0:00

Welcome to Cannon Fodder, a

0:02

behind the scenes look at the Glass Cannon Network. What

0:33

is going on everybody? Welcome back to Cannon

0:35

Fodder. It is Wednesday, September 11, 2024. And

0:39

I'm your old pal Joey O'Brien. It

0:42

looks like it appears as if

0:44

I'm here solo today. Unfortunately, I'm

0:46

without my worst half, Mr. Troy

0:48

LaValle, who is unavailable this

0:51

week. But man, oh man, do I have

0:53

a fantastic guest to join me on the

0:55

FOD today. I am so excited to spend

0:58

this FOD digging into a new project. Something

1:01

that has blown our minds

1:03

that we are in the midst of playing

1:05

right now every single Wednesday night on YouTube.

1:08

We are releasing an episode of our

1:10

playthrough of Foundry VTT's Ember.

1:14

And so joining me today on the FOD

1:16

to dig into this project and talk all

1:18

about the nitty gritty of it that we

1:20

really couldn't get into too much in the

1:22

actual play itself is the creator of

1:24

Foundry VTT. Mr.

1:27

Andrew Clayton. Andrew is with us today.

1:29

Hey, buddy. Welcome. Hello. Hello. Awesome. Thank

1:31

you so much for coming on, man. I

1:34

really appreciate it. You are in the

1:36

midst of madness right now as you

1:39

are mid Kickstarter. Any creator mid Kickstarter

1:41

I can only imagine is in an

1:43

absolute whirlwind at all times. And I

1:45

will, of course, be asking you about

1:47

the details of that as we get

1:49

into this. But I appreciate you

1:51

taking time out of your day to come and talk to me for a

1:53

little bit. Absolutely. Yeah, I was

1:55

happy to get your email and I was really hoping

1:57

we'd get a chance to do something like this. So

1:59

I'm. I'm psyched to get a

2:01

chance to talk a little bit more behind the

2:04

screen or backstage about how

2:07

Ember's getting created and what we're up to.

2:10

Obviously what folks are seeing on the

2:12

live play is from the player perspective

2:14

and it's definitely the view of the

2:16

play at the table, but there's a

2:18

whole lot more going on behind the

2:21

scenes in terms of what goes into that. So yeah,

2:23

it's a good chance to- And

2:25

that is what the fodder is for. You

2:27

have explained very well the heart and soul

2:30

of this show. It's all about digging into

2:32

the behind the scenes stuff, not

2:34

only from the player's perspective and what they

2:36

were thinking when they did certain things, but

2:38

also from the GM perspective for any game.

2:40

It's about learning by

2:43

others mistakes, right? Like what worked well,

2:45

what didn't work well, how can our

2:47

games get better? How can we be

2:49

better? All of that is

2:51

what builds and makes the fod what it

2:53

is. And so I appreciate you setting it

2:55

up like that. That's perfect. I

2:57

do want to disclaim that unfortunately for

3:00

this particular fod with Troy, it's a

3:02

complete coincidence that he happens to be

3:04

out again. He wasn't supposed to be,

3:06

but something came up very, very last

3:08

minute. And so we

3:10

have not talked about the GCP in a couple of weeks. We

3:12

are going to get back to it, fear not. But

3:15

today we are going to dedicate a little time to

3:17

learning about a very exciting new product,

3:20

but that makes it sound, I don't

3:22

know, not as sexy as I wanted

3:24

to. It's not a product. It's an

3:26

experience, right? It is an experience in

3:29

the gaming world that I'm

3:31

very, very excited about that I want

3:33

to talk about that I want to

3:35

bring to the table. And so please

3:37

let me disclaim up front to anybody

3:39

that's sort of wondering like, is this

3:41

episode of fodder sponsored by Foundry VTT?

3:43

It's like, no, it is not. This

3:45

is not an ad for Ember, even

3:47

though it's going to seem like that

3:49

at times. This is truly,

3:51

Troy couldn't make it. And I really

3:53

wanted to bring Andrew on because playing

3:56

Ember, which we have already recorded the episodes that

3:58

are about to air over the the next few

4:00

weeks has been a fascinating

4:02

experience for me as a gamer. And I would

4:04

love to dig into some of the background of

4:07

how this idea came to be and what exactly

4:09

it is. And of course, if you listener or

4:11

viewer are interested in checking it out, the project

4:13

is being kickstarted right now. You can get it

4:16

on the ground floor. But

4:18

again, this is not meant to be an

4:20

ad. This is really meant to open up

4:22

a discussion about the deeper behind

4:24

the scenes things that made Ember come

4:26

to light. So let me start

4:28

off just by getting everybody familiar.

4:31

We'll leave Ember for a second. Get everybody

4:33

familiar with who you are, Andrew,

4:35

as a gamer, as an entrepreneur

4:38

who created the Foundry Virtual Tabletop,

4:40

which we use on the GCP. I'd

4:43

like to first get a sense of, you

4:46

know, it's funny. You said behind the

4:48

scenes off camera

4:50

that you were nervous about hosting

4:52

the show, the Ember show,

4:54

because you're looking around, you're in the studio. Yeah,

4:57

the lights are on. The lights are

4:59

hot. You know, it's action. And you

5:01

were like, I'm a little nervous about

5:03

this. But you also made it clear

5:05

at that time that you love game

5:07

mastering. You were like, I have no

5:09

problem game mastering. I love that. But

5:11

it's just the showmanship aspect is new

5:13

to me. So I'm a little, you

5:15

know, take it easy on me. I'm

5:17

a rookie. My question

5:19

is, how and

5:22

when did you discover

5:24

that love of game mastering?

5:26

Where does this come from? That's

5:29

a good question. I mean, I think it probably

5:31

came to me a little bit later

5:34

compared to some folks that like grew

5:37

up playing pen and paper

5:39

with their like friend group as a kid.

