The BIG Chip Theory Interview | 20 Strong x AR, Eldre Scrolls, TMB2 & More | BGSS ep_009

0:00 Uh, essentially it's like once you play through your first game, your deck of Ether Fields is your deck of Ether Fields. Nobody else has one like it.

0:07 I don't want to give away too much, but it's like that character coming together has had definitely had an influence on how we've been thinking about like Too Many Bones, too. Like

0:16 we were like finally getting our offices done and he like takes me into where the dev office was going to be and he just goes, "This is where you'll be moving." He's like, "I feel like you need to switch full time." I think with Elder Scrolls, we made a very different product that kind of also learned some of the lessons of Too Many Bones.

0:33 You're getting rid of cards for good. You're making really tough decisions. Uh solves a deck building problem.

0:39 It's like I absolutely think a good dice roll should save you from losing a losing situation, but a bad dice roll should never cause you to lose a winning one. Welcome to Ride in Salem. I really appreciate you being here. Um, hot off the press, my Trover is about to hit that. I just got the got the out for delivery. I'm pretty I'm pretty excited about that one. Did either of you have any uh any hand in Trover?

1:11 Uh, yeah. Um, I Well, it's funny. So, Trover, I see I might be frozen here again, but like uh but Trover is um honestly it came from like a discussion that that I was having with Josh Carlson and Josh like a couple years ago. We were kind of talking about how we couldn't really make produce any more Too Many Bones stuff because uh because the protest was full and then I was kind of like, well, you know, like it's not like totally full. Like there's like a few slots left in in Riffles's uh uh uh gearlock container. And then I was sort of like that's like kind of a funny idea. Like what if we just made a gearlock that was like the joke of it for April Fools is that like you thought we were like going back on a promise like you thought we were betraying the trust of all the people who built who who had the trove chest but actually what we're doing is we found another place that you could put it in the trove chest and then like the more kind of elaborate and the more complete of a character that that would be we found it was like that the funnier that the idea kind of became to us. So, um, I sat down last year with, uh, Andrew Santoro, who works in our marketing department, but also has been helping with like a lot of design and development stuff for us. And the two of us kind of like sketched out the idea for um how how uh Trevor would work. And we kind of designed the mechanics and the dice together. And then what we didn't originally think it was going to be a cobalt, but then Salem

2:43 was kind of like, "Oh, that'd be kind of funny if it was sort of a cobalt type character that was like almost kind of had a box troll uh vibe." And so then like the kind of the character's personality started coming together that way. And um yeah, I think we're really happy with how it turned out. I think it's a really fun and funny character. And and honestly, I think it's even maybe I don't want to give away too much, but it's like that character coming together has had definitely had an influence on how we've been thinking about like Too Many Bones, too. Like we're we're making, you know, another Too many another game in the Too Many Bones universe. And I think Trover has actually had an effect on like how we've thought about how to make characters for that game as well, which is kind of fun.

3:25 Oh, Too Many Bones Too. Oh, I Okay, I'm gonna try not to go off on that. This is about 20 strong. That That makes me incredibly excited. Yeah, but Trover, I I'm excited. I love the weird. I love the quirky. I'm a big Elder Scrolls fan. What you did is incredible, but you know, my my review says it all and all the content I put out, but there's something just I don't know, the whimsy of Too Many Bones, the characters that you all created to me just feel so fun. Like I love the personality that comes through on all of the different skills and um the weirder the better for me and I think a lot of people really praise Elder Scrolls for being able to build whatever you want. I really loved the idea of just having this super unique character kind of given to me and letting me you know play with those levers. So um hearing that you are you know I haven't been keeping up on things. I've been doing all kinds of crazy stuff. I had no idea. I knew it was a rumor, but I don't know that um it's been said out loud that Too Many Bones 2 was being worked on or is something that's being green lit.

4:31 Yeah. I mean, we we don't have a lot of details about it yet publicly, partially just because like we're figuring it out still like we're still kind of in the relatively we're still in some kind of conceptual stages. We're getting more and more as it goes. But uh but yeah, I mean like definitely something we've been thinking about for a long time and starting to work on, you know, kind of in between getting the Awakened Realms decks uh finished and um and proofing like the second round of Elder Scrolls stuff. That's we've also been kind of working on on that. Salem's actually especially has been very productive on that front, coming up with a lot of character ideas and things of that nature. Uh

5:06 are you by any chance Yeah.

5:08 taking into account cooldown? Uh, that's something we're thinking about. We're thinking about like I think it's like we don't want this to be a sequel. We want we want it to like we don't want it to just be like, oh, this is like Elder Scrolls again, but now it's in Too Many Bones or anything like that. But I think with Elder Scrolls, we made a very different product that kind of also learned some of the lessons of Too Many Bones in terms of like some of those elements that felt a little bit more uh frictiony. sort of like for example like like how it sometimes was annoying to use skill dice in Timothy Bones because you only got to use them once and uh and then like so maybe that kind of led people to want to get stats more often, you know, and so that was something we kind of addressed a little bit in that. But then same thing with this where it's sort of like we want to go back and like look at like maybe here's some things we learned from Elder Scrolls and from Bones and then make a new thing but sort of kind of try to spiritually take these things that are like what is fun about these things?

6:11 What's maybe a little bit less fun to some people? How can we evolve that stuff but and make a totally new thing but still you can see like the DNA there. Um, so yeah, it's still a lot a lot of it, like I said, I I couldn't really talk about it even if I was allowed because we're still we're still sort of in the like so characters like how should they work? Should they work like this? Like what about like environments or or or or map or that kind of a thing, you know? So, it's it's we're having more and more discussions about it every week, but I would say there's very few decisions that have been made about it like in a concrete way, I guess, other than to say that like the the bespoke the bes we definitely what you're saying though about the bespoke characters like that will be much more of a thing in this than it was in Elder Scrolls where like they'll work differently than they work in Too many Bones one, but there will be like you'll pick a character and that character will have a name and it'll have like certain things that only that character can do and you can you'll play that character, you know.

7:10 Yeah. I I personally just love that and that was what originally kind of got me into, you know, even knowing that Chip Theory um existed and I was just so enthralled by being able to, you know, explore these different characters that you all have created. And for me, the stat padding, I know a lot of people, you know, that's a big criticism. I never really worked that way. I you know I would obviously to me training the stats was so boring. I you know I I hated trading training stats. I wanted to train yeah

7:44 the skills and I wanted to use those skills. Now being able to put them on cooldown would have been incredible.

7:50 Uh first and foremost

7:52 I it's all right.

7:55 We're gonna we're going to patch you up.

7:56 Hey we back.

7:58 Yeah. being able to put those skills on cooldown would be huge,

8:01 but also a an expanded map similar to um you know the dungeons and such and setups that are in Elder Scrolls like that would be my dream game. So I don't know if that's you that's the that's the other thing that always bothered me a little bit in Too Many Bones was the the constraint on the small grid, right? And I I felt like

8:21 a lot of times

8:23 well first of all moving around wasn't that fun. uh more fun is just standing there and punching somebody. And I felt like I did that more often than not. As much as I probably should have moved around, I didn't always feel like depending on the situation that there um was incentive enough for me. But then when Elder Scrolls came along and you were looking at this map and especially in the dungeons, that's just like the the best part. And and you're trying to puzzle out this situation and how you're going to get around everything. That was just so fun. And I just couldn't stop. you know, Elder Scrolls as an IP is is fine. I'm a more of a Fallout guy. Um, but if I were to put the Too Many Bones IP on there and and some of that whimsy that comes with those characters, the bespoke nature, that's just like my dream. So, um, can I be an unpaid intern? I don't have a job now. Can I stay at anyone's house? I'll come on over and we'll just I, you know, play Bones 2.0. Like, I I would love to. Um, you know, I have a few months on my hand, so if anyone needs it.

9:21 Well, if you come up to Minnesota to do to like check out some game stores up here, you can def definitely swing by the office. I mean, you know, I don't know exactly how we're going to be doing the the external play testing on this because like it would been really difficult for us to do like a ton of TTS. We did some I guess the first time for Elder Scrolls,

9:40 but it's like it was way easier to do it this time because like someone went and made like a big mod and it's easier to make a big mod of a game that already exists,

9:47 right? So, we'll see. But like I certainly, you know, if you want to play test something, if you have something to play test,

9:52 no, no, I don't think you heard me. I'll go and live in the office.

9:55 Yes.

9:55 And I'll just, you guys just show up. I'll just wake up. I'll roll over and we'll just start playing Bones. Like,

10:00 that would be my dream. My wife and kids would think I'm even crazier than I am right now, not actually applying for jobs. But, you know,

10:08 yeah, it's a midlife crisis. I got to do something nuts. I do have to compliment you though because I I I I agree with you. I hate I hate training uh stats and I think that's true of most people in our office and that was one thing I said when we were kind of doing the Trover stream last week was like I really had to be reminded um during us testing this thing that it's just like that is the instinct for like a lot of people who like minmax bones. just like uh stats stats stats. And so like we really want with a lot of the characters, but especially for Trover because he's got so many skill dice, like we wanted the skill dice to shine, you know? And uh and so like I appreciate you saying that because it's like, yeah, to me it's always like what's like the weird fun unique stuff I can do? I'd rather do that than train than bump my stats up. Um and honestly that's something we're considering in um in the new game as well. Uh just like how like is there like a a little bit more of like a ceiling you can put on stats and if so how that is and how do we again how how are we encouraging people to want to train in skills

11:15 an automated progression system maybe like just that that's the unfun part to me just like you know make that you know create milestones have me you know try to go hit these milestones to become kind of generally more powerful but I just want the cool dice like that's that's that's all I want I want to do the cool stuff you know I want to have these crazy moments on the map where I, you know, roll this insane combo and it just pulls off magic as opposed to it just being a, you know, a stat dump against an enemy. Um,

11:45 you know, it's funny though, too, because like when we did the second round of Elder Scrolls stuff, and sorry Sam, I'm talking too much, but like the

11:53 Oh, by the way, this is what we do on this show. We just ramble. So, sorry if you have anything to do.

11:57 No, it's all it's all good. I mean, Ryan's taking the rambling from me, so we're gonna get to you.

12:04 On the second round of like Elder Scrolls stuff, we were like, "Oh, well, no one's using combat anymore." Like, which is funny because like the combat is like sort of the equivalent of like of like training stats in bones. And we were like, well, how do we make combat dice interesting? Because that now that that became a thing people were like, well, I don't want to train my combat stats ever. And so then some of the skills now like or or or classes like are like kind of involving combat dice now in different ways. So I think you what you want when you make a game it's like the whole game is your precious baby and so you're like well

12:37 someone isn't looking at my someone everyone is like concerned about my baby's like adorable toes. They're not thinking about like my baby's all like you know perfect smile. So how do I when I make an expansion to it? how to make it so that they're really looking at the baby's teeth because they weren't doing it before, you know.

12:55 Yeah, that's and in the games you make the the number of interactive pieces that have to come together to create your baby is insane and trying to make everything interesting and and and work incredibly well together. Like my hats off to uh you your team um over there at Chip Theory. It's really awesome. Um I I think your company does things the right way and that's actually one of the reasons I started which I think might have been uh Salem one of your first roles which was interacting with um a support specialist

13:33 did you start so it wasn't with you in particular um but I had you know issues I had a missing my very first Too Many Bones went missing on Christmas and they sent me you know it's funny they actually my wife got it and I so excited, like literally like a kid on Christmas. I'd never been so excited for a present and I knew it was coming, of course, because it's the only thing I asked for for my wife. And I got sent like random pieces, non-chip theory pieces that of just like stuff, what whatever warehouse it was coming from, they sent us something totally different. And I open it up and I go, "Is this a joke or something?" And my wife's like, "That's not it." I was like, you didn't look at it before you like I literally had a little bit of an out of body, but uh and you of course you have a question there, Salem.

14:22 Yeah. What year was this? This sounds familiar actually.

14:25 21 I think.

14:27 I this I think I remember this actually like a little bit of an ordeal and I probably annoyed people. like

14:37 uh because I I think as you mentioned I don't necessarily think I I worked with you directly but this whole ordeal is extremely familiar to me. I think you've like reunlocked a memory,

14:49 right? I'm trying

14:53 you were still, right? Cuz

14:56 Yeah, I was like I was like a I would probably say like a 40 60 split uh dev and then support. So still more support than dev, but I was definitely

15:07 Name some of the other support specialists at that time.

15:10 Um so Heather or Raven.

15:13 Uh yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.

15:15 Yeah, it was Heather. Is Heather love? Um I think it was Bulbasaur.

15:20 Yes.

15:21 Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I We So we went back and forth. So this interaction was just so great and I know I was annoying her. I was just so passionate. I didn't have a YouTube channel or anything. I was I was totally new and I just I just wanted this game so badly and it was like out of stock and I was just so disappointed. I had to wait like another month. But the interaction that I had with your company early on was so incredible and caring and and not at all like you know a lot of board game companies just like don't have I guess the the the customer service chops but that first interaction was like you know this I don't know a a really big foundational thing that I I really appreciated that made me come back and I had a couple other things. things. I had a trove chest that got busted and we all know how those ship and and um but all of those interactions have been so insanely great. Is that like a any sort of I belief that you all have as a company in terms of like looking at your customers in a specific way?

