page is contains two ways that the world can end.
I don't want to talk about the last one because I want it to be the secret that people buy the book and read about. But the first one, world ending game, not to be confused with world ending game, isn't that another game?
Right?
Sam: Yes. World Ending Game by Everest Pipkin is a great game that is meant to be played at the end of a campaign in any other RPG rule system. So you sort of like get to the end of your campaign, you throw out whatever rules you're using, and then you play World Ending Game to kind of wrap everything up it's a very cool game. I've not gotten the chance to play it, but I would really love to one day. And you know, we'll see how that goes.
Aaron: Yeah. The hard part is you have to play a campaign beforehand.
Your world ending game is basically two pair, one paragraph which is, I mean, can we reveal it?
Sam: Yeah, yeah, I've published this thing. I published this for the Dice Exploder Demake Game Jam, where I was like, what if you took any game and then did this weird little thing to it?
Aaron: and the weird little thing is, you give one of the characters a bomb that can destroy the world.
Sam: Yeah,
Aaron: It takes six seconds to arm after which it can be detonated with the simple press of a button. And that's it.
I mean, I love it. Again, like, in the game. I love it on its own, absolutely, but in the broader conversation of what if I, what if the characters are overpowered? What if I give them the wrong magic item and it ruins the campaign? And it's like, no, look, this is the coolest thing. This is a great thing to give the drama, the stakes. It raises questions. Everyone wants it, maybe no one wants it, but must keep it so that no one else gets it. I love giving someone a bomb. I love the deck of many things. Raise those stakes.
Sam: I love how you interpreted all of that from the game, because I intentionally didn't put any of that into the text, even though that is absolutely exactly what I'm trying to say. But I think the other thing I'm trying to say with World Ending Game is this'll fuck up any game. Like, the whole game does then become about this, and like, whatever the hell else you are doing, doesn't matter anymore.
That's, maybe that's a pro, right? It does raise the stakes, like, it is cool. Like, this is a whole ass game in and of itself, like, this is a LARP in one Item description. But also maybe you just wanted to play For the Queen, you know, like maybe, maybe you just wanted to play Stewpot, you know,
Aaron: And the way, like, when you said For the Queen, I think it would be great to have this in For the Queen.
Sam: Actually did get the idea for this because someone did this in a game before the Queen that I was playing.
Aaron: That's good. But then when you said Stewpot, I was like, no, my tavern, don't, don't put a bomb in my tavern. And I immediately got really sad and I was like, keep this far away from my Stewpot game. And I appreciate those reactions that you gave me.
I feel like we need to talk about the cover.
Sam: Yeah.
Aaron: the cover. In the background, a building, a fence, barbed wire, not important. Big California trees, though, that's important, and a brightly flowering bush. And what's this in front of this beautiful greenery? It seems to be a wicked little man, in a bowtie, with some sort of smile like he's about to ruin my day, and clutched to the torso are four overly large, Brightly colored dice. A foot is raised. The gremlin takes a step toward me. I don't know what is coming next.
Sam: Yeah.
Aaron: Did you mean it to feel sinister?
Sam: Yeah
Aaron: And I know, I know the cover that you're, that this is in homage to
Sam: Yeah,
Aaron: also has a very sinister feeling.
Sam: yeah
Aaron: What is that book called?
Sam: All that the rain promises and more by David Arora, who wrote this, what is considered to be one of the great guides to mushroom foraging, in the 90s. And I was trying to figure out what to do for the cover of this book, and our friend Kali Lawrie of Gem Room Games suggested that as a cover.
And that cover is just sort of deranged on its own, right? It's this guy in a suit with a tuba holding a bunch of mushrooms.
Aaron: It is again, just as an ominous, Brass player clutching a giant mushroom with a trombone hanging off the arm, but looking like the shirt has ruffles, like looking like he just stepped out of an orchestral performance.
I like it and I don't like it.
Sam: Yeah. I wanted to create do you know that meme that's like a mom texting her son. That's like, Hey, your little four year old brother just said that he was about to go goblin mode. Do you know what that means? The, the child replies, run. And mom's like, I'm sorry? Run.
That was the energy that I wanted to bring to this cover. And I think I I think I succeeded. Um, Yeah, I did have to buy those foam dice. We, we had a budget for this photo shoot. Um, It was like 30 bucks or something, but I think it was worth it. I really think this is one of the great all time photographs of me.
Aaron: I thought you were just gonna say in general.
Sam: the suit obviously is there because of the, all that the rain promises and more cover, but it's specifically this suit and bow tie and outfit that I was wearing in the first Dice Explorer Kickstarter video. And there's a gif from that that I sometimes share of me just throwing dice at the camera after saying Dice exploder that I think is also up there in terms of greatest images of me ever. I have this like shocked wide eyed, like, overcommitted look on my face for a minute, and then I just break down laughing and the gif cuts off.
And I wanted to make a companion piece to that, you know, and I, I really feel like I succeeded with wild, wild success here. My partner has requested that I print this photo out and frame it so we can just kind of keep it on the, on the mantle. We have no other photos of any, like, human beings in our house, But yeah, just me looking like this is soon going to join the bookcase, I think.
Aaron: if you back this, if you pre order it, I hear there's a nude version as well.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, there's rumors of that.
