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[SPEAKER_01]: Hello and welcome to Table Talk, a show where I chat with other creators in the TTRPG space about how they run their tables.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Danger'd Andrews, the GM and host of D&D and joining us at the table today is the CEO and founder of Arcane Circle, Mike.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Hello, hello, hello, thanks for having me.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for being here.
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[SPEAKER_01]: To get us started, can you tell us just a little bit about yourself, your history in the
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[SPEAKER_00]: Oh man, well, I mean, in terms of my own personal history within the tabletop industry, I've been playing the game for over a decade.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I don't even count anymore.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But no, I've been a player for a very long time, uh, switched over to the GM side, uh, little prior to COVID times, and uh, been a professional GM and content creator, running sort of actual plays.
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[SPEAKER_00]: For about four to five years, sort of give or take again, don't really count anymore.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I've been running our cane circle, which is our all-one T-Tarbagey platform for GMs and players.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I've been doing this for a very long time, and it all started with a level two fighter human.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It is much the same for me.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The first character that I legitimately consider my actual first character, also a level two fighter human, did the deathhouse portion of Curse of Strod as a one shot.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And that was kind of like my first little toe dip into D&D.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I done a couple of other one shots in a few other varying systems beforehand.
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[SPEAKER_01]: all of those I'd come into with character prejans.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I consider my first legit character, a human fighter level two kind of simple as you can get.
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[SPEAKER_00]: When I got started with tabletop, I did what I would like to call the poster boy a first-time player, which was I'm a champion fighter.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I got really lucky.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The first time I started playing, I was invited to a work game.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was working for a company called New Egg.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And as part of their marketing team, and I was very close with one of their studio heads.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They had to sort of a studio.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They were making much of streams, productions.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, everyone in within the industry over within that company was very much like either you're a business person or you're a tech nerd.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We're all nerds and he was like, hey man, you know, you do you do content and you do all the stuff on your own.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Do you want to be part of, you know, my game.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, of course, never played before.
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[SPEAKER_00]: and i was very lucky because that game lasted for eight years nice from level two to completion level twenty and i was able to get a full and it's one of the things we're like now i'm kind of like all right i'm moving on from what i started with and when i am able to play which has become very rare because i'm now sort of subjugated to the forever dmc it whenever i do have the chance to play one shot it's always like i can't wait to play something else and it's only
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[SPEAKER_00]: After how many years of passes that eight-year game is ended, and I'm like, I kind of wish I want to be a fighter again.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to have all these complexities.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I want to just be a fighter again.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be really fun.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I have such a simple beginnings from TTRPGs, and it's kind of blossomed to what we are now.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That tracks very well with the community meme that everyone's first and final character is a human fight after running the gambit with everything in between.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There's something great about it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: No, so I was doing that for a very long time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Just being a player.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And there was a certain point where I'm the type of person who always has to do some creative.
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[SPEAKER_00]: During my time at New Egg, there was a period where I was in charge of their live streams, they're gaming live streams.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I got really lucky to build a community and hang out people and play games for a living which was like, you know, the dream come true and there was a certain point where I was able to express all this creativity unbound and just go off and then there was a moment where my bosses were like, hey, we can't do that anymore.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We got a, you know, corporate America, we're sort of focusing now a numbers and lesson of a community building and I had to stop and it was one of those moments that I kind of stopped and was like,
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[SPEAKER_00]: Man, if I'm not doing some creative, I feel like a zombie.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so I took the love of tabletop and how I was already in that game.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, I'm just gonna start my own game.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just gonna start my own home game.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm gonna get some friends together, and we're gonna play, and, you know, even though we have lives, we're gonna play digitally, we're in a digital game, and,
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[SPEAKER_00]: COVID hit and we're like, well, already doing digital games is going to it now.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it evolved into an actual play and then evolved into me doing a professional GMing and then then all of a sudden, I was like, you know what?
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[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of spots that need improvement that I could see that can actually help GMs.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it's kind of, it's led my way here to AC.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So on that topic, can you walk us through a little bit the different aspects of Arcane Circle, what your marketplace and platform does and like what kind of tools you are bringing
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[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So the main staple that we had in terms of like what we want to include in the AAC ecosystem was if we're answering this one question.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If the feature of we're providing helps a GM or helps a player, we want it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There are some limitations that we can't do like.
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[SPEAKER_00]: As much as I would love to have some sort of like audio feature like a discord situation we already have a lot on our plate so what we're offering is it is all the one teach RPG platform we have game discovery so GMs can list out games and try to find players has player organization template creation when you make a game we have the option for you to create a campaign wiki for that particular game in your players which then you can share pages for even users to have like their own journals.
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[SPEAKER_00]: we have a discord bot that helps with notification.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That was my biggest problem when I was running a lot of like one shots was I was like all right don't forget everyone we have a game today and I was like well it'd be great to have a system that could do it automatically and we have that we also I've met numerous professional GMs who run six games a week
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[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, shout out to Ron, you know who you are.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He, man, this guy's a beast, but it's almost necessary to have someone to assist you to like do session transcriptions and summaries.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So we wanted to have a bot to do that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And we're in the works of releasing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think we're by the time this recording is happening.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think we're about a week and a half, maybe in less so of a training module.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So we were able to collaborate with a bunch of T-Tarbagee creators, Dyson Autism, Vixie Bell, Buff GM.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We were able to work with all these guys and a lot more.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And we're building all these sort of videos and training videos to teach you about table safety and system-specific training and tools.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And you're able to as a player or GM go through that training module and kind of learn how to maybe be better GM, be a better storyteller and get
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not even done yet, my CEO, really, man, my company shut it to him, he already has a skeleton of a VTT.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That one's going to be on the back burner for a while, but we have it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We have the skeleton and muscles of a character creation feature, so you can also connect it to your discord and connect it to your account.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, the whole concept is whatever we could provide that will make you're like easier without having to jump to five-year-in-platforms.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's what
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome and like with the breadth and width of niches that you're covering with that that's a lot of ground to cover on a lot of technical know how can you tell me a little bit about the process of logistically bringing some of those things together and in setting up a venture like this what were some of the hurdles that you had to jump over and ducks that had to be in a row for success to happen.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm very much of that mentality in that person who goes, well, I don't like the way this works.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I guess I'll just build my own Disneyland or, you know, like one of those things like, I guess I'll just build my own casino.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I taught myself what to use Figma and I started to do web design and I started to build out each feature.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, this is what I want and I started to visualize how each one looks.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I have notebooks filled of draft ideas in terms of the way it sort of all came together and how it interacts.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In the eyes of my CTO, it's very simple.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I don't believe him.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But then again, Harmony is a really talented person.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He is an indie game dev.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So not only he is experienced with web design.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He's been doing it for a very long time and web creation.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He also knows how to integrate sort of like video game aspects to it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So he's worked with more complicated things.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The way we did it was we did a baseline of game discovery first and then we started to build
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[SPEAKER_00]: Players find a game.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Cool.
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[SPEAKER_00]: How do you organize players?
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[SPEAKER_00]: How do you organize sessions?
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[SPEAKER_00]: How do you organize this?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And we started to build on top of that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then we started to expand it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This talks to this.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, character creation talks to this here to, you know.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So we're going one by one at the moment.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so far everything looks okay.
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[SPEAKER_01]: it definitely looks like you've got a really solid foundation going and I really admire your leaning on the expertise of the community around you.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's something that I've to my own detriment.
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[SPEAKER_01]: My kind of go to philosophy for my projects is I do not ask anybody to do anything that I am not willing to do myself and so I kind of have to put in my own hours into a thing
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[SPEAKER_01]: only lately have I been more willing to ease off on that and let people who know better take more of a lead in things.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And I've always been big on delegating and like having to divide and conquer, it's just kind of the limitations of my own time and mental space.
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[SPEAKER_01]: have really only recently started to cement in.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I very strongly admire anybody that has that kind of strong interconnected team and the ability to really branch and web out and divide and conquer and delegate.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm in the same boat.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of, I don't know if it's called millennial guilt or whatever, but it's like, you know, it's like, well, I can't ask you for help, but I'm going to do it myself.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And when I'm really struggling, that's what I'm going to finally ask.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so it very was me for a while, just sort of in the very beginning, kind of drafting everything, getting everything situated, how each block was going to fit.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then finally, I had to sort of break down, go, I don't know how to develop.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't have the time to do so.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so I ended up reaching out to Harmony.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then it came to a thing where it's like, we were having numerous calls for, uh, talking to creators, uh, AC Spotlight, specifically, you know, talking to developers.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We were able to talk to some amazing game developers.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, I, everything's slipping out of my hands.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I need someone to help me organize.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so I was able to add, uh, Amber Rucamonte, our COO, and I would be lost with that my team.
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[SPEAKER_01]: To that end, are there any features that are kind of like a white whale for you for AC, that is like an eventual end game goal, but so far is just kind of like a little bit too far out.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I would love to have a marketplace, specifically that focuses more off than not than on indie systems, not to say I'm going into the sort of bigger dogs out there, D&D, Pathfinder or Heldiel, but I would love to have a lot more attention on indie systems.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The reason why that's big whale and that's sort of further down the line is because there's a lot of licensing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: that has to go about.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of like legal leads that I have to talk to.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of like handshake deals.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And right now, if you look at it from my original goal, which is like, hey, what features can I offer to help GMs?
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's not technically helping anyone beyond just sort of maybe developers and ourselves.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that's not the focus right now.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The focus is, okay, can we get a full version of our wiki out?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Can we get a full version of our characteristics out?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Can we get a full version of this out?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Because that'll be helpful.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I can completely understand all the legal hurdles there.
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[SPEAKER_01]: For me, my personal thing for our show is transcriptions have always been a big thing for me from the beginning and it's always been the thing that's been a little bit out of reach.
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[SPEAKER_01]: but I'm very particular about the way that I like things and I've recently had to kind of check myself and be willing to step back and let the technology do the thing.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We finished our first season of our actual play about a year ago as of this recording.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It was an 80 episode two and a half year campaign and
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[SPEAKER_01]: As far as transcriptions goes, it's been me almost exclusively with a couple of other people on the team helping out here or there, and in the year that we've been done, I've got about 15 episodes transcribed out of 80.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I've kind of had to pump the brakes a little bit and reassess just because I also I edit the show I am the primary GM and it's just there's only so many hours in the day.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It kills me to have to put that so far on the back burner because I love it's so useful to have those transcripts and I love having them as an accessibility thing.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But.
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[SPEAKER_01]: the more time that I devote to that, the less time I can devote to editing and producing the show and to GMing and like getting the story out there, and there's only so many things that I can juggle at a time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We experimented a little bit with putting out a call for volunteers and we were able to get one or two people to help out with one episode, but it's just such a time-consuming and monotonous process that it's a hard sell unless you got like a bunch of people
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's once again sort of going back to the whole thing of like if I can do it just myself, why would I ask you, but there's also sort of this mentality that I have in the same vein of like if there's a monotonous very kind of troll task ahead of you that time put into it should be valued and so I like yeah I would imagine that anyone having to go through a three to four hour session and having to transcribe every word and maybe there's overlap of talk is a child that's a challenge, you know,
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And that's like the big limitation of the technology that makes it more necessary to have to like have a person transcribe is I try to go out of my way to designate who is speaking and to separate when it's a player speaking and when it's character speaking.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's what the big TDM is.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's where the technology kind of falls short and where all of the time goes into.
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[SPEAKER_01]: My basic process for that has generally been, I would use technology to kind of like auto transcribe and then painstakingly go through and correct and separate out who is speaking when to say this player is speaking this this player as this character is saying this thing this sound effect happens in the background it's been nice to have the finished product of those but it's been
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[SPEAKER_01]: proven to me more and more recently as I've been kind of like hitting my mental wall of being able to do that for my own sanity and like sake of time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I've had to kind of give up on that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: At least for now, my plan is to eventually, if I can get enough of a framework, if there's like seven or eight people doing it, then it immediately becomes substantially easier.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But for now, that's the thing I've got to kind of put on the back burner.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But that is my white whale.
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[SPEAKER_00]: that's a hundred percent fair.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's one of the great things that I love about our bot that does transcriptions and there's sort of a complicated feeling I have about it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But the great thing that I love about it is that because it is connected to discord and each player can attach their discord name to it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There is this lovely feature where if someone's talking even if they're overlapping in themselves, it's like a text wall.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You can see that this person talked because the bot recognized that that account was talking and it'll bring up the text and it'll bring up the next text and it'll bring up the next text, which I love that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: My complexity when it comes to anything that works almost automatically is obviously, and this is where I have sort of a heavy hand into it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: My whole goal with Arkansas is obviously we want to be the goal is to help GMs and players.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And beyond that, I'll help the community as a whole.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And relying on AI and utilizing of AI for gen AI stuff is something that I don't want to do.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The problem that I found is I try looking into it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think the old school audio text transcription services and software is like it's so outdated and it's never kind of like promoted anymore it's so difficult to find that the best thing you can find for audio transcriptions is sort of like reliant on AI which I kind of like had a grit teeth and go well.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Is it the best thing I can say right now is that, you know, it's limited to this, which is you're kind of forced into it, which is unfortunate, and it is helping.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it is an accessibility thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So it's, I've taken a punch, but I'm, I'm going with the role.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I feel that entirely, and I think that's kind of where the nuance has to apply a little bit in the difference between generative AI and procedural AI.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's a similar thing for me, basically every transcription software that exists in
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[SPEAKER_01]: And as staunchly anti-AI as I am, there's only so much that you can practically draw the line on, especially now.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It seems to be changing, but... Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, as well as things like, if a community member comes up to me and they're like, hey, I found something else.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I would, yeah, let's give it a look.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's your white whale, man.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I can definitely see that, you know, scraping the wall with a spoon.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's going to take you some time.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
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[SPEAKER_01]: To shift gears a little bit and pivot towards your actual like game style as a player and as a GM.