16:23 Oh yeah. Uh I mean with like having started in customer support, I can absolutely vouch for like pretty much the moment I started working here, there was so much of a degree of like, hey, you know, if you can think of a like a nice way we can like help someone more, like essentially go beyond what would be normally expected, like do it, you know, obviously within reason, you know. Um, but I remember too like when I first started and they're like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, be incredibly like when it comes to like component replacements, like obviously, you know, there's a difference between like what what is something that we can actually reasonably replace? Uh, what do we consider to actually be damaged or something?" But I I remember too like it's like yeah, have some have some leeway, have some grace, you know, like someone had a one of my first ones was a duster uh character mat that their cat had scratched up. And so it's like, okay, we didn't do anything wrong. Our manufacturers didn't do anything wrong.

17:30 Nothing went wrong in shipping. We've done everything right on our end up until this point. But it's like, "Yeah, we'll send you a replacement. No problem." You know, and obviously we can't do that in all circumstances, especially like depending on what it is and where we might need to ship it to, especially as shipping costs rise. But there's always been that degree of like,

17:52 no, we genuinely want to make sure people are like because anytime you have to interact with customer support, it's you're probably not happy to do it, you know, because it's some means something.

18:04 We're typically calling to praise everyone. Right. And so we've always just been like, okay, we want to make sure that at every point in the experience of purchasing and playing a game that people can go like, "Yeah, no, I like interacting with Chip Theory." Whether that's being a part of a campaign, you know, buying and playing the games, if asking questions in our Discord about rules clarifications and having, you know, uh, Shannon be there or any of the other Discord members who have sort of really, uh, taken up that mantle as like almost like unofficial community ambassadors for certain games. Uh and then customer support, you know, and always making sure like, hey, you know, even when it's like a situation where it sucks and we might not be able to do something to actually help remedy the situation completely, like we always want to make sure, what can we offer?

19:00 What can we do to soften the blow? Um, yeah. And I I really appreciated that because I've worked customer service in other places and oftentimes it has just been like do the minimum, do

19:14 Right.

19:15 Protect whatever saves us money. Right.

19:17 Right.

19:18 Yeah. Whereas like I I mean I don't think I've ever like people came up to me at conventions and they would recognize me or not like you know they I' they'd see my name and then recognize the name and go like oh my gosh you helped me out with like these things like I was in Essen and I helped this one guy in Germany uh this was also one of my first things I think I replaced he had such a bad like bad luck with his Too Many Bones dice and I sent I had to like replace a good number of them. And because there was so many, I ended up getting a couple wrong. And he's like, "I'm so sorry." But there's like four of these dice that I didn't actually need replacing. And I'm still I still have issues with the other other four. I'm like, "Oh gosh, I'm so sorry. I'll get down to that." And you know, and I and this is of course shipping to Germany from our warehouse in

20:07 Minnesota. So it's like it takes a while to get there. It's doing all these things, you know. So this is like a like over the process of like a couple months. and and he was just like, "Hey, like, thank you so much. This was incredible. This like there was so much work put into making this right." And you know, and he was like, "And you're always so patient. You're always so understanding. Like, thank you." And then he's like, "I'm gonna buy you a beer sometime." And then I went to Essen like later that year and he's like, "Hey, you I'm I'm help like I promised you a beer." You know, and I'm like, I've never had that,

20:47 right? Yeah. I've never had that kind of interaction before working in customer service until I was doing it for Chip Theory. Like it it feels good actually. Like

20:56 Oh, yeah.

20:56 You know, when you Yeah. Of course, it makes the moments when you can't actually like help feel way worse because you're like, "Oh, no. I really want to

21:05 do more." But, you know, the feasibility of whatever situation it might be.

21:10 Yeah. I so you know I appreciated it so much because I came I've worked for Nordstrom for two dec decades until very recently and I started on the floor. Customer service was king. There's like this this uh lore in the company uh around somebody returning a tire to one of our stores. It was which is real. It was in um Alaska in our Anchorage store. It used to be a tire store and an old lady brought in a tire for whatever reason and the store manager took it back and it wasn't and that that story demonstrates one thing, right? It's not about like um doing I know what's fair necessarily. It's about like how do I build f raving fans for life,

21:49 right?

21:49 And you know, maybe you all take this story back because because you were so patient with me and over multiple situations, I bought everything in Too Many Bones. I don't even know how much. I I my wife might be listening to this. It's probably only a hundred bucks or so, honey. um you know the trove chest. I bought absolutely everything. I bought Burn Cycle. I just kept going and going and going uh all because of those interactions. Um so those are and I started a channel and the very first thing I was doing was unboxing Too Many Bones and then playing it and you know for the first few months that's all I made videos on. So you know maybe uh you know doing what's what would make the customer happy does actually end up you know making more money from a corporation's perspective.

22:35 Oh no, we lost Salem again.

22:39 We can we can ping pong back this way.

22:41 Yeah, that's totally fine. Salem, you're back.

22:46 Oh, there there they are.

22:49 Oh my gosh, I have no I have absolutely no

22:51 cut that out. It's all good. Uh, so one of the questions that I had is basically around both of your starts and Salem, we just talked about like you were a support specialist first off. How on earth did you make it here where you're designing board games? Presumably, you had no experience in the designing of board games before coming to Chip Theory.

23:12 Uh I mean, yeah, that's true. I had experience playing board games. Um

23:17 which is different.

23:18 Uh

23:19 just because we play them doesn't mean we can design them, right?

23:22 Absolutely. Yeah. Uh honestly, it kind of started within like the first couple months of me even being there. So because I started in January of 2019 and we were cloudspire was in development and I hadn't been given a ton of responsibilities yet from the support angle. So I had some you know some time and uh I was I think I wasn't even asked specifically. I think there was just a companywide ask being like, "Hey, if anyone's free to learn Cloudspire and then maybe do some play testing for it." And I'm like, "Yeah, sign me up. Absolutely. I'll do it." And I dove in specifically into the solo. And there is a uh essentially I just really absolutely resonated with it. Uh and I got really good at it. And then more specifically, I got really good at breaking it.

24:20 And so there was this uh Yeah, I know, right? Uh so there's this odd on ongoing joke that I had with Josh Welgus uh where because he was doing a lot of the solo scenario designs and I would play through and just break a scenario and I would give him like notes or sorry pages of notes just like multiple pages. Uh, we would joke about like it being a novel and I'd be like, "Hey, here you go. Here's everything." And I kept I kept doing that and they were all good notes. Like I didn't want to just be, you know, unnecessarily wordy. Uh, I want to make sure it's all very good, specific feedback. And by the end of that project, he was even just like, "Look, I trust you. If you find an issue and you break something and you think you can fix it, go for it. Um, I do then have to apologize though to all of the uh, Cloud Spire solo players who have got their butts crushed with that first solo scenario because I mean we kind of tailored the difficulty of those around

25:30 you being so good

25:31 which Yeah. which it was like oh you know all right I don't know if that was the best idea at you know in hindsight but then also too at the same time the solo community for cloudspire has just

25:43 they love it they just love how hard it is and how rewarding it is to overcome and now that that first scenario too has become like a right of passage uh where it's like no you have to get your uh you know I I I don't I I apolog I apologize for my language, but this the only way I can like think of it is like you have to get your ass kicked

26:06 by ignition. We can say that's just

26:09 all right, perfect. It's like that's that's just how it is. Like that's a cloudspire experience is you learn the game, you play the first scenario and you get wiped and like I'm kind of proud of that. Like, you know, I was a little nervous at first when people started saying how hard the game was, but then people started to get it too.

26:27 That reminds me of the first fight in El Elden Ring. Either of you played Elden Ring. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Against uh like the first big boss.

26:34 Yeah. Yeah. You just get your ass. Well, no. The literally like the very first scene as you're walking through, you have like nothing

26:39 and you just get smashed. Some people can actually beat that guy. I know.

26:43 Some people actually beat it, which I think is is is absolutely nuts. Like you can do like 1% damage per hit or even less, right?

26:50 But yeah, that's that's what that's what that reminds me of.

26:53 I love that comparison. But yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And uh and then pretty much ever since then it was just I like to call it weasling. Um just sort of continued to maybe overstep my bounds a little bit here and there. Uh just you because like then I got invited to help compile play testing notes, offer input on those, you know, doing that. uh when we did the Cloud Spire reprint, I got asked to design the tutorial scenario for Solo uh and continue play testing for the the other new factions. Um and then probably the biggest like tipping point I would say was with uh Tubity Bones Unbreakable. And I'm it's uh it's great that Ryan's on this call here because he can actually speak to that because it came down to Polaris specifically. So, Polaris was one that Ryan designed and it was in play testing.

27:51 My favorite.

27:52 I know. I remember your video of it. I was so excited.

27:55 My favorite.

27:55 Uh,

27:56 yes. Um, and like the play testing was coming back and you know, people were just not quite getting her, you know, I guess. And

28:07 um, and you know, I'm not going to blame the players. You know, there's always a degree in which it's like, okay, how do we how do we let how do we let the fun be the thing that drives players to where to go instead of like forcing players to find it?

28:21 Um, and so, you know, as I was compiling notes, I just had these ideas and I'm like, all right, this is absolutely not what people asked of me. This is barely even what people would probably tolerate of me doing. But I did a pass through of like, hey, based on the notes, based on what I understand of this character and what we hope to still keep of this character, here's my redesign and I talked with JC about it and he was very like he he was very interested. He's like, "Yeah, no, I get this." And so then he's like, "Uh, we'll have a call." And so it was the three of us, so Ryan as well. And um I think that call too helped make even what I had better because Ryan had some objections with certain things which I think was for the best to like keep some of the original identity a bit more. But through that conversation we really dialed in on to where Polaris is today. And yeah, I think I mean to hear that she's your favorite like that's awesome. That's wonderful. like she I've seen a lot of Polaris fans out there that are just they love how she operates and I think that was the moment where too like my foot was not just in the door I was actually passing through um because then shortly after my boss at the time who's our chief operations officer Andrew Chzn uh we were like finally getting our offices done and he like takes me into where the dev office was going to be and he just goes this is

29:51 where you'll be moving. You're He's like, I feel like you need to switch full-time.

29:56 And he he gave me one final thing. He's like, I just want to make sure like, are you do is that what you want? Um he's like, I don't want to kick you out of support because I'll miss you, but

30:11 And that's where I've been ever since.

30:14 That's that's awesome. Um, there's so much I could go into and we've already gone so long. So, I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna try to hold myself back a little bit because I'm so interested in that story. Um, but Ryan, you started as writing lore. Is that true?

30:32 Uh, yeah. Well, um, so I started freelancing here in I want to say 20 I think like late 2017. It was like it was like a few months before like Undertoe was on uh was on Kickstarter I think Jimmy Buzz Undertoe and um you know that was a very small it was a very small company at that time. Basically they had like I think four full-time employees including the owner. Um, actually I'm not even sure if Anthony artist was full-time at that time, but um, including the owners, I mean, but yeah. Uh, so they were just like, we need somebody who like knows how to do writing and editing to, uh, actually to edit uh, like the the copy that we have on the second print of Bones and on Undertoe. Um uh and uh I knew Josh Welgus uh from we both went to college at the same time and I used to work at a newspaper and so they knew I was like I could do editing and stuff. Um and then I kind of was like oh like I like doing this and I was like I think I could do I could really kind of help continue to kind of push push the writing uh of these games a little bit more a little bit further. And so I kind of sold myself as doing a lot of their flavor writing from original Cloudspire on. So then I wrote like the the the the hard covers for Cloudspire and then they ended up I was kind of, you know, doing

32:02 more and more stuff and then they ended up hiring me full-time like like a month before the pandemic hit actually. So I feel pretty lucky that that was able to work out. But um and then yeah, I did kind of some social stuff and some uh writing for a while. Uh just mostly just writing. And then uh I want to say yeah, also around like around Unbreakable. I did a I helped a little bit with some of the development on the uh on on the second Cloud Spire campaign. like Josh designed the uh like the the the Horizon's Wrath um uh faction, but I had kind of had said, "Oh, what if we did this? What if we had this faction that was like pirates that you could move their their ship around the board and stuff?" And then and then I helped make some of those um helped like do the maps and stuff for like the solo scenarios in that one. And then I think it was also around Unbreakable like pretty early in the unbreakable process that I was asked to start doing um design stuff. And then and then uh you know that was kind of when our design and development uh department was kind of crystallizing outside of mostly just Josh Carlson. And so Josh is still our head designer but we had the kind of this formal department. So I ended up being the director of that department. So uh that's kind of a short version. So I still I still do most of the flavor writing and then Salem has contributed uh you know a lot of that as well on the Elder Scrolls titles in particular. Um but uh and then I still am kind of like

33:33 the lead editor. We have Liz McFarland Johnson who's not on this call. She um Johnson McFarland. She's she also does a lot of the editing as well. Um but uh yeah so I still do some of the old hats but then I also do develop and design stuff. um less of it right now just because we are in such a heavy edit stage on multiple projects. So I have I've been kind of jealous of Salem's been having doing a lot of fun design and development stuff and I'm like looking at at the Somerset Gazeter for like the 80th time. But uh you know that's an important job too.

