Afterwords: The Guide to Death - An Anthology From Heartbreak to Anti-Capitalism

Do you want to explore topics and the idea of death but through the lens of TTRPGs you can play with your friends? Spanning from Heartbreak, Anti-Capitalism, Internet Communities, and Trolley Problems? Well yes this is super specific but if this a desire you have and want to know more about then you will love todays episode about Afterwords: The Guide to Death! 

I bring on the project manager Marx Shepherd to talk all about their Anthology project that is made up of 4 short games and an essay exploring topics all around death and to open up having conversations about death that aren't rooted in fear! Collaborating with many writers for this project gives many different thoughts on death and takes on how to explore it and you will absolutely find something for you!

Afterwords: Guide to Death is on Kickstarter RIGHT NOW!
Back the project here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marx-of-high-water/afterwords-the-far-horizons-guide-to-death?ref=ksr_email_user_watched_project_launched

If you enjoyed Marx and want to stay up to date on what Far Horizons Corp is up to and Marx themselves you can find and follow them below!
Marx Shepherd Socials: https://marx-shepherd.carrd.co/

Far Horizons Corp Socials : https://farhorizonscoop.carrd.co/

Far Horizons Website: https://farhorizonscoop.substack.com/

And of course all the fantastic writers that are apart of the Guide to Death and mentioned in this episode! 
- Bastien Trotobas-Gibelin (they/them or he/him)  
mimic@dice.camp on Mastodon

-Jessica Marcrum (she/her)

-Poorna M (she/her)

-Keith Asada (he/him)

-Jeremy Borders (he/him)  
Twitter @tayuface

-Seamus Conneely (he/him)

-Austin Holm (he/him)

-Thomas Vorderbruggen 
 Bogus Cheesecake on social media

-Bek Andrew Evans (he/him)