17:13.540 --> 17:18.288
[SPEAKER_01]: What are the different TTRPG systems that you've played and what stuff do you gravitate towards?
17:18.308 --> 17:21.714
[SPEAKER_01]: I know you said that you're wanting to promote and prop up more indie systems.
17:22.195 --> 17:30.790
[SPEAKER_01]: Are there any specific systems that are your comfort zone that you like or love to promote that you feel like should get more attention?
17:31.073 --> 17:32.295
[SPEAKER_00]: Lazy in the dark is really fun.
17:32.515 --> 17:35.759
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm part of a blaze in the dark campaign been doing it for, I think a year now.
17:36.220 --> 17:37.502
[SPEAKER_00]: I also love kids on bikes.
17:37.582 --> 17:40.666
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a really fun and simplistic system to really get into.
17:40.706 --> 17:51.000
[SPEAKER_00]: And in terms of like indie systems that I would love to get more attention, I haven't had a chance to actually get into the system but I was able to sit down with the creator of Coyote and Crow.
17:51.620 --> 17:52.682
[SPEAKER_00]: I can Alexander.
17:52.722 --> 17:56.507
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's an aspect of her game
17:56.487 --> 18:13.973
[SPEAKER_00]: that's kind of blew my mind and that was when you're doing character creation, you can give yourself faults like a pet that doesn't obey you all the time or you can have a family member who's a bit of a rival and it gives the GMC these hooks to like really hurt you on your roles.
18:13.953 --> 18:16.137
[SPEAKER_00]: the question then goes, well, why would I want that?
18:16.738 --> 18:24.851
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the more negatives you take, the more points you can put towards your character stats, which I was like, oh, that's so cool that solves a few more things.
18:25.352 --> 18:29.579
[SPEAKER_00]: One, it allows the GM to have a lot of hooks immediately just by your choice.
18:29.780 --> 18:32.063
[SPEAKER_00]: And two, I love it when characters have faults.
18:32.184 --> 18:35.770
[SPEAKER_00]: It is the best storytelling mode and sort of like scenes set.
18:35.810 --> 18:37.653
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, oh, you're not always the best.
18:38.114 --> 18:39.015
[SPEAKER_00]: And, uh,
18:38.995 --> 18:41.058
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so Kiting Crow, shout out to that.
18:41.158 --> 18:43.663
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a game that has gotten my attention so hard.
18:43.683 --> 18:45.125
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can't wait to get a game going.
18:45.405 --> 18:46.407
[SPEAKER_01]: That is awesome.
18:46.607 --> 18:51.355
[SPEAKER_01]: I absolutely love it when systems mechanically incentivize imperfect play.
18:51.996 --> 18:57.004
[SPEAKER_01]: It's one of the things that I've loved the most about the handful of powered by the apocalypse games that I've played.
18:56.984 --> 19:01.611
[SPEAKER_01]: A thing that they do is that they tie your experience points to your failed roles.
19:01.952 --> 19:06.679
[SPEAKER_01]: That is the way that you get stronger and generate XP is by failing.
19:06.880 --> 19:08.362
[SPEAKER_01]: You learn from your failure.
19:08.823 --> 19:16.495
[SPEAKER_01]: And similarly, like you said with kids on bikes, I love adversity tokens as a way to really push yourself to make riskier decisions.
19:16.475 --> 19:17.196
[SPEAKER_00]: fail forward.
19:17.597 --> 19:21.062
[SPEAKER_01]: failing forward is one of my favorite things in design.
19:21.122 --> 19:25.048
[SPEAKER_01]: So right there with you, I love that concept for coyote and crow.
19:25.448 --> 19:29.815
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there was another aspect of the game that again, I was so lucky just to sit down with the creator.
19:30.336 --> 19:35.643
[SPEAKER_00]: She mentioned that there was much like in D&D where you can like set your points to like what are the minimum is to to 20.
19:36.104 --> 19:38.688
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a certain point if you go over an amount.
19:38.768 --> 19:41.272
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's five is the base of like what a human could do.
19:41.352 --> 19:44.136
[SPEAKER_00]: Like
19:44.116 --> 19:48.726
[SPEAKER_00]: Once you hit over five, which you can do, the entire world is then aware of you.
19:49.167 --> 20:02.395
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're really good at dexterity and you've got like a six or seven, the surrounding towns and neighbors and everything else, wrecking us, saw you do that triple, you know, barrel axe flip and they're like, hey, that guy's unique, that's weird.
20:02.375 --> 20:18.038
[SPEAKER_00]: and you start to become known and I'm with that's great because that means as the players are progressing the GMs and go hey mid campaign you're now like a superhero you're doing par core off walls there's now a rival who does the exact same thing who doesn't like that and it gives you another hook.
20:18.018 --> 20:19.921
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, oh, your game's full of hooks.
20:20.122 --> 20:20.562
[SPEAKER_01]: I want it.
20:20.883 --> 20:22.005
[SPEAKER_01]: That is so fun.
20:22.165 --> 20:34.106
[SPEAKER_01]: I was already interested in coyote and crowed just from the general pitch of it being indigenous focused and underrepresented voices within the community, kind of having a chance to shine.
20:34.627 --> 20:37.271
[SPEAKER_01]: But mechanically, that sounds awesome.
20:37.291 --> 20:37.912
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so smart.
20:38.093 --> 20:40.617
[SPEAKER_00]: It covers a few things and I can't wait to give the shot.
20:40.647 --> 20:50.352
[SPEAKER_01]: So in games like that and like in those mechanical hooks that you're intrigued by, what kinds of aspects of those things do you like to bring into your own game?
20:50.392 --> 20:54.623
[SPEAKER_01]: So like as a GM, what is kind of your bag of tricks that you go to?
20:54.890 --> 20:58.816
[SPEAKER_00]: I like to call sort of my style, bread crumbs and cookies.
20:59.396 --> 21:05.044
[SPEAKER_00]: I love getting obviously my players involved in the overarching story as a we're in the whole campaign.
21:05.104 --> 21:14.898
[SPEAKER_00]: And I like integrating their recipe, their characters, and their backstories into what I like to call bread crumbs, where I'll drop a little bit here, drop a little bit there, and kind of keep them trailing.
21:15.519 --> 21:19.405
[SPEAKER_00]: And it won't actually resolve until they hit something big, which I call cookie.
21:19.805 --> 21:21.167
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are the big reveals.
21:21.147 --> 21:25.233
[SPEAKER_00]: I love teasing something 50 sessions down the line.
21:25.554 --> 21:28.318
[SPEAKER_00]: A great example is I had a player's very early game.
21:28.358 --> 21:29.640
[SPEAKER_00]: They started off level three.
21:30.241 --> 21:33.145
[SPEAKER_00]: And we were session two in the campaign.
21:33.606 --> 21:38.093
[SPEAKER_00]: And they met Pixies who were like, we're chased away from the Feywild from a fade giant.
21:38.133 --> 21:39.415
[SPEAKER_00]: And they were like, oh, that's horrible.
21:39.916 --> 21:41.438
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but we were saved by this family.
21:41.779 --> 21:42.700
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
21:42.680 --> 21:57.537
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think they're now 70 sessions in, and they're in the Feywild, and they must have forgot about the Feyjiant, which I was hoping for, and I was like, and then you get captured by the Feyjiant, you know, circumstances be damned, and they're like, wait a minute, why does this sound familiar?
21:57.577 --> 22:00.680
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, haha, here's your cookie, and now you get it.
22:01.121 --> 22:02.022
[SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome.
22:02.282 --> 22:03.964
[SPEAKER_01]: It's fantastic when that can happen.
22:04.565 --> 22:08.569
[SPEAKER_01]: For my general play style, I,
22:08.549 --> 22:32.751
[SPEAKER_01]: tend to, it's hard to say because most of my experience as a GM is in actual plays, which I feel like is kind of a different focal point in structure, but the characters are very heavily centered in the stories that I tend to run, which I know there's a lot of standard advice saying, hey, don't do that because if this player no longer can make it to the table and you've made that character load bearing, now you got to work around that.
22:32.731 --> 22:43.428
[SPEAKER_01]: But I see that as a challenge and I find the most interesting TTRBG experiences come more player centric than GM centric.
22:43.448 --> 22:48.275
[SPEAKER_01]: So I love being able to make the characters pivotal to the story.
22:48.676 --> 22:53.764
[SPEAKER_01]: Whether they are important to the world or not, is kind of subject to debate.
22:54.265 --> 22:55.026
[SPEAKER_01]: But
22:55.006 --> 23:04.300
[SPEAKER_01]: at least in the events of the story, if it doesn't tie into the players, I tend to feel like it's a bit of a missed opportunity.
23:04.800 --> 23:06.303
[SPEAKER_01]: So I love doing that.
23:06.723 --> 23:10.208
[SPEAKER_01]: I describe my own style as being very polpy and fast-paced.
23:10.228 --> 23:12.812
[SPEAKER_01]: What I consider my strength is what I call height moments.
23:12.792 --> 23:29.721
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I will basically get like a snapshot image in my head of a specific moment that is cool as all hell that I want to get to and then we'll work backwards from their retroactively to set it up and make it happen.
23:29.701 --> 23:36.112
[SPEAKER_01]: So those kinds of things kind of bleeding into each other are like my general style and sensibilities.
23:36.132 --> 23:40.139
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm also very collaborative, which I'm sure is the same for you and most of your group.
23:40.159 --> 23:49.515
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of the arcane circle GMs have very collaborative, very roleplay heavy, very like loose in their structure in their tags.
23:49.495 --> 23:53.600
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I'm sure that is a very common sentiment among your community.
23:53.740 --> 23:57.365
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think as much as I would love to take that, it very much as a sentiment.
23:57.385 --> 24:09.580
[SPEAKER_00]: I think just as the tea temperature community as a whole, shifting back to sort of the AC spotlight interviews, one big question I'd love to ask people is what is a role you have at your table that's set in stone.
24:09.560 --> 24:21.580
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's mainly because I've been kind of made very well aware that most creators and storytellers generally start to lean towards the rules of cool rather than the rules as written kind of structure.
24:22.061 --> 24:29.053
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's very indicative of the actual community as a whole that we are here just to tell a story and make sure everyone is having fun.
24:29.033 --> 24:46.514
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been very, very lucky because I have seen like read at horror stories, but I've been very lucky that most of the GMs I've spoken to and people that have interacted with have been people who are good-natured, want-to-tell story, they don't want you to cry, like they're not aiming for making, you know, make you have any sort of trauma, but they really love it if you did.
24:46.534 --> 24:50.118
[SPEAKER_00]: I've described GMs as emotional vampires.
24:50.419 --> 24:54.163
[SPEAKER_00]: We can't wait for you to feel something so we can just suck that out.
24:54.143 --> 24:55.265
[SPEAKER_01]: absolutely.
24:55.766 --> 24:57.630
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a very interesting question.
24:58.031 --> 24:59.393
[SPEAKER_01]: You've got my wheel spinning.
24:59.854 --> 25:02.519
[SPEAKER_01]: I will toss that back on you while I think upon that.
25:02.880 --> 25:05.204
[SPEAKER_01]: What is your immovable rule?
25:05.625 --> 25:06.868
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh man, you know what?
25:07.048 --> 25:10.735
[SPEAKER_00]: As much as I've been asking people that question, no one's asking that question.
25:10.715 --> 25:18.086
[SPEAKER_00]: I think my role is respect is not optional, I think respect has to be mandatory.
25:18.267 --> 25:28.302
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of those things where if you know you're about to come off as disrespectful or if you do come out disrespectful and someone calls you out on it, there needs to be some transparency and communication.
25:28.282 --> 25:35.648
[SPEAKER_00]: I have had players in parties who argue with each other and at the very end I'm like You guys are right and they're like no, no, don't worry about it.
25:35.668 --> 25:38.070
[SPEAKER_00]: We planned this We knew we were gonna argue with each other.
25:38.091 --> 25:41.473
[SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna get really up on each other's throats And I was like so this was cool.