34:08 Yeah, I was going to say how are you fitting all of this in? But it's it's more staged like you're you're you're bouncing back and forth. Yeah, I haven't designed anything in probably six months, I would say. Um because I

34:20 We gotta get you back.

34:22 We've been there's a there's a funny strong deck I've noodled on in like the very amount small amount of free time that I have had. But yeah, I've been mostly, you know, uh we had uh uh we have a new person who's going to be doing our rule book writing, Devin Norris, is we're we're trying him out on rules. And so he kind of like changed how we were doing the rule books for which I think you have I uh the rules for uh the Awaken Realms decks. So that was like a pretty extensive process for him to write those and for us to make sure that that they were like working well in the edits. So I did a lot of that. And then yeah, now there's a ton of content for Elder Scrolls, the Heroes of Tamreel stuff. And so I'm mostly working on that. That's hopefully going to be done with the major editing on that in May and then I'll be able to do more fun stuff again.

35:08 Do all the fun stuff. So, Josh Carlson is a founder, lead designer, but now you're both credited alongside him on major titles. Like, what does creative ownership look like at Chip Theory Games?

35:22 Well, that's a good question. So, uh we don't we used to put box credits uh on the boxes, which we and we don't do that anymore. And the reason we don't do that is because it really does take like a ton of different people to make a game. And not even just the people who are doing the design and development on it. Like, you know, the graphic design is so important and the art is so important, but also as we're talking about the customer service and the ops and getting it where it is so important. So, we try we now we have like very extensive uh credits pages um that kind of try to credit everybody in the company who worked on on on a project. Um, as far as like uh the design and development goes though, it just sort of depends on the project. So like for Elder Scrolls, there's a lot of people credited as design on that because like there were a lot of people involved in kind of like concepting that process or that thing out and everybody handled different elements of it. you know, uh Josh came up with a lot of the initial concepts, but then and especially as they relate to the um the the the battle or like the character mat and stuff, but then I would say Salem and I worked very extensively on like how encounters and like pounds and overland movement and like the campaign structure would work, you know, and then other people worked more on like kind of undergirling rules and or like uh or classes and and skill lines, how those would work and stuff like that. So that's like a big game.

36:46 had a lot of different people working on it, you know. Uh I don't think we posted like the credits really uh anywhere and you know it's like it's a little bit different on Borggan Geek than it is like in our in our uh in our rule books. But like you know Josh uh designed the system of Tony Strong like on his own which is why you look and see for game design under the in like the core rules it's just Josh's name but then um and he designed like the solar sentinels deck and then we kind of contributed to development which is why we're all credited game design development. um you know for these decks uh that are coming out right now um like we're still using Josh's uh design and he also is still speaking into the decks like we show them to him and he's like well I don't love this maybe or this is really cool maybe try to emphasize this you know work on this but then I would say that like I was the primary design on uh painted grail Sam was the primary design on Etherfields and Logan Gianini who uh uh is not on this call because he doesn't work anymore. He works at uh at uh Fantasy Fight now and is doing some awesome stuff over there. But he was the primary design on the Nemesis deck. So, which is cool because the Tony Strong decks are so fun to make because everybody uh uh like gets to kind of put their you can kind of tell like who did which one. At least internally I feel like I can tell because everyone kind of has different things that they like and different ways that they approach the process which is fun.

38:15 Yeah. I mean that brings me to, you know, you mentioned 20 strong and now working with Awaken Realms. You know, you it launched as a system, right? And now you're trying to adapt some of the most beloved IPs in the entire industry, which is a a ton of pressure first and foremost. Um, at what point did this system like reveal itself to being able to be adapted to different IPs and all of these different situations and and or was that like from the very beginning the vision of of I don't know what I see is surprising variety in every time I read one of these rule books.

38:51 Yeah.

38:52 Uh I Oh, go on. Sorry, Sam.

38:55 Oh, all right. Uh, well, because I was I was just going to mention too because I remember I'll be I'll try to be quick. Uh, but I remember the first round of this specifically,

39:05 uh, in regards to the versatility of this system, uh, I remember when Josh Carlson showed us the core 20 strong thing and then like Ryan very quickly was like, "Oo, I think I have an idea for Too many Bones deck."

39:20 And I was like, "Oh, I think I've got an idea for a Victori." Um, and I remember coming up with my first pitch for the Victorium deck and I was not quite sure what 20 strong meant at the time, like what defines a 20 strong game. You knew the rules. I had only played I knew the rules and I had only played a version of Solar Sentinels. It wasn't called that at the time and it was a different theme, but

39:45 uh it still had the same three deck structure and very simple thing. And so what I did is I made another three- deck structure game, but it's like, "Oh, but these ones are sport events, and these ones are bloodshed events." And it still had the recruiting dice thing, and it still had the primuses, but it was like, "Oh, there's a primus in each deck. You play through it, and you fight the primise, you play through one, fight, you know, but you can pick and choose how you want to go." And I showed it to him and he's just like, "Oh, this is just Solar Sentinels, but like with extra steps." And I'm like, "Yeah, what is that? Not what 20 strong is, you know?" And he's like, "No, no, no. Like, think more.

40:27 The dice is the thing kind of like

40:29 Yeah, the dice is the thing. Everything else is up for grabs." And then I actually like that's when I uh I chatted with Logan, too, because Logan was the lead designer on Victori. So, I'm like, "Hey, I want your input on this. Like, what do we think? Like, how should we tweak this?" And then that's where like the mountain layout was born where you're like but you're no longer able to just freely pick. It actually matters where you are which I think now of of course we see again like we saw a bunch of that in Tangle Woods and now I've done it again in Ether Fields and Nemesis does it too. Um and it all started with that Victorium one specifically of like hey there is an adventure like we can use this to tell an adventure story. um not just a raw battler like it and I think that's and then of course like that that was the first tipping point for me to be like oh my gosh this is very malleable and then when I saw what Ryan and Logan designed for Tangle Woods seeing how that get pushed in more ways and then once we got the like and then what Adam did with the Cloudspire deck too like very very different uh and so then I'm like all right I have essentially been told by both JC directly and by seeing these other decks designed. It's like 20 strong really can mean whatever we want it to mean and I believe it has the potential to adapt into almost any environment. Um

41:56 but yeah, that first step was like the big tipping point.

41:59 That said, I I would say that like uh we we still want them to be we want them to be recognizable. And so I think all I'm really pleased with like the

42:10 the diversity of the these three that we're doing this time. I think these are the most different from each other and also the most different from the other ones. I would say that like uh like not that we we haven't reach not that we've reached our limits but I think we've definitely experienced on this one some like some good kind of like walls in terms of like divergence in terms of like what are the best things to diverge or not diverge you know especially with like some of the Nemesis stuff like realizing that okay like originally the original version of Nemesis like the way that you use dice was so different than it was in most other Tony Strong decks and was confusing. And so we didn't just like we didn't like standardize it fully, but we sort of like tried to figure out, okay, like are there are there parts of this we can standardize a little bit more, draw back, that kind of a thing? Because we still we want it, it can be lots of different things. We still want you to be like have in your head like, okay, well, the dice work like this generally speaking, you know, like uh that is an important thing to us for sure. Yeah, it seems like the elasticity is in the card format. Like that you're you're much more uh kind of beholden to the the dice and the round structure in how all of that works, but you really have had fun with the card format. Is that fair to say?

43:29 Yeah.

43:30 The the the dial too, weirdly, I would say, um

43:33 we use a dial for a lot of stuff. Um and I can still hear you, Sam, I think. Um

43:39 Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, I'm just showing off the the dial.

43:42 So, the first several we use the dial primarily for uh you know, counting points or counting rounds or counting gold and stuff. And then I think Salem and I both were like, we got to use this color side. Now, obviously, you can use the color side in in some of the sometimes when you're playing Cloud Spire as well, but I think we were really like, let's

44:02 let's really get that going. So, I think we both were like, how do we use it this way? you know, and and so like that's another weird thing where it's like uh like we like having that which is a relatively adding the chip was a pretty late thing in the process of of making the original stuff but like now we're always trying to be like what's a different way to use the chip that we haven't used it before which is kind of fun as well.

44:24 What was the foresight in the color side? because it seems to me you would have had to have some sort of vision, you know, down the line of all of these different decks on like how that would be used. But it almost sounds like you are finding ways to work within the rules of this system rather than like following a playbook that's, you know, a multi-year plan. Yeah, it's Yeah, honestly, like the reason why the colors are on there like is not because of any it's like a foresight in terms of like someone being like, "Well, I guess we could use colors later, but it was mostly like, well, we had the number side and we're like, well, the ship has to have something on the back." And then we were kind of like, well, it shouldn't be it shouldn't be numbers again. It should be something else in case we want to use the back.

45:10 Which is also why if you see like there's also like the there's like a sun and a moon on like on the different sides of the of the chip as well, which we haven't used that yet. I don't know when we're going to do what we're going to do with that, but like uh the but like and so if we first we're talking about like oh maybe it could be symbols or it could be colors or it could be like the colors of the dice but there's like different symbols on there. And then I think eventually I think it was Josh Carlson was like, "Well, if we're going to do colors, just have the different like dice symbols on there too and it can represent the dice directly and then we'll just figure out what we want that to mean later, you know." And then we didn't we didn't for a while because then when we did Tangle Woods, those were much more obviously those are very different from each other, but they're much more standardized into like kind of a meta structure. And so all of those had uh you were using the the dial to track money and you it wasn't like your money is blue now or whatever. So it had to be numerical. Um uh and so I think this time Salem are really hungry to be like let's get that thing flipped over. Let's figure out what stuff to do with it. Um, yeah.

46:15 For fans of these giant IPs, like how do you take a world so big and compress it into 20 dice? That has to be almost tougher than starting from the beginning, ground up with no constraints, and building a world.

46:34 I actually I don't agree with that. I think it can be, but like one of the things that's like so nice about 20 Strong uh and I I'm not going to speak for Salem in terms of like how the Ether Foss one came together, but I think one of the the things that's so nice about 20 Strong is that like you do have creative limitations like where you're like, well, I know that this thing has to be 20 dice and a dial and no more than uh 85 cards, which is that's our internal all like box limit. Um uh and uh and so like knowing that then well this is the space I have to play in so like I better figure something out you know. Now, there are certainly things that like would be harder than other things to like capture the vibe. Uh like for example, I know people have talked about and we've talked internally about like if we ever do like an Elder Scrolls Betrayal of the Second Era uh deck, which like I think we'll have to make some hard choices about like what to leave in and what to take out if we ever do that. Um and like how that would work and how we would be simulating the feel.

47:42 But ultimately it's like if I you know like like especially for some like the nemesis deck I think is the one of them that is the most direct kind of like simulation of like the game itself. I think the question is just sort of like how do you miniaturaturize this or if you're going to be kind of breaking off a chunk of it like the tainted grail thing. It's sort of like what is the interesting thing about this to me or like what is the most what's the thing that like seems like the most card gameable and then how do I turn that into a card game, you know, like like and I think that's one of the things that's so nice about this about these three is that we took different um approaches to it. So I don't know if we want to talk about like the individual ones. Um

48:26 yeah, I just threw up Tainted Grail on the that's my that's where I'm headed next.

48:29 Okay. All right. Well, I can go I can do that one first then. Um because that I that one was mine. So, that one was a thing of just sort of me kind of looking at at it and being like, okay, well, obviously exploration is a big part of the original uh Ty Grail and the narrative stuff. And originally, I think there was an early pitch on this that was sort of like, well, what if we had an app or something that would like you could like read story entries like that would be pretty prohibitive for us to be able to build that. We don't really want to make extra components. We don't want something that like would have to be maintained later on. Um, and also like I knew that like the other two of the decks were using um uh they were using uh exploration and like movement and stuff. And so looking at the Tainty Grail combat system though, I was like, "Oh, this is really cool." Like this is there's like a deck building element to this. Now, obviously Etherfields has an element of deck building as well, but I was like, "I really like the way that the nodes kind of like playing cards like that match different nodes, how that works and stuff." And so I was like, you can make something like really really tight and really kind of like gritty and challenging and like thinky without having like a really lot of like extra rules or extra complexity like you know it's it's a complexity of choice not a complexity of rules. And so like I was like, let's take this one part of Tammy Grillil that I like and uh really focus in on that and like showcasing that aspect of it and then giving you a lot of customization in that with all the different characters and and like having you know each of the characters has their own unique uh uh hero ability and

50:02 their own unique hero card that gets mixed into their deck and that kind of a thing. So like that was how I handled that. But then Salem, you had a different way that was you were doing with with

50:15 Yeah. Also too, I I cut out a little bit like I lost connection for a brief moment there, so I wasn't sure what the question that was asked, Ryan, that you were responding to earlier, but so if I say anything,

50:26 I think we have a good cut there.

50:28 Okay. Uh but yeah, anyway, so yeah, with Ether Fields, um because I backed Ether Fields, the original campaign, uh I got it. I tried to table it a few times. I don't think I was quite like I hadn't quite gotten the feel of how to learn and approach big box games yet at the time.