5:42

I didn't have that. I grew up on

5:46

CRPGs. I grew up on Baldur's

5:48

Gate and Morrowind and all these

5:50

amazing sort of old school computer

5:54

game experiences and books, like

5:56

so many books. And

5:59

of course, all of that. of that

6:01

kind of like primed me to be

6:03

totally into role playing. Yeah. But I

6:06

just like didn't really have that until

6:08

college actually. And so like I started,

6:10

you know, playing in college and I

6:12

don't always been like familiar with D&D

6:14

but familiar with D&D from the perspective

6:16

of like, Oh, that's like the

6:19

video games that I play or like, Oh, that's

6:21

like the cartoon I saw. I'd

6:24

not I wasn't familiar with like the actual pen

6:26

and paper game. But then in college I joined

6:29

like a gaming club and I like started playing

6:31

with folks and you know, really sort of started

6:33

enjoying it. And you

6:35

know, I, I guess discovered

6:37

that I kind of had an

6:39

enthusiasm for the storytelling aspect of

6:41

it, both as a player,

6:43

but also in terms of like the creative

6:46

process of, you know, envisioning

6:48

a world envisioning the characters envisioning the

6:50

plot lines envisioning the adversaries, the nemesis,

6:52

you know, envisioning all of that and

6:55

then trying to kind of like draw

6:57

people into it. And so

6:59

that was something that is the the job

7:01

of a game master. Yeah, right. And so

7:03

and so I kind of came to being

7:07

a GM later

7:09

in my in my in my life, I

7:11

guess, I mean, not so much later, I was still young.

7:14

But you're still young now.

7:16

Yeah, right. But I importantly,

7:18

importantly, after college, you

7:21

know, there was this sort of diaspora,

7:23

right, like everyone scattered, you know, friends

7:26

from from gaming, friends from school,

7:28

friends from life, just all over, not

7:31

connected. I was out in Seattle then

7:33

for grad school. And, you know, no

7:36

one, none of my friend group was there with me. So, you

7:39

know, I kind of kept in

7:41

touch and kept playing with people online, because

7:43

we were playing, you know, MMOs, or we

7:46

were playing Path of Exile, or we were

7:48

playing whatever else video game together online. And

7:50

then we were also saying, like, well, you

7:52

know, let's let's let's play D&D. So let's

7:55

figure out how to do that. Let's let's

7:57

look into map tool

7:59

or fantasy grounds or a Roll20 and

8:02

all of these options that existed

8:04

to help facilitate that. And so

8:06

we started diving into that

8:08

and was like, oh, this is so great.

8:10

We can have a scene. And let me

8:12

interrupt you there. So when you started doing

8:15

this remote gaming with your friends and you were

8:17

out in grad school, were you the GM? Sometimes

8:22

yeah. Sometimes. Mostly I was sort

8:24

of the ringleader, I guess, of

8:26

trying to get it to happen. So yeah.

8:29

Were you your first forays

8:31

into jamming? Were they pre-written

8:34

D&D modules? Yeah,

8:38

but I just did you start out homebrewing?

8:40

No, I would I would usually start with

8:42

a module and then just kind of when

8:45

I got tired of it go off

8:47

the rails, you know, sort of

8:49

like just use it as sort

8:52

of the seed to get things going and then

8:54

kind of take it in whatever direction it ended

8:56

up feeling like was right for the game.

9:00

So yeah, you know, playing a lot of, you know, playing

9:02

a lot of pre-written modules, not just

9:05

D&D, but also Pathfinder 1e at the time.

9:08

You know, we had a really like

9:10

great sort of curse of Crimson Throne

9:12

game going for a while. Great AP,

9:14

another great AP. And

9:17

so, you know, just like and so you

9:19

would do this using virtual tabletops of some

9:22

kind or another. And hold on.

9:24

Let me back up one more second. Where were you

9:26

growing up? Like where did you go to college? I

9:29

went to Clemson, go Tigers. Oh,

9:31

Clemson. Nice. All right. So

9:33

you went to Clemson and then are your friends

9:35

kind of still in that in that area? Are

9:38

they still in the southeast or? Some, honestly, that

9:40

kind of spread out. Okay. Spread

9:42

out a lot. There's a few folks still in that

9:44

area, but for the most part, it's kind of all

9:46

over. And what did you study? Economics.

9:50

Really? So that was my professional career

9:52

for a while before going. Oh,

9:55

I assumed you were like a software

9:57

designer, programmer from day one. Well,

10:00

I was doing applied

10:02

microeconomics, which is really

10:05

actually quite focused on software

10:07

in that we're building statistical

10:10

models to predict customer behavior.

10:12

So we won't go too far into that.

10:14

I don't want to dig any deeper into

10:16

that. I don't want to talk everyone to

10:18

just close their browser window immediately. But

10:22

I guess suffice it to say that

10:25

there is a fair bit of software development involved

10:27

in that, and that's where I picked up a

10:29

lot of the skills that ended up

10:31

serving me well in making

10:33

Foundry VTT. Totally different concept.

10:36

Yeah. So when does Foundry

10:38

VTT come into the picture? When do you

10:40

decide something's missing with my

10:42

current options and I need something different?

10:45

Well, I was probably feeling that way for

10:47

a while, just not taking any action

10:49

on it. And

10:51

then I kind of

10:53

always had sort

10:56

of hobby or

10:58

hobbies that I sort of poured free

11:00

time into, whether it's gaming or painting

11:03

Warhammer minis and going around to

11:06

like 40K tournaments or making

11:09

like a fan site, website for

11:11

playing the Elder Scrolls online, all

11:13

these just random projects

11:15

that I've done in the

11:17

past and modding for

11:20

games. Always had like

11:22

something going and I sort of found myself

11:25

without or in

11:27

between hobbies. And so I had to itch like

11:29

I need a project. I need something to do.

11:33

And this was back in 2018 and we were playing a weekly game on Roll20

11:36

at the time. And

11:41

I just was like, you know, I'm

11:45

feeling a little bit constrained here. I'm feeling like

11:47

I'm boxed in a little bit with like what

11:49

the software is doing for us. And

11:51

so I was like, you know, what

11:55

if it was, what if there was

11:57

something different? What if like there was a software

11:59

that was a little bit more... immersive or a

12:02

little bit more focused on like the visual storytelling

12:04

or it was a little bit more maybe snappy,

12:06

you know, a little bit more performance, just

12:09

various things. And I guess that's

12:12

something that I'm sure people have thought, but I

12:14

guess the difference is that I had the

12:17

hubris to feel like

12:19

I could actually do something about that. And

12:23

you know, folly or not, it turned

12:25

out to be not, but I just sort

12:27

of started hacking around

12:29

and it was a time when like

12:33

web technologies had kind of evolved to

12:35

a point where there was sort of

12:37

a new generation of tools

12:39

that were available to do to make

12:41

something like Foundry that maybe weren't

12:44

available, you know, when a prior

12:46

generation of solutions were made. And

12:49

so, you know, it seemed like a cool opportunity.