25:41.513 --> 25:58.288
[SPEAKER_00]: They're like, yes, we love that we had a fight And I was like, okay, cool and there have been other moments where I've had players who feel like they've been left out And that feeling comes out as as being upset agitated and almost defeated and it does have to come up where we all have to sort of sit down and go listen
25:58.268 --> 26:15.494
[SPEAKER_00]: Here are the reasons why you're not being targeted, and there needs to be communication, there needs to be an understanding, but all that comes from a place of respect, we recognize that someone doesn't feel safe or doesn't feel acknowledged, and we all have to come together to provide context and do signify that they do matter.
26:15.875 --> 26:18.298
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, it's a respect has to be mandatory.
26:18.539 --> 26:23.466
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a very pragmatic rule, too, for my answer to that question,
26:23.547 --> 26:37.284
[SPEAKER_01]: I generally operate on a law of equivalentech's change, so both between player and GM player to player in how I operate, I try to have an even flow going across all directions.
26:37.965 --> 26:43.952
[SPEAKER_01]: I, as a GM, am willing to budge on most rules if a player is willing to meet me halfway.
26:43.932 --> 26:52.028
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm very willing to bend rules as long as we don't break them and we'll try to compromise with my players on anything.
26:52.048 --> 27:00.344
[SPEAKER_01]: You can a lot of the times when a player asks me a question that is blatantly against the rules, I will try to get to the heart of what is your goal here?
27:00.484 --> 27:02.548
[SPEAKER_01]: What is the thing you want to do?
27:02.528 --> 27:06.996
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's find a way that we can meet in the middle where we can do this without breaking the rules.
27:07.016 --> 27:10.903
[SPEAKER_01]: You still get the outcome you want, just maybe not with that same method.
27:11.344 --> 27:20.740
[SPEAKER_01]: Or, like you said, with some players feeling neglected and others kind of hogging the spotlight, the way that I've structured our actual play is I try to do
27:20.720 --> 27:25.892
[SPEAKER_01]: Basically every character kind of gets their own focal story beats nice.
27:25.913 --> 27:38.543
[SPEAKER_01]: I have them centered almost like anime arcs I will have like this is your characters subplot and like your character takes the spot Well, dude, we came from the same we came from the same
27:38.523 --> 27:44.168
[SPEAKER_00]: I've struck your most of my games the same way where I've told people in sessions here as I'm like, everyone here gets too arcs, all right?
27:44.528 --> 27:47.711
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you don't think you've gotten your arc yet, that means you're at the very bottom of the list.
27:47.751 --> 27:49.753
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't worry, you'll get an arc, okay?
27:50.114 --> 27:51.154
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone gets a focal point.
27:51.495 --> 27:57.821
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody gets their opportunity to be a badass and to have their big story moment.
27:58.261 --> 28:08.310
[SPEAKER_01]: I just usually will focus them one at a time, but I try to give everybody equal attention
28:08.290 --> 28:36.458
[SPEAKER_01]: There's definitely a couple of characters in our season 1 who are very backloaded in their importance in prominence within the story, but a lot of that just kind of comes down to the dynamic of the table and they, at least from what they've told me, they were very satisfied with the arcs they eventually got and because they did come so late, there was a lot more weight and heaviness and momentum and like the stakes were a lot higher for those ones.
28:36.438 --> 28:39.582
[SPEAKER_01]: So it felt like a good compromise there.
28:40.062 --> 28:43.025
[SPEAKER_01]: Compromise is kind of my general headset there.
28:43.065 --> 28:52.056
[SPEAKER_01]: There's also a bunch of different house rules that I do are ways to kind of equalize spotlight and like the power dynamic between GM and players.
28:52.776 --> 28:57.882
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the core signature homebrew rules that we did for season one was Devil's Bargains.
28:57.962 --> 28:59.644
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's a blazing the dark thing.
28:59.624 --> 29:18.910
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, where if any player fails a role that they desperately need to succeed or an enemy succeeds a role they desperately need to fail, they can petition the GM for an automatic success or the enemy's automatic failure and then either GM get a back pocket net one that I can replace any one role that theirs down the line with.
29:19.611 --> 29:23.016
[SPEAKER_01]: So trading instant success for eventual failure.
29:22.996 --> 29:46.837
[SPEAKER_00]: I started to implement Blazing the Dark features as well into my games as a relate, especially when it comes to like downtime, or I'm like, yeah, you can totally get proficiency in these particular tools if you want during downtime each week counts as a you having a chance to roll some D6s based on your skill modifier and if you get double sixes, which is a crit and Blazing the Dark, hey, you get proficiency, but it's building up a clock.
29:47.358 --> 29:49.700
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that the devil's bargain is so much fun.
29:49.760 --> 29:52.142
[SPEAKER_00]: I've implemented a few times or even players
29:52.122 --> 29:54.299
[SPEAKER_00]: And I get it, that was bargained for like advantage.
29:54.339 --> 29:57.019
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, yes, and then I get to pull something.
29:57.303 --> 30:03.091
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's, I love taking things from other systems and kind of retrofitting them into the game.
30:03.532 --> 30:15.209
[SPEAKER_01]: Another, this isn't like a system specific thing, but there's another home rule that I have not implemented in my games yet, but as soon as I heard about it immediately, like, oh, this is an obvious one that I need to do from here on out.
30:15.630 --> 30:26.365
[SPEAKER_01]: In combat, when a player lands the killing blow, they can choose to narratively designate that final strike to a different player if they so choose.
30:26.345 --> 30:27.266
[SPEAKER_00]: That's real cool.
30:27.346 --> 30:33.334
[SPEAKER_01]: So if narratively it would feel a lot better for this other character to have gotten the final hit.
30:33.354 --> 30:37.399
[SPEAKER_01]: They can designate that no this character actually gets the final blow.
30:37.499 --> 30:39.822
[SPEAKER_00]: No, that's that's so that's a good role.
30:40.183 --> 30:40.423
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
30:40.703 --> 30:42.085
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a lot of things like that.
30:42.125 --> 30:51.537
[SPEAKER_01]: I just I love things that encourage and incentivize that kind of group collaboration and that kind of level the playing field between GM's and players.
30:51.637 --> 30:56.183
[SPEAKER_01]: So equivalent exchange.
30:56.618 --> 30:58.863
[SPEAKER_01]: You did bring up your AC spotlight interviews.
30:59.244 --> 31:04.315
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you tell me a little bit about some of the information and some of the wisdom that you've gotten from doing those interviews?
31:04.415 --> 31:09.767
[SPEAKER_01]: And if there's any particular bits of advice that really stand out to you.
31:09.933 --> 31:19.510
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, out of the 20 something on calls and talks I've had, I've been kind of blown away with all the creativity from sort of the love out of the system and tabletop in general.
31:20.091 --> 31:30.810
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though there's like similarities in some of the talks I've had with where people have like the same mentality in terms of respect and how they started and where their brain goes when it comes to creation and sort of the advice they provide.
31:30.790 --> 31:41.444
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's a piece of advice that's been enforced time and time after again that's kind of always enforced when I talk to people and that is don't be afraid to tell your story.
31:41.804 --> 31:53.119
[SPEAKER_00]: Who cares if you run straw and everyone else has run straw to time on a tradition you had to do it and even if they've run it to death and people have posted all mine of my new straw campaign and oh is it not original?
31:53.099 --> 31:54.821
[SPEAKER_00]: No one can tell a story like you can.
31:54.841 --> 31:56.483
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm pointing to the camera that's not seen.
31:57.084 --> 31:58.726
[SPEAKER_00]: No one can tell a story like you can.
31:59.086 --> 32:01.909
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, audio is way better than video is kind of what I grabbed.
32:02.510 --> 32:06.795
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a breakdown that I had from Alessandro from D20 workshop.
32:07.255 --> 32:11.300
[SPEAKER_00]: He has this long extensive family history where he grew up around creatives.
32:11.340 --> 32:12.802
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is his input.
32:12.822 --> 32:13.843
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was really interesting.
32:13.863 --> 32:21.452
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think anyone who's like wants to see how family can kind of sway your creative methodology should definitely check out that chat.
32:21.432 --> 32:29.448
[SPEAKER_00]: If you really want some great advice on world creation, especially for new GMs, go check out the chat with Sphinx from the Everright Archive.
32:29.748 --> 32:36.321
[SPEAKER_00]: He brought some amazing tips when he came to world building and world creation and implementation of your characters in those backstories.
32:36.802 --> 32:38.766
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of ways to sort of learn from him.
32:38.746 --> 32:44.771
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I have favorite and that's only because I'm biased because I'm I'm lucky enough to chat and play with these people.
32:45.352 --> 32:46.373
[SPEAKER_00]: I've done some of the past.
32:46.693 --> 32:48.655
[SPEAKER_00]: That's Dyson autism and Vixie Bell.
32:48.935 --> 32:52.358
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been able to play in chat with them kind of extensively.
32:52.378 --> 32:56.422
[SPEAKER_00]: They're talented individuals who fill those stories so Leo's check out those chats.
32:56.922 --> 33:00.506
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I think those are kind of like my top four.
33:00.626 --> 33:07.572
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to one more out throw in is if you want to interview that caught me off
33:07.552 --> 33:11.629
[SPEAKER_00]: She caught me off guard because she was like, she explained what her interest in T.T.R.P.
33:11.649 --> 33:14.642
[SPEAKER_00]: started and I was like, that's mine and nobody talks about that.
33:14.926 --> 33:16.528
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, oh my god, I found another person.
33:16.548 --> 33:17.931
[SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't realize that we all exist.
33:18.371 --> 33:19.212
[SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome.
33:20.094 --> 33:25.902
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure you're very similar to me in that you learn something new from each interview that you do.
33:25.923 --> 33:32.432
[SPEAKER_01]: I very lucky in the interviews that I've done to have had like a really wide range of experiences to pull from.
33:32.472 --> 33:36.799
[SPEAKER_01]: I love how varied the different ones that you've brought up are.
33:37.240 --> 33:38.642
[SPEAKER_01]: I've chatted with GMs.
33:38.662 --> 33:39.603
[SPEAKER_01]: I've chatted with showrunners.
33:39.663 --> 33:40.985
[SPEAKER_01]: I've chatted with game designers.
33:41.546 --> 33:42.908
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's always
33:42.888 --> 33:46.014
[SPEAKER_01]: something that I can take away from each of them.
33:46.054 --> 33:50.341
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of like really good little nuggets that I've distilled from a lot of them.
33:50.842 --> 33:55.570
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of my favorite ones are the ones that have like really broadened my perspective.
33:56.011 --> 34:01.521
[SPEAKER_01]: One that I tend to point people to from our table talks is I did an interview with the infinite tavern.
34:01.501 --> 34:03.645
[SPEAKER_01]: which is a show based in India.
34:04.246 --> 34:13.263
[SPEAKER_01]: And I got to learn a whole bunch about the Indian TTRPG scene and how like relatively new the hobby is over there.
34:13.283 --> 34:17.350
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was a really interesting and fascinating perspective shift.
34:17.330 --> 34:23.756
[SPEAKER_01]: I also got to talk with Neil from Faith, who is from Scotland and is doing a master's degree on folklore.
34:24.317 --> 34:41.013
[SPEAKER_01]: And basically, Faith is like a system and a compendium of monsters that are based in fairy and fay wild type folklore that is rooted in like the actual traditions of Ireland and Scotland and like Eastern European.
34:41.574 --> 34:44.637
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that was so interesting.
34:44.617 --> 35:01.959
[SPEAKER_01]: He had a lot of really cool and interesting tidbits about monsters that are things that really fly under the radar because of like a lot of our assumptions come from media and he was going straight to the source for a lot of them and how much they have shifted and changed with time was absolutely fascinating.
35:02.460 --> 35:10.270
[SPEAKER_01]: Some recent other good ones that I've done, I recently interviewed not all but most of the GMs from the Dungeons and Cabins event.
35:10.250 --> 35:13.534
[SPEAKER_01]: and each of them had a lot of really interesting things to say.
35:13.554 --> 35:22.486
[SPEAKER_01]: I particularly really liked the interview with Sammy, who is the founder and head of Dungeons and Cabins, getting into a lot of the logistics of setting up an event like that.
35:22.967 --> 35:38.468
[SPEAKER_01]: It's basically like a D&D and a Castle type thing, but in the woods of San Bernardino mountains where it is a weekend doing summer camp activities and a five session D&D game where the camp activities affect what happens on the table.
35:38.448 --> 35:39.550
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's clever.
35:39.570 --> 35:46.722
[SPEAKER_00]: I love when unique culture beyond my own sphere because it's unique to me, obviously, not to everyone.
35:47.223 --> 35:53.594
[SPEAKER_00]: But when someone from a background that I don't generally interact with a lot is able to, like, be able to sit down and talk to them.
35:54.054 --> 35:58.101
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, as I've spoken to a guy named Dre, he runs rumble roll.
35:58.542 --> 36:01.587
[SPEAKER_00]: He has such a loving passion for his Filipino background.
36:01.567 --> 36:06.293
[SPEAKER_00]: He has a whole history on there are monsters that were created.
36:06.333 --> 36:17.567
[SPEAKER_00]: These like boogie man like tails that were told in the Philippines from colonizers who would like tell them these sort of stories just to scare them and to like dissuade them from doing certain actions.