50:48 Um because like even our games I I never had to learn. I was always just taught by people who knew it

50:55 and that's a lot easier to do for me. And so trying to dive into that. So like I tried to bring it to the table a few times kept getting discouraged because I was just like not quite clicking. I think they also too like admitted their first rule book wasn't what they wanted it to be. So like I remember getting a second wave of stuff with a improved rule book. Um and but I had I sort of like hadn't touched it. And then when we were like hey we're doing Awaken Realms and I thought back like oh my gosh I remember being so enamored with Ether Fields's like aesthetic, its lore, its it's what I understood its gameplay to be. So, I'm like, I want to dive back into that and possibly do that for 20 strong. And so, I opened it back up. In fact, we actually got an all-in sent to us uh so that I could actually look at a lot more expansive. So, I actually finally started to dive into it again.

51:49 And uh I mean, as Ryan sort of explained, it's like anytime you do a 20 strong thing, you have to be okay with cutting things. Like, you have to just sort of look like I can't adapt every part of this. be hard, right?

52:04 Right. Oh, it's so hard. Yeah, cuz like

52:06 there's so many great elements in these giant boxes, right?

52:09 Oh my gosh.

52:09 How do you pay service?

52:10 I love cutting stuff though. Like I

52:12 You do?

52:13 I I I I like even like when we adapt our own stuff, I'm just sort of like like I'm like what can I because I love things that Sam and I have very different design like I think spaces that we like to play in. And so Salem loves like an accurate like simulation. And I love to just be like simple simple simple like like like again like really a lot of good narrative a lot of good like structural decisions but like really easy to understand. You can just like dive in there. So for me I'm always like how many limbs can I hack off here while and still have the thing be recognizably the thing you know like it's that's a fun challenge to me. But yeah, I was I'm

52:53 Yeah, I was just talking to Chris Porter of Chris Couch Games and he was talking about some of his influences and best design advice he'd got. Jamie Stegmire had told him that anytime there's especially in play testing, there's like friction. Don't don't add another rule to kind of get around it. Instead, cut it

53:10 like really focus in on what this thing is supposed to be.

53:13 Oh yeah. Yeah.

53:13 Right. And and just get rid of it instead of ruling creating edge cases, more friction for the user, all of that stuff. Is that is that kind of how you all look at it?

53:23 Yeah, it is hard sometimes if you're precious, but yes, that's how I

53:28 Yeah, I mean I I oftentimes try to be like, is there a simpler way that we can capture the vibe of whatever that original rule was going for? Um, I will say it is probably harder for me to say goodbye to something like that than it is Ryan, for example. But I have definitely learned to do it and it feels good to do when you see how it turns out. Um, but yeah, with like Ether Fields, like the part I struggled the most because like I saw the in like as I was playing it, I was like, "Okay, influence cards. Heck, we already have a great onetoone comparison." Like we've got a game with green dice, yellow dice, and red dice. There's the three resources there. What if you can use those to supplement your hand? Um, so that was like a really easy thing for me to just wrap my head around. Um, and there was like other things too where it's like, okay, that game has like the suits, like the card suits to indicate how things are going to go. Obviously, I'm like, I don't want to add more cards because that takes away the how many influence cards or enemy cards or bosses you can have. So, that's where I was like, oh, well, what about just creating like an ether dial, which isn't normally a thing in ether fields. Um, and now all of a sudden we're using the color dials in interesting ways. And that also by extension plays into the resource management of like, oh, I'll exhaust a yellow to move because I'll just get it back for free. Uh, but the one thing that I was just really I struggled with for a while was

54:59 the fact that Etherfields doesn't isn't like a combat adventure game. It's more of like I've seen somebody describe it as like almost like a puzzle escape room, and I love that. And I'm just like I have no idea how to capture that because like we've to we've joked about the idea of doing like a puzzle deck 20 strong but it's never being on that. It's it's like well 20 strong is dice rolling. It is I don't want to say it is combat because that can always be rethemed but it is rolling dice applying dice

55:32 taking things out and getting the rewards. So I was like, okay, I don't I can't see a way forward to capture the escape room puzzle aspect of it. But the other part about that that makes it so good is that whole dream like feel about how you are navigating a dream. You don't know what's what to expect. Things are going to change. They're going to be weird. And that's where I was just like, wait, like what if what if this deck changes with you? And that captures that dreamlike vibe. And so that's where the idea came where it's like, okay, the cards have an A and B side. They have different things. And you don't reset it at the end of the game. You you pick it up next time and you go through it again. You go through it again and it'll constantly change.

56:20 Like uh essentially it's like once you play through your first game, your deck of Ether Fields is your deck of Ether Fields. Nobody else has one like it

56:28 and it'll keep changing like that. And uh I was I'll I'll admit I was like always a little bit nervous like by being like okay yeah I'm putting it out there but you are still fighting enemies and like these are enemies that aren't enemies in ether fields really like or they're not even enemies at all they're like abstract concepts your character has to deal with and I was worried that it was like oh is it going to just feel like you are fighting a realization of a dark truth rather than that is a thing that is happening to your character and you need to sort of adapt to it and understand it. But I think like because it has that dreamlike nature because the cards are changing, things are sort of very spontaneous and unpredictable in that way. I think it is it has captured that puzzly vibe and that escape room vibe in a way that doesn't seem so obvious. And yeah, that was probably the like the hardest part was just like, oh gosh, I hope I hope people like it. Yeah, you hit on the two things that are super interesting. First of all, the ex exploration. Like that is that seems like a fun thing to do, like an interesting thing to do. But on top of that, you're you're able to are you able to um manipulate ether? That's essentially kind of like the goal, the escape room part.

57:47 Yes. Yeah, that's a great I Yes. I'm glad Oh, I'm so glad you brought that up. That's actually like a slam dunk comparison. Uh yeah, because like the bosses require you to reach certain things in order to challenge them. And so it'll be like, okay, yeah, you have to get the ether to red and it starts at yellow and you have to find the different places in this dream that will let you advance it. And like that's probably the most straightforward one, but now that I'm thinking about it, like some of the bosses do have a good amount of puzzle to even activating them. Um so wow, I Good job, Salem. I did I

58:21 Yeah. Was that a happy little accident right there or what? You should have said that because you're looking incredibly smart right now because it does to me that system feels exactly like an escape room.

58:32 Mhm. I mean, I do enough escape rooms. I I'm up to like 90 on Morty, uh, which is an escape room tracking app. The fact that I have an escape room tracking app.

58:42 Yeah. Uh, it's really great. Anyone out there who's got loves escape rooms, Morty. M O R T Y. It's We'll just do a quick plug. Um, but I guess I don't know, maybe that just carried over subconsciously.

58:56 That's funny.

58:56 Yeah, I mean there's there's a lot of enemies. There's a lot of bosses in Etherfields that you can't even fight until you get them unlocked. Like you can't you wouldn't be able to choose any boss when you start playing the game,

59:09 right?

59:09 Because you have to like you have to like escape room them to find them in one playthrough and then play them in another one

59:16 because they have to get flipped.

59:18 Yeah. Like, so there's I I don't want to spoil anything too much, but there is what I would consider a final boss, which there is a way to flip it way earlier than intended, but like that's okay. That's also really cool. Uh, but otherwise, like I could foresee people playing this deck for like 10 plus times before they even maybe realized that there was a secret boss in there.

59:45 That is so cool. Well, so the other thing that really stands out is the legacy nature of this game. Like were there was it always I'm we're going to flip cards. Did you have to fight any other kind of I don't know destructive urges that come with legacy games or was that was legacy kind of a non-negotiable in this design from the beginning?

1:00:05 Um it was actually a little bit later uh of an ad. Uh not too late. Uh but um it definitely because like again going back to like when I originally came up with that first uh hoplo deck just not quite fully seeing the big picture of what 20 Strong could be. So there was a part of me that was just like yeah the deck's got to go back into the box. Uh but I also am like well you know we have a max of 85 cards but that's 85 double-sided cards. The backs of those can be more, which means we can get up to uh more than double like double that. Whatever the 85 times two is

1:00:48 190. 190.

1:00:49 Thank you. Uh

1:00:51 no. And

1:00:53 170

1:00:55 170. There we go. Thank you. Uh and so all of a sudden it's like, whoa. Yeah. Okay. But there's the question of if it's 170 cards, but like how do you determine what side you should be using each time? So, I think originally there was a degree in which like, oh, maybe you use one side when you're playing at the easier difficulties, then you use the other side when you level up and you get to the harder difficulties. Uh, but then it's like, well, then you're saying goodbye to maybe so many cards you really enjoyed. Um, you know, that's not very fun. Uh, and so, and if it's like they all start on one side, but then different effects will flip them, you're just very rarely gonna actually see some of the backside of these cards. And I don't know exactly what triggered it, but eventually I was just like, "Yeah, wait." Like, Ether Fields has persistent things. It's a campaign game. Like, you add cards to your influence deck that are new cards you didn't have access to before. That's changing your deck. And because we don't have the ability to put in a whole large sleeve of cards like Etherfields does, we're limited to 85.

1:02:00 What's a way where we can have that be tracked like a campaign? Uh, and that's where that idea came up. And then of course I reincorporated that into the rest of the deck design to make sure it is highlighted really nicely.

1:02:13 Are the is the other side to every card in highly intentional? Meaning like it's from like a progression standpoint, it made sense in your design to make the other side the B side because it's not the same card, right? Because they can go to totally different types of cards.

1:02:29 Uh for the map currency back

1:02:32 narratively linked, right, Sam? Like

1:02:34 was that

1:02:34 a lot of them?

1:02:35 They're kind of narratively linked, aren't they? Like a lot of them where it's sort of like

1:02:39 a a good amount of them. I'll be honest, I have not played through an entire campaign of Etherfields, so I can't vouch for every card back being narratively linked in the original game. Uh, but there is definitely intentionality behind what they do. Uh, so like the back of one card will sort of be an interesting inverse to whatever the front card is. That's not universal. There are some where we were just like, I want both these cards and I think this would be a good pairing. Um, there are other cards where it's a lot more narratively driven or things like that. Um, and then like the influence cards, those were easy a lot of the time because I especially for the character like the character inspired ones. So unlike Tainted Grail, doesn't matter what hero you're playing as, you always get the same full deck of character cards. But some of those influence cards are pulled from their character specific ones in Etherfield. So like the tough guy has a couple of tough guy only ones in base game. Whereas in this deck, everyone can access them, but then I have the back side of it be a different tough guy. So it would be like uh I can't remember exactly what their names are off the top of my head, but it would flip and then all of a sudden you have access to the other tough guy card. Uh, and then like the bosses too. Like there is a boss. Um, again I I because this has like a bit of an element of surprise. I don't want to spoil too

1:04:09 much, but there is a boss in this game that

1:04:14 in Ether Fields shows up as both a helpful influence card and one of the larger like I don't want to call them boss cards, but the larger um entity cards. And while again a lot of the bosses in base ether fields aren't bosses in the normal sense or they're very different, we had to change that a bit. I was like, "Oh, I want to include that." So that's one where it's like it starts off as a boss, you fight the boss, and now you get that boss's version into your hand as an influence card in the next game.

1:04:46 Yeah, that was one of my questions. Do these always feel like a bane or a boon? and and they're contextually like whatever made it flip. Is it, you know, if it was a bad consequence or whatever it might be, does it feel bad by when a when a um a player reads the other side or will it feel random to them in some cases?

1:05:06 Um, so you are allowed to look at the back of the cards as long as they're in the active area. Uh, and you can obviously you can look at it, you know, there's nothing saying like, hey, once you get your deck, you're not allowed to like just look at both cards. You absolutely could study the entire dashboard if you want to.

1:05:22 I'd say no, right?

1:05:23 But I wouldn't say of exploration and like surprise.

1:05:28 Yeah. Oh, that's my What are you?

1:05:37 What? Oh. Oh my gosh. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Getting a note not to not to manipulate this deck because this is currently an in progress play deck. So,

1:05:46 what? I just saw you flipping through it.

1:05:49 I don't think I messed anything up. Uh but good to know. Uh

1:05:52 someone will drop their deck and just ruin their whole game. You know that, right?

1:05:56 So I Yeah, somebody asked me that on stream one time and I said like, "Well, this is all about dream and whimsy and fate and bizarre things happening." And so I would just say, "No, yeah, it's it's fate. It's not a mistake. That's just

1:06:09 that's what your dream has told needs to happen. And now just gather it all up in whatever way just immediately calls for you and that's your deck from know from now on.

1:06:19 Well, it's what what does he say in um what does he say in Christmas Carol? It's like it was just like a you know a bad piece of meat or like you know cheese or something like that that that's that's what happened. So you ate something weird and you dropped the

1:06:32 more gravy than grave about you.

1:06:34 Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

1:06:36 Yeah. And so, uh, as far as the question of like if it's a boon or a bless like a blessing or things like that, it really comes down to the card. U, I would say on average, most influence cards and item cards flipping is good.

1:06:50 On average, most enemies flipping and maps flipping are bad. Uh, it is very contextual though. So, you know, like

1:07:02 Yeah. And like a really good example I think that I just want to highlight real quick. I know I'm talking a lot here, but uh again, this is on the A side. I'll make sure it stays on the A side. Um are the map cards that advance the ether. So on the A side, it costs five awareness to do so, but it lets you recover all of the dice of the new ether value. So if it goes from green to blue, you then get to recover all the blues. That's pretty nice, but it costs five. Whereas on the B side, it reduces the cost down to three, but you no longer get to recover those dice. So, contextually, that might be better or worse depending on where you are in a given

1:07:44 just different. Yeah. Uh whereas like I'd say enemies and map cards again on the whole are going to be harder on their B side than they are on their A side. items and influences on the whole are going to be better on their B sides with some exceptions of course because again it's fun to keep people guessing. It's fun to have people have like oh yeah I don't mind flipping a card like in my hand that's awesome and they look at the back of them like oh oh this turns into an enemy I don't want that like shoot uh let me pick a different card you know things like that.