Transcript

0:00

Do you want to start having some conversations about death and explore it and think about it in a different way than you may already and you want to do it with your friends or in a fun way like playing A TTRPG? This is great if you're into this really hyperspecific topic, because in today's episode of The RPG Goblin, we are going to be talking about a game anthology series called Afterwards the Guide to Death. This is A TTRPG that is on Kickstarter actually right this moment. So if you want to get the game, please check the description of this episode to find it and get it yourself because it is really, really cool because Afterwards the Guide to Death is actually a combination of four small games plus an essay, talking all about death and kind of discovering that topic. If death is an uncomfortable topic for you, please don't listen to this episode. We have more new episodes coming out very soon that won't be on this topic. So you can just skip this one and come back later when we're not talking about something that makes you uncomfortable. Now, if you're sticking around, I think it's time for me to stop talking and let's get into it. Welcome everyone to The RPG Goblin, a TTRPG podcast that makes learning and exploring these games easy and fun for you. I am your host, Willow, and I am the resident goblin and the one who asks all the questions because I'm obsessed with these games. In today's episode, we are going to be talking about a project and an anthology of games called Afterwards the Far Horizons Guide to Death. And I am really, really excited to hear all about this game and learn everything. And for our guest, for today's episode, we have on Mark's Shepherd. Marks, would you like to introduce yourself and who you are and what you do? Absolutely. Thank you for inviting me onto the podcast. Absolutely, yes. My name is Mark Shepard. Congratulations on correctly pronouncing the difficult X Sh crossover there. I am a tabletop role playing games designer and editor, and I'm community manager, I think that's the right word for the Far Horizons Corp sort of international collective of TTRPG, creators of various disciplines, colors, stripes, all sorts, really. People might know me from yes, indeed. Pod, which I used to host and produce, and various other things such as being the community manager for the Indiesine, which is now finished, and various games under my own imprint. Marks of high water such as Ghost Box and a Loud Noise in a quiet place. Those are the two kind of big ones we did a couple of years back. But today, yes, I'm here to represent the Far Horizons co op and to talk about afterwards our forthcoming anthology of games and essays about death in various forms, which I guess might sound rather morbid, which I guess that's sort of true, but also we want to kind of take the morbidity out of it. And it kind of comes about because I think everybody in the world has a kind of strange relationship to death related to role playing games. Because on the one hand, a lot of our favorite role playing games wouldn't really be that fun without the threat of death to our characters and without other characters, usually non player characters being killed or otherwise disposed of. But at the same time we're really fearful about the death of our own characters. And I think that's kind of because we sort of do this embodiment of characters, this kind of internalized personification of characters when we're role playing, we do become them and we impose our own fear of morbidity, I think, on characters. And I thought that's kind of an interesting subject to explore, but maybe a bit too niche. So I sort of thought, well, what could we do instead? What's broader? What's like a really bold statement. And I said, well, let's make a guide to death itself. Let's make a collection of games and essays exploring what death could mean to different people. What kind of exploration of, I don't know, rituals of death, talking about grief and mourning, talking about what death might mean in a digital age or in a future epoch and maybe kind of attaching a little bit of whimsy to some of it as well. To maybe take the sting out of a subject that people do find difficult to talk about and do struggle to come to terms with throughout their lives in many cases. I mean, I am certainly projecting there. Yeah, for sure not, but no, I think that's actually wonderful. That is such an interesting project and I was trying to look into more on this project before we did this episode. But I'm glad that you gave kind of an explanation of the inspiration behind this idea because that is actually very interesting and that's a fun kind of experiment to even do of these types of games. Yeah, sorry, I'll let you go on. Yeah. I was curious of how you have found the experience so far, getting essays. I know it hasn't just been you writing them, but getting the essays and doing the games and all that so far. Yeah, that's right. So this project is going to kickstarter in September. If this episode is out in September, it will be finishing on Friday the 29th. And actually we don't have much of the writing done yet. What we've done is we have accepted pitchers from all across the tabletop role playing games scene and we've basically said to loads of people, oh, send us your pitch. What kind of game do you want to make? What kind of essay do you want to write on this subject? And we received 81 pitches. Oh, wow. Yeah, this is really good because what we wanted to do was publish four games and one essay initially in the anthology and we got almost exactly four to one ratio of essays to games of games to essays. That's crazy. Fabulous. So the first thing that we did was all the staffers then took away a massive chunk of those pictures and filtered through them and said which ones they were really excited about. And then we went for a second round where we found all the ones we were really excited about and tried to put them together into a couple of different potential books and voted on that and we finally got the one out. Now all of this work that sounds like it's quite difficult. I mean, it would be quite difficult if it was just like funding applications, which I also did earlier in the year, where it was like trying to decide which project sounded cool and which one was worthwhile. But then also at the same time, you exposed to all these potentially unknown content warnings, which is just like, oh, this is a game about I probably shouldn't go into any of the pictures in particular detail, but all of them were there was stuff about execution, which was a really fascinating game, but. I. Don'T think I can publish this game. It's too scary. All of these things are just fabulous, fantastic ideas. Really interesting. Some of them were just like very difficult subjects. So we tried to spend a lot of time, was what I'm trying to say, being fair and allowing our assessors to kind of take as many breaks as they wanted to for their own well being. I can't remember what the question was. But the experience so far with all. Of the games and ideas so sort of the experience so far has been really wonderful and a little bit harrowing. I also find it quite stressful, like accepting pitches because I just watch the number go up and up and up and thinking, oh my God, that's a lot of workload for us. But also feeling really responsible for people's ideas. And what I wanted to say to all of these people was if you have the wherewithal go out and publish this yourself because it sounds super cool. We can't publish it at this time. We do want to publish it, but we can't because we're limited by space. But all of these things sound really interesting and to the right audience, absolutely an amazing experience. Yeah, for sure. But feeling responsible for people's creative input is quite scary, I bet. I couldn't even imagine. And I feel like as well, I'd like to talk a little bit about even the tone of the I'm just going to call it the Guide to Death. Sure. As kind of a little bit of a nickname. I'd love to hear about kind of the tone and the intent of the type of games and stories that are going to be in this book. Since death is a tricky subject and you've already mentioned kind of skipping over, not skipping over, but not accepting some ideas that were a bit more intense and gruesome. Well, would you like me to list the games? Because, I mean, it's all been announced. Oh, yeah, sure. Absolutely. I think what we tried to do is because we've only got one essay in the initial anthology, we've tried to build the games and tie them all into this kind of central essay, which is an exploration of how we might make links between neurotypical and neurodiverse people through this shared understanding of death and morbidity. I think that's a