12:51

Like let's take a lot of the ideas that

12:54

I've liked from those other tools

12:56

that I've used and let's try and do it

12:58

in a slightly different way that

13:01

has a really focus on

13:03

like autonomy and control over

13:05

your space. I feel like as game masters,

13:07

we all want to be like absolute

13:10

sort of masters of our own

13:12

environment. And so because of that,

13:14

I never really loved the like,

13:17

you know, software as a service approach to

13:20

DMing that felt like sort of

13:22

wrong to me because it's like it's

13:24

my stories, it's my data,

13:26

it's my characters, it's my music that

13:28

I've chosen to be part of the

13:30

game, it's my images that I've, you

13:33

know, hacked together or sketched

13:35

myself or whatever. I

13:37

didn't really love like having all of that body

13:40

of work on,

13:42

you know, someone else's service that could go

13:45

down or could become unavailable or, you know,

13:47

could go in a direction that I didn't

13:49

like. And I was like, why can't just

13:51

all of this be on my computer? Why

13:53

can't I be the host? Why can't I

13:56

be in control of my own environment?

13:58

And so, you know, a lot of Genesis for

14:00

foundry was like, let's make something self

14:02

hosted. Let's make something web based.

14:05

Let's make something that doesn't force people to

14:07

pay a subscription fee every month. Yes,

14:10

like feeling very cynical about subscriptions at

14:12

the time. So

14:14

like, let's let's make something where you just buy

14:16

the software and then you have it. And

14:19

I don't have to host your game for you.

14:21

You host your own game, people will just connect

14:23

to you and play. And you as the game

14:25

master have all of the files, all of your

14:27

data, it's all on your hard drive, it's all

14:29

on your computer. You know, it's up to you.

14:31

You just do whatever you want with it. And

14:33

it's a tool to empower

14:35

GMing. And so, you

14:37

know, that yeah, that was kind of the vision. And

14:39

that that's how foundry came together. And I was

14:42

working, you know, sort of nights and weekends

14:44

to develop it for a couple

14:46

years, about a year and a half and

14:49

then put it out on pay for you

14:51

playing your games. Yeah, on

14:53

like a jacked up pre version

14:55

of it. I subjected the

14:58

party to some horribly subpar

15:00

experiences during the early times of foundry

15:03

BTT, but they were all very, you

15:06

know, supportive of like, of

15:08

the effort. And honestly, like, it

15:11

didn't take so long and to achieve

15:14

at least sort of a basic level of functionality

15:16

that didn't feel like it was like too much

15:18

of a step backwards. I

15:20

think, you know, I sort

15:22

of hustled to get to a point where it

15:24

felt like, okay, you know, we have more or

15:26

less a similar experience that we had before,

15:29

but now we can continue to make

15:31

it better. From

15:34

that's great. So I'm gonna keep it moving

15:36

forward here, because there's so much I want

15:38

to talk about with Ember. And so I,

15:40

I mean, we could spend an entire show

15:42

talking about the evolution of foundry to make

15:44

it, you know, where it is today and

15:46

why it became the focus

15:48

of our network as our VTT

15:50

why we approached you about sponsoring

15:52

a new show in the campaign

15:54

too and how we could become,

15:56

you know, start working together, a

15:59

large part of the reason behind that is

16:01

the sheer brilliance

16:04

of the software and how wonderful it

16:06

is to play on and how wonderful

16:08

it looks to an audience. And so

16:10

that's what really eventually, obviously, it evolved

16:12

into a fantastic product. And we

16:14

would not have come to you, most

16:16

likely, if we didn't have such a

16:19

huge army of Foundry fans among our

16:21

listeners who were just coming to us

16:23

and being like, why are you not

16:25

using Foundry? Your experience would be so

16:27

much better with Foundry, blah, blah, blah.

16:30

And you hear once or twice that from people,

16:32

and you're like, yeah, I'm not interested in your

16:34

fringe software that you use. But then when you

16:36

start hearing dozens and dozens and dozens of these

16:38

comments, and people are like, well, maybe we should

16:40

look into this. And it really

16:42

was an incredible step up for us. And

16:44

so we're excited to be partnering with you.

16:47

I guess that's another tidbit of news, which is

16:49

really exciting, that as we approach, we

16:52

very quickly approach episode 52 of the

16:54

Glass Kind of Podcast here, which will

16:56

be the quote, unquote, one

16:58

year anniversary. We can

17:01

also announce that we've re-upped with Foundry

17:03

VTT for another year of sponsorship of

17:05

GCP campaign two. So thank you, Andrew.

17:07

That is huge. And we're so

17:09

excited about that. But what I want to get

17:11

back to now is when. Joe, just one second.

17:14

Yeah. I need to

17:16

say something related to what you mentioned,

17:18

which is that the

17:20

work that I did and the work that

17:23

the team that now exists around Foundry has

17:25

done is, of course, wonderful. But

17:28

it is also really important to shout

17:30

out the incredible community

17:34

of Pathfinder 2 users on

17:36

Foundry in particular, not just

17:38

gamers playing, but specifically the

17:40

team that's building that

17:42

game system for Foundry. Because what

17:44

you mentioned in terms of it

17:46

becoming such an amazing experience, and

17:49

beautiful and easy to use, and very popular, and

17:52

everyone's recommending it, that would have

17:55

only happened. And that did only

17:57

happen because of the many, many

17:59

people who have been. volunteered their

18:01

time to making the Pathfinder system

18:03

on Foundry as excellent as it is. And

18:05

so I think

18:07

whenever we're shouting out, especially in this

18:10

context, especially in terms of how did

18:12

Gatewalkers end up using Foundry, that wouldn't

18:14

have happened without the community that we

18:17

have. You didn't personally do

18:19

that. I didn't personally do it, yeah. And so

18:22

I think what our focus has been is

18:24

to create the landscape, the ecosystem that has

18:26

allowed that amazing outcome

18:28

to happen. And then of course Paizo taking

18:31

up the torch as well and joining up with

18:34

us and making that official partnership and figuring

18:36

out the right ways to work together. It's

18:38

been amazing on all fronts. And so I

18:40

think it's obviously been a

18:42

big team effort and I

18:45

just wanted to make sure to

18:47

acknowledge that. Yeah, that's great and

18:49

very important. And something that definitely

18:51

passes me by as I've

18:54

never been involved in this kind

18:56

of thing. I remember playing Skyrim

18:59

on PC years later after playing

19:01

it on PlayStation and

19:03

being absolutely blown away by the mods. This was

19:06

an entirely... So

19:09

the idea of a community that builds and

19:11

adds on to a platform that someone else

19:13

has built is not something I've ever

19:15

been a part of in terms of a community.