1:08:17 I mean all of these decks feel like a departure. Etherfield feels like the biggest departure from anything we've seen in 20 Strong. Is that true? I mean, Tainted Grail also with the deck deck building and such, but this one just feels so different.

1:08:33 I would say I think I should say I think that Nemesis is probably the biggest departure from Is

1:08:40 because of the grid exploration and the co-op nature and that type of stuff.

1:08:44 Well, there's the co-op enemies Yeah, there's there's positional enemies. I mean, like there are some of positional enemy stuff, I guess, in like Cloud Spire and Rose, but like it's like they're in a very specific spot. Um, the dice, the way you use dice is like very different in terms of like, you know, your recovery step is the beginning and you roll dice different like you're rolling dice to move and you're rolling dice like not roll to move, but you're rolling you're rolling engages on your movement. You're rolling gate, you're rolling noise checks, you're rolling uh for your attacks, and then you're rolling to recover, you know, you're rolling to salvage, your salvaging is used in a totally different way than other than other uh uh like roles. And you've got your noise checks. And then there's also like the crits making noise element

1:09:34 like the noise meter and stuff like this is the one where we felt like we had to be the most cognizant of like rules overload in terms of like we didn't want to like assault everybody with like all these different uh changes where I would say that like tainted grail even though like it adds the the the new element of like deck building like is probably the most uh familiar to players uh who played like Solar Sentinels or whatever. In terms of like the basic rule setup, I would say even more so Tangle Woods than even more so than like a lot of the Tangle Woods decks, I would say the Tainted Grillil is like a little bit more um I don't want to say straightforward, but like like a little bit more huing to the core rule set and uh Nemesis is to one to us I think that goes like the the furthest of field I guess. Yeah, I want to get back to Nemesis, but we we we we lightly went over Tainted Grail, and I'm I honestly don't know which one I'm I'm more excited about. These all feel different and fun and new and fresh. I love deck builders. Is this a deck builder?

1:10:43 Yeah, I mean, that was a big like it's a deck builder and it's actually like it's a I mean, you know, in a mild sense, you don't you don't have to build your deck better, I guess, if you don't want to. And I know some people who like don't like to fight the purple enemies to get the upgraded cards, but it's it's a deck builder in a way that like that also like takes out like a thing that I find irritating about deck builders, which is I I love deck builders. Like DC Comics deck builder game, one of my favorite uh favorite board games. But um uh shout out to Cryptozoic for that. Um the uh one I don't like about deck building games is that when you add a bunch of cool cards then like your your deck gets too big and then you the cards that you have uh like it's harder to get them and stuff. And so like I was like oh what if instead of like trashing or what if instead of like trashing cards like being an actual like normal action you take every time you add a card to your deck you just get rid of one. It's like one in, one out, you know, and which is a is an interesting decision space in terms of like well where like what do I want to get rid of and like also like how badly do I want to draw this card right away because like where you put the card determines like what you get rid of.

1:11:54 Uh but yeah, then also like it's just sort of like it takes that it it also just means that like I'm I'm never going to have more than 10 cards or you know depending on what you do nine cards like uh in my in my entire deck. So I'm going to be cycling through it, you know, relatively quickly and getting these these kind of cards that I want to have. So there definitely is a deck building element of it. And then also like weirdly, and again, you know, credit to to Ne to uh to Tanny Grail for this aspect of it, like there is a deck building element to it as well in terms of like how you play your cards. like you're playing your cards in sort of the manner you would play in a deck building game where the order you play them in and like how you're applying their effects also matters. Um, which was like the most appealing thing to me was just in terms of like how do I make it so that like every time you're playing the cards out like that the the order you're playing them makes a difference and like that also like triggers like all these different things you can do basically.

1:12:53 Well, the very first thing you you were mentioning, which is the the replacement of cards, you're getting rid of cards for good. You're making really tough decisions, uh, solves a deck building problem. And I think I we probably agree on that problem. You you outlined it. Uh, well, had you seen that in any other games? I can't remember if I've ever seen that particular mechanism to building decks before because usually it's a feature to be able to mill cards out of your deck or or decision later on with another card or another action or whatever it might be which is you know obviously like the core the cornerstone to to building a good deck is being able to get rid of those those crappy cards. Like was there any influence there or you just trying to solve a problem that you saw? Well, I don't want to say that this is a new idea or anything because I I but so I guess I don't it probably isn't. I'm sure there is a deck there is a game out there that's like that and it's not one that I have run into. I would actually say probably the biggest influence on this decision is

1:13:53 playing uh deck putting games with my wife who is better at them than I am. And one of the reasons is because she is really good at at milling cards out of her deck. Yeah.

1:14:02 And I it's always annoying to me to watch her just like rack up all these cards. just throw them in the trash while I still have like, you know, useless like, you know, one power cards and stuff like that. So, I was like, I just want to like I want to just like I want I want to have the the part that's really the part that's really fun for me, which is like adding the cards and then like the like there still is like an interesting decision there about like where you're adding it and what you're pulling out, but then I don't have to worry about like I've got this annoying card still in here and now it's taking me longer to get the good card that I bought. Like so it was honestly more I would say I was very I was influenced by losing to my wife at deck building games constantly. So

1:14:40 she's like this is the one I'm going to beat you in.

1:14:44 It's solo too so I don't have to worry about that either. But

1:14:46 did you ever was it always the case where you could put that card wherever you want? Because in most deck builders, going straight into hand is overpowered and going straight to the top of deck is overpowered and most go right into your discard and you have to you have to cycle them back through. Like was that always a feature?

1:15:07 It was a consequence of the one in one out system actually because I was like well I can't just have them go into your discard because I need to them always to be able to replace something. So

1:15:18 because discard's not always full. if the discard doesn't have anything in it, then I can't have them replace something that's in that spot. And so I was like, "Oh, well, I kind of like I kind but then I liked the way that it was working because it's like, okay, well, the safest place to put it is your discard because you most likely have stuff in there that like you either didn't want or you already used it. You're not really counting on it coming up again soon. So like that's the safest way to place it, put place to put it, but also it's going to take the longest for you get to get the good card out again. So that's kind of the riskreward thing. And then it's like the putting it in your hand. Obviously, you get it fastest, but then you probably have stuff in your hand that you want. And so like you're going to have to get rid of something maybe good or you're going to have to kind of purposefully like save a card you don't like or you don't care about that much in your hand to get rid of it.

1:16:07 And so that and then sort of like the the putting it on top of your deck is sort of the devil's choice of like you're like, "Well, h how bad could this be if I do this, you and then maybe the answer is quite bad. You're not sure because you don't know what's going to be you can't check the top card before you before you put a card there. So that one it's sort of like I always like a big part of like a lot of stuff that I that I I like to make here is like tempting you to do something stupid like that that's it's like oh this won't be that big of a problem and then you do it and you're like oh I shouldn't have done that like and so that's another that's a that's a that's an that's why I like being able to put it on top of your deck. I think it creates a rich decision space. I think that's that's something that's not there in most deck building games. I haven't played this, but based upon what you're saying, I think you might have solved deck building.

1:16:58 And I I would imagine somebody to copy the system because most board games are just kind of like standing on the shoulders of the next and and kind of iterating. I would imagine that this gets copied at some place or at some point.

1:17:11 Well, that's very nice of you to say. I mean, I I love deck building games. I would love and I I had a lot of fun making this and I'm very proud of it. I would love to be able to work on like kind of like a proper neck building game.

1:17:21 I was gonna ask that. You're taking words out of my mouth.

1:17:23 I I really again I'm not very good at them. I I'm fine. I'm I'm not very good at them compared to my wife who is like very very good at like any kind of like point salad uh game. But I really I really do have a lot of fun with them. You know, I I love playing Clank Legacy and like losing almost every single game of it. And like I said, I like I like getting beaten by my kids when I play DC comics deck building and stuff, but I really enjoy them. I I I they very they work really well in my in they they just I really appreciate them. So,

1:17:51 I love asymmetry. I love progression in games, feeling more powerful. So, deck building is definitely right up th those alleys. I think it, you know, some people have rightful criticisms, you know, for a lot of, you know, not being able to cycle through the deck enough, your deck getting too big, like, you know, there's all of these different problems, but I love them. So, you basically to get this green lit, you have to find a way to put chips in and deck building together so we can get a chip theory full-fledged deck.

1:18:18 Yeah. Yeah.

1:18:19 It could happen. It could happen. You know, I I think the other thing I would love to do is uh worker placement. And I have like

1:18:27 I have not had time to work on it like at all, but I have like an idea for worker placement. Um but it's like again if we did worker placement here, it would be a very different thing. It's like we most of our games have been uh combat oriented or you know burn cycle is a little different but like it's still they're very kind of like units moving around in a physical space which I think is another reason why I think 20 strong is a really refreshing environment to play in because obviously we do have some decks that are doing that there but it feels different when they're doing it in that way and also like there are avenues to do things that are not that as well and again I like I like I like games about moving units around a physical space, too. I would say like probably my favorite board game of all time is uh Tanhouser, a now sadly, you know, defunct title that was published by FFG back in the day in in English. And it was I think it was I can't remember the it was a French game originally, but I love that game. And it's like kind of like a squad-based like shooter game in like a it's it's it's the the the targeting system was like adapted into Unmatched like uh you look at the Unmatched rule book and see that like they adapted uh Star Wars Epic DS and Tanhouser into that game which I both of which I own the original the original games of those. Uh

1:19:48 you mean like the the proximity based attack being on the right

1:19:52 like the color wheel like the the color wheel like determining like line of sight and stuff is from is from. Yeah, love that game. And that is a game about moving guys around on a board and and doing things with them. So like that's great, too. But I just I love variety. Like I love doing different kinds of of things always. So uh you know, deck building or worker placement or whatever. I would love to be able to do that kind of thing one day as well. So

1:20:15 before moving on to Nemesis, I'm really interested in the node system. That's the other thing that piqued my interest here. um you know, the the the physical manifestation of of stringing together these cards and combos are do they feel like they're comboing? Like what what went into the the design of the nodes and the card play here?

1:20:35 Yeah. Well, that that one I do want to give a ton of credit to uh and I should I should actually look up the name uh although I'm probably not gonna be able to pronounce it because it's very Polish, but um the the designers of uh Tina Girl because like obviously this is this is an adaptation of Tina Girl. I'm make some typing sounds. Sorry. Uh but um uh so I want to and I I do apologize to uh Kristoff uh Piscorski and Marcen Swat or I'm not sure if I said that the right way. So but you can go look at their names and how they're correctly spelled on BG. Uh like you know this I when I started like working on this like the the system of the nodes was what was really interesting to me originally. And so like I took that and I made it simpler in the sense that like it needed to be simpler for a small card game than it did for a large uh uh board game. But uh like that that that the idea of like you have to match the nodes to like get the most out of your um your play comes from that board game. So I don't want to take too much credit for that. But like I Yes. I mean, I did want it to feel like you were comboing. Um, the And even like I think one of the things that I'm most pleased with with the deck and how it turned out is that all of the hero characters have their own unique starting card. So, you get to have the fun of like your start your hero's

1:22:05 ability, but you also get this kind of additional thing that is like adding a new dimension to the uh the characters. And um often times those uh will um like relate to the character in like the character's hero ability in some ways. For example, like I can't remember which hero it is, but there's like one key hero that like lets you uh like damage yourself to like do stuff um to like to to like do additional actions or or to or to I don't deal damage. I can't again I don't have them right in front of me. And then like her uh that that character's like card just allows you

1:22:44 a tip. Yeah. Yeah. That character's card allows you to heal. So when you play that card, you're sort of like you're almost you're kind of like comboing the card off of the character's ability and stuff like that. So they were all sort of like meant to kind of complement their hero ability. But then, yeah, obviously, you know, I was just um you know, Daniel over at Think Gaming, he posted uh his his playthrough of Nemesis today, the day we're recording this, and it was really really fun to watch because he played against one of the the the bosses. And I think he ended up playing like six cards on the boss like in in the over the course of like two or three engages because he just kept on figuring out ways to like combo strike against and stuff. And so, it was really neat. He's like, "Okay, well, I can play Oh, no, no. If I play that one, then I won't be able to connect this one. So, I'll play this one first, then I'll play this one, that gives me the node setup that I need to do this other one, which is like that's the most satisfying thing about the whole game, I think, probably is to be able to be like,

1:23:42 I cannot beat this right now, but if I play these cards in this order, then I can maybe do it, you know? Um, that was what I liked the most about it. with those nodes. Do you feel like um players have more agency in this design as compared to the more just dice heavy um reliances in other 20 strong designs? Well, uh, so I would always I would always push back a little bit on like obviously you are somewhat at the whims of you have a bad role, you have a bad role, but I think that like I think a lot of people who have an issue with uh the game with Tony Strong early in play like I think it's just like they have to you have to see through the matrix. I think you would agree with this Salem probably, right? like you kind of have to like see through the matrix of Tony Strong and realize that it's not actually a game about rolling dice. It's a game about like resource management and it's a game about like manipulating the mechanics within each individual deck that you're playing because like uh like you know for example like I remember like there was a lot of issues with testing uh the Too Many Bones deck because people were just really not like understanding that like well I have to defeat all these guys and I have to defeat them as as soon as possible. I don't like getting hurt um and so I'm going to just run out all of my dice.