36:17.888 --> 36:23.575
[SPEAKER_00]: Like there is like there's a hurtful history and so he took them and he was like, I have an idea.
36:23.555 --> 36:24.116
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's own it.
36:24.357 --> 36:31.855
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he ended up grabbing a lot of these sort of concepts taking the monsters and making them actually like a thing that can happen.
36:31.875 --> 36:40.756
[SPEAKER_00]: There's one of my favorites, which is a bi-sected vampiric woman named the monologue and it could separate from the middle and kind of fly off in different areas.
36:40.776 --> 36:41.698
[SPEAKER_00]: I know about that one.
36:41.678 --> 36:43.521
[SPEAKER_00]: And how it went, that's so rad.
36:43.802 --> 36:47.308
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it was, yeah, it came from a hurtful place, but we were sort of grab it.
36:47.669 --> 36:55.082
[SPEAKER_00]: And they mentioned they're like, we're not the only ones, but we're able to sort of do the same with grabbing the sort of thing that had this one concept and now we built it sort of be our own.
36:55.804 --> 37:05.982
[SPEAKER_00]: And in terms of finding people who have a unique back round to us and bringing in sort of these new monsters and ideas and cultures.
37:05.962 --> 37:10.616
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, uh, sort of, you know, how they can integrate in your story is just so refreshing.
37:10.636 --> 37:11.478
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so exciting.
37:11.679 --> 37:16.493
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's kind of tying in again, why I love, like, piloting grow, how I'm, what I'm really excited to sort of learn that.
37:16.914 --> 37:20.224
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of these unique ideas that I want to be exposed to.
37:20.558 --> 37:22.000
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
37:22.600 --> 37:32.752
[SPEAKER_01]: Before we run out of time, I want to throw this back to you and make sure that if there's any miscellaneous things that you want to cover, any topics that are important to you to hit, I want to make sure that we get a chance to cover them.
37:33.052 --> 37:36.376
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll end it with the same advice that I got, you know, sort of been instilled for a while.
37:36.536 --> 37:45.807
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is there was a certain point in the strategic strategic community that I saw that there was a lot of like sort of banter back and forth, whether or not an actual place should exist or not.
37:45.787 --> 37:54.259
[SPEAKER_00]: And I saw that and I did make a video that my own sort of actually channel and it was sort of this is you should be able to be free to make your stories.
37:54.880 --> 38:08.419
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have a story to tell, go do so, keep though in mind that respect for both yourself, for your players and for the audience, if you will are producing something for, you know, for their general public is there.
38:08.399 --> 38:13.887
[SPEAKER_00]: There needs to be a respect on all fronts, but beyond that, don't make your stories.
38:14.007 --> 38:14.588
[SPEAKER_00]: Be creative.
38:14.949 --> 38:16.611
[SPEAKER_00]: No one can tell a story like you can.
38:16.671 --> 38:18.554
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a sort of a phrase that I die on.
38:19.315 --> 38:29.631
[SPEAKER_00]: Is if you feel like you're unsure whether or not you can tell a story well enough to be consumed by public, if you've ever made your players feel something.
38:29.611 --> 38:41.585
[SPEAKER_00]: If you've ever made your players feel pissed off at a villain, or you made them sad at the loss of a favorite NPC, or you made them laugh at a silly joke character, you were able to make someone feel something.
38:41.986 --> 38:42.867
[SPEAKER_00]: And that means you're ready.
38:43.327 --> 38:44.849
[SPEAKER_00]: You're ready to start telling stories.
38:44.869 --> 38:46.371
[SPEAKER_00]: You're ready to sort of put yourself out there.
38:47.052 --> 38:50.436
[SPEAKER_00]: And even if you still will go, well, I'm not entirely sure, hey, take your time.
38:50.957 --> 38:51.277
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fun.
38:51.697 --> 38:53.880
[SPEAKER_00]: But here's me telling you, I think you're ready.
38:54.046 --> 38:56.730
[SPEAKER_01]: absolutely fantastic advice to end on.
38:56.891 --> 39:00.236
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a story for everyone and there's an audience for every story.
39:00.316 --> 39:11.215
[SPEAKER_01]: So I love that advice and I think that the hobby and the community is only improved by more people sharing their stories and experiences.
39:11.255 --> 39:19.969
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so much that I learn from everybody that I listen to, everybody that I talk to and my games are improved, the more that I
39:19.949 --> 39:25.623
[SPEAKER_01]: so I can only imagine that it's the same for a lot of our audience and a lot of like fellow creators.
39:26.285 --> 39:37.873
[SPEAKER_01]: So on that note, can you remind us one more time where our listeners can find you your projects and your platform, your actual plays, your games, arcane circle, go ahead and give all those links now.
39:37.921 --> 39:44.852
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, so if you would like to find your own game or host your own game, you can do so an arcingcircle.games.
39:45.252 --> 39:49.599
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a bunch of tools currently up and coming in the pipeline as well as sums that are already released.
39:49.639 --> 39:58.292
[SPEAKER_00]: As I mentioned before, we have our description bot, we have our campaign wiki as well as a bunch of organizational tools utilized there, but it's please stick around, we have a lot more things coming.
39:58.272 --> 40:01.637
[SPEAKER_00]: Most socials are arcane circle or arcane circle games.
40:02.078 --> 40:04.742
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't worry, you can always go to arcane circle.games and the links are there in the bottom.
40:05.103 --> 40:12.274
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're looking for me personally and sort of the work that I do, uh, specifically for my actual play channel, it's called Arcane Focus D&D.
40:12.715 --> 40:15.319
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I like the word, you know.
40:15.299 --> 40:16.441
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a good brand name.
40:16.481 --> 40:17.903
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's all part of a family now.
40:18.264 --> 40:19.966
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, so Arcane focused D&D.
40:20.006 --> 40:24.874
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an actual play channel that's honestly I just started to do because I like creating stuff.
40:25.334 --> 40:31.884
[SPEAKER_00]: I was not expecting to have the availability to work with so many good creatives and so many amazing people.
40:32.465 --> 40:36.651
[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe you'll find one of your favorite creators on our channel one day and that's really fun.
40:37.112 --> 40:40.337
[SPEAKER_00]: But please go check us out on that channel or Arcane Circle.
40:40.377 --> 40:41.439
[SPEAKER_00]: We're available all the time.
40:41.619 --> 40:42.580
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm chronically online.
40:42.601 --> 40:43.602
[SPEAKER_00]: You can always reach out to me.
40:43.767 --> 40:44.288
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
40:44.308 --> 40:45.430
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for all of that.
40:45.611 --> 40:49.980
[SPEAKER_01]: All of those links will be in the description and thank you again for coming by the chat with me.
40:50.140 --> 40:52.404
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like I could keep going for hours.
40:52.445 --> 40:53.807
[SPEAKER_01]: This was a ton of fun.
40:53.968 --> 40:55.090
[SPEAKER_00]: I know I could too.
40:55.250 --> 40:57.214
[SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, it was one of those things where it's like three days ago.
40:57.234 --> 40:59.659
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, uh, I might have a heartstep.
40:59.759 --> 41:00.340
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry.
41:00.361 --> 41:03.106
[SPEAKER_00]: I usually like to keep it open, but I had a lot of fun.
41:03.126 --> 41:04.088
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much.
41:04.270 --> 41:07.035
[SPEAKER_01]: And thank you to all of you for listening.
41:07.516 --> 41:08.398
[SPEAKER_01]: One more time, everybody.
41:08.578 --> 41:11.884
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Danger Dancers, the GM and host of D&D Ark.
41:11.904 --> 41:16.172
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been chatting with Mike, the CEO and founder of Arcane Circle.
41:16.573 --> 41:18.597
[SPEAKER_01]: And this has been Tape Talk.
41:19.118 --> 41:21.823
[SPEAKER_01]: And I hope you enjoy what we brought to the table.
41:25.904 --> 41:34.194
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Table Talk, created hosted and edited by myself, Danger Dan Jürs, with artwork by Jordan Nelson.
41:34.794 --> 41:37.878
[SPEAKER_01]: Our guest this episode was Mike from Arcane Circle.
41:38.318 --> 41:40.281
[SPEAKER_01]: Links to his work can be found in the episode description.
41:40.861 --> 41:47.589
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're interested in being a guest on the show, reach out to us at dndarkpodcast at gmail.com.
41:48.190 --> 41:51.053
[SPEAKER_01]: Our theme song and outro were created by Jeremy Volucin.
41:51.073 --> 41:55.438
[SPEAKER_01]: Check out more of his works on Instagram at Jeremy Volucin underscore wreck of time.
41:55.418 --> 41:59.792
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time we have a guest take a seat at the table.
00:04.469 --> 00:12.556
[SPEAKER_01]: Hello and welcome to Table Talk, a show where I chat with other creators in the TTRPG space about how they run their tables.
00:13.197 --> 00:21.004
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Danger'd Andrews, the GM and host of D&D and joining us at the table today is the CEO and founder of Arcane Circle, Mike.
00:21.545 --> 00:24.067
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello, hello, hello, thanks for having me.
00:24.448 --> 00:25.649
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for being here.
00:26.189 --> 00:32.535
[SPEAKER_01]: To get us started, can you tell us just a little bit about yourself, your history in the
00:32.515 --> 00:39.611
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh man, well, I mean, in terms of my own personal history within the tabletop industry, I've been playing the game for over a decade.
00:39.831 --> 00:40.833
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't even count anymore.
00:41.495 --> 00:52.178
[SPEAKER_00]: But no, I've been a player for a very long time, uh, switched over to the GM side, uh, little prior to COVID times, and uh, been a professional GM and content creator, running sort of actual plays.
00:52.158 --> 00:56.426
[SPEAKER_00]: For about four to five years, sort of give or take again, don't really count anymore.
00:57.007 --> 01:04.340
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I've been running our cane circle, which is our all-one T-Tarbagey platform for GMs and players.
01:04.921 --> 01:11.432
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been doing this for a very long time, and it all started with a level two fighter human.
01:11.412 --> 01:13.535
[SPEAKER_01]: It is much the same for me.
01:13.555 --> 01:24.207
[SPEAKER_01]: The first character that I legitimately consider my actual first character, also a level two fighter human, did the deathhouse portion of Curse of Strod as a one shot.
01:24.688 --> 01:27.731
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was kind of like my first little toe dip into D&D.
01:27.792 --> 01:32.357
[SPEAKER_01]: I done a couple of other one shots in a few other varying systems beforehand.
01:32.337 --> 01:34.849
[SPEAKER_01]: all of those I'd come into with character prejans.
01:35.150 --> 01:41.740
[SPEAKER_01]: So I consider my first legit character, a human fighter level two kind of simple as you can get.
01:41.939 --> 01:48.049
[SPEAKER_00]: When I got started with tabletop, I did what I would like to call the poster boy a first-time player, which was I'm a champion fighter.
01:48.089 --> 01:49.672
[SPEAKER_00]: And I got really lucky.
01:49.712 --> 01:53.458
[SPEAKER_00]: The first time I started playing, I was invited to a work game.
01:53.538 --> 01:55.101
[SPEAKER_00]: I was working for a company called New Egg.
01:55.422 --> 02:00.109
[SPEAKER_00]: And as part of their marketing team, and I was very close with one of their studio heads.
02:00.290 --> 02:01.271
[SPEAKER_00]: They had to sort of a studio.
02:01.331 --> 02:03.475
[SPEAKER_00]: They were making much of streams, productions.
02:03.455 --> 02:09.330
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, everyone in within the industry over within that company was very much like either you're a business person or you're a tech nerd.
02:09.731 --> 02:15.506
[SPEAKER_00]: We're all nerds and he was like, hey man, you know, you do you do content and you do all the stuff on your own.
02:15.526 --> 02:17.451
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you want to be part of, you know, my game.
02:17.471 --> 02:19.877
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, of course, never played before.
02:19.857 --> 02:45.257
[SPEAKER_00]: and i was very lucky because that game lasted for eight years nice from level two to completion level twenty and i was able to get a full and it's one of the things we're like now i'm kind of like all right i'm moving on from what i started with and when i am able to play which has become very rare because i'm now sort of subjugated to the forever dmc it whenever i do have the chance to play one shot it's always like i can't wait to play something else and it's only
02:45.237 --> 02:50.566
[SPEAKER_00]: After how many years of passes that eight-year game is ended, and I'm like, I kind of wish I want to be a fighter again.
02:50.586 --> 02:52.369
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to have all these complexities.
02:52.469 --> 02:53.711
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to just be a fighter again.
02:53.771 --> 02:54.793
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be really fun.
02:54.813 --> 03:00.242
[SPEAKER_00]: I have such a simple beginnings from TTRPGs, and it's kind of blossomed to what we are now.
03:00.408 --> 03:10.882
[SPEAKER_01]: That tracks very well with the community meme that everyone's first and final character is a human fight after running the gambit with everything in between.
03:10.922 --> 03:12.224
[SPEAKER_00]: There's something great about it.
03:13.225 --> 03:15.288
[SPEAKER_00]: No, so I was doing that for a very long time.