19:17

I've never built that kind of stuff and I

19:19

tend to forget how community based that

19:21

is and what a beautiful thing that is.

19:23

It's really awesome. People are passionate about making

19:25

Pathfinder 2e part of this software that they

19:28

can use. And so they put in the

19:30

time to do it and then we obviously

19:32

benefit from that. And

19:34

all of us users that use 2e on Foundry

19:36

benefit from that. So yeah, thank you for shouting

19:38

them out. That's awesome. But

19:40

I want to talk about Ember. As Foundry

19:42

VTT grows in success, we

19:46

talked about this around the time

19:48

of our initial partnership. You, correct

19:50

me if I'm wrong, had never

19:52

spent money or resources on traditional

19:54

marketing for Foundry VTT. It really

19:56

sort of grew out of word

19:59

of mouth. Right? I mean, isn't that fair

20:01

to say? Traditional marketing being more

20:04

like paid advertising. We just historically

20:06

don't really do that. I think

20:08

what we've always leaned into is

20:11

trying to focus on authentic

20:13

grassroots messaging, and then work

20:15

with our community of users

20:17

to focus on

20:19

engaging with them, and then

20:21

rely on our community to

20:23

help spread the word. Ultimately,

20:26

someone who gives a personal recommendation of,

20:28

I think you should use Foundry VTT.

20:31

That's so much more powerful than

20:33

a paid ad that shows

20:35

up on your social feed. So

20:38

we're really focused on trying

20:40

to listen to, and

20:44

build for, and be receptive to what our

20:46

community wants us to do. And of course,

20:48

it's really hard to live up to that

20:50

sometimes, because there's so many amazing things we

20:53

could be doing, or so many things that

20:55

we don't have the time for. But I

20:57

think we've been very community-focused in the way

20:59

that we've developed Foundry. And what that's done

21:01

is it turns all of our users into

21:04

advocates for the software. And

21:06

I think that community-based advocacy, it just

21:08

feels better to me than

21:11

talking about return on ad

21:13

spend, or converting click-through rate.

21:18

Yeah, it just makes me grimace a little

21:20

bit. I mean, I understand how valuable that

21:22

can be. And it does play a role.

21:24

And we actually are doing a little bit

21:26

of paid ad spend for Ember, because there's

21:29

a way to do that through Kickstarter that

21:31

has made it easier for us to help

21:33

get the word out. But

21:35

we really, like

21:37

you said with Gatewalkers, when you've got

21:40

folks in your audience who are saying,

21:43

I'd love it if you used Foundry VTT,

21:45

how valuable has that been for us? I

21:48

think, and we're kind

21:51

of hoping, I guess, with Ember, that it

21:53

will be a little bit of the same sort

21:55

of experience. That if we focus on

21:57

building this incredible product.

22:00

that hasn't really existed before, not

22:02

in this format. It's not the kind of

22:04

thing that has been created by anyone. It

22:08

does make it a little bit hard to

22:10

get people in at first, because there's this

22:13

uncertainty. What exactly is

22:15

this? Is this going to be for me? Should

22:18

I jump all on board with this? It's kind of a new

22:20

thing. Is it going to work? Is it going to be good?

22:23

It's a little bit expensive. Should

22:26

we split that with the group? Do

22:28

we want to do that? There's all these questions that

22:30

people have, but then I think once

22:32

people get a chance to see, and I

22:35

think the live play that we've

22:37

done is an amazing way to show that,

22:39

but then also experience

22:41

themselves. Once some people start

22:43

playing Ember, I'm

22:45

hoping that there will be a sort of

22:47

similar phenomenon where people who've experienced

22:50

it themselves will become believers and then

22:52

will share that

22:54

excitement with their friends and

22:56

with other folks that are adjacent to them in

22:59

the community. So we'll see, but

23:01

it's sort of a risk, just

23:03

like Foundry VTT was a risk, and

23:06

it grew steadily over time via

23:08

positive word of mouth, and

23:11

hoping that Ember will be much the same. Yeah,

23:14

it is very interesting,

23:19

and what it leads me to think about is the... What

23:22

I'm kind of skipping over is all of

23:24

that development that got Foundry to where it is now. It's

23:27

such a strong software and so strong in this

23:29

space, and I can see

23:31

how that developed over time. At

23:33

what point during that evolution does

23:37

the seed of Ember get

23:40

planted? At what point are you like,

23:42

oh, I need to make an original

23:44

campaign that uses the software. When

23:47

did this happen? Was it almost immediately, or

23:49

did it take a couple years before that

23:51

idea happened? When did that occur?

23:55

I think that dreams

23:57

around what the Foundry ecosystem could

23:59

someday be. have kind of existed for a

24:01

while. But in terms

24:03

of when did it become kind of a clear

24:05

plan or a clear direction that we wanted to

24:08

move in, it

24:10

took a little bit of time. I think the

24:12

focus for the first couple of years was so much

24:14

on like, can Foundry

24:16

VTT approach something that feels relatively

24:20

feature complete? And we're not even there yet.

24:22

There's still features that we feel like belong

24:24

in Foundry that aren't there yet. So we've

24:27

still got a lot of development to do on the core

24:29

software. But

24:31

once Foundry grew to a point where

24:33

it has so many people using it,

24:35

then the question is especially given

24:37

our business model of the one time purchase,

24:41

what is the future for our company?