1:25:02 And it's like, well, but you don't have to do that in that game. Like, you want to roll some misses so you can use them in your backup plan. And you also sometimes are going to be like, okay, well, I can tank this hit that will allow me to recover dice and then I can beat the guy the next time or whatever. And so, like I do think that like all of these games are more controllable than I think sometimes people give them credit for. And you have to just kind of figure out when you're playing a new deck, what is the element that I'm able to control here, you know, like and uh whether that's like where you end up in ether fields is a big I think a big part of like that is like or like how you put the rooms together. It's like you can get totally messed up in ether fields if you like connect rooms in a bad way. Uh but if you connect rooms in a good way, then you can set yourself up for these like insane runs through like the dream and like do a lot of stuff and accomplish that. And so like even though you can't necessarily control like what your dice are going to do when you roll them, you can control like all of these other things that are kind of mitigating um like your dice being bad to a degree.

1:26:08 And so I I would say that like I I think that the honestly to me the the cards in the nodes and the cards and stuff in um in Tainer Grill, they're not mitigating dice rolls because most of them still are just telling you you can apply more dice to this thing. It's like what they're mitigating is they're mitigating the other restriction that the game puts on you, which is that usually you can only apply four dice in a given engage in the D girl deck until you start playing the cards, you know, and that's more more what they're mitigating rather than like the dice randomness. I recently uh interviewed Cole Worley and we had a very similar conversation and about luck and specifically where we were talking about arcs um you know uh dice rolling is always criticized as just like this luck based mechanic. But his point was if you get to a point where that one roll cost you your game, you probably made 30 or 40 other decisions behind that that actually influenced you to get to that point. So, um, one of the interesting things I did some analysis on arcs on, uh, cardboard, my platform, where people were rating the fans of it rated Lo luck significantly lower than the than the critics.

1:27:18 The critics the critics all thought that that luck was a seven, while the people that absolutely love Darks thought it was more of like a five. And my hypothesis is that luck starts to go away in a game, at least your perception of it the more you play it because then you start to realize these these nuances and the the metag game and all of these like important aspects that actually go into that eventual role of dice. Do you do you see it the same way for both of you?

1:27:45 Yeah, abs. Absolutely. I think like I think like it's it's interesting because like I think all the all the decks we made are really cool. Um, but I think that internally we probably have a different perspective on like which ones of the decks have more like RNG than than some of the fans internally or you know externally. uh like uh and because I think we're just more aware of like how you might need to navigate that like like you know I've seen a fair amount of people say for example you know and I'll I'll use this example because this is like one of the ones that I designed but like Tangle Woods white that that one has the most RNG out of any of the um the Tangle Woods decks but I actually kind of think that it has the least because like you are way more in control of like where you're going and like and so it's like yes, you can't see the next step in the forest unless you've paid to paid gold to like flip it over and then you can, but it's like usually you can't see the next step step of the forest.

1:28:47 You don't know what card you're going to draw, but you know when you step on there, okay, these are the likely uh modifiers that I'm going to be facing because I can see what all the modifiers are. I can see the uh the cards that are in like kind of the the the hunt deck and so I can see like okay I can pick from this this this or this. Um I know like and also like when I go to the shop I can pay to basically like pre-cout the woods. I can pay to scout like which um which mini bosses I'm going to be fighting all this stuff. And so it's like yes like there is more randomness there if I'm not pulling on all the levers the game has provided me. But if I am playing on the letters the game has provided me, then as you're saying, it's like it's rare that like one, it's not like it's one bad role is going to sink me. It is much more likely that like the the the the bad roll is the straw that broke the camel's back because maybe I wasn't quite exercising.

1:29:44 You know, obviously any any game with dice rolls, you can just have kind of a bad run. And like certainly we want all the games to be hard enough. I certainly lose 20 strong games when I that that are already out now when I when I play them later. Uh but like yeah there's usually like a conflict a confluence of things that have kind of led to that that moment and it's with really in any game I'm not saying that our games are not unique in this regard. It's like any game that you play, part of playing it is sort of like discovering all of the breadcrumbs that the designers have led left for you to to manipulate the game to your advantage, you know?

1:30:21 Right. Salem, do you feel similarly about, you know, critics that will say chip theory games are all about luck?

1:30:28 Yeah. Uh, yeah, I would agree. Fun fact, actually I remember talking about this a lot at conventions when we um we had uh Hoplamakus Victorium out. So like with that being a reimagining of our first system, people like who had who never played the original Hoplo are now seeing it for the first time. And this is a post too many bones world. And what I mean by that is like

1:30:56 we we have seen the backup plan. And the backup plan to me is probably the my favorite thing we have designed in any of our games ever. And I think we've only improved upon it with like the tenacity system in Elder Scrolls. I love it so much. Even in Burn Cycle, like two misses can be combined to a one. And so then now we have Hoplo come come out and it brings back the whole a miss is a miss. There's nothing you can do with it. And there's a degree in which like when players like this

1:31:33 Yeah. And and uh but what we always made sure to do though is like so like there's those situations where Yeah. you can have a bad role and your opponent can have a really good role. But neither of those two situations should be the thing that makes or breaks a scenario. It's like oftentimes I think maybe what happens is people don't realize they have put themselves in such a bad strategic position and are banking on a really good role to save them and they don't get that really goal.

1:32:07 I know, right? That's I mean that's why I love dice rolling too is I love I do love how it's like you should never give up a dice game

1:32:15 because right

1:32:16 it can bail you out. um where on the flip side is I don't think a dice game should ever just purely through you know and if it's a multiplayer game then maybe because both sides need to be on even playing there but when it's a solo or co-op game it's like I absolutely think a good dice roll should save you from losing a losing situation but a bad dice roll should never cause you to lose a winning one. Um, and like I think that's like that's true in all our games or at least that's we're always trying to strive for that. Uh, and so you know like with when for example too Nemesis we added enemies rolling dice and the first thing we notice is like oh gosh if an enemy rolls two dice and it rolls two crits and it can just kill you. No, we can't have that. And so pretty early on in the development process of Nemesis, we're like, okay, enemies do roll dice, but crits don't deal more damage. They just increase noise so that you can always just be like, all right, I am never going to take more than at most two damage from this enemy and you can plan for that. Whereas if the the scale is like, well, it could miss completely or it could hit me for four, that's way too big of a variance. And also your health is like in 20 20 strong is at most six.

1:33:39 Like that's not going to save you against a four most of the time. So that was a very quick thing we like realized.

1:33:46 And yeah, with like going back to Hoplo like that is a full tactics game. That is absolutely not just tactics but squad building too. Like in Victoria especially like

1:33:57 part of the game strategy is taking your time to recruit the best gladiators. Don't don't just like recruit whoever's available. Be intentional. Like look at the stadium, see who has one you want. Go do a mission there to try and get it. Um obviously then you start bal uh balancing your character build and your prowess cards, all of these things to sort of hone in on a given strategy. And the dice are just mainly there to be like, okay, but don't get too cocky because if you get a bad roll, you need to be able to pivot. Uh and I love dice rolling. I I truly do. That said though, I also I love the backup plan and the tenacity systems uh so much because

1:34:39 well I think that's what separates your dice rolling right in is is having

1:34:45 a strategic consideration on you know with misses. I I think that's a super important thing and I think that's where a lot of people's argument on

1:34:55 you know in too many bones in particular and the randomness and the bad beats that you could you can get you know there are a lot of mitigating factors that you are allowing a user to kind of play with you all I was going to push back on you a little bit with too many bones because I've had some incredibly bad beats but you also mentioned like in in Hoplo it's all about building your team It's also about what you trained in in too many bones, right? Like there's

1:35:23 to Cole's point, I made these decisions to train skills and and train stats and and all of this other stuff leading up to that point where that baddie just crushed my dreams and and ended my day. So, you know,

1:35:36 and you usually in in Too many Bones, too, I think when you get totally just like completely stomped, it's not necessarily a di a die like the the problem isn't necessarily the dice. It's the problem is uh your initiative being lower than

1:35:51 I was just gonna say initiative is what's broken there

1:35:54 which is what which is you know obviously love too many bones but like that was something we we did try to address

1:36:01 with Elder Scrolls which not ever not to everybody's satisfaction because some people think that it allows too much like alpha striking and we're looking at a different way to do it again in um in Too Many Bones 2. So, you know, we're always we're trying to learn it. You know, we we do a lot of testing, but also it's like

1:36:17 the first time you release a game,

1:36:20 more people will play it than you could have tested possibly.

1:36:23 The first day you get more play tests on release, right, than you ever could have ever simulated yourself.

1:36:30 Yeah.

1:36:31 Yeah. to

1:36:33 and and maybe we'll also release a different way of doing initiative and we already have like the the the difficulty modifier for Elder Scrolls, but I know we've talked about like maybe one of the DRI princes in the future like affects your initiative or something. So, we're we're talking about more.

1:36:46 Very cool.

1:36:47 You want to say something?

1:36:48 Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just to quickly go back to like misses and 20 strong because like I say I hype up the back of play of tenacity, but then of course most of the 20 strong decks you can't really use misses to meaningful degree. But again, that's where it's like I feel like it's such an easy trap to fall into where recovery is the best strat or a best stat to increase. And recovery is very important, but like I think that's where like the strategy stat like um when I first started playing the game too and then trying to design for it and everything, I was also like, "Oh yeah, recovery, recovery, recovery. I want to get these dice back." But having a high strategy stat, like having a six in strategy, I would say is way more powerful than having a six in recovery. Uh because it's like, okay, yeah, you can get bad dice rolls, but like the more times you can roll, the more times you can roll and roll again and again and again to get for those crits, to get to bypass the misses, it's gamechanging.

1:37:47 like and then of course too if you have a high strategy you also can have a lot more items which can help you mitigate the randomness too um as well. So like sort of again going back to that original decision like you lose a game because of a bad dice die roll. If the game is well designed I should say there's probably games out there where you could be winning and a bad die roll just immediately causes you to lose that never feels good. But what we're always going for is making sure that if you have a bad role and you lose, you were already losing and that bad you just didn't get the winning role you needed to come back from it,

1:38:28 right? Yeah. Yeah. You didn't get the godsend role, right?

1:38:32 You were already teetering on death. So, is strategy broken?

1:38:36 Is strategy broken? Oh, no. I would not call it broken.

1:38:39 Overpowered?

1:38:40 I I wouldn't even call it overpowered. No. Uh because I kind of cliffy real quick for the shorts.

1:38:47 I'm just saying it's way stronger than people think when they compare it to recovery. That's all I'll say. I I'd say like once you get to recovery four, if your strategy is still at two and you have options, of course, sometimes you might not always be given the option to just increase strategy, but like at that point, prioritize finding ways to increase your strategy over your recovery. And I would honestly say like once your recovery is at four, I'd say focus entirely on strategy until it gets to six. Then at that point, you can go back to recovery. Um, of course too, health you never want to ignore as well because like health is a spendable resource. Tank a hit. Don't commit any dice, the enemy goes away or you have other ways to deal with the enemy besides rolling dice.

1:39:34 Just take the hit, get the free dice, and continue. Like the only You never lose a game from losing health. You only lose the game from losing your last health. So

1:39:43 yeah. Uh well I think too we Yeah. I mean like we're also always trying to find ways to like emphasize strategy too. Like for example like that's how you do you know strategy also like determines how many times you can strike in in uh

1:40:01 in Tinder and stuff. This is why I love to make uh one strategy uh heroes like with the one strategy starting stack. They're like I like to torture people. So,

1:40:10 oh, it's I Oh my gosh, those are the hardest ones for me to play. Like, I'll take a one recovery over a one strategy hero.

1:40:18 You have a more work to do, you know?

1:40:20 Right. Yeah.

1:40:21 Again, that's just part of me being like, can I convince people to make a bad decision here? Like, it's like we're like, ah, I'll probably be fine with this many dice here that way many dice, you know, one or the other.

1:40:36 All right. So, we don't have the lead designer for Nemesis here. However, I do want to ask the question. Why did you all ruin crits for us?

1:40:45 Well, no. I mean, you you still does crits still count as crits for for damage that you were all But yeah, there's the noise. I mean, like

1:40:53 but they create that one of the

1:40:55 Yep.

1:40:56 Yeah. That was one of the first uh the first kind of actually design decisions about this I remember that Logan

1:41:02 uh was was talking about which we I I do think is really cool. You're right. It is. it does kind of like ruin them. But also, it's like even even that it's it sort of goes back to the resource management thing that we're talking about, especially when you're playing it um multiplayer where I think a thing that we love to do when we're playing it in the office is basically get it as close as possible to the noise ticking up and then being all right, now it's your turn. Um, so that way that the alien will come out on their on them instead of on you, you know, like um

1:41:34 uh so there's definitely ways to use your

1:41:36 Yeah. Um

1:41:38 that's great.