03:15.728 --> 03:16.429
[SPEAKER_00]: Just being a player.
03:16.630 --> 03:21.316
[SPEAKER_00]: And there was a certain point where I'm the type of person who always has to do some creative.
03:21.636 --> 03:26.803
[SPEAKER_00]: During my time at New Egg, there was a period where I was in charge of their live streams, they're gaming live streams.
03:26.783 --> 03:45.931
[SPEAKER_00]: And I got really lucky to build a community and hang out people and play games for a living which was like, you know, the dream come true and there was a certain point where I was able to express all this creativity unbound and just go off and then there was a moment where my bosses were like, hey, we can't do that anymore.
03:46.031 --> 03:55.204
[SPEAKER_00]: We got a, you know, corporate America, we're sort of focusing now a numbers and lesson of a community building and I had to stop and it was one of those moments that I kind of stopped and was like,
03:55.184 --> 03:59.092
[SPEAKER_00]: Man, if I'm not doing some creative, I feel like a zombie.
03:59.493 --> 04:02.759
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I took the love of tabletop and how I was already in that game.
04:02.779 --> 04:04.423
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, I'm just gonna start my own game.
04:04.503 --> 04:05.485
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just gonna start my own home game.
04:05.505 --> 04:12.619
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm gonna get some friends together, and we're gonna play, and, you know, even though we have lives, we're gonna play digitally, we're in a digital game, and,
04:12.599 --> 04:15.382
[SPEAKER_00]: COVID hit and we're like, well, already doing digital games is going to it now.
04:15.903 --> 04:22.711
[SPEAKER_00]: And it evolved into an actual play and then evolved into me doing a professional GMing and then then all of a sudden, I was like, you know what?
04:23.111 --> 04:27.096
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of spots that need improvement that I could see that can actually help GMs.
04:27.776 --> 04:29.959
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's kind of, it's led my way here to AC.
04:30.419 --> 04:30.519
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
04:30.540 --> 04:41.492
[SPEAKER_01]: So on that topic, can you walk us through a little bit the different aspects of Arcane Circle, what your marketplace and platform does and like what kind of tools you are bringing
04:41.759 --> 04:42.280
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
04:42.421 --> 04:49.978
[SPEAKER_00]: So the main staple that we had in terms of like what we want to include in the AAC ecosystem was if we're answering this one question.
04:50.419 --> 04:54.208
[SPEAKER_00]: If the feature of we're providing helps a GM or helps a player, we want it.
04:54.749 --> 04:57.034
[SPEAKER_00]: There are some limitations that we can't do like.
04:57.014 --> 05:24.456
[SPEAKER_00]: As much as I would love to have some sort of like audio feature like a discord situation we already have a lot on our plate so what we're offering is it is all the one teach RPG platform we have game discovery so GMs can list out games and try to find players has player organization template creation when you make a game we have the option for you to create a campaign wiki for that particular game in your players which then you can share pages for even users to have like their own journals.
05:24.436 --> 05:27.242
[SPEAKER_00]: we have a discord bot that helps with notification.
05:27.663 --> 05:41.652
[SPEAKER_00]: That was my biggest problem when I was running a lot of like one shots was I was like all right don't forget everyone we have a game today and I was like well it'd be great to have a system that could do it automatically and we have that we also I've met numerous professional GMs who run six games a week
05:41.632 --> 05:44.096
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, shout out to Ron, you know who you are.
05:44.516 --> 05:52.529
[SPEAKER_00]: He, man, this guy's a beast, but it's almost necessary to have someone to assist you to like do session transcriptions and summaries.
05:52.549 --> 05:53.931
[SPEAKER_00]: So we wanted to have a bot to do that.
05:54.552 --> 05:56.374
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're in the works of releasing.
05:56.395 --> 05:58.458
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we're by the time this recording is happening.
05:58.718 --> 06:02.644
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we're about a week and a half, maybe in less so of a training module.
06:02.624 --> 06:09.133
[SPEAKER_00]: So we were able to collaborate with a bunch of T-Tarbagee creators, Dyson Autism, Vixie Bell, Buff GM.
06:09.474 --> 06:12.097
[SPEAKER_00]: We were able to work with all these guys and a lot more.
06:12.518 --> 06:19.768
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're building all these sort of videos and training videos to teach you about table safety and system-specific training and tools.
06:20.409 --> 06:29.121
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're able to as a player or GM go through that training module and kind of learn how to maybe be better GM, be a better storyteller and get
06:29.101 --> 06:35.367
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not even done yet, my CEO, really, man, my company shut it to him, he already has a skeleton of a VTT.
06:35.808 --> 06:38.190
[SPEAKER_00]: That one's going to be on the back burner for a while, but we have it.
06:38.711 --> 06:46.259
[SPEAKER_00]: We have the skeleton and muscles of a character creation feature, so you can also connect it to your discord and connect it to your account.
06:46.799 --> 06:52.645
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, the whole concept is whatever we could provide that will make you're like easier without having to jump to five-year-in-platforms.
06:53.066 --> 06:54.467
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what
06:54.447 --> 07:17.873
[SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome and like with the breadth and width of niches that you're covering with that that's a lot of ground to cover on a lot of technical know how can you tell me a little bit about the process of logistically bringing some of those things together and in setting up a venture like this what were some of the hurdles that you had to jump over and ducks that had to be in a row for success to happen.
07:17.853 --> 07:24.082
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm very much of that mentality in that person who goes, well, I don't like the way this works.
07:24.623 --> 07:29.329
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess I'll just build my own Disneyland or, you know, like one of those things like, I guess I'll just build my own casino.
07:29.910 --> 07:36.420
[SPEAKER_00]: And I taught myself what to use Figma and I started to do web design and I started to build out each feature.
07:36.440 --> 07:39.825
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, this is what I want and I started to visualize how each one looks.
07:39.845 --> 07:45.733
[SPEAKER_00]: I have notebooks filled of draft ideas in terms of the way it sort of all came together and how it interacts.
07:45.713 --> 07:48.217
[SPEAKER_00]: In the eyes of my CTO, it's very simple.
07:48.498 --> 07:49.339
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't believe him.
07:50.160 --> 07:52.264
[SPEAKER_00]: But then again, Harmony is a really talented person.
07:52.645 --> 07:53.807
[SPEAKER_00]: He is an indie game dev.
07:54.207 --> 07:56.571
[SPEAKER_00]: So not only he is experienced with web design.
07:56.812 --> 07:59.075
[SPEAKER_00]: He's been doing it for a very long time and web creation.
07:59.576 --> 08:02.541
[SPEAKER_00]: He also knows how to integrate sort of like video game aspects to it.
08:03.082 --> 08:05.526
[SPEAKER_00]: So he's worked with more complicated things.
08:05.987 --> 08:11.957
[SPEAKER_00]: The way we did it was we did a baseline of game discovery first and then we started to build
08:11.937 --> 08:12.758
[SPEAKER_00]: Players find a game.
08:13.339 --> 08:13.540
[SPEAKER_00]: Cool.
08:14.001 --> 08:14.882
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you organize players?
08:15.363 --> 08:16.325
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you organize sessions?
08:16.765 --> 08:17.487
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you organize this?
08:17.847 --> 08:19.230
[SPEAKER_00]: And we started to build on top of that.
08:19.290 --> 08:20.532
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we started to expand it.
08:20.552 --> 08:20.752
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
08:20.772 --> 08:21.454
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
08:21.474 --> 08:22.275
[SPEAKER_00]: This talks to this.
08:22.516 --> 08:25.320
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, character creation talks to this here to, you know.
08:25.340 --> 08:27.424
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're going one by one at the moment.
08:27.965 --> 08:30.790
[SPEAKER_00]: And so far everything looks okay.
08:30.770 --> 08:40.541
[SPEAKER_01]: it definitely looks like you've got a really solid foundation going and I really admire your leaning on the expertise of the community around you.
08:40.961 --> 08:43.885
[SPEAKER_01]: That's something that I've to my own detriment.
08:44.345 --> 08:58.701
[SPEAKER_01]: My kind of go to philosophy for my projects is I do not ask anybody to do anything that I am not willing to do myself and so I kind of have to put in my own hours into a thing
08:58.681 --> 09:07.475
[SPEAKER_01]: only lately have I been more willing to ease off on that and let people who know better take more of a lead in things.
09:08.056 --> 09:17.972
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've always been big on delegating and like having to divide and conquer, it's just kind of the limitations of my own time and mental space.
09:17.952 --> 09:21.020
[SPEAKER_01]: have really only recently started to cement in.
09:21.141 --> 09:31.489
[SPEAKER_01]: So I very strongly admire anybody that has that kind of strong interconnected team and the ability to really branch and web out and divide and conquer and delegate.
09:31.520 --> 09:32.581
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm in the same boat.
09:33.122 --> 09:41.273
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of, I don't know if it's called millennial guilt or whatever, but it's like, you know, it's like, well, I can't ask you for help, but I'm going to do it myself.
09:41.373 --> 09:43.676
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I'm really struggling, that's what I'm going to finally ask.
09:43.696 --> 09:51.587
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it very was me for a while, just sort of in the very beginning, kind of drafting everything, getting everything situated, how each block was going to fit.
09:51.567 --> 09:54.790
[SPEAKER_00]: And then finally, I had to sort of break down, go, I don't know how to develop.
09:54.850 --> 09:56.252
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't have the time to do so.
09:56.292 --> 09:57.733
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I ended up reaching out to Harmony.
09:58.214 --> 10:06.742
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it came to a thing where it's like, we were having numerous calls for, uh, talking to creators, uh, AC Spotlight, specifically, you know, talking to developers.
10:06.762 --> 10:09.065
[SPEAKER_00]: We were able to talk to some amazing game developers.
10:09.846 --> 10:11.948
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, I, everything's slipping out of my hands.
10:11.968 --> 10:13.429
[SPEAKER_00]: I need someone to help me organize.
10:13.489 --> 10:19.195
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I was able to add, uh, Amber Rucamonte, our COO, and I would be lost with that my team.
10:19.175 --> 10:31.733
[SPEAKER_01]: To that end, are there any features that are kind of like a white whale for you for AC, that is like an eventual end game goal, but so far is just kind of like a little bit too far out.
10:31.966 --> 10:45.171
[SPEAKER_00]: I would love to have a marketplace, specifically that focuses more off than not than on indie systems, not to say I'm going into the sort of bigger dogs out there, D&D, Pathfinder or Heldiel, but I would love to have a lot more attention on indie systems.
10:45.692 --> 10:50.481
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason why that's big whale and that's sort of further down the line is because there's a lot of licensing.
10:50.461 --> 10:51.282
[SPEAKER_00]: that has to go about.
10:51.302 --> 10:53.345
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of like legal leads that I have to talk to.
10:53.385 --> 10:54.847
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of like handshake deals.
10:55.448 --> 11:02.137
[SPEAKER_00]: And right now, if you look at it from my original goal, which is like, hey, what features can I offer to help GMs?
11:02.637 --> 11:07.204
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not technically helping anyone beyond just sort of maybe developers and ourselves.
11:07.464 --> 11:09.307
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's not the focus right now.
11:09.347 --> 11:12.831
[SPEAKER_00]: The focus is, okay, can we get a full version of our wiki out?
11:13.072 --> 11:14.994
[SPEAKER_00]: Can we get a full version of our characteristics out?
11:15.034 --> 11:16.456
[SPEAKER_00]: Can we get a full version of this out?
11:16.476 --> 11:17.818
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that'll be helpful.
11:17.984 --> 11:20.488
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I can completely understand all the legal hurdles there.
11:20.888 --> 11:39.317
[SPEAKER_01]: For me, my personal thing for our show is transcriptions have always been a big thing for me from the beginning and it's always been the thing that's been a little bit out of reach.
11:39.297 --> 11:49.794
[SPEAKER_01]: but I'm very particular about the way that I like things and I've recently had to kind of check myself and be willing to step back and let the technology do the thing.
11:50.275 --> 11:55.583
[SPEAKER_01]: We finished our first season of our actual play about a year ago as of this recording.
11:56.024 --> 12:00.411
[SPEAKER_01]: It was an 80 episode two and a half year campaign and
12:00.391 --> 12:16.105
[SPEAKER_01]: As far as transcriptions goes, it's been me almost exclusively with a couple of other people on the team helping out here or there, and in the year that we've been done, I've got about 15 episodes transcribed out of 80.
12:16.085 --> 12:26.819
[SPEAKER_01]: I've kind of had to pump the brakes a little bit and reassess just because I also I edit the show I am the primary GM and it's just there's only so many hours in the day.
12:26.839 --> 12:34.730
[SPEAKER_01]: It kills me to have to put that so far on the back burner because I love it's so useful to have those transcripts and I love having them as an accessibility thing.
12:35.471 --> 12:36.152
[SPEAKER_01]: But.
12:36.132 --> 12:48.126
[SPEAKER_01]: the more time that I devote to that, the less time I can devote to editing and producing the show and to GMing and like getting the story out there, and there's only so many things that I can juggle at a time.