24:43

What is it that we do if we've already made

24:45

Foundry and we've already sold you Foundry? What

24:48

do we do next? And there's a

24:50

multi-prong strategy to that. We have amazing publishers,

24:52

partnerships, where we can work with publishers to

24:54

bring their content onto the platform. And that's

24:56

a good way to do it. We're

24:59

also very inspired and creative people. So

25:01

it's fun to convert someone else's content

25:03

to Foundry, but it's much more fun

25:05

to make our own content. And so

25:07

I think we're trying to do a

25:09

little bit of both of those things

25:13

to sort of balance things out. And we've

25:15

got many irons in the fire. But Ember

25:18

actually isn't the first first

25:20

party adventure that we've made. We did two

25:23

relatively smaller forays into the space, both of

25:25

which I think are actually excellent. One of

25:27

them is called The Demon Queen Awakens, which

25:30

is sort of a two to

25:32

three shot adventure for

25:34

mid-level players, supports both D&D and

25:36

Pathfinder. It's really flavorful. It's

25:38

kind of a boss fight gauntlet type

25:40

dungeon experience. And

25:43

then we've got a product called House Divided,

25:45

which is a longer, maybe 12 to 15

25:47

session adventure arc, kind

25:51

of gothic horror, extra

25:54

planer, metaphysical fantasy, really

25:57

great sort of... medium

26:00

form campaign that

26:03

people are playing through it. And we love seeing

26:05

the feedback in Discord when someone gets through it.

26:07

It's like, we just finished. It was amazing, loved

26:09

it. And so those

26:11

kind of were like warm up exercises for

26:14

us in terms of getting to

26:16

the point of then committing to a project like

26:18

Ember, where each one of

26:20

those steps has been sort of proportionally

26:22

like 10x in size of

26:24

the thing we did before. And

26:27

so kind of ramping up in terms of

26:29

the level of ambition to this sort of

26:32

insane point where we are now with Ember

26:34

and the scope of it. Also

26:36

in terms of the genesis of Ember, a lot

26:39

of it came out of my friendship and

26:42

discussions with Kiaora, a wonderful

26:45

talented creator in the

26:47

Patreon community, Map Maker, Token Maker.

26:50

And Kiaora and I, we just

26:53

were talking for a long time about

26:56

like, do we wanna

26:58

try and make a setting? Do we

27:00

wanna try and make something more like

27:02

an all inclusive game experience? And it

27:04

kind of was just a back and

27:06

forth brainstorm for a while. And then

27:08

we eventually sort of committed to doing

27:10

it. And we had all these initial

27:12

design conversations and the genesis of Ember

27:15

was born out of those. And

27:18

so yeah, sort of a history,

27:21

but in terms of

27:23

the strategy, we've got this amazing platform, Ember

27:26

can be this incredible setting. And

27:28

then we're also investing into the game

27:31

system Crucible, which we

27:33

haven't talked as much about, but hopefully maybe

27:36

a later show, we could do

27:38

like a one shot or something and dig into it if

27:41

that ends up being an option.

27:43

But having the three pillars

27:46

of that triangle, the platform, the

27:48

system, the setting, as well

27:50

as all of the publisher partnership content

27:52

that we have, that's kind of the

27:55

recipe that I envision in terms of

27:57

like how we build

27:59

our, little mini VTT empire, I

28:01

guess. Yeah. I do want to get

28:03

to, I had a little bit on Crucible I

28:05

wanted to touch on. I think you're right. I don't think

28:07

we're going to have a lot of time for it. That

28:09

is for something down the line. I say, sure. I'm sorry.

28:12

No, no, it's OK. It's

28:15

an interesting concept. And it's jumping ahead a

28:17

little bit. I want to back up for

28:19

a second, because Ember, as

28:22

it develops in your mind, is a completely

28:26

original world. And

28:29

our experience with it, although

28:31

brief, was really eye-opening

28:33

and extremely fun and very, as

28:37

a fan of fantasy, I read a lot of books,

28:39

and I play a lot of video games, and I

28:41

play a lot of role-playing games. And so you end

28:43

up getting a lot of different worlds kind of thrown

28:45

at you. And some stick and some don't so much.

28:47

And this one really jumped out to me as complex

28:51

yet easily digestible and something

28:53

that from a very early

28:56

stage in the game, I was eager

28:58

to learn a little bit more about the

29:00

world, just because of the way you parsed

29:02

it out. It was very, it was like

29:04

little breadcrumbs, right, to kind of follow this

29:06

trail. So the way it's designed in terms

29:09

of its introduction is well

29:11

done. But the overall world

29:13

building, we barely scraped the surface. Can

29:16

I ask just as an overarching

29:18

question, what

29:22

is the, are there some particular

29:24

inspirations for the world building? Where did

29:26

it begin, and are there

29:28

certain ideas that got you into the space to

29:32

make Ember what it is from a

29:34

fictional world standpoint? Yeah,

29:36

absolutely. We

29:39

always wanted to make something that was a little

29:41

bit, what I guess we

29:43

internally use the term imaginative fantasy. And

29:45

of course, all fantasy is imaginative to

29:47

a degree, but a lot of fantasy

29:50

is kind of grounded in a certain

29:52

archetype, whether it's sort of like medieval

29:54

Europe based with augmented by magic, whether

29:57

it's sort of Tolkien-esque, whether it's, something

30:00

that's a little bit more kind

30:02

of weird and wild, you know,

30:05

spell jammer style or, you know,

30:07

sort of grim grim dark, there's all these different kind

30:10

of genres. And we wanted

30:12

to make something that sort of

30:14

felt like you were stepping into

30:16

a totally different world with its

30:18

own ecosystem, its own peoples, its

30:20

own cultures, its own

30:23

expectations that you couldn't necessarily take

30:25

what you know from another setting

30:27

or take what you know from

30:29

Earth history and project it in

30:32

a way that lets you really understand Ember or

30:34

feel like you understand Ember. And that would leave

30:37

you with this sense of like, the

30:39

desire to discover because you don't necessarily

30:41

feel like you already have

30:43

it mapped out, you know, you're like, you're

30:45

curious, we're in, we're trying to inspire that

30:47

curiosity. And so, you know, part of

30:49

the design of the early game experience, but also the design

30:52

of the setting itself is intended to be

30:54

kind of, you

30:56

know, just different from the types of

30:58

fantasy settings that are typically played. But

31:01

also very focused on like the mechanical

31:03

requirements for those settings, like there's certain

31:05

things that from a gamification perspective, you

31:07

want to have certain structure, like you

31:09

want to have a way to talk

31:12

about elemental forces, you want to have

31:14

a way to talk about good and evil, you

31:16

want to have a way to talk about, you

31:19

know, what is the what is your

31:21

spiritual journey in terms of your soul

31:23

or your essence, or what what creates

31:26

life or what happens after you die, you

31:28

want to have a framework for all of

31:30

those things that can then turn into game

31:33

experiences. And so we're we're with Ember

31:35

trying to think about like, what are

31:37

the sort of essential foundational

31:39

components of a fantasy setting, not

31:42

just any fantasy setting, but

31:44

a fantasy setting that's specifically well

31:46

thought out for the perspective

31:49

of role playing games where it

31:51

has that structure, and it has

31:53

those, you know, fundamental pillars, but

31:55

it leaves a lot of open scope to

31:57

take those elements and tell You

32:00

know really compelling stories with them. And so,

32:02

you know inspirations that we have of course

32:04

games. We've played book series We've read movies.