1:41:38 That that's like a a key a key strat if you're playing the game because it's it's it's semi-ooperative, right? So it's like you all can win and you usually do want to help your your your your players out originally, but like ultimately like most times when you're playing that game,

1:41:53 you get to a point where you're like, um, all right, I have to go help myself. see it, you know, like it's kind of like how how most games have it end, which I really like. And uh like so yeah, there's there are definitely ways that you're kind of like manipulating the crits and the noise level to your advantage as well. Or even just like stuff like you know when you're uh you sometimes like you want crits to uh to roll crits when you're doing salvaging because like that gets you more dice you can recover or things like that. And and also it's like sometimes you might want to crit him because you're like, "Okay, well uh like I have a couple of actions left rather than this guy coming out on the next turn when I want to be doing something. I actually want the the alien to come out now. So hopefully I roll a crit enough crits now to tick the noise over and then I can fight that guy with my last action on this turn, you know?"

1:42:49 So there's lots of like it's not like a purely negative thing to make noise in this game. It's like it's not typically ideal. It's like you generally speaking, you don't want an an alien to attack you. But like sometimes you do like sometimes you're like, "Okay, how like what what it's more of a question of like when do I want this alien to come out? Like do I want it to come out on my turn and I can handle it now or do I want to come out on Salem's turn and they can handle it then or or something else, you know? So it's not a purely negative I would say.

1:43:17 Are you still rolling noise as you go into rooms like the original game? Uh depends on the room.

1:43:24 Yes. Yes.

1:43:24 Um because like some rooms will have uh it'll be listed as like this is what you need to do to activate it. It's called a noise check.

1:43:32 Uh and that was also too a way where we wanted to try because we're always looking for ways to make it so that your rec like the dice you recover isn't always obvious. Like it's not always oh get the red then always the purples then always the blues you know and so on. Um, so like that's where we had the idea of like, oh, anytime dice are rolled for like a non-action, they're rolled first from exhausted, then from your dice pool. So it actually benefits you to have a pretty diverse exhausted dice pool. Um, because you like you'll roll these noise checks and if they're inexhausted, perfect. You don't exhaust them. But if they're not, you have to pull them for your dice pool and then exhaust them. Uh, and so yeah, that would just determine, did you make any noise upon activating this room? But a lot of the rooms also have other ways to activate them that don't increase noise.

1:44:20 Perhaps they'll activate for free if a different room is active. Or this one you can discard an item to do it quietly

1:44:28 or use

1:44:30 or you just add an enemy, which you know, I guess technically doesn't increase noise.

1:44:35 Uh but uh there's like it's not necessarily a blanket rule of every time you go into a room you do a noise check. It's just it's part of the way the rooms activate. And then also too part of uh the movement action is when you move, you commit dice to sort of be like, "All right, I'm going to roll these, do my strategy phases." Um, and crits still let you move with them, but they'll increase noise. And that's where you like have to make the decision like, "Okay, well, I got enough movement points. I like to move three. I rolled three. That's perfect. That's what I want. But one of them's a crit. Do I risk re-rolling and hopefully not get another crit to be able to make that movement or do I risk it? Maybe I don't get enough movement the next time or I get multiple crits. Um, so there is there is ways where like movement and just general play is going to be increasing noise over the course of the game, but with the strategy phase, there's a little bit of interesting decision space to be made with it. with the hidden trader um semi-cop nature of the game, has there been any interesting metas that have come up around the office or even rivalries or intense sessions that have happened?

1:45:45 Well, there is that there is the crit. Yeah, the crit kind of like crit edging, I guess. I don't know what you call it, but like uh

1:45:54 trying to kind of like have have that stuff like trigger on someone else's turn. I would say also what? Yeah. I mean like all of us are kind of like too nice to be like really really ruthless. I think it's not because you can lie and stuff

1:46:10 or like lie about your intentions.

1:46:12 I think that kind of fun above the table narrative in games.

1:46:17 Yeah. That we we we don't really do that in most of our games, but that's certainly like a thing you could do. I would say uh one I really like is which Sam do you remember which room it is that has like kind of the ability to like open a room that is not normally openable?

1:46:37 Yes, that's that's my favorite room in the game. Uh I'll look for it real quick here. So, there's one room that you can basically you can discard some items to like get a room like open uh like before you would normally be able to activate and you just kind of like dip out like way early before other people and just kind of like leave them to deal with with the mess because that's one of the things that's interesting about the game is that like

1:47:01 the player count determines kind of like a lot of the difficulty in terms of like how many rounds you have left when the self-destruct timer like flips over like some enemy strength strength, their enemy damage type stuff. And that does not change when people leave the game. So like if I escape, if we're playing a three-player game and I escape, the difficulty level is still kind of calibrated to a three-player game. So like you're going So like if you leave early, then you're leaving the other two players to deal with like a three and a three character difficulty level on their own. So that's like an interesting like thing to consider as well. sometimes.

1:47:39 Uh it is the servers and it also allows you to deactivate a room as well. So if you ever are in a situation where like

1:47:48 uh I think probably I mean I didn't I don't think I did this in the stream but there was that uh gameplay stream where we played through all three decks during CTG week and I notoriously like was playing nice because that seemed like the best call until the end of the game and I just left Andrew Santoro. uh high and dry. Uh but like you can use the server to be like I have, you know, I'm looking at my objectives

1:48:14 and each objective card has mostly objectives that are either

1:48:19 you can complete these and they don't require you to sabotage others or you actually want people to succeed in order to complete these. But they always have at least one that's like, "Yeah, you do kind of need to sabotage somewhat, but you don't have to get all of the objectives. You just have to get a certain number of points." So, I was playing the whole game just thinking like, "Okay, no, I don't need that sabotage one. I'm good. I'm gonna I'm gonna play nice." And then because of when Ryan left, he devoided me the opportunity of completing one of the non like competitive um objectives. So by Ryan leaving when he did, I all of a sudden have to be like, "Oh no, I have to I have to leave Andrew here to die."

1:49:04 That's like,

1:49:07 "Oh, go on. Sorry."

1:49:09 I like So I mean, it was just like, "Okay, all right." Yeah. And I don't think I use the server specifically, but that's where the server can be really good because you can just be like, "Okay, well, I mean, the last person needs to get into the escape pod to leave." The escape pods require the engine rooms to activate or the generators to use. So, I could use the like and I'm already in like, let's say, or I'm right next to an escape pod that's already active. You could use the server to deactivate one of the engine rooms, hop into the escape room, and then run away. And now all of a sudden the other person's like, "Shoot, I can't activate that escape pod I was going to go to. I have to now go reactivate that engine, which increases noise, and then make my way back to the escape pod."

1:49:53 Uh, server room's not always there. It's randomized.

1:49:57 Uh, it's so all of the cards are always there. It's just um so there's no room cards that aren't used.

1:50:03 Okay.

1:50:03 Uh it's just

1:50:04 everything,

1:50:05 you know, there's always a chance of someone doing that and lying about what's underneath that card and all that stuff. So there's always that that that sense of distrust,

1:50:13 you know, when you know that capability exists in later games.

1:50:17 Yeah. Uh uh that that's that is my favorite part of the game, though. I think when you're playing at co-op anyway, is like the is like the moment where you where you decide it's time to get yours, you know, like you're like, "Okay, this is real now. I got to get out of here." Like I I love that that feeling.

1:50:36 Is this the best part of it?

1:50:38 Go ahead. Go ahead, Sam.

1:50:39 Oh, sorry. Oh, I was gonna say the best part about that game in particular that we played is I absolutely sabotaged Andrew so much to the point where I was like there's no way he's getting out alive and yet he still did. Um, and so like I think that's why like that was the one thing I was always nervous about with like sharing a dice pool in Nemesis is like how do we make it where if you sabotage someone, you know, it's not just a situation of like oh they have no way of coming back. Uh but through a very clever use of items and rooms and the salvage effect, he was able to just be like, "Okay, no, I can adapt. I can overcome this." And yeah, anyway, sorry. I just wanted to say that one bit real quick there.

1:51:21 No worries. Is this the most faithful recreation of these three games?

1:51:28 Yeah, I was going to say that earlier. I think I think this is the most faithful simulation and then I because I I think mine is like simulating a part and then Salem's I would say is a much more kind of like spiritual adaptation of like which is appropriate given the subject matter but like it it's like Salem is like recreating the vibe and then I'm kind of recreating like a one part of it really kind of like trying to make that part really crunchy and then Logan was like I want to try to simulate the game kind of like, you know, out of the box and then, you know, we kind of then put some additional refinements on it in terms of like figuring out some things to cut or add or whatever. But like ultimately like it it's the one that feels kind of most like mini name of game.

1:52:17 It really does. It it based upon what I'm hearing, it's feel it feel it sounds like it's going to feel like Nemesis when you're playing it.

1:52:27 Hope so. I mean, one of my uh play test groups for it uh were big Nemesis players and so I invited him in to play it and they were just like sitting there like whoa. Yeah. Like I mean I they didn't straight up say I would rather play this than Nemesis. And I would hope that's not true because they're, you know, different games, but they're very much so like, oh, if yeah, this is like the perfect way to play Nemesis if you want to guarantee like, okay, I don't I don't want this to take

1:53:01 X amount of time to play because Nemesis can be a very

1:53:05 like a whole afternoon kind of game. And I love that about it. But sometimes like depending on how everyone's feeling or how much time people have or if people are like, "Hey, I want to play the same game multiple times, you can still get that nemesis feel and it it it doesn't feel like it loses anything because anything that it it does lose because it's objectively not there." It's like, well, it's a 20 strong thing, so you get all the things that 20 strong brings to the table

1:53:32 to sort of supplement that. Um, but yeah, no, I I think I would say yeah, it's probably safe to say this is the most direct, faithful onetoone adaptation of a 20 strong deck yet.

1:53:46 Yeah. And I also think it's probably fair to say from like a a price perspective, it's in seems like it would be an incredible value relative to the the experience that you're getting here, which feels very much like a big box, highly interactive, you know, multi-person game uh experience. So, how many players does this play up to?

1:54:07 One to three.

1:54:08 One to three. Couldn't get four in there. Uh no because uh the your your stat dice well first it's not balanced for four but also like your your stat dice are your players in this um that's actually and the reason and and which is why your your recovery and uh strategy strat stats in Nemesis are primarily with some exceptions static. Um you can't you can't really increase them or decrease them. You can only increase or decrease your health because like your health is being measured on the individual dice. So they only the game only comes with three stat dice. So you can have three players basically.

1:54:48 Has any of the original designers played these?

1:54:52 And what's the feedback or did you get any push back?

1:54:54 I don't think so. I I mean I can speak a little bit to their feedback. I don't think that they've played them. They might have. We've sent them stuff. Uh but you know they're they're over in Europe and uh you know um they've got lots of other things going on as well. But like um they've definitely checked them out and they've approved them and okayed them. Um I will say for the Nemesis one they were really like wanted to make sure that it was like capturing a few uh vibe related things that they didn't feel like in the first round were quite all the way there. And so we went back to the drawing board with a couple things and kind of added them and they seem to like those changes. So like for examp I think mostly they just wanted it to feel more like you were uh like that you were really like being like hunted and that there was like a lot of like uncertainty about about what was going on. So for example like one of the one of we don't have to go through all the things but like I would say two of the things that we did which I do think made the game a lot better were um even though it was fun you know the first time but I think even these these were helpful is that we took rewards off of the the aliens. This is the only only 20 strong game where the the enemies like don't give you stuff for defeating them. And because they were sort of like we don't want you like in Nemesis like oh I want to go kill an alien to get something good. It's like you only ever want to kill an alien so the alien doesn't kill you, you know, like and so

1:56:20 like thematically it doesn't make a lot of sense you to pull anything off of them,

1:56:24 right? Another thing we did is they were like it needs to be more. They were they were like because originally we were just saying like noise goes up by one automatically at the start or at the end of every uh turn. And they were like that's too predictable. Like it should feel a little bit more like you're risking something. And so we changed it. So now you actually roll your strongest exhausted die and that will determine how much noise will go up. It go up zero, one or two depending on what you roll. And which I think has been really fun because sometimes you're like okay well I have two wall

1:56:57 I'm probably okay and then you roll a crit and you're like ah I have to move it up too you know like like and then and then it does activate or it also kind of encourages you to be like okay well maybe I'm going to recover these dice

1:57:08 and I'm only going to leave like this level of dye in here. So maybe you're like, "Okay, well, I don't maybe I I don't want to apply this dye to the enemy because I won't be able to recover it because it'll still be applied to the enemy because then that means that that will be the the strongest die. And so if I have a red that's not been recovered, then I know it's going to increase by one. Whereas if my strongest die left is like a blue, maybe it doesn't increase at all, which could be nice, you know? So those were a couple things. They just were basically kind of like make it scarier, make it feel more uncertain, I guess I would say. So, they definitely were tapped in to like what the rules were and stuff. If I'm not I'm not sure if they actually physically played them though.

1:57:49 Who's been easier to work with, Bethesda or Awaken Realms?