12:48.206 --> 13:04.384
[SPEAKER_01]: We experimented a little bit with putting out a call for volunteers and we were able to get one or two people to help out with one episode, but it's just such a time-consuming and monotonous process that it's a hard sell unless you got like a bunch of people
13:04.448 --> 13:32.245
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's once again sort of going back to the whole thing of like if I can do it just myself, why would I ask you, but there's also sort of this mentality that I have in the same vein of like if there's a monotonous very kind of troll task ahead of you that time put into it should be valued and so I like yeah I would imagine that anyone having to go through a three to four hour session and having to transcribe every word and maybe there's overlap of talk is a child that's a challenge, you know,
13:32.360 --> 13:32.701
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
13:32.721 --> 13:47.208
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's like the big limitation of the technology that makes it more necessary to have to like have a person transcribe is I try to go out of my way to designate who is speaking and to separate when it's a player speaking and when it's character speaking.
13:47.729 --> 13:50.094
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's what the big TDM is.
13:50.154 --> 13:54.823
[SPEAKER_01]: That's where the technology kind of falls short and where all of the time goes into.
13:54.803 --> 14:17.419
[SPEAKER_01]: My basic process for that has generally been, I would use technology to kind of like auto transcribe and then painstakingly go through and correct and separate out who is speaking when to say this player is speaking this this player as this character is saying this thing this sound effect happens in the background it's been nice to have the finished product of those but it's been
14:17.399 --> 14:26.173
[SPEAKER_01]: proven to me more and more recently as I've been kind of like hitting my mental wall of being able to do that for my own sanity and like sake of time.
14:26.653 --> 14:28.396
[SPEAKER_01]: I've had to kind of give up on that.
14:28.857 --> 14:40.275
[SPEAKER_01]: At least for now, my plan is to eventually, if I can get enough of a framework, if there's like seven or eight people doing it, then it immediately becomes substantially easier.
14:40.315 --> 14:43.740
[SPEAKER_01]: But for now, that's the thing I've got to kind of put on the back burner.
14:43.840 --> 14:45.583
[SPEAKER_01]: But that is my white whale.
14:45.563 --> 14:46.685
[SPEAKER_00]: that's a hundred percent fair.
14:47.126 --> 14:53.659
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's one of the great things that I love about our bot that does transcriptions and there's sort of a complicated feeling I have about it.
14:54.200 --> 15:00.653
[SPEAKER_00]: But the great thing that I love about it is that because it is connected to discord and each player can attach their discord name to it.
15:00.633 --> 15:06.960
[SPEAKER_00]: There is this lovely feature where if someone's talking even if they're overlapping in themselves, it's like a text wall.
15:06.981 --> 15:15.611
[SPEAKER_00]: You can see that this person talked because the bot recognized that that account was talking and it'll bring up the text and it'll bring up the next text and it'll bring up the next text, which I love that.
15:16.031 --> 15:30.268
[SPEAKER_00]: My complexity when it comes to anything that works almost automatically is obviously, and this is where I have sort of a heavy hand into it.
15:30.248 --> 15:35.039
[SPEAKER_00]: My whole goal with Arkansas is obviously we want to be the goal is to help GMs and players.
15:35.520 --> 15:37.545
[SPEAKER_00]: And beyond that, I'll help the community as a whole.
15:37.805 --> 15:43.138
[SPEAKER_00]: And relying on AI and utilizing of AI for gen AI stuff is something that I don't want to do.
15:43.178 --> 15:46.806
[SPEAKER_00]: The problem that I found is I try looking into it.
15:46.786 --> 16:03.225
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the old school audio text transcription services and software is like it's so outdated and it's never kind of like promoted anymore it's so difficult to find that the best thing you can find for audio transcriptions is sort of like reliant on AI which I kind of like had a grit teeth and go well.
16:03.205 --> 16:12.480
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it the best thing I can say right now is that, you know, it's limited to this, which is you're kind of forced into it, which is unfortunate, and it is helping.
16:12.660 --> 16:14.423
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it is an accessibility thing.
16:14.483 --> 16:18.209
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's, I've taken a punch, but I'm, I'm going with the role.
16:18.369 --> 16:18.750
[SPEAKER_00]: So.
16:19.186 --> 16:29.087
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel that entirely, and I think that's kind of where the nuance has to apply a little bit in the difference between generative AI and procedural AI.
16:29.107 --> 16:39.388
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a similar thing for me, basically every transcription software that exists in
16:39.368 --> 16:48.227
[SPEAKER_01]: And as staunchly anti-AI as I am, there's only so much that you can practically draw the line on, especially now.
16:48.368 --> 16:50.933
[SPEAKER_01]: It seems to be changing, but... Yeah.
16:51.595 --> 16:54.942
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, as well as things like, if a community member comes up to me and they're like, hey, I found something else.
16:55.263 --> 16:57.107
[SPEAKER_00]: I would, yeah, let's give it a look.
16:57.627 --> 16:59.491
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's your white whale, man.
16:59.591 --> 17:02.517
[SPEAKER_00]: I can definitely see that, you know, scraping the wall with a spoon.
17:02.577 --> 17:03.860
[SPEAKER_00]: That's going to take you some time.
17:04.962 --> 17:05.523
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
17:06.305 --> 17:13.560
[SPEAKER_01]: To shift gears a little bit and pivot towards your actual like game style as a player and as a GM.
17:13.540 --> 17:18.288
[SPEAKER_01]: What are the different TTRPG systems that you've played and what stuff do you gravitate towards?
17:18.308 --> 17:21.714
[SPEAKER_01]: I know you said that you're wanting to promote and prop up more indie systems.
17:22.195 --> 17:30.790
[SPEAKER_01]: Are there any specific systems that are your comfort zone that you like or love to promote that you feel like should get more attention?
17:31.073 --> 17:32.295
[SPEAKER_00]: Lazy in the dark is really fun.
17:32.515 --> 17:35.759
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm part of a blaze in the dark campaign been doing it for, I think a year now.
17:36.220 --> 17:37.502
[SPEAKER_00]: I also love kids on bikes.
17:37.582 --> 17:40.666
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a really fun and simplistic system to really get into.
17:40.706 --> 17:51.000
[SPEAKER_00]: And in terms of like indie systems that I would love to get more attention, I haven't had a chance to actually get into the system but I was able to sit down with the creator of Coyote and Crow.
17:51.620 --> 17:52.682
[SPEAKER_00]: I can Alexander.
17:52.722 --> 17:56.507
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's an aspect of her game
17:56.487 --> 18:13.973
[SPEAKER_00]: that's kind of blew my mind and that was when you're doing character creation, you can give yourself faults like a pet that doesn't obey you all the time or you can have a family member who's a bit of a rival and it gives the GMC these hooks to like really hurt you on your roles.
18:13.953 --> 18:16.137
[SPEAKER_00]: the question then goes, well, why would I want that?
18:16.738 --> 18:24.851
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the more negatives you take, the more points you can put towards your character stats, which I was like, oh, that's so cool that solves a few more things.
18:25.352 --> 18:29.579
[SPEAKER_00]: One, it allows the GM to have a lot of hooks immediately just by your choice.
18:29.780 --> 18:32.063
[SPEAKER_00]: And two, I love it when characters have faults.
18:32.184 --> 18:35.770
[SPEAKER_00]: It is the best storytelling mode and sort of like scenes set.
18:35.810 --> 18:37.653
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, oh, you're not always the best.
18:38.114 --> 18:39.015
[SPEAKER_00]: And, uh,
18:38.995 --> 18:41.058
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so Kiting Crow, shout out to that.
18:41.158 --> 18:43.663
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a game that has gotten my attention so hard.
18:43.683 --> 18:45.125
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can't wait to get a game going.
18:45.405 --> 18:46.407
[SPEAKER_01]: That is awesome.
18:46.607 --> 18:51.355
[SPEAKER_01]: I absolutely love it when systems mechanically incentivize imperfect play.
18:51.996 --> 18:57.004
[SPEAKER_01]: It's one of the things that I've loved the most about the handful of powered by the apocalypse games that I've played.
18:56.984 --> 19:01.611
[SPEAKER_01]: A thing that they do is that they tie your experience points to your failed roles.
19:01.952 --> 19:06.679
[SPEAKER_01]: That is the way that you get stronger and generate XP is by failing.
19:06.880 --> 19:08.362
[SPEAKER_01]: You learn from your failure.
19:08.823 --> 19:16.495
[SPEAKER_01]: And similarly, like you said with kids on bikes, I love adversity tokens as a way to really push yourself to make riskier decisions.
19:16.475 --> 19:17.196
[SPEAKER_00]: fail forward.
19:17.597 --> 19:21.062
[SPEAKER_01]: failing forward is one of my favorite things in design.
19:21.122 --> 19:25.048
[SPEAKER_01]: So right there with you, I love that concept for coyote and crow.
19:25.448 --> 19:29.815
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there was another aspect of the game that again, I was so lucky just to sit down with the creator.
19:30.336 --> 19:35.643
[SPEAKER_00]: She mentioned that there was much like in D&D where you can like set your points to like what are the minimum is to to 20.
19:36.104 --> 19:38.688
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a certain point if you go over an amount.
19:38.768 --> 19:41.272
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's five is the base of like what a human could do.
19:41.352 --> 19:44.136
[SPEAKER_00]: Like
19:44.116 --> 19:48.726
[SPEAKER_00]: Once you hit over five, which you can do, the entire world is then aware of you.
19:49.167 --> 20:02.395
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're really good at dexterity and you've got like a six or seven, the surrounding towns and neighbors and everything else, wrecking us, saw you do that triple, you know, barrel axe flip and they're like, hey, that guy's unique, that's weird.
20:02.375 --> 20:18.038
[SPEAKER_00]: and you start to become known and I'm with that's great because that means as the players are progressing the GMs and go hey mid campaign you're now like a superhero you're doing par core off walls there's now a rival who does the exact same thing who doesn't like that and it gives you another hook.
20:18.018 --> 20:19.921
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, oh, your game's full of hooks.
20:20.122 --> 20:20.562
[SPEAKER_01]: I want it.
20:20.883 --> 20:22.005
[SPEAKER_01]: That is so fun.
20:22.165 --> 20:34.106
[SPEAKER_01]: I was already interested in coyote and crowed just from the general pitch of it being indigenous focused and underrepresented voices within the community, kind of having a chance to shine.
20:34.627 --> 20:37.271
[SPEAKER_01]: But mechanically, that sounds awesome.
20:37.291 --> 20:37.912
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so smart.
20:38.093 --> 20:40.617
[SPEAKER_00]: It covers a few things and I can't wait to give the shot.
20:40.647 --> 20:50.352
[SPEAKER_01]: So in games like that and like in those mechanical hooks that you're intrigued by, what kinds of aspects of those things do you like to bring into your own game?
20:50.392 --> 20:54.623
[SPEAKER_01]: So like as a GM, what is kind of your bag of tricks that you go to?
20:54.890 --> 20:58.816
[SPEAKER_00]: I like to call sort of my style, bread crumbs and cookies.
20:59.396 --> 21:05.044
[SPEAKER_00]: I love getting obviously my players involved in the overarching story as a we're in the whole campaign.
21:05.104 --> 21:14.898
[SPEAKER_00]: And I like integrating their recipe, their characters, and their backstories into what I like to call bread crumbs, where I'll drop a little bit here, drop a little bit there, and kind of keep them trailing.
21:15.519 --> 21:19.405
[SPEAKER_00]: And it won't actually resolve until they hit something big, which I call cookie.
21:19.805 --> 21:21.167
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are the big reveals.
21:21.147 --> 21:25.233
[SPEAKER_00]: I love teasing something 50 sessions down the line.
21:25.554 --> 21:28.318
[SPEAKER_00]: A great example is I had a player's very early game.
21:28.358 --> 21:29.640
[SPEAKER_00]: They started off level three.
21:30.241 --> 21:33.145
[SPEAKER_00]: And we were session two in the campaign.
21:33.606 --> 21:38.093
[SPEAKER_00]: And they met Pixies who were like, we're chased away from the Feywild from a fade giant.
21:38.133 --> 21:39.415
[SPEAKER_00]: And they were like, oh, that's horrible.
21:39.916 --> 21:41.438
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but we were saved by this family.
21:41.779 --> 21:42.700
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
21:42.680 --> 21:57.537
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think they're now 70 sessions in, and they're in the Feywild, and they must have forgot about the Feyjiant, which I was hoping for, and I was like, and then you get captured by the Feyjiant, you know, circumstances be damned, and they're like, wait a minute, why does this sound familiar?
21:57.577 --> 22:00.680
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, haha, here's your cookie, and now you get it.
22:01.121 --> 22:02.022
[SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome.
22:02.282 --> 22:03.964
[SPEAKER_01]: It's fantastic when that can happen.
22:04.565 --> 22:08.569
[SPEAKER_01]: For my general play style, I,
22:08.549 --> 22:32.751
[SPEAKER_01]: tend to, it's hard to say because most of my experience as a GM is in actual plays, which I feel like is kind of a different focal point in structure, but the characters are very heavily centered in the stories that I tend to run, which I know there's a lot of standard advice saying, hey, don't do that because if this player no longer can make it to the table and you've made that character load bearing, now you got to work around that.