32:07

We've watched, you know, there's sort of a

32:09

little bit we've sampled from a lot of

32:11

different places but

32:13

ultimately it's kind of about thinking like taking

32:17

the the kind of vision for

32:19

what type of feel

32:21

of the setting would be and mapping

32:24

that onto the architectural framework of like

32:27

what's needed for game design. But how

32:29

do you how

32:31

do you come up with this infrastructure or

32:33

these these elements that you

32:35

just rattled off like it was nothing

32:38

that are like key components

32:40

to understanding a character's place in

32:42

a fictional world Where

32:45

do you get these, you know, you

32:47

round them off like they were bullet points are these things that

32:49

you've just kind of learned over your experiences of You

32:52

know just kind of bring together the experiences

32:54

of video games and TTRPGs and books you've

32:56

read over the years or I mean

32:59

are you getting this out of like a World-building

33:01

guide because it just it sounded so

33:04

detailed of like the major pillars that

33:06

you need to have in

33:08

place to build a fictional world.

33:10

There are some very good World-building

33:13

references and resources out there and some

33:15

of which I have engaged with over

33:17

the years, you know Read

33:20

a lot of like articles on

33:22

sites like World Anvil a great

33:24

community of world-building enthusiasts over there

33:27

That's cool. I know that side. I've never really dug

33:29

into that You know

33:32

like the community aspect where you could probably you

33:34

know hear a lot from people about ideas and

33:36

stuff Yeah, but but I think I think to

33:38

a certain extent. It's also about I Guess

33:42

I maybe the my left-brained sort of

33:44

structural approach You know the the same

33:46

approach that tends to work well for

33:48

software development in terms of thinking about

33:51

like what are the fundamental? Concepts

33:53

the fundamental building blocks that you need

33:55

in place to then create

33:57

something powerful or something extensible

34:00

I think some of those

34:02

lessons also apply to thinking about creative

34:04

process in terms of like what are

34:07

those? You know

34:09

cornerstones of a game setting that

34:11

you need to then have these

34:13

powerful components that can motivate

34:16

conflict or introduce tension

34:19

or build suspense or

34:22

Give characters something to anchor to that

34:24

lets them feel grounded in the world

34:27

And are you sure

34:29

you studied economics in college? You

34:32

didn't study literature? like

34:35

Your grasp on the detail

34:37

of storytelling. It seems it's

34:39

academic almost You're

34:42

too high. I think I

34:44

think probably you're over overselling my

34:46

ability and you know, I Ember

34:49

would not be here without without k or as

34:51

creativity on these points as well I think yeah,

34:53

we tend to be a very good partnership because

34:55

I I bring that

34:57

kind of structured Framework

35:00

and and k-ara brings the most

35:03

creative ideas that have been sort

35:05

of populated and fit into

35:07

that as well So that's cool. The

35:10

game itself is really

35:12

fun to play Obviously the world is

35:14

an interesting thing already, but then You

35:17

described this in the actual play in

35:19

the introduction as being a

35:21

mesh between Ttrpgs that

35:24

you would play remotely with your

35:26

friends and like a digital

35:28

multiplayer video game. It kind of marries

35:30

the two together When

35:33

you attempt to do something like that,

35:35

first of all, I think that it's

35:37

a very bold move I don't know

35:39

of too many options in this space

35:41

for that which is why I'm very

35:43

honestly and Genuinely

35:46

eager for people to check

35:48

this out because I've never seen anything like

35:50

it personally It's also I think

35:53

that there's a danger there of Getting

35:56

a little bit to rail

35:59

roadie for lack of of a better term,

36:01

right? Like you have to if you have

36:03

to build these beautiful video elements

36:05

to go along with something, then the players have

36:07

to do that thing. That's right. And that in

36:10

and of itself feels kind of railroady. How do

36:12

you address that challenge in this project? Yeah,

36:14

that's a great, a great call out. And I think, you

36:18

know, when we're trying to build that hybrid, there is sort of

36:20

this, I don't know, it's

36:22

not an uncanny valley in the sense of like the

36:24

way that people look when you illustrate them, but there

36:26

is this sort of valley where if

36:28

we get too close to the

36:30

video game experience, it

36:33

would become bad, you know, it's

36:35

like, uh, Ember would become unrecognizable

36:37

as a tabletop role playing game

36:39

and it would feel more like

36:41

a, a poorly executed video game

36:43

than a really elegant and

36:46

fun collaborative storytelling experience. So the first

36:48

thing we need to keep in mind

36:50

always when we're doing this is how

36:52

do we stay a little

36:54

bit more on the TTRPG side of

36:56

that hybrid model? Cause we don't want

36:59

to go too far, you know, we're

37:01

never going to be able to compete

37:04

with what people think of as the state of

37:06

the art on the computer gaming

37:08

side. When you think about, Oh, I'm going to

37:10

log into Baldur's gate three with my friends. Like

37:12

we can't make that. Um,

37:14

so, you know, you,

37:17

well, you're laughing, but I mean, obviously it's true.

37:19

It's just a, it's a funny way to put

37:22

it. It's like, we can't

37:24

do that. Yeah, we cannot do that.