really interesting theme and this is being done as kind of a sociological interview. So the author, Bastien, is going to interview several people, neurotypical, neurodiverse people on subjects around death like rituals. And whether it means more or less when people are close or distant to you and mourning and grief, that is fascinating, like loads of different subjects. And in a kind of rigorous scientific way, I think he's an academic. He works in communication theory. Really interesting stuff. So I took the themes that he was talking about in his pitch and kind of tried to bring in a game that tied into that theme and pull that into the rest of the anthology. So we've got, for example, to do with grief and mourning. We've got a game from Jessica Markrum unsealy Jess on Twitter or wherever else you can find her now. And that's a game about a terminally ill person already. You can tell this is going to be super sad and their carer. And these two people have been friends for a long time and they're trying to express their feelings of romantic love for each other in these final moments of this person's life in the final weeks, final months. And I think it sounds like an absolutely incredible game. And knowing Jess's work, I think it's going to be really fantastic. Yeah, that's obviously that one also is heartbreaking. Then we have Porna M, who is she's done a lot of work on just like a few games that sound really cool. I can't think of what she's done off the top of my head, but she's a cool person and she's writing a game about a myth from the Balkans where if somebody's shadow is buried in the foundations of your house, then that's said to bring good luck to you, but bad luck to them. And we're exploring a kind of gloomy economy and she says the tone of her game is gloomy. I love that word. And kind of looking at she says it's kind of like the Trolley Problem but made into something a bit more tangible and it just sounds really cool. Yeah, it sounds like a really interesting game. So at the start of the game, you're kind of doing this weird bidding to a third character, like a shadow mage who's going to actually do this spell. And the house owner says, I've had terrible luck in my life. All of these awful things have happened to me and I just like a little bit of extra look and it would be really nice if you could bury your shadow in my house and the person selling their shadow is saying, like, I really need the money. Yeah, basically. And then you come back to both of their stories later and find out whether or not it's brought them good luck and whether or not it's brought them it's brought the shadow seller bad luck and like, what what's that what's that meant to their life? And have they passed away yet? Yeah. That's interesting, I think. Sounds an interesting game and I'm really keen on exploring this kind of weird, gloomy myth. I should note that we will be hiring some consultants for all of the games, I think that deal with specific subjects like grief or mourning, but also, in this particular example, to make sure that we do speak to somebody from that part of the world to kind of correctly capture the feeling of this myth and not misrepresent it. Yeah, I love that extra work and care put into it to make it accurate and essential because these types of tones can hit people pretty hard. And so being careful on kind of the sensitivity of it is also really. Nice to number three. So we've done the essay. Game number three is I can't remember what all of them are called. That one is called Shadow Market and Jess Markrum's game is called Farewell My Heart, which is such like a cheery title. Yeah, that one sounds devastating. Like out of all of them. So, I mean, it's only been the two games in the essay, but that just sounds like devastating and I would probably just cry at the end. I think I would cry throughout. I'm really keen to have this game out in the world, not just because I think the creator is amazing, but also because I think it's a really important story to consider. A really important story to tell. Because I think sometimes some of that stuff gets a bit hidden and left behind and it's just very human. Very human, yeah, exactly. That's a good way of putting it. Yeah. Game three is called caron rails. And this is a much more whimsical take on this. So this is kind of looking at the myth of the fairy man, but through a kind of anti capitalist lens. I should probably preface that by saying the Far Horizons co op is kind of explicitly leftist and a kind of very diverse space and we've always kind of aimed for these anti capitalist, anti establishment, pro socialism, absolutely things in what we do. And I think car on rails is going to be going to be really good. So it's kind of the idea that there was just one ferryman, but there are so many people dying nowadays that they need a whole company of people of train drivers, basically. And these psychopomps are kind of going to deal with all sorts of things. But the idea is that they still have to get these people gently from the land of the living to the land of the dead. And the problems that they deal with and the way that they deal with them might be kind of magical and whimsical in nature, but you're still dealing with a human soul and you kind of have to treat that with respect and dignity. And I think that is going to be quite an interesting game. It's written by Keith ASADA, who is a game designer, who is actually a member of the Cop. The other people who have produced games in essays for us are not members of the Cop and we've worked with them before and their work is just cool. It's just good. I know this is going to be a good game and I'm really pleased to be able to kind of give it the justice that it deserves. Yeah. And the concepts is really interesting too. Yeah. So far we've had one devastating game. One game which is quite gloomy, an essay which is fairly academic in tone, I think that's fair to say. And the final game is called upon the digital sea. And this is the one I'm personally most excited about because this is a game where there are it's weird to explain it basically it's a game about an online community of people who have known each other for a long time, like a forum or something or a discord server, and one of the members has died. And so for the first time, some of the other community members are going to their funeral and they're going to meet in person for the first time. And then you are telling the story of not only how that person who has died lived and died, but also how the community comes together and then disintegrates afterwards. So it's kind of a story about not only memorializing people, but it's about how communities come together and fall apart, like maybe how they hinge on one person. I'm not sure totally where some of the stories are going to go with that, but also what does memorializing people look like in the digital age? I think that's really interesting because it's something that as a society, perhaps we've not quite come to terms with yet. I'm thinking of things like Facebook memorial pages. That was kind of a big thing a while ago. I don't know how much it happens nowadays, but Facebook were taking down people's memorial pages because they knew they were dead. Is that respectful or is that disrespectful? I don't know. And I just think it's an interesting subject that is maybe not thought about. And I had a conversation with this game about with the Darkest Dogs podcast a while ago and I suddenly thought, if I touch wood, if I were to die, tomorrow? What would happen to the Far Horizons co op and what would happen to the other online spaces that I'm involved with? Well, I'm sure they would remember and notice that I was gone because the project lead suddenly have disappeared for several projects. But maybe in other communities would people recognize that you were no longer consistently there when you've lost touch with somebody on Twitter or even going back Google Plus, something like that and you've lost contact with somebody and occasionally think well, what happened to that person? Are they still kicking around on the internet or they just given up with this or have they passed away? And sometimes we just never know these things and I don't know. That's weird. It is weird. You're making me think about it and I'm just like no, this is like such an insanely interesting project just in the ideas that it brings forward, in the thought experiments that you kind of have people go on with playing some of these games and really thinking what could happen? What does happen when we play these games and explore these stories? This is fascinating. I love this so much. So I'm really hoping is that it doesn't sound too eclectic because that's not what we want. I think what I've tried to