22:32.731 --> 22:43.428
[SPEAKER_01]: But I see that as a challenge and I find the most interesting TTRBG experiences come more player centric than GM centric.
22:43.448 --> 22:48.275
[SPEAKER_01]: So I love being able to make the characters pivotal to the story.
22:48.676 --> 22:53.764
[SPEAKER_01]: Whether they are important to the world or not, is kind of subject to debate.
22:54.265 --> 22:55.026
[SPEAKER_01]: But
22:55.006 --> 23:04.300
[SPEAKER_01]: at least in the events of the story, if it doesn't tie into the players, I tend to feel like it's a bit of a missed opportunity.
23:04.800 --> 23:06.303
[SPEAKER_01]: So I love doing that.
23:06.723 --> 23:10.208
[SPEAKER_01]: I describe my own style as being very polpy and fast-paced.
23:10.228 --> 23:12.812
[SPEAKER_01]: What I consider my strength is what I call height moments.
23:12.792 --> 23:29.721
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I will basically get like a snapshot image in my head of a specific moment that is cool as all hell that I want to get to and then we'll work backwards from their retroactively to set it up and make it happen.
23:29.701 --> 23:36.112
[SPEAKER_01]: So those kinds of things kind of bleeding into each other are like my general style and sensibilities.
23:36.132 --> 23:40.139
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm also very collaborative, which I'm sure is the same for you and most of your group.
23:40.159 --> 23:49.515
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of the arcane circle GMs have very collaborative, very roleplay heavy, very like loose in their structure in their tags.
23:49.495 --> 23:53.600
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I'm sure that is a very common sentiment among your community.
23:53.740 --> 23:57.365
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think as much as I would love to take that, it very much as a sentiment.
23:57.385 --> 24:09.580
[SPEAKER_00]: I think just as the tea temperature community as a whole, shifting back to sort of the AC spotlight interviews, one big question I'd love to ask people is what is a role you have at your table that's set in stone.
24:09.560 --> 24:21.580
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's mainly because I've been kind of made very well aware that most creators and storytellers generally start to lean towards the rules of cool rather than the rules as written kind of structure.
24:22.061 --> 24:29.053
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's very indicative of the actual community as a whole that we are here just to tell a story and make sure everyone is having fun.
24:29.033 --> 24:46.514
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been very, very lucky because I have seen like read at horror stories, but I've been very lucky that most of the GMs I've spoken to and people that have interacted with have been people who are good-natured, want-to-tell story, they don't want you to cry, like they're not aiming for making, you know, make you have any sort of trauma, but they really love it if you did.
24:46.534 --> 24:50.118
[SPEAKER_00]: I've described GMs as emotional vampires.
24:50.419 --> 24:54.163
[SPEAKER_00]: We can't wait for you to feel something so we can just suck that out.
24:54.143 --> 24:55.265
[SPEAKER_01]: absolutely.
24:55.766 --> 24:57.630
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a very interesting question.
24:58.031 --> 24:59.393
[SPEAKER_01]: You've got my wheel spinning.
24:59.854 --> 25:02.519
[SPEAKER_01]: I will toss that back on you while I think upon that.
25:02.880 --> 25:05.204
[SPEAKER_01]: What is your immovable rule?
25:05.625 --> 25:06.868
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh man, you know what?
25:07.048 --> 25:10.735
[SPEAKER_00]: As much as I've been asking people that question, no one's asking that question.
25:10.715 --> 25:18.086
[SPEAKER_00]: I think my role is respect is not optional, I think respect has to be mandatory.
25:18.267 --> 25:28.302
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of those things where if you know you're about to come off as disrespectful or if you do come out disrespectful and someone calls you out on it, there needs to be some transparency and communication.
25:28.282 --> 25:35.648
[SPEAKER_00]: I have had players in parties who argue with each other and at the very end I'm like You guys are right and they're like no, no, don't worry about it.
25:35.668 --> 25:38.070
[SPEAKER_00]: We planned this We knew we were gonna argue with each other.
25:38.091 --> 25:41.473
[SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna get really up on each other's throats And I was like so this was cool.
25:41.513 --> 25:58.288
[SPEAKER_00]: They're like, yes, we love that we had a fight And I was like, okay, cool and there have been other moments where I've had players who feel like they've been left out And that feeling comes out as as being upset agitated and almost defeated and it does have to come up where we all have to sort of sit down and go listen
25:58.268 --> 26:15.494
[SPEAKER_00]: Here are the reasons why you're not being targeted, and there needs to be communication, there needs to be an understanding, but all that comes from a place of respect, we recognize that someone doesn't feel safe or doesn't feel acknowledged, and we all have to come together to provide context and do signify that they do matter.
26:15.875 --> 26:18.298
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, it's a respect has to be mandatory.
26:18.539 --> 26:23.466
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a very pragmatic rule, too, for my answer to that question,
26:23.547 --> 26:37.284
[SPEAKER_01]: I generally operate on a law of equivalentech's change, so both between player and GM player to player in how I operate, I try to have an even flow going across all directions.
26:37.965 --> 26:43.952
[SPEAKER_01]: I, as a GM, am willing to budge on most rules if a player is willing to meet me halfway.
26:43.932 --> 26:52.028
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm very willing to bend rules as long as we don't break them and we'll try to compromise with my players on anything.
26:52.048 --> 27:00.344
[SPEAKER_01]: You can a lot of the times when a player asks me a question that is blatantly against the rules, I will try to get to the heart of what is your goal here?
27:00.484 --> 27:02.548
[SPEAKER_01]: What is the thing you want to do?
27:02.528 --> 27:06.996
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's find a way that we can meet in the middle where we can do this without breaking the rules.
27:07.016 --> 27:10.903
[SPEAKER_01]: You still get the outcome you want, just maybe not with that same method.
27:11.344 --> 27:20.740
[SPEAKER_01]: Or, like you said, with some players feeling neglected and others kind of hogging the spotlight, the way that I've structured our actual play is I try to do
27:20.720 --> 27:25.892
[SPEAKER_01]: Basically every character kind of gets their own focal story beats nice.
27:25.913 --> 27:38.543
[SPEAKER_01]: I have them centered almost like anime arcs I will have like this is your characters subplot and like your character takes the spot Well, dude, we came from the same we came from the same
27:38.523 --> 27:44.168
[SPEAKER_00]: I've struck your most of my games the same way where I've told people in sessions here as I'm like, everyone here gets too arcs, all right?
27:44.528 --> 27:47.711
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you don't think you've gotten your arc yet, that means you're at the very bottom of the list.
27:47.751 --> 27:49.753
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't worry, you'll get an arc, okay?
27:50.114 --> 27:51.154
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone gets a focal point.
27:51.495 --> 27:57.821
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody gets their opportunity to be a badass and to have their big story moment.
27:58.261 --> 28:08.310
[SPEAKER_01]: I just usually will focus them one at a time, but I try to give everybody equal attention
28:08.290 --> 28:36.458
[SPEAKER_01]: There's definitely a couple of characters in our season 1 who are very backloaded in their importance in prominence within the story, but a lot of that just kind of comes down to the dynamic of the table and they, at least from what they've told me, they were very satisfied with the arcs they eventually got and because they did come so late, there was a lot more weight and heaviness and momentum and like the stakes were a lot higher for those ones.
28:36.438 --> 28:39.582
[SPEAKER_01]: So it felt like a good compromise there.
28:40.062 --> 28:43.025
[SPEAKER_01]: Compromise is kind of my general headset there.
28:43.065 --> 28:52.056
[SPEAKER_01]: There's also a bunch of different house rules that I do are ways to kind of equalize spotlight and like the power dynamic between GM and players.
28:52.776 --> 28:57.882
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the core signature homebrew rules that we did for season one was Devil's Bargains.
28:57.962 --> 28:59.644
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's a blazing the dark thing.
28:59.624 --> 29:18.910
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, where if any player fails a role that they desperately need to succeed or an enemy succeeds a role they desperately need to fail, they can petition the GM for an automatic success or the enemy's automatic failure and then either GM get a back pocket net one that I can replace any one role that theirs down the line with.
29:19.611 --> 29:23.016
[SPEAKER_01]: So trading instant success for eventual failure.
29:22.996 --> 29:46.837
[SPEAKER_00]: I started to implement Blazing the Dark features as well into my games as a relate, especially when it comes to like downtime, or I'm like, yeah, you can totally get proficiency in these particular tools if you want during downtime each week counts as a you having a chance to roll some D6s based on your skill modifier and if you get double sixes, which is a crit and Blazing the Dark, hey, you get proficiency, but it's building up a clock.
29:47.358 --> 29:49.700
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that the devil's bargain is so much fun.
29:49.760 --> 29:52.142
[SPEAKER_00]: I've implemented a few times or even players
29:52.122 --> 29:54.299
[SPEAKER_00]: And I get it, that was bargained for like advantage.
29:54.339 --> 29:57.019
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, yes, and then I get to pull something.
29:57.303 --> 30:03.091
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's, I love taking things from other systems and kind of retrofitting them into the game.
30:03.532 --> 30:15.209
[SPEAKER_01]: Another, this isn't like a system specific thing, but there's another home rule that I have not implemented in my games yet, but as soon as I heard about it immediately, like, oh, this is an obvious one that I need to do from here on out.
30:15.630 --> 30:26.365
[SPEAKER_01]: In combat, when a player lands the killing blow, they can choose to narratively designate that final strike to a different player if they so choose.
30:26.345 --> 30:27.266
[SPEAKER_00]: That's real cool.
30:27.346 --> 30:33.334
[SPEAKER_01]: So if narratively it would feel a lot better for this other character to have gotten the final hit.
30:33.354 --> 30:37.399
[SPEAKER_01]: They can designate that no this character actually gets the final blow.
30:37.499 --> 30:39.822
[SPEAKER_00]: No, that's that's so that's a good role.
30:40.183 --> 30:40.423
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
30:40.703 --> 30:42.085
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a lot of things like that.
30:42.125 --> 30:51.537
[SPEAKER_01]: I just I love things that encourage and incentivize that kind of group collaboration and that kind of level the playing field between GM's and players.
30:51.637 --> 30:56.183
[SPEAKER_01]: So equivalent exchange.
30:56.618 --> 30:58.863
[SPEAKER_01]: You did bring up your AC spotlight interviews.
30:59.244 --> 31:04.315
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you tell me a little bit about some of the information and some of the wisdom that you've gotten from doing those interviews?
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[SPEAKER_01]: And if there's any particular bits of advice that really stand out to you.
31:09.933 --> 31:19.510
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, out of the 20 something on calls and talks I've had, I've been kind of blown away with all the creativity from sort of the love out of the system and tabletop in general.
31:20.091 --> 31:30.810
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though there's like similarities in some of the talks I've had with where people have like the same mentality in terms of respect and how they started and where their brain goes when it comes to creation and sort of the advice they provide.
31:30.790 --> 31:41.444
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's a piece of advice that's been enforced time and time after again that's kind of always enforced when I talk to people and that is don't be afraid to tell your story.
31:41.804 --> 31:53.119
[SPEAKER_00]: Who cares if you run straw and everyone else has run straw to time on a tradition you had to do it and even if they've run it to death and people have posted all mine of my new straw campaign and oh is it not original?
31:53.099 --> 31:54.821
[SPEAKER_00]: No one can tell a story like you can.
31:54.841 --> 31:56.483
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm pointing to the camera that's not seen.
31:57.084 --> 31:58.726
[SPEAKER_00]: No one can tell a story like you can.
31:59.086 --> 32:01.909
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, audio is way better than video is kind of what I grabbed.
32:02.510 --> 32:06.795
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a breakdown that I had from Alessandro from D20 workshop.
32:07.255 --> 32:11.300
[SPEAKER_00]: He has this long extensive family history where he grew up around creatives.
32:11.340 --> 32:12.802
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is his input.
32:12.822 --> 32:13.843
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was really interesting.
32:13.863 --> 32:21.452
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think anyone who's like wants to see how family can kind of sway your creative methodology should definitely check out that chat.
32:21.432 --> 32:29.448
[SPEAKER_00]: If you really want some great advice on world creation, especially for new GMs, go check out the chat with Sphinx from the Everright Archive.
32:29.748 --> 32:36.321
[SPEAKER_00]: He brought some amazing tips when he came to world building and world creation and implementation of your characters in those backstories.
32:36.802 --> 32:38.766
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of ways to sort of learn from him.
32:38.746 --> 32:44.771
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I have favorite and that's only because I'm biased because I'm I'm lucky enough to chat and play with these people.
32:45.352 --> 32:46.373
[SPEAKER_00]: I've done some of the past.
32:46.693 --> 32:48.655
[SPEAKER_00]: That's Dyson autism and Vixie Bell.
32:48.935 --> 32:52.358
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been able to play in chat with them kind of extensively.