Aaron: Only Sams. Anything else? I mean, I think I didn't, I don't know if I've said it yet. I don't think I have, but like, this is a good zine. And people should go and order it and they should get inspired by it and angry at it, and make their own version, and a response zine.
Sam: I would love that. I would love to inspire people to make their own zines. Because that rules. I want to throw out there that like, if you can't afford this thing, but you want a copy for whatever reason, just like DM me and we'll work something out. If you don't have PayPal, you Venmo me or we can meet up in person and trade zines. That's a good, good way to do it.
Aaron's going to get a copy of this for free. Cause they gave me. A bunch of their zines. And some might say that the whole reason I'm making this is because I'm so Minnesotan I felt like I couldn't just accept that as a gift, that I might need to make something to repay Aaron.
So yeah, we'll get it to you. Oh, it is only available in the US, we should be clear about that, because shipping prices are what they are. But even if you live outside the US. You just hit me up, we'll work it out. PDFs will be available eventually, once I actually get the physical copies sent out to people. And you can look for that also.
Aaron: Anything else? We want to call it there?
Sam: Wait, so, one of the other reasons I wanted to make this thing in the first place is because a few months ago you did you hosted bootleg fest, Aaron, which was a thing in which you made a bunch of zines and then just didn't do a kickstarter or anything. You just kind of took pre orders and then sent them to people and that was very inspiring to me. And I would love to hear you talk about that a little bit.
Aaron: Yeah. Bootleg Fest was three games, each one had one to four zines involved and they were all pretty explicit ripoffs. Like one was a Dune game that used Dune words that I'm sure are copyrighted so I didn't want to run a Kickstarter partially because I know that puts it in front of the eyes of strangers, and the older I get, the less interested I am in having strangers discover my games kind of without knowing the context of me. At least a little bit.
And so I didn't want to do a Kickstarter and I didn't want to make a lot of money. I just wanted to have some print copies of these zines and if anyone else wanted some print copies, they could get some too. And so yeah, I just did a pre order on Shopify. I set up a Shopify site used all that money to print stuff and then sent them out and it was pretty good.
I also printed some extras and those are all gone now too.
So I feel like the response was good. There are PDFs around still if people want them, but I don't know, I'm not trying to make a living as a game designer, and I'm not trying to go viral.
Sam: Yeah. I think that's healthy.
Aaron: I just want to make my weird little things.
And, like, I used to have a print shop here in Minneapolis that burned down during the uprising, and, like, it was really nice to just be able to go in there and say, I want 10 copies. I want 20 copies. And it wasn't that expensive and I didn't have to pay shipping and I can just take them to a zine fest.
And that's like, no longer possible. Things are so much more expensive. So I did have to do a little bit of a pre order, but it went well. And yeah, I think if you just want to make a thing, you, the broader you, whoever is listening. You just want to have some for yourself and some friends, or to take to a zinefest or a local bookshop or whatever, you don't have to do a kickstarter. Kickstarters are really stressful, just crowdfunding in general, like having to post every day and get pull quotes from people slightly more famous than you uh, etc,
Sam: have to answer to strangers who want to know where their thing is, as opposed to, like, this was the thing that was really inspiring to me about Bootleg Fest from you, was like, your goal was not gain credibility. Your goal was like share your art with your friends. And I think just that reframing, like,
For years, I've, like, wanted to do a Kickstarter, right? Like, I still want to, like, do a crowdfunding campaign for this game about witches that I have, that you can currently get on the Bully Pulpit Patreon, or, like, the John Witt game that I talk about every once in a while in the discord and on here, and I will at some point do those things, and I, like, they're good games, I think they're really good games, I think people will like, would like them.
But like, logistics surrounding a Kickstarter are so difficult and emotionally taxing, and learning on the fly all the marketing and the printing and the dealing with community, is something that has never felt sustainable to me. And so this idea of like, Oh, what if the goal for this project was like, share some art with some friends and also like, learn how you work with a printer? That is so much more manageable than a whole ass fucking Kickstarter or Backer Kit right?
I have so much happier with this of like, I just put together the thing and then I'm gonna like, print somewhere between 50 and 100 copies and then give them away to my friends. Like, that's, ah, god, it just, I feel my body un tensing just saying that out loud.
Aaron: Yeah. And you know, hopefully some of those just find their way to a bus seat or, you know, like that's always my dream, right? Is like, I don't want to get reviewed on Rascal. I like Rascal. I'm glad it's there. I don't want to have a review there. I don't want to like email a press kit to someone. I want someone to find my thing in a little free library after my friend has read it and is moving and needs to get rid of stuff or whatever. Like that feels better to me.
That's the level I'm comfortable at. It's highly recommended. If anyone has questions about doing that kind of thing both of us are in the Dice Exploder discord. I would be happy to answer questions. It's not hard. Like it's, you know, there are some steps that take some time, but highly encouraged if you want to make a weird little thing,
Sam: Yeah. Come on down. Share your weird little thing. Trade it for mine.
Aaron: do it. Yeah. Yeah. Sam, thank you for being here on your podcast Dice Explode. I, I'm thankful every time you're on an episode of Dice Exploder.
Sam: Aw, that's so nice. Thanks for having me Aaron
Aaron: Come to the Discord. Go to dice explode.com.
Sam: Hit that pre-order. button.
Aaron: Bye .Bye .
Sam: Thanks again to cohost for being here
Our logo is designed by Sporgory. Our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Gray. And thanks to you for listening.