do is to build together a cohesive mixtape of stuff that will feel like it belongs together and I think part of that is going to be around theme and we'll have an editorial team working on that who I think are going to have to try and bring things together in certain places. But I think part of it as well is to do with how things are illustrated, how things are laid out and the actual graphics and the physicality of the book itself, which is something I'd like to talk about later. Because all of these things, I think, are really important. Because I don't know how much you personally know about the Far Horizons Court, but your listeners may or may not know that. We used to produce digests of short games sort of like this every three months and we did that for two years and we didn't theme them. So you went from one game to the next game and there was no cohesion between them and that's not the reason that they didn't sell well. But I think it contributed to it because in a way it's difficult to sell an anthology of very mixed music, very mixed anything coming onto the idea of like now that's what I call music CDs because you don't go out and buy them for their cohesion, right? You go out and buy them because you feel like you ought to or whatever. It's a harder sell. I think it's a difficult sell unless you have some absolute spell binding musicians or in our case game designers in there, which we do, but I'm not sure that they are headliners which could necessarily sell a game entirely on their own merit. I don't know if that's really unfair because I would 100% go out and buy any of these books. But anyway. Yeah, no, I totally get it. It's also not a common idea either to just do kind of these short anthology games together and actually, the first time that I ever saw a book like that was actually Last of the I visited a game shop. Up in Ohio and I got some stuff from their free, like stuff from the free RPG day. And one of it was I think it's called, like, Level Up or something, where it's this little booklet that's filled with a bunch of short games and it's just like an anthology of a bunch of different games. Fabulous. I think as someone who plays these types of games, normally I didn't know what that was. I didn't know if it was actually like a bunch of games or if it was just like if it was days. And I actually wasn't even going to take the book at first until the person just gave it to me. It's like, oh, you should check this out. I'm like, okay. And I was then surprised when it had a bunch of short games that were easy to start up and play with a bunch of people that as well. They all had tones and how many people were meant to play them, and a bunch of different things like that that made it actually a really interesting read. And so to see I don't know too much about the Far Horizon Corp, but the little bit that I looked into before doing this, I saw your anthology. I think they were like revised versions of your anthology games that you did before, and those looked really good and kind of reminded me of that idea of just putting a bunch of games in one thing. But it is a really hard sell because it's not just one idea, it's not a straight idea, like a normal not saying that those aren't normal games, but most people are used to a rulebook that this is a game about playing monster hunters and that's what the game is, 100%. So the difficulty that I think we've had with selling anthologies before is we would just accept any number of games that pitch to us. So we'd be trying to sell a game book of eight to ten short games and you get very muddled messages there because you're trying to make each game sound really, really cool, but you're not buying one game, you're buying ten games. So I think ambition was our enemy there and what we've tried to do a little bit since then is scale it back. So we've had, for example, the Far Horizons Guide to Cults, which was a book of basically system generic cults that you can just drop into your games. Yes, that and the Heist one look really good. The heist. Yeah. Heist is really good as well. That's the Role Player's Guide to Heists which is an absolutely fabulous book and I think that was the first project we kick started as a co op cults was a couple of years ago. Now it's almost ready, I think. I hope so because I've got a cult in that. So our next one is the Guide to Death which is a little bit different because we've not done an anthology of games in a Kickstarted format before. We've not crowdfunded for an anthology of games before, but we have aimed to lower our ambitions and we said what we want to do is we want to make a book of four games, one essay for starters. If we get a lot of extra funding, maybe we'll extend that a bit. But that's what we want to do. And we want to make a product that looks the business, that looks nice, that feels good to read, feels maybe not good to play, because some will be dealing with difficult subjects. But in general is just like a nice product. Yeah, no, for sure that does the part. Yeah. I think going full into one theme, one central theme is a fantastic way to do these anthology games. Yes. Have you found that when you did the Heist and the Cults game, what was the reception on those versus the more general anthology ones that you did before? Heists did fantastically well and I'm really proud of how that did. And we funded Cults as well and that did as we expected it to. And overall we're really pleased with how those games have gone and ongoing sales on Heists has been a pretty strong source of income for a lot of our co op members. I think the anthologies, I think in a way because they're a harder sell. We've not been so successful with those and that's fine because some people have bought them and have really enjoyed what's therein. There are a lot of very cool games in there that could and have been republished elsewhere and that's cool. Yeah, no, that's really cool. I've got a lot of games in there that I'm really proud to have made, I'm really pleased are out in the world and that I would just like for people to play maybe and if not then I'll just republish them sometime. Exactly. But again, I think that it is then reflective that strong idea. Like this is a whole thing of Heist, this is a whole thing of cults, this is a whole thing on A Guide to Death. I think those are fantastic and a great approach to these style games because I actually find the idea to be really cool and especially for people who may not have always the time to learn a new game or they only really want to do one shots. These types of anthology type games are really cool because you can pick them up pretty easily and I'd actually like to talk a little bit about the games that are going to be in this book. I'm guessing are all going to be roleplay type games. Are they meant for specific amount of people? Are there Gmless games? What's the structure of the games that are going to be in here? Great question. Let's rely on my memory for most of it. So, Jess Malcolm's game Farewell My Heart is specifically a duet game like Starcrossed and Dread. It's played with a tumbling block tower. Oh, that's fun. I think I'm correct in that it is not based on Starcrossed, it is based on the I can't remember the name of the system, but it's Jess's system. WLW can't remember the full name of it. It does not stand for women loving women. It is a good game, it's a good system, and it's a slight twist on the original version in that the game doesn't end when the tower falls. That's just the moment that they confess their feelings for each other and the game ends sometime later. Something to do with cards as well. I do know vaguely how this game works and there will be more detail in the Kickstarter campaign about this, of course, but personally I have memory issues anyway, so that's fine. Shadow Market, the game about shadows and foundations of houses, I think can be played with two, three or more players. So two players is the standard version and I think that's for the person buying the shadow and the person selling the shadow. In the three player version, one of the players is also the shadow mage. And then when there are more players, I think they just exchange roles from time to time. So that's sort of Gmless, but structured very cool. Let's go on. Car on Rails, fairly sure, is a kind of more traditional game of a game master and a party of players. Not 100% on that and I don't think it was in the original pitch, so it's not all on me. And the last one is upon the digital Sea, which is definitely a Gmless non facilitated game, but with a kind of act structure that makes it a bit less free form. Yeah, that game has been described to me as being a 55 word game. It'll be written in more words than that, but I think it kind of assumes