32:52.378 --> 32:56.422
[SPEAKER_00]: They're talented individuals who fill those stories so Leo's check out those chats.
32:56.922 --> 33:00.506
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I think those are kind of like my top four.
33:00.626 --> 33:07.572
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to one more out throw in is if you want to interview that caught me off
33:07.552 --> 33:11.629
[SPEAKER_00]: She caught me off guard because she was like, she explained what her interest in T.T.R.P.
33:11.649 --> 33:14.642
[SPEAKER_00]: started and I was like, that's mine and nobody talks about that.
33:14.926 --> 33:16.528
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, oh my god, I found another person.
33:16.548 --> 33:17.931
[SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't realize that we all exist.
33:18.371 --> 33:19.212
[SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome.
33:20.094 --> 33:25.902
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure you're very similar to me in that you learn something new from each interview that you do.
33:25.923 --> 33:32.432
[SPEAKER_01]: I very lucky in the interviews that I've done to have had like a really wide range of experiences to pull from.
33:32.472 --> 33:36.799
[SPEAKER_01]: I love how varied the different ones that you've brought up are.
33:37.240 --> 33:38.642
[SPEAKER_01]: I've chatted with GMs.
33:38.662 --> 33:39.603
[SPEAKER_01]: I've chatted with showrunners.
33:39.663 --> 33:40.985
[SPEAKER_01]: I've chatted with game designers.
33:41.546 --> 33:42.908
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's always
33:42.888 --> 33:46.014
[SPEAKER_01]: something that I can take away from each of them.
33:46.054 --> 33:50.341
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of like really good little nuggets that I've distilled from a lot of them.
33:50.842 --> 33:55.570
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of my favorite ones are the ones that have like really broadened my perspective.
33:56.011 --> 34:01.521
[SPEAKER_01]: One that I tend to point people to from our table talks is I did an interview with the infinite tavern.
34:01.501 --> 34:03.645
[SPEAKER_01]: which is a show based in India.
34:04.246 --> 34:13.263
[SPEAKER_01]: And I got to learn a whole bunch about the Indian TTRPG scene and how like relatively new the hobby is over there.
34:13.283 --> 34:17.350
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was a really interesting and fascinating perspective shift.
34:17.330 --> 34:23.756
[SPEAKER_01]: I also got to talk with Neil from Faith, who is from Scotland and is doing a master's degree on folklore.
34:24.317 --> 34:41.013
[SPEAKER_01]: And basically, Faith is like a system and a compendium of monsters that are based in fairy and fay wild type folklore that is rooted in like the actual traditions of Ireland and Scotland and like Eastern European.
34:41.574 --> 34:44.637
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that was so interesting.
34:44.617 --> 35:01.959
[SPEAKER_01]: He had a lot of really cool and interesting tidbits about monsters that are things that really fly under the radar because of like a lot of our assumptions come from media and he was going straight to the source for a lot of them and how much they have shifted and changed with time was absolutely fascinating.
35:02.460 --> 35:10.270
[SPEAKER_01]: Some recent other good ones that I've done, I recently interviewed not all but most of the GMs from the Dungeons and Cabins event.
35:10.250 --> 35:13.534
[SPEAKER_01]: and each of them had a lot of really interesting things to say.
35:13.554 --> 35:22.486
[SPEAKER_01]: I particularly really liked the interview with Sammy, who is the founder and head of Dungeons and Cabins, getting into a lot of the logistics of setting up an event like that.
35:22.967 --> 35:38.468
[SPEAKER_01]: It's basically like a D&D and a Castle type thing, but in the woods of San Bernardino mountains where it is a weekend doing summer camp activities and a five session D&D game where the camp activities affect what happens on the table.
35:38.448 --> 35:39.550
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's clever.
35:39.570 --> 35:46.722
[SPEAKER_00]: I love when unique culture beyond my own sphere because it's unique to me, obviously, not to everyone.
35:47.223 --> 35:53.594
[SPEAKER_00]: But when someone from a background that I don't generally interact with a lot is able to, like, be able to sit down and talk to them.
35:54.054 --> 35:58.101
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, as I've spoken to a guy named Dre, he runs rumble roll.
35:58.542 --> 36:01.587
[SPEAKER_00]: He has such a loving passion for his Filipino background.
36:01.567 --> 36:06.293
[SPEAKER_00]: He has a whole history on there are monsters that were created.
36:06.333 --> 36:17.567
[SPEAKER_00]: These like boogie man like tails that were told in the Philippines from colonizers who would like tell them these sort of stories just to scare them and to like dissuade them from doing certain actions.
36:17.888 --> 36:23.575
[SPEAKER_00]: Like there is like there's a hurtful history and so he took them and he was like, I have an idea.
36:23.555 --> 36:24.116
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's own it.
36:24.357 --> 36:31.855
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he ended up grabbing a lot of these sort of concepts taking the monsters and making them actually like a thing that can happen.
36:31.875 --> 36:40.756
[SPEAKER_00]: There's one of my favorites, which is a bi-sected vampiric woman named the monologue and it could separate from the middle and kind of fly off in different areas.
36:40.776 --> 36:41.698
[SPEAKER_00]: I know about that one.
36:41.678 --> 36:43.521
[SPEAKER_00]: And how it went, that's so rad.
36:43.802 --> 36:47.308
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it was, yeah, it came from a hurtful place, but we were sort of grab it.
36:47.669 --> 36:55.082
[SPEAKER_00]: And they mentioned they're like, we're not the only ones, but we're able to sort of do the same with grabbing the sort of thing that had this one concept and now we built it sort of be our own.
36:55.804 --> 37:05.982
[SPEAKER_00]: And in terms of finding people who have a unique back round to us and bringing in sort of these new monsters and ideas and cultures.
37:05.962 --> 37:10.616
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, uh, sort of, you know, how they can integrate in your story is just so refreshing.
37:10.636 --> 37:11.478
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so exciting.
37:11.679 --> 37:16.493
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's kind of tying in again, why I love, like, piloting grow, how I'm, what I'm really excited to sort of learn that.
37:16.914 --> 37:20.224
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of these unique ideas that I want to be exposed to.
37:20.558 --> 37:22.000
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
37:22.600 --> 37:32.752
[SPEAKER_01]: Before we run out of time, I want to throw this back to you and make sure that if there's any miscellaneous things that you want to cover, any topics that are important to you to hit, I want to make sure that we get a chance to cover them.
37:33.052 --> 37:36.376
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll end it with the same advice that I got, you know, sort of been instilled for a while.
37:36.536 --> 37:45.807
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is there was a certain point in the strategic strategic community that I saw that there was a lot of like sort of banter back and forth, whether or not an actual place should exist or not.
37:45.787 --> 37:54.259
[SPEAKER_00]: And I saw that and I did make a video that my own sort of actually channel and it was sort of this is you should be able to be free to make your stories.
37:54.880 --> 38:08.419
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have a story to tell, go do so, keep though in mind that respect for both yourself, for your players and for the audience, if you will are producing something for, you know, for their general public is there.
38:08.399 --> 38:13.887
[SPEAKER_00]: There needs to be a respect on all fronts, but beyond that, don't make your stories.
38:14.007 --> 38:14.588
[SPEAKER_00]: Be creative.
38:14.949 --> 38:16.611
[SPEAKER_00]: No one can tell a story like you can.
38:16.671 --> 38:18.554
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a sort of a phrase that I die on.
38:19.315 --> 38:29.631
[SPEAKER_00]: Is if you feel like you're unsure whether or not you can tell a story well enough to be consumed by public, if you've ever made your players feel something.
38:29.611 --> 38:41.585
[SPEAKER_00]: If you've ever made your players feel pissed off at a villain, or you made them sad at the loss of a favorite NPC, or you made them laugh at a silly joke character, you were able to make someone feel something.
38:41.986 --> 38:42.867
[SPEAKER_00]: And that means you're ready.
38:43.327 --> 38:44.849
[SPEAKER_00]: You're ready to start telling stories.
38:44.869 --> 38:46.371
[SPEAKER_00]: You're ready to sort of put yourself out there.
38:47.052 --> 38:50.436
[SPEAKER_00]: And even if you still will go, well, I'm not entirely sure, hey, take your time.
38:50.957 --> 38:51.277
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fun.
38:51.697 --> 38:53.880
[SPEAKER_00]: But here's me telling you, I think you're ready.
38:54.046 --> 38:56.730
[SPEAKER_01]: absolutely fantastic advice to end on.
38:56.891 --> 39:00.236
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a story for everyone and there's an audience for every story.
39:00.316 --> 39:11.215
[SPEAKER_01]: So I love that advice and I think that the hobby and the community is only improved by more people sharing their stories and experiences.
39:11.255 --> 39:19.969
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so much that I learn from everybody that I listen to, everybody that I talk to and my games are improved, the more that I
39:19.949 --> 39:25.623
[SPEAKER_01]: so I can only imagine that it's the same for a lot of our audience and a lot of like fellow creators.
39:26.285 --> 39:37.873
[SPEAKER_01]: So on that note, can you remind us one more time where our listeners can find you your projects and your platform, your actual plays, your games, arcane circle, go ahead and give all those links now.
39:37.921 --> 39:44.852
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, so if you would like to find your own game or host your own game, you can do so an arcingcircle.games.
39:45.252 --> 39:49.599
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a bunch of tools currently up and coming in the pipeline as well as sums that are already released.
39:49.639 --> 39:58.292
[SPEAKER_00]: As I mentioned before, we have our description bot, we have our campaign wiki as well as a bunch of organizational tools utilized there, but it's please stick around, we have a lot more things coming.
39:58.272 --> 40:01.637
[SPEAKER_00]: Most socials are arcane circle or arcane circle games.
40:02.078 --> 40:04.742
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't worry, you can always go to arcane circle.games and the links are there in the bottom.
40:05.103 --> 40:12.274
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're looking for me personally and sort of the work that I do, uh, specifically for my actual play channel, it's called Arcane Focus D&D.
40:12.715 --> 40:15.319
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I like the word, you know.
40:15.299 --> 40:16.441
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a good brand name.
40:16.481 --> 40:17.903
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's all part of a family now.
40:18.264 --> 40:19.966
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, so Arcane focused D&D.
40:20.006 --> 40:24.874
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an actual play channel that's honestly I just started to do because I like creating stuff.
40:25.334 --> 40:31.884
[SPEAKER_00]: I was not expecting to have the availability to work with so many good creatives and so many amazing people.
40:32.465 --> 40:36.651
[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe you'll find one of your favorite creators on our channel one day and that's really fun.
40:37.112 --> 40:40.337
[SPEAKER_00]: But please go check us out on that channel or Arcane Circle.
40:40.377 --> 40:41.439
[SPEAKER_00]: We're available all the time.
40:41.619 --> 40:42.580
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm chronically online.
40:42.601 --> 40:43.602
[SPEAKER_00]: You can always reach out to me.
40:43.767 --> 40:44.288
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
40:44.308 --> 40:45.430
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for all of that.
40:45.611 --> 40:49.980
[SPEAKER_01]: All of those links will be in the description and thank you again for coming by the chat with me.
40:50.140 --> 40:52.404
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like I could keep going for hours.
40:52.445 --> 40:53.807
[SPEAKER_01]: This was a ton of fun.
40:53.968 --> 40:55.090
[SPEAKER_00]: I know I could too.
40:55.250 --> 40:57.214
[SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, it was one of those things where it's like three days ago.
40:57.234 --> 40:59.659
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, uh, I might have a heartstep.
40:59.759 --> 41:00.340
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry.
41:00.361 --> 41:03.106
[SPEAKER_00]: I usually like to keep it open, but I had a lot of fun.
41:03.126 --> 41:04.088
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much.
41:04.270 --> 41:07.035
[SPEAKER_01]: And thank you to all of you for listening.
41:07.516 --> 41:08.398
[SPEAKER_01]: One more time, everybody.
41:08.578 --> 41:11.884
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Danger Dancers, the GM and host of D&D Ark.
41:11.904 --> 41:16.172
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been chatting with Mike, the CEO and founder of Arcane Circle.
41:16.573 --> 41:18.597
[SPEAKER_01]: And this has been Tape Talk.
41:19.118 --> 41:21.823
[SPEAKER_01]: And I hope you enjoy what we brought to the table.
41:25.904 --> 41:34.194
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Table Talk, created hosted and edited by myself, Danger Dan Jürs, with artwork by Jordan Nelson.
41:34.794 --> 41:37.878
[SPEAKER_01]: Our guest this episode was Mike from Arcane Circle.
41:38.318 --> 41:40.281
[SPEAKER_01]: Links to his work can be found in the episode description.
41:40.861 --> 41:47.589
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're interested in being a guest on the show, reach out to us at dndarkpodcast at gmail.com.
41:48.190 --> 41:51.053
[SPEAKER_01]: Our theme song and outro were created by Jeremy Volucin.
41:51.073 --> 41:55.438
[SPEAKER_01]: Check out more of his works on Instagram at Jeremy Volucin underscore wreck of time.
41:55.418 --> 41:59.792
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time we have a guest take a seat at the table.