1:57:53 I cannot like I'm I'm actually not not allowed to talk about that. I I will say that like any any truly like any any licensing uh agreement that you have like the the people who are uh like who you're working with like they care a lot about their thing, you know? It's like and I'm sure if we like licensed too many bones out to somebody else, we would have a lot of notes about um whatever they were doing. And so like they're concerned about it. And so sometimes you're you're not always going to to agree with uh you know the notes you get back. Um, sometimes you will though like I again I would say that like uh I do think that ultimately you know they didn't and I I would say that like Awaken were good about I I one thing I really appreciated about some of their notes is that they were like well here are our notes you know we didn't necessarily agree with all of them but we definitely saw where they're coming from with a lot of them but they were very gracious in terms of like say not being like so what you should do is X they were sort of like this the vibe doesn't feel right to us.

1:59:05 Uh, so maybe you could do this, but ultimately like here's the feedback. You figure out like how you want to change this to make it work. And that was so that was good. like like that would be I did did really appreciate that like and um I think that like ultimately like I'm you know as someone I I am the person who like is kind of on the front lines of taking the notes for Bethesda uh you know on Elder Scroll stuff and I am you know was one of the people who was the kind of the first people to take the notes on um on the the the Awaken Realm stuff too and that can be a frustrating experience sometimes but you're also Well, everyone just wants everybody wants us to be good

1:59:49 and everybody like and like what they're they're just trying to make sure that like you've taken their baby and are making sure that that you're showing it off in the way that like that is accurate to the spirit of the thing. And so like I do try to keep that in mind every time you do have a note. And so, and generally speaking, it's like, you know, I work, you know, we work, especially with Bethesda. We work with them. We, you know, we mostly communicate with the the Awaken guys via via email and stuff. You know, I have, you know, we have a meeting like every other week with the Bethesda folks. And so, I know all, you know, those people we work with. And they're all they're all, you know, they all want like this to to to work out in a way that that makes sense to them. And, you know, no one's trying to no one's trying to get in anybody's way. And I feel and I'm sure that I hope that they feel the same way with us if we're like oh well what about this? I don't think that they're probably being like h like they're being so stupid or whatever like that. They're they're probably like okay I understand like they're trying to accommodate the concerns they have when they're making their thing. So you know

2:00:54 when am I going to see a Fallout adaption from you guys?

2:00:59 Uh

2:01:00 well I mean uh

2:01:02 I love Fallout.

2:01:03 I don't know. I don't know.

2:01:05 That world is so wonderful.

2:01:08 Um I Yeah, I don't know. I don't know that you necessarily will, but you might I'm not saying you won't either. It

2:01:16 could be a cool deck builder.

2:01:17 Uh

2:01:19 sure. Yeah. Yeah. I I I uh I think that it and I think if you did, you might not it might not be in a way that you expect either. It's like these are certainly discussions we've had internally, but like you know uh we do like working on our our licensed stuff and I think we're proud of what we've made this license, but like I think most of us like our passion does lie with uh like caring original worlds, you know, and it's like and that's why you like Fallout is because once upon a time like someone had the idea to make Fallout, you know what I mean? like and and so it's like uh not to say that we would never do that kind of thing because we again we're very proud of El Scrolls and that was it's been a huge success for us and and really pleased with that but like you know if you know if we we put out Too many Bones too soon and that becomes a very successful thing for us. It's like that might be like of our flagship game for a while. It's like, you know, Elder Scrolls, it's not a coincidence that Elder Scrolls came out kind of as Too many Bones one had kind of like reached its sort of content complete stage. You know, Trover notwithstanding like uh

2:02:30 uh so um you know, we want Too Many Bones 2 to we, you know, we still have we still definitely have a lot of juice left for Elder Scrolls. So, I don't know that we would necessarily be like releasing a big box Fallout game while we were still releasing Elder Scroll stuff. That would for one thing that would be like a huge strain of the company's resources because making that game is a lot of work. Um, oh yeah,

2:02:54 but uh but also it's like we want we want to make sure that there's a lot of runway for 2 months 2 to be successful for a number of years as well. So when you put,

2:03:03 you know, there's other ways, you know, we could maybe we could make a a 20 strong deck if we don't do a big box game or, you know, we've talked about different things. So,

2:03:10 well, Too Many Bones 2 I am more than happy to receive instead of a Fallout game. So, that's that's all good. All right. So, this is the last one. Ryan, I believe, and correct me if I I'm wrong, you wrote 20 strong is one of my favorite things I've ever ever contributed to in my five years with the company at at this point. Uh I I I probably did write that somewhere. Yes, I would say that's accurate. Yes.

2:03:33 Yes. Yes. So that's a really big statement for somebody that's worked on Elder Scrolls and all of these other kind of like huge um uh you know projects and arguably 20 Strong is about to have its biggest moment, you know. So, what does it mean to finally have 20 Strong really be heavily into the spotlight with kind of the backing of Awakened Realms, bringing totally new people to the 20 Strong system.

2:04:01 Uh, I mean, I want to hear what Sam has to say about this, too. Uh, but

2:04:05 yeah, I want to hear from both of you on this because this is the big kind of finale here

2:04:09 because Sam and I think Sam and I I would say are probably

2:04:13 the two biggest 20 strong fans in the company like like uh would that would that be accurate to say Sam? Like

2:04:22 we both love 20 Strong. We love making 20 Strong decks and we love playing it and uh so very pleased to be able to work on it. Um, and it's it's so fun because like it's so fun a because it's like it's it is an easier process. It's like it doesn't feel like you're having to like eat a house like it does when you have to make new like Elder Scrolls or like Too many Bones stuff where you're just like it's there's so much stuff you have to consider and it takes such a long time like um and you get to kind of like it's like you get to create like this almost like handmade like bespoke object you can kind of hold up and be like look it's all right here like that's very very

2:04:58 satisfying and and for it to all like work in this sort of like small box is really really fun to me and satisfying and Um, you know, I would say that like I I obviously want the company to do well and I'm very pleased to have been able to work here for such a long time and um and it's always nice to have more people recognizing your stuff. Like I would say that like making Elder Scrolls the first time was like a difficult process just because like it was so much work to do it. like it was we we Sam and I just worked like all of us but but I Sam and I worked together a lot on that project and so it was a real real tough go of it in terms of like just the amount of hours we had to put into it to get it to where it is. Uh and it was nice that it was successful because I think that that it did make us feel a little bit better about like all that time we're like oh man like we really did make something that like is doing really well for the company people really like and stuff. as far as it goes, it's like I'm excited that it's going to do well and it's it's great um that it is and I and I think that out of the decks that I've designed um for it like uh for the system like Tana Grillil is my favorite of the ones that I have I've been like the lead on. Um uh and I think Sam would probably say the same about their Etherfields deck. Um, but like it I the the sales are not necessarily like it's like it's it's cool to get the attention but it's like

2:06:29 ultimately it's like if I liked what I did and some people liked it and and it found its people like I am happy you know it's like Trover is doing like quite well for us which I'm really pleased with but even if it had done only okay and there were people who were like oh this is really fun it's like it was really fun to make that. And like I would say that the Too Many Bone prior to Tain of Grail, too many bones deck was was maybe my one of my favorite things I had designed. And that is not like it was not a huge campaign. And that was probably not even the most popular deck out of those three decks. But I just liked the way that it worked and I liked the way that I felt when I played it. And I liked seeing what people had to say about it. And so like ultimately like the work to me is more satisfying than the attention.

2:07:17 you're the the the the attention paid to it in my opinion.

2:07:21 Sam, what do you think?

2:07:23 Yeah. Uh I mean I like that last the last thing you said there. Like I mean that's why too I absolutely adore everything Burn Cycle even though that game has not found as wide of an audience but again the audience that is found loves it and

2:07:41 a cool game by the way.

2:07:43 Thank you. I Yeah. It's I love it and I could talk about it for a long time, but I'm going to try and stay on on track here. But it still speaks to that thing of the work, the work that was put into it and the pride with what we made is the most fulfilling part, especially when the people that it finds love it the way they do, even if it may not be like a crazy amount of people. Like I would always be more proud of a a 10 out of 10 game that like a hundred, you know, I'm just throwing out numbers there, but like a hundred people like versus a six or seven out of 10 game that, you know, a thousand people like.

2:08:28 Um, but obviously, you know, we got to, you know, make sure we're making stuff that keeps the lights on, you know. So when we do have an Elder Scrolls where we both feel so proud of what we put in there and also does very very well, that's a double bonus and that's what we're really excited for with this like Awaken Realm stuff. Like yes, we're excited that it's like oh yeah, this will be a big campaign for us

2:08:52 that'll keep us that'll allow us to keep making awesome stuff, but also we are so proud of these decks. And I would say yeah, Ether Fields is the deck I'm most proud of. um at least the deck I'm most proud of that exists and is printed at the moment. Um

2:09:09 yeah, we have a bunch of in various uh

2:09:13 going back to the idea like when Ryan's saying like, "Oh yeah, we're the probably the two biggest 20 strong fans."

2:09:19 I have found myself these last couple months to be very fortunate uh to have a good amount of free time. like we've been an absolute proofing and everything like that, but I, you know, my role in proofing is not as big as like Ryan's, for example, as Ryan is doing all of like the editing passes and consolidating and getting that sent to graphics and working with Bethesda and all that, whereas I'm just like I'm just reading it, making some notes, so that doesn't take up my whole day. And we haven't quite yet gotten to the point with Too Many Bones where I can start running with that. And I've also gotten a good head start on more Elder Scroll stuff. So like I've been in a unique position where I've like whoa I can just like make stuff. And I have made three relatively final like I mean still play need to be played but like three 20 strong decks in that time plus three more that are in early concept stages. And I know not all of them are going to see the light because like that it's we just there's so many ideas uh for 20 strong and not enough places to slot them. But it's again it's speaking to that like just working on it is so fulfilling even if it's like oh yeah this is not gonna get made this is you know um and one of those decks as I've sort of hinted at is probably I dare say the most fun thing I have ever made.

2:10:48 And it is an absolute

2:10:51 energetic blast. I have to hype it up. It is so

2:10:55 Okay, I stopped recording. Why don't you tell us?

2:10:57 We'll make we'll make that one. We We will We will make that one. It's But

2:11:01 it might just not exist as Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

2:11:03 Because we can't say too much about it because it's something we would basic we would maybe be exploring a deal with someone to theme it in a certain way. But

2:11:13 Oh, got it. So, it's it's possibly not an original IP, but you have a system that would work well with a specific IP.

2:11:21 Yeah, it would work. There's one in mind that would we think it would work best with, but it is a system that doesn't need that IP to do well.

2:11:32 Um, it would just be like, oh yeah, that would just be the coolest way to do it. But it's also a really like I played it again and oh my gosh it's it's so energetic. It's like oh my gosh. Yes.

2:11:46 Uh so just speaking to that like

2:11:49 fun. It's so fun to make stuff for 20 strong. And even if some of those other ones I have in my head or have even prototyped don't ever get made, it's like it's still so much fun to work on. Every time I make one, I learn more about how it can be applied in cool ways, how it can be simplified in important ways. It's great. I love 20 strong.

2:12:12 Well, I don't know how we don't end on that. I will say through this conversation going into it, you know, I recently watched kind of the the Andrew's videos and and got an understanding of the games and was excited about some aspects. You know, I wonder, you know, how much of this is just going to be kind of like, hey, we're we're gonna make some money on a collaboration with Awaken Realms, but I can confidently say that every all three games have these really unique aspects that are just so exciting and seem larger than the small package that they're going to come in. I am so excited to to, you know, deck build and and string together nodes to explore ether ether field um

2:12:58 and to to have a co-op game in a 20 strong package where I can stab my friends in the back. Like all of this stuff is so exciting and it clearly is not a money grab. It's clearly a passion project where you all put a ton of time and thought into innovating the system, not adapting what was already there. And I think that's that's a huge um accomplishment that I think, you know, like I said, I haven't played them yet, but I don't know how they're bad to be honest and not incredible. So,

2:13:30 now this comes from a Chip Theory fan voice. Don't don't feel too good about yourself. you know, our our names have to go on all of this stuff. And so I think that like everybody who works in really in the company at all, but you know, especially just, you know, speaking to the people who make do the design uh side of it, like in development side of it, it's like I think we're just sort of like, well, if my name's going on it, it better be good, you know, like. And so it's like I don't know that we could make something that is a cash grab because it's like well I have to

2:14:02 my name's on it. So like I want to I want to be pleased with it because like that means something to me you know like

2:14:09 but it would be so easy to do in a 20 strong deck. You already have

2:14:13 part of the system built. You're throwing on some IPs that are have high recognition and that's clearly not what was done here.

2:14:21 Yeah.

2:14:22 So thank you. We've went incredibly long. You know, we had some technical difficulties. I'm so glad we pushed through through those. I don't know how I get this out to more people than I will, but I need people to listen to this because I there's so much good stuff. So, uh I'm really excited to get this out and I I'm guessing I'll probably put out the first day of the campaign. Um I don't know.

2:14:46 Thank you very much.

2:14:47 Awesome. Yeah, this has been a blast.

2:14:50 So, with all of that said, I'm gonna go ahead and end the recording now. So, thanks for being here.

2:14:56 All right. Thanks, man.

2:14:57 You

2:14:58 talk to later.