that you're starting with a ten or eleven word sentence that you then add to or change words from throughout the game. I'm very interested to see where that goes because it's kind of a fascinating concept to me. I really like games that play with form. In a weird way. It reminds me of Paul Sager's game. The World, the Flesh and the Devil. Possibly not in that order. Yes, it is in that order, where you write like a paragraph about your character to begin with and then you underline certain words and make annotations on that. I think it's kind of that game of playing with text and playing with descriptions of things to make really cool more exciting. I think that sounds really cool. Yeah, no, all of those to know where that goes, all of those sound really cool. And I love the different ways that they are also played feel fitting as well to the types of stories that they're yeah. Yes, I think so. And have you played Starcrossed? Have I played I i don't believe I've even heard of it, actually. Starcrossed is Alex Roberts game of a relationship that shouldn't happen for whatever reason, but it's going to happen. And it's played with a tumbling block tower. So when the tower falls, that's when they kiss or their relationship starts, even though it's not supposed to. It's kind of star crossed lovers, that sort of thing. And the reason I'm talking about that is because that kind of build up of tension and that kind of build up of sort of little bit of anxiety about your character is how Farewell My Heart is going to feel. And that is absolutely perfect for the subject matter. Yeah, for sure. It's going to be really good and I'm very excited to see how that pans out. And the thing I like most about it is that it has that kind of structural twist in that the game doesn't end when the tower falls and that the relationship continues for a little bit after that. And I think that may be even more heartbreaking than anything else. Yeah. Because you get a glimpse of it and it's good and you get to. Know what could have happened. Yeah. Oh man, I'm sad about it. I haven't even played it yet. I think that's a great way, though. That's how you know you have a winner of a game when someone can already tell how they're going to feel. I know this is going to break my heart. I know this is going to make me really sad and actually I kind of really want that. Yeah, exactly. And making it so that a person does still want to play it and wants to explore that story is also insanely important because the amazing thing of this anthology that you're doing so far, even though I definitely know myself, I have a pretty weird relationship with Death and how I view it. And it's something that makes me uncomfortable, but it makes me also excited to have an opportunity to explore these types of stories through this game and to think about it. Yeah, absolutely. Because it feels like almost a if. I can sort of put a thought into your mind, I feel like it's a sort of invitation to have a conversation about Death in a kind of veiled but also safe way. Exactly. And to me, I think that's what not saying that only young people play role playing games, but I think that's what young people don't have. They don't have this opportunity. A lot of young people, I mean obviously there are people who experience tragedy in their lives but don't have this opportunity to kind of go out there and say, well, what does it feel like to go through grief? What does it feel like to go through a mourning process before it happens and then it's happening to you. And some people will be fine with that and some people will find that really difficult to not know how they are going to be able to process their feelings in that. So I think without sounding too high minded, I think that this work is quite important as well as being hopefully fun and entertaining. Fingers crossed, hopefully. No, I think that I would like that. And that's where I think that you do have a good mix of games too, because there are a few that sound devastating. But the chiron one specifically, even though there is still care and thought and is still a heavier topic, that one sounds like it can be played while having that conversation and not having to, I guess, take it as it doesn't have to be as consuming. It doesn't have to be entirely about death because it can also be about how capitalism sucks. Yeah, exactly. That's fun, right? Yeah, we love that. Who doesn't want to role play having a terrible boss and like getting your own back on them? I think that sounds really fun. It really does. I feel like that's why Dimension 20 has gotten so popular because we love. What I'm trying to do as well. I mean, I can see that this anthology is not for everybody, but I'm trying to make it broad enough so that maybe 80% of people who look at it say, oh, do you know what? There's a game in there that sounds really cool. And hopefully they back it based on that game that sounds cool and then find out that the others are also really cool. Yeah. And then what we do is we get four authors names out there just a little bit more and say to the world, hey, these people are cool, you should watch these people because they're going to make more cool stuff and I guess the cop as well. No, I think that's the coolest part is getting more of those voices out there, more of the creativity from people who might not always have the chance to do that themselves. That's what I actually love about that's. A big thing I love about quite a few TTRPG publishing companies is that they work with smaller creators and get their ideas out there and then they can have a game that might have been amazing and wonderful as it was when they didn't have a company behind their back. But it wouldn't have done well, and people wouldn't have seen it then if they had a company that could actually get it out to the world. I think we have done that to some extent in the past. So one of the games that we've published before is Kamala Kara Arayo's Friendship Effort Victory, which is like a shounen battle manga. Oh, that's so fun. It's so much fun. And Kamala is a wonderful creator, absolutely fantastic. But by herself, she didn't have access to Illustrators, she didn't have access to editors, she didn't have access to proofreaders without paying out. So as a co op, what we do is we take all of the profits from the books and we split them according to how much work somebody put into that project. I love that. So what that means is that any creator who brings a project to us has access to our pretty experienced team of Illustrators, layout designers, editors, et cetera, and also has the name for Horizons Corp. Behind them so that you can put that out in the world and sell in the case of Friendship Effort Victory, really well, sell loads and loads of copies of this book and make people quite excited about it. And that's fantastic because I think by herself, Kamala probably wouldn't have gotten quite the traction that we managed to get with Fev because it has a super cool cover, and getting access to that cover would have been a lot more challenging for a solo creator. So, yeah, that's a big part of our mission, is taking small creators and being able to put them out there and also, like, bigging up the editors who work with us, like myself, bigging up the layout designers, bigging up the Illustrators, saying, hey, you know what? It takes a team of about 20 people to make this anthology, and here are all their names and go out and buy their stuff as well, because. They'Re cool people, for sure. Always amazing to just see creators, uplifting creators, getting those names out there. That's wonderful. So I love that. Along with creating awesome projects that create really interesting thought experiments and things like that, you also get to do awesome things of working with cool creators and getting their voices out there. Love it. Yeah. And taking risks doing stuff that traditional publishing companies might feel is not ideal. Even companies. I mean, evil hat aside, I think most companies would probably take this idea and say, that sounds cool, but I don't think we can get away with publishing it. And fine, whatever. Let's have collectives of creators working together to produce stuff and displaying profits evenly, and maybe that's a good thing. Exactly. I mean, someone has to at least start, and then you can see if it's something that is actually like, yeah, no, this is a good idea, and this is something. So I love taking those risks, even though they are terrifying. It's less terrifying when you've been through it before. And I've run my own kickstarter. I have been editor on another Kickstarter, and I've worked on various projects that have at some point had crowdfunding attached to them and the more you do it, yeah, it's always a