37:26

And so, you know, we have to

37:28

think about where can we position ourselves,

37:30

which is very much like let's make

37:32

a TTRPG, but let's augment it with

37:34

these video game like elements. Let's design

37:37

it in a way that still requires

37:39

and relies on a human game

37:42

master sitting at the table to

37:44

lead the experience and to connect

37:47

all of the different narrative threads that the

37:49

party's pulling on. And we

37:51

rely on that person heavily. So

37:53

we're not trying to script away

37:56

the role of the game master. We're trying

37:58

to empower that game master to. to have

38:00

an easier time telling really rich

38:03

and deep stories. Now, the

38:05

first part of the Ember game

38:07

experience is a little bit railroady.

38:10

And that is by design because we need to tutorialize

38:12

the way that Ember works as a setting, the way

38:14

that Ember works as a game, and we need to

38:16

kind of ease people into it. And

38:18

so giving too much choice too early on would

38:22

not be successful. But like, as players- I

38:24

remember it. So you and I had a

38:26

very brief conversation in

38:28

the studio about Morrowind, where

38:31

we talked about my initial experience

38:34

in Morrowind when they just like, let

38:36

me off the boat out in that town,

38:38

Seydanine. I'll never forget the name of the

38:40

town. And I walk out in Seydanine and

38:42

I got nothing. I've got no clear objective.

38:44

I'm not sure what to do. And so

38:46

I just started- You just got to go

38:48

looking in stumps for magic rings and stuff.

38:50

I just started stealing silverware and plates

38:52

and selling it for a dagger. I

38:55

mean, it was realistic in its own

38:57

way. But it was a little bit-

39:01

It felt a little- I felt a little lost. And

39:03

so yeah, I think that opening tutorial- I think that

39:05

type of game experience is a real commitment to the

39:07

art of absolute sort of

39:09

open world design. And before

39:11

it was really thought of that way. But

39:13

like, I think, you know, the early Bethesda

39:16

games, Morrowind in particular, I think was a

39:18

sort of really

39:20

defining accomplishment for a

39:22

whole genre of games that now we

39:24

kind of think of as

39:26

fairly commonplace. But they don't usually commit

39:29

to the bit the same

39:31

way that Morrowind did. And I

39:33

think that's a certain aspect in gaming that has

39:35

been lost over the years. Yeah. Anyway,

39:38

I'm sorry, I cut you off. Continue. But

39:41

yeah, you know, you're going back

39:43

to your question around like, how do we design

39:46

this content so that it doesn't become

39:48

too railroady? It's a tough challenge. I

39:50

think like what we have in Ember,

39:52

though, is we have really nice sort

39:54

of non-linear quest

39:56

designs, like these flowcharts of events that

39:58

define- the quest and we always give

40:01

our events sort of

40:03

multiple jumping off points. There's

40:05

never just one event that can start a

40:07

quest. There's always like it could be breadcrumb

40:09

A over here. It could be breadcrumb B

40:11

over here. It could be something

40:14

else that happens later in the game that

40:16

incentivizes you to backtrack and go back to

40:18

an area you were before in case you

40:20

missed something. And then

40:22

we kind of try and have these tributaries that

40:24

lead to the river that we want you to

40:26

be on. You know,

40:29

railroading is sort of what

40:31

it what the term you use when it

40:33

feels forced. Like when you feel like I

40:35

have to do this thing, you know, we're

40:37

trying to pursue a type of design that,

40:40

you know, incentivizes you with the

40:42

urge to explore a topic that

40:45

we put in front of you

40:47

as an appetizer. Because when the

40:49

players want to latch

40:51

onto the hook that you've given, then it's much

40:54

easier as the GM to follow that track without

40:56

it feeling like you have to force them into

40:58

it. Right. So

41:00

in increasing the motivation of the players is really the key.

41:02

You got to find a way to make them want to

41:04

do it. And yeah,

41:07

yeah, I guess we try and provide that

41:09

out of the box. But again, this is

41:11

a place where we rely on having a,

41:13

you know, an engaged and capable game master

41:15

at the table who can, if for whatever

41:17

reason, the players like didn't really like this

41:20

NPC that they made. And so therefore they're

41:22

feeling reluctant to like, follow up

41:24

on the lead that they just got, you know, we

41:27

we rely on the game master in that case to

41:29

think about like, do I want to try and frame

41:31

this a different way? Or do I want to try

41:33

and give a different on ramp to the players to

41:35

get onto this quest? Because I think I know what

41:37

this quest is. And I think they'll really enjoy it

41:39

once I can get them kind of going with it.

41:41

And so there is there is

41:43

absolutely a role to happen there. And that's

41:46

true, I think in any kind

41:48

of adventure path or or published,

41:50

you know, campaign that you'll play

41:53

like there is always the expectation

41:55

that the GM is going to help to

41:58

channel the gameplay towards. towards the

42:01

writing in the book. I think we can

42:03

do that a little bit. I think that's the heart of my, it's

42:05

not the heart of my question, but

42:07

you've answered the question very well. My

42:09

next question goes right along those lines.

42:11

It's like, how would you describe how

42:13

more or less railroady

42:17

this experience might be versus just a

42:19

pre-written adventure? Does it have to

42:21

be a little bit more set or

42:25

is it just as customizable

42:28

in a way as any pre-written

42:31

published adventure? I

42:34

think there's trade-offs on

42:36

both sides because I

42:38

think with some pre-written

42:40

textbook adventures, there

42:42

is more latitude around how

42:45

do you get a certain gameplay

42:47

experience across. Say

42:49

in the book, you've got an assassin

42:51

that's tracking you down and they're

42:53

supposed to jump you at some point and you have to

42:56

fight them off. If

42:59

that's the only information that's given in the

43:01

book, then the GM has a lot of

43:03

latitude, like where does that encounter take place?

43:05

What's it look like? What's the assassin look

43:07

like? When does

43:09

it occur? Like the GM can kind of make

43:11

all of those decisions themselves. In

43:14

a game experience like ours, we're probably

43:16

making some of those decisions for you,

43:18

like we're saying, oh, the assassin's gonna

43:20

get you when you're at the crossroads,

43:22

or it's much more likely to happen

43:24

when you camp for the night, so

43:27

we put our finger on

43:29

the lever and we affect

43:32

the probabilities of things happening, or in some

43:34

cases, we just define when they happen. And

43:37

so those are some ways where some of the- Because

43:39

you have these added video elements that accompany the experience.