little bit anxiety inducing but I think that gets that reduces with time. So when you've got a level head behind it and I kind of balking at the fact that I've just described myself as a level head, I think it makes it feel a lot more comfortable for everybody else. And yeah, this isn't going to be Avatar. The last airbender. RPG. This is going to be a much smaller scale project with a much smaller budget. But I still think we're going to smash it. Yeah. No, I believe it. I think the idea is so freaking strong and I can't wait for it to come out. And actually I'm curious. Hey everyone. We are at the midway point through the episode now, which is when I'm going to be running a promo for a really cool show called Arthadian Anthologies and also tell you about some things. First off, if you are enjoying this episode of the RPG Goblin so far, please make sure to give it a follow wherever you listen to your podcast and also give it a rating if you're enjoying it. Every little bit of support really helps keep it going because I know that you guys are liking it. And also, I know I mentioned somewhere in this episode, I can't remember if it's this first part or the second part. RPG Goblin has an official discord now. Yay. If you do want to join the discord and come hang out with me and all my really, really cool guests. The link for the discord is in my link tree, which is Linktreethrpgoblin. You can also find it on Twitter if you look at some of my most recent posts. I'm really, really excited about this discord and to finally start talking to some of you guys. And basically it's the perfect place if you want to nerd out. And I'm going to have a whole section where you can find the guests and actually buy the games that we talk about on this show so that it's easier for you to get them. So I'm really, really excited about that. And yeah, please come join the community. I'm very excited. The next episode of The RPG Goblin, which is coming out Friday 22nd, is going to be about a really, really cool game called Castles and Crusades, which is kind of an old school game that replicates the same vibe as early DND and Pathfinder and such. So if you really like old school fantasy and that vibe in a TTRPG, you would really like to hear about Castles and Crusades where I bring on Meliora to talk all about it. Meliora is a freelance artist that actually works for Trolls Games, who produces Castles and Crusades and she has some amazing things to say about this game as it's one of her all time favorites and is actually working on Redoing the character sheets. It's really, really awesome and super cool to just experience a kind of old school fantasy game that is lower on magic. So if that sounds really cool, please make sure to listen to the next episode, which again, will be coming out September 22. And yeah, I think we are at the end of this midpoint here today. We have a promo that's going to be playing in a few moments here for the awesome Show arthadian anthologies, which, if you don't know who arthadian is already, we actually did an episode talking all about his game and passion project Reborn in Power. And he runs a show that basically talks about the lore of this world. And that is what we're going to be listening to here. So let's roll it. Greetings fellow travelers and storytellers. You are invited to explore a new expanding universe where life does not end at death. Experience a science fantasy epic like no other with an anthology based podcast that spans across the core realms, incorporating multiple audio fiction sagas, mixed with an actual play of a highly customizable modular tabletop RPG titled Reborn in Power. You can explore it all at your world's head codex, Archive artheianthologies.com. And I can't wait for it to come out. And actually, I'm curious. So you mentioned at least at one point that the Guide to Death could be more than the four games and the one essay, is that something that's connected to the crowdfunding with potentially reaching over your goal? Yes, and I think our goal is kind of up in the air slightly at the moment, but we're looking to make about 13,000 pounds, which is I think about $17,000 if we can get another 2000. On top of that, we'll get some additional games. The one I've been looking at is Reload by Seamus Cannibal halfling games. Yeah. So that game is called Reload and it's kind of like the film Edge of Tomorrow. I think that's the film I'm thinking of where basically it's a war and the character dies every day and yeah, it's kind of like a bit like a more bleak version of Groundhog Day, I guess. So you just kind of die repeatedly, but none of it is high stakes until the final loop of the game, in which case if you die in the final loop, you die for real. Wow. Yeah. Which I think is kind of an interesting take on. Are you familiar with DCC? Do you know about Funnels in DCC, where everybody starts with lots of zero level characters and you just kind of churn through them and at the end of the dungeon, whoever has got a character left that becomes their character for the rest of the campaign, which is kind of a cool idea in Prince. Yeah, it's a little bit weird and it's quite glib. It's quite glib and quite gory. And I'm not a massive fan of it because it's the kind of game that doesn't interest me anyway. But I think it's kind of reload is going to be a kind of interesting approach to kind of that funnel time loop, Groundhog Day, Edge of Tomorrow kind of feel that sort of makes you think about how we treat violence and fatality in role playing games and consequently what we mean when we do that creatively. How do we feel about that? Yeah, no, that's actually really interesting. Yeah, no, I like that thought a lot because I think it's very easy to look at these games as a game and look at it through the eyes of these are just enemies, we kill them and we take their loot, stuff like that. And to actually have a game that makes you think about that a bit more exactly. And makes you think of what else is there. That's actually a big reason I always tend to put a little bit of backstory or things behind monsters or enemies that my players encounter and I'll always make it a harder choice and a harder thing to deal with in my games every time that they want to solve something through just straight violence and murder. Because it's not just like no, these aren't just mindless monsters or mindless people or anything like that. These are real things. Yeah. And I think that kind of as a culture, like a role playing game culture, we kind of have a weird connection to murder and theft. Right, fine. That is a fantasy that we're dealing with and we know that we're trying to I know we have this weird relationship between we go and kill things and take their loot and we gain personal experience that allows us to grow as individuals when we kill things. What a weird message to give to people. I have a problem with games that do that. I don't want to proselytize about it because that's my personal taste, but I think that in general there is a feeling in the co op that that kind of approach to things is weird and we want to tell different stories. Yeah. And that's kind of why we got sort of excited about reload because I think it just sounds like a fun take on things. No, I absolutely agree. That would be awesome to see get added. Yeah. So that would be if we can come a little bit later and get a little bit more funding, I'm sure we have some other yes. So that's going to be from Seamus Connelly and that's based on the Breathless system, which is six if we get even more money, is from Austin home. And that game is called you'll like this one? That game is called before I'm gone completely. And the pitch of that is you are dying piece by piece, memory by memory. Escape the hospice seniors home to fulfill your bucket list before you forget who you are. Fantastic. Oh, wow. I think this is cool. And I'm not even sure I can express entirely why I think it's cool. Have you seen the film Cloud Atlas, or have you read the book? There's a kind of cloud, one of these stories in that is about a person who escapes from a senior's home, and it's basically that story of escapade and adventure and trying to deal with memories and difficult subjects, like why am I here and all that. I think that'll be a really interesting word, a really interesting game as well. And I know a little bit less about this one because we're not working directly with Austin at the moment, but I think it's going to be fun. Yeah, no, that sounds really cool and really fun. I really hope that you go over the funding goal, because just these two games, I don't know if you're adding more. These extra ones, I think they'll all be on the Kickstarter page, so I can definitely say the other two, which the third one is Crater, which