43:41

Because we have all of the visual storytelling assets. We

43:43

need that encounter to play out a certain way so

43:46

that you get the value that we've created out of

43:48

it. But that's on one

43:50

side. On the other side, I think

43:52

we actually can do a lot more

43:54

to create meaningful choice and consequence and

43:56

branching narrative paths than any print product.

43:59

can do because in a print book

44:01

you have to put all of your

44:03

content in a linearized

44:05

format, page one,

44:07

page two, page three, and

44:10

you have to present it in a certain

44:12

way. And, you know, everyone's familiar with Choose

44:14

Your Own Adventure books. It's like a fun

44:16

little thing like, oh, like flip

44:18

to page 93 and then flip

44:21

back to page But there's

44:23

a reason that like full TTRPG campaigns aren't

44:25

that. There's a reason why when you're playing,

44:27

you know, Gatewalkers, it doesn't tell you to

44:30

go get the other book and flip to

44:32

page 73 and then go get book

44:34

three and flip back to page 13. Like

44:36

that's just too chaotic an experience for the

44:38

GM in the heat of the

44:41

moment. But in our software, everything

44:43

can be completely nonlinear. We just link you to

44:45

where you need to go. And

44:47

so, you know, when you have

44:49

this meaningful branching choice, like, you know, you've

44:51

reached this pivotal decision point for your party,

44:53

are you going to follow path A or

44:56

path B or path C? We

44:59

can support all three of those paths to

45:01

a degree of fidelity that that

45:03

a print product simply can't. And so,

45:06

you know, those are those are the types of ways that

45:08

we can add levels of nonlinearity

45:11

or openness or meaningful choice and consequence

45:13

that can only happen in a software

45:15

product like this one. I'm

45:18

going to I'm going to throw

45:20

this out there just because

45:22

I think that the audience would want to know and I

45:25

don't want to put you on the spot too much here

45:27

in the middle of a Kickstarter. But

45:29

I think that the choice to launch this

45:31

game or launch this Kickstarter, I should say,

45:34

as 5E compatible

45:36

is without question the

45:39

way to launch a product like

45:41

this. I mean, you essentially are

45:44

giving a framework to the kind

45:47

of largest, you know,

45:49

known fantasy, high fantasy gameplay

45:51

framework that's out there. You also envision

45:53

a future for Crucible as being a

45:55

part of this game, which I love

45:57

and want to talk about in another.

46:00

cannon fodder down the line. Do

46:02

you envision a future where

46:05

Pathfinder 2e or whatever version

46:07

may be around at the time remaster

46:10

will be compatible with Ember? Yeah,

46:13

I, I don't know. I love

46:15

I love the idea of it. And, you

46:17

know, to be honest, like, ever

46:20

since we started working on this, we've had a

46:22

lot of difficult internal conversations

46:25

about like, what is the dice

46:28

resolution mechanic that we're using for

46:30

Ember? You know, ultimately,

46:33

because of the way that Ember is as a

46:35

game, it's such a substantial layer

46:37

on top of that game system. I think

46:39

a lot of times campaign is sort of

46:41

a thin layer on top of the game

46:44

system. And therefore, the choice

46:46

of game system proportionally is

46:48

like massively impactful to the

46:50

experience that you have. I

46:52

think because Ember is so

46:54

dense and so expansive, in

46:57

proportion, the choice of game system is a

46:59

little bit less impactful, but

47:02

it's still very meaningful and very impactful to

47:04

a lot of people. And so, you know,

47:06

within our team, we've had some really

47:09

tough conversations about what that was going

47:11

to look like. And bear in mind,

47:13

like, we've been developing Ember now for

47:15

about two years at various, you know,

47:17

stages of development. And so during that

47:19

time, there's been an OGL

47:21

crisis during that time, there's been, you

47:24

know, major licensing discussion during that time,

47:26

there's been new systems coming out, like

47:28

Tales of the Valiant from Cobalt Press,

47:31

or Draw Steel from MCDM, or, you

47:33

know, like, the there's

47:35

all of this that's gone into that. So much

47:37

has happened in two years. So much has happened

47:39

in two years. And so ultimately,

47:41

with 5E, like you said, the reason

47:43

for that is because it is the

47:46

most familiar starting point for

47:48

the most people. And so, like, on

47:50

one end of the spectrum, that's the

47:52

choice that lets us reach the largest

47:54

audience is the choice that lets people

47:56

feel like there's a very low barrier

47:58

to entry into Ember because the

48:00

D20 system that almost everybody

48:02

knows to some degree. Now,

48:05

Crucible is on the complete other end of the

48:08

spectrum in that it is our passion

48:10

project. It's part of our

48:12

little empire building strategy. One

48:14

of the pillars. One of the pillars. We

48:18

weren't even committed to Crucible until a couple months

48:21

ago. As much as I

48:23

wanted it to happen, we didn't necessarily

48:25

have the clarity of vision or the

48:27

clear alignment that it was for sure

48:29

going to happen until pretty shortly before

48:31

the Kickstarter because it is

48:33

such a tough conversation. Now, Pathfinder,

48:35

I love Pathfinder and

48:38

it would be a

48:40

wonderful game experience to have Pathfinder 2e in

48:42

Ember. It really would. But

48:45

it also would be extraordinarily

48:48

effort intensive to make that

48:50

happen. And

48:53

also, there's some tough challenges that

48:55

we've been working on in terms of

48:57

the open world

49:00

nature of it. As those of you who

49:02

play Pathfinder 2 very regularly

49:04

know, encounter balance is pretty

49:07

sensitive in 2e. If

49:10

you are two levels higher

49:12

or two levels lower than you are

49:15

intended to be for a certain passage

49:17

of play, that can be

49:19

either effortless to the point that it's

49:21

not fun or you're going to

49:23

die. And

49:26

so, the need for something to be

49:28

like really immaculately balanced becomes greater and

49:30

the need therefore for the content that

49:33

we have in Ember to scale with

49:36

your party level becomes more important because it is an

49:38

open world game and we have all of these quests

49:40

that you could be doing in different orders. So

49:44

that's another thing that from a design perspective and

49:46

there's some variant rules that you can use like

49:48

you can play Pathfinder

49:50

without proficiency bonus

49:52

to your roles and so it keeps things

49:54

a little bit more flat in terms of

49:57

progression. But yeah, it's a difficult

49:59

thing.