the pitch for that is man, it would have been so useful to have this before. An astronaut sits on the moon, their helmet is cracked and they are lost. They are utterly, completely alone, which is a solo role playing game. Oh, man. Yes. So that is I'm not sure we even need any more words. Yeah, no, I think it's going to. Be really interesting, and it reminds me of this game, our Radios Are Dying by Caitlin Bell. I'm going to say Caitlin Bell it may not be, which is basically the same thing, but with two players and our radios are dying is it stands out to me because Jeff Stormmer once played it on Party of One and I couldn't listen to the end of the episode because I was so sad about it. And I think that's probably the only time where I had to skip forward on an actual play. So I think this game will do that again. Yeah, no, that sounds as a solo game, obviously, we're going to have to have quite a lot of heavy safety talk in this game, but I think it's a very good subject. Yeah, that's going to be very amazing subject. And actually what a pitch. Yeah, I know. That sentence. Just that sentence is absolutely amazing. And for someone, as one of my favorite, but also most horrifying episodes that I love in the Magnus archives, being the one of being trapped alone in a spaceship with all the stars blinked out yeah, that one gets me on a personal level. That gets me on a personal level. I thought you were going to talk about the one in the caves, because I listened to that recently. Oh, my God. Yeah, that was scary. I love that episode, too. Absolutely terrifying. My sister is a caver. When I heard that episode, I was like, well, I hope she doesn't start doing that again. I couldn't imagine knowing someone who does that I went to a cave workshop one time where they basically just talked about their experiences of going cave diving and whatever and having that and then listening to that episode, I'm like, I know what I'm never doing. Yeah, being trapped underground. No, not my cup of tea. Last thing I'd like. And that's from that game is by Thomas Thorderbrugen. I do not know how to properly pronounce that. That's as good as I'm going to get. Also known as bogus cheesecake. Bogus cheesecake, I love that. That's cool. The final one that we would definitely be adding if we get the funding is another essay from Beck Andrew Evans, which is called Death the Everyday Reality of Impoverished Life which kind of goes back into that capitalism sucks theme. And I am really keen to talk about this subject or for our book to talk about this subject because I think it sounds very much up as street, which is a kind of exploration of the I have to personally be careful of what I say because I've not been in poverty in the past. But the kind of casualizing of death and the kind of proximity that people who are in poverty are to not having enough money to survive effectively and what that would do to your psyche and what that would do to your personality and the way that you see things and being able to talk about that, I think, is an important thing. I think it does tie into the themes of the other of the other games as well. Obviously has this linking theme which is it's all about death and dying, but it ties into Reload, for example, because it's about experiencing near death experiences over and over again. It's about what you might do in order to get money like Shadow Market. It's about ways that you wonder whether you will be remembered. And I'm very keen to get this in. That sounds heavy, but like a really good conversation to have out there. Yeah, and maybe there's a time and a place for that conversation that might be in a book that otherwise contains stuff about a whimsical train company. I think about trashy magazines that you can buy that have both completely pointless and useless stories like Psychic Ache, My Hedgehog and then also using those same stories to kind of springboard people into conversations with each other about serious topics. I think about like soap operas and telenovelas which basically do the same thing but from a melodramatic point of view. And actually I think there's a way that you can combine serious with non serious subjects that is not just smashing two things together and getting people to laugh at them. Yeah. No, I agree. Actually also completely valid way of doing things. But I think being able to combine the sublime with the ridiculous is definitely a thing that an anthology with a theme is capable of doing and hopefully it will get people thinking. Yeah. Again, being high minded about these things. I mean, I would hope so as well because I can't see a way that it wouldn't spawn those types of conversations well. Yeah. So that's everything that we've got planned. And I definitely also love, if you would like to, after we're done recording this, give me all of the information for all of the writers. I'd love to put them in the description for this episode as well so that people can check them out individually because all of these people sound amazing. And just these ideas and the ideas that they have and the conversations that they can start, I am for sure amazed by. So I'd love for more people to check them out. I will send their details to you. Yeah, absolutely. Because they're all really cool designers. Some of them are people I've worked with before. Some of them are people I've wanted to work with for a long time. Some of them I've never heard of. And that's cool because that means that this pitch request went way beyond my social network. I'm really pleased about that. Absolutely. I'll get those names to you. Perfect. I love how you talk about that as well. You get to outside of the social circle that you're in, and you get to work with these people that you've been wanting to work with or never heard of. Just so many different opportunities coming from this one idea to explore death. Yeah, I love it. And it was because we apart from me, because we reviewed these pictures without having any names attached to them. We had no idea whose game was whose. I didn't even know. I knew that a couple of people from the co op had submitted pictures, and I knew that some people I was friends with, both online and offline, had submitted pictures. And it was both great that I had all of these new and interesting contacts. And it was fantastic that we got somebody from the corp in as well. It was also kind of sad that I didn't get some of these pictures. And I'm not saying that they were worse than the others because the competition was just so stiff. It was very difficult to make decisions about it. So, yeah, sorry to all those people who submitted and didn't get through. Well, maybe. Sorry. See, the thing is, at least with that, there's always opportunities for the future too. What if there's a second volume of the Guide to Death, stuff like that? We do have a secret stretch goal, which is not that secret, actually. It's a social stretch goal. If you're saying it out loud here, it's definitely not going to be secret. No. If we get enough social media interactions of some kind during the campaign, we will later in the year kick start a second volume, which I think will be called Besides as kind of a pun on Besides. And that will be a digital only volume of the stuff that didn't make it into the first volume. And I think I've forgotten who I've said is going to be leading that. It's not going to be me. I think that will feel more of an eclectic volume, and I think that's fine because I think that's going to be cute. I think it's going to be an interesting juxtaposition against this kind of tome and instead might feel a bit more like a zine or might feel like a collection of zines or something like that. And I think that's cool as well. If you go out there and if you can't back our project, if you just share it and like what we do and repost stuff, whatever the parlance is nowadays. Yeah, things like that, you can contribute to potentially getting something out in the future as well. Absolutely. I love that, too. Having ways for people to support outside of backing the project is always fantastic. So where can people find where would you like people to go to start helping with that if they can? Like, we're on, I guess social media. What accounts? Yes. Okay, let's see if I can remember the good ones. So we are on Twitter. We are at Far Horizons co op on Twitter. I refuse to call it by its new silly name. Yeah, I haven't either. Every time my friends keep joking, I. Hear on the radio and I'm like, you're being silly, don't do that. I know I say Twitter in front of my friends and they're like, you mean X? And I'm like, no, that's not what I mean. I mean Twitter. We are on mastodon at dicecamp. So that's farizonsco. Op Dice.com. I don't remember how that works. I don't remember how mastodon works. We also have an account now at Bluesky Bluesky, or however it's supposed to be pronounced. And that's just Far Horizonscorp Bluesky social. Is that how that one works? It's like b sky, I guess. B sky? Yeah. I don't know. I'm sure you'll be able to find it. It's just the main. Blue sky. Blue Sky Server. We've not done very much with that yet. I only got an invite code today. Exciting. So that's there as well. We also have a discord server, which you can get to through our regular newsletter, which I think is Farizonscorp substack.com because it's me writing that. And I have a lot of other hats to wear. It doesn't get out more than about once every six weeks, but I'll do one next week. Yeah. So it could definitely be something. You can get a lot of information out of the newsletter, and we'll be pushing the afterwards anthology pretty heavily in that in the next few weeks. Perfect. Can I think of anywhere else you can find our stuff at Far Horizons Card card Co. And I think that's probably everywhere apart from Itch and DTRPG, but you can get to those through the card. Yeah, perfect. Absolutely. And I'll make sure to also put the information in the description below for everyone. And like Mark said, just support them, interact on the stuff around the Guide to Death and hopefully the Volume Two will come out and you get to see all of the other projects that had an opportunity to make it into this. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no, that sounds amazing. I am very excited about this. I'm trying to think if there's any big things that I wanted to cover on the Guide to Death or if there's anything specific that you were wanting to cover, since I think we are getting closer to the end here. Sure. I think the only thing that I don't know, you might want to splice this back in further, is that there will be a digital edition, but we're mainly trying to get a printed edition and that's going to be a really cool book. I just want to tell people about this because I've been chasing print specs and printers to give me quotations for months and I'm really excited about what we've got planned, which is a hardback book, which is cloth bound with a foil printed cover of sorts. Oh, so this is going to be like when you said tome, oh, yeah. It'S going to look really nice. It's going to be a five. So half letter size, a little bit stubby, other than half letter. And the covers that we're putting together is I wanted it to be super simple and I'm astonished by what our cover designers are doing with this. So it's going to look cool, it's going to have skulls, it's going to look nice. So excited. Then the rest of the book will have a bookmark ribbon, things like that, but just also be a nice, crisp, well made made, well put together, well produced book. That's one of the bits I'm most excited about is just to be able to hold 350 books in my hand, put them through the postal system. Yes, I'm pretty stoked about that. So it's not going to be the cheapest book, but I think you're going to want to have it. And that's where the digital options are. Always nice and actually digital options will be available. How many pages is this going to be? I think we budget maybe 150 pages since not huge, not like a real not a heck in chunkosaurus, but it is chunkosaurus. It is a book which I think will feel nice. I think what it will feel like is the kind of thickness of a nice journal, like 100 and 5200 page journal with a lovely cover that you can put in your bag and take with you on a summer's day to read in the field somewhere. Oh, sounds lovely. I love it. No, this sounds absolutely amazing. I am so excited about this, actually. I can't wait for it to come out and to just see, also see everything written out and be able to see the art of the book and see the book itself and just like all of the little things. I can't wait. Oh man, it's so exciting. Fantastic. Well, as I said before, it will be kick starting in September. We'll be finishing September 29, I say Friday definitely because I don't want it to go into October. Yes, done before this last opportunity. Yeah, because otherwise everything's going to be all spooky saturated. Exactly. I need to pull ahead of the game a little bit. Be ahead of the game. That's our intention. Because this isn't spooky and this isn't horror. This is just death. Yeah, it's death and it's thinking about death and having those conversations which I love and I can't wait for it to come out. And this episode is going to be out around the time either before or after. We will see where it lies in the schedule for sure. But when I do the intro and stuff, everyone who listened, you'll probably already hear if it's out or not and where to find it, which will be on Kickstarter for sure. Yeah, absolutely. I will send you a link when we have one. Perfect. I will definitely be sharing that around then. Yeah. I am so excited about this and I think that it's about time to wrap up and I want to say this has been amazing to hear all about this anthology game. I am so very excited to actually see it and to hopefully explore the games myself and maybe get some of the people that I know to play them with me. But this has been fantastic and I think I'm going to do one last question before we wrap up here and that's going to be what you are the most excited about with this project. Oh, heavens. I am most excited about getting to work with not only some of my favorite people from the co op, such as Ninfael, our layout designer, art, lead illustrator, just a fabulous person all around and people like John Boyle, resident bard, one of our editors, and just cool people. Like, the team is massive. I'm very excited about working with all of them, but I'm also really excited about bringing new people, new perspectives into our co op workflows and to find out what other people think of them and to learn from what ways that they like working as well. And I know that Pornet M and Jess Markrum are really good at leading projects, so hopefully I get to learn a little bit about how to do it properly. Absolutely. I'm just excited to be working with people again and to be bringing a cool project to bear based on that. Absolutely. I think that is so fair. Working with people is amazing. That's been one of my biggest things with the podcast that I've enjoyed so much is getting the opportunity to work with so many cool people. It's like, oh, I love you guys. Yeah, it's always so good. When I used to run a podcast, it'd be, you know, I don't think this person would want to talk to such a tiny podcast me. Don't be ridiculous. And then I was like, Just tried it. Why not? And then, not to name drop, really, but, like, James Demarto was like, yeah, sure, I'll talk to you, whatever. Or like, Jess Storm was like, yeah, sure, Marks, whatever. Let's chat. And now we kind of interact quite regularly. Or, like, Vincent Baker is very happy to come on the podcast and talk to me. I was like, this is a big deal. Why so casually about this? But I think it's fantastic. I'd actually like these big designers because they want to talk to people. They want to sell this stuff, but also they want to talk about this stuff, and that's amazing. Yeah. And everyone's just so nice, too, and it's just absolutely lovely. Yeah, I mean, mostly. Yeah, that's true. There have been some bad apples in certain people, but for the most part, everyone is usually fantastic. You have been absolutely lovely, and thank you so much for coming on and talking about the Guide to Death with me, because this has been fantastic and I just absolutely love learning about it. Yeah, thank you for having us. I suppose you're hosting the co op as well as me. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you. And thank you, everyone, for listening and I hope that you have enjoyed and please make sure to check out Mark's Shepherd. Where can they find you specifically on social media. Right. So on most social media, I'm phofos that's P-H-O-P-H-O-S on Twitter. Somebody had already taken that one. So I am phofos on Twitter, but I got to say, I'm not there very much anymore. I'm mostly on blue sky now. And Discord. You can always find me on Discord because I'm just, like, splurging conversations with people all the time. Perfect. Yeah. Discord is almost certainly the best place to find me. Perfect. All right. Absolutely fantastic. So go check out Mark's on those social medias if you're on Blue Sky and things like that. And also, hopefully by this point, I also will have my own Discord server up and open to the public for people to join. And you can talk to Mark's possibly even here, potentially. But, yeah, this has been absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on. And thank you, everyone, for listening. We will end it here. Bye.