Designer Series: Samuel Bailey - Old Ones: Origins
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Transcript
Pickax FX's American Horror Story returns for an unrivaled 13th installment with the iconic horrors you love to fear and an allstar cast reprising fan favorite roles. Light your candles, draw your pentagrams, and prepare for a supreme surprise. FX's American Horror Story 13, now streaming on Hulu.
When fall comes back around, there's a sense of a reset. And new pieces from Lululemon's fall drop are an inspiration to push your goals and elevate your routines. As your calendar fills, easy to layer styles meet the demands of your day. And as you challenge yourself to try even more, versatile sets transition with you. The Lululemon fall lineup brings new levels of comfort and confidence. Whether you're starting something fresh or starting something over, check out the latest arrivals in store and on Lululemon.com. Now, hello and welcome to Rolling Dice and Taking Names. This is our special designer series where we have designers on to talk about games that we love, games that are coming out, games in the past, and we happen to have a guy on now who has games in the past that I love and a game coming out in the future, which I think I'm going to love. And that his name is Samuel Bailey, who used to work with a Fantasy Flight game. So y'all, he's he's had his name on a lot of different games that you may have heard of, including XCOM, Talman, Star Wars Imperial Assault, Relic, Mansions of Madness. did a game with another company called A Lawyer Up. Going back to Fantasy Flight, did Forbidden Stars and a game that we're going to be talking about tonight that's based on that game coming out is going to be Old Ones origins.
Sam, for the third time, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me again, Marty and and Tony.
I say the third time because All right, let's pull back the curtains. Earlier, Tony said, "I got a conflict. I can't meet tonight." No problem. I got it. We start recording. Tony Hops on. What? What are you looking at me for?
I never said I had a conflict.
Hold on. I thought you said you had a conflict.
I never said I had a conflict.
Uh, I have something on the calendar for tonight. I thought that was meaning that you couldn't meet for our interview tonight because it was some other thing on the calendar.
No, I have something on the calendar tonight. meaning this interview that we're doing so well with was Samuel Bailey and I'm like
by Sam.
Uh I know but I mean so if you go out to Board Game Geek and you look it up and see that long list that Marty read from which is amazing. First off, two amazing images of Sam there in that one that red uh suit dude. I don't know when that was sporting but you need to bring that back. I like that. [snorts]
Oh my gosh, this this is hilarious. And so the second take was we went for about 15 minutes until I realized I didn't restart the recording again after Tony joined. So we're back again. All right, Sam, you're going to hear some of the same stuff that we've already talked about. But to
why I'm excited to have you on is because there's a game in our past that we love that Tony and I played with a couple other friends. We were heavy into Starcraft. So, we got into Starcraft the board game and it was one of the early board games we got into, which was wild for us because we had never seen a box this big. And you told us in the second take that those were coffin boxes from FFG called the coffin box
and we loved that game. I mean, there was a lot going on. The the learning curve was pretty high, but it really
uh got us into wow thematic games. Absolutely loved it. So then uh in 2015 after Starcraft had been out have had been out of print for years because Fantasy Flight lost the license with Blizzard uh you came back and said all right let's kind of reimagine this game called Forbidden Stars which is in the Warhammer 40k universe. kind of the history of that was actually I got started on Forbidden Stars when I first joined Fantasy Flight
and that was actually like 2010. Uh James Niffen had been working on it. He had been given that that job and I was just working on like one expansion for Talisman at the time and was looking for more things to do. So I'm like, "Oh, what are you working on?" And he's like, "Oh, I'm working on this uh 40k thing." And I'm like, "Oh, I love 40k stuff." And so I just started kind of sounding ideas off of him and play testing with him. And when he went, I not good at combat systems. You want to do a combat system? And I said, "Sure." And that's when I kind of became the co-designers with him. So we worked on that for, you know, a good four four years, three four years before uh it came out. And then uh in our second recording, which we're recapping at this point, uh we talked about how the game came out, was a huge hit. I mean, a lot of people loved it. We're talking about amazing production, amazing miniatures, extremely thematic game, which obviously set itself up for uh expansions as in, you know, we only had four of the factions uh in the base game, and there are a lot of other factions of Warhammer 40k.
telling us unfortunately as you were working on those expansions, you got the word that oops, Fantasy Flight's not working with Games Workshop.
My job at Fantasy Fight was to mostly do expansions and since I'd worked on Forbidden Stars, I thought, well, there's no reason why I wouldn't be the one doing the expansions for Forbidden Stars. So, I was already etching out ideas. I was excited about doing some of my favorite factions like Nekrons and um those sort of things, Tyrannids. So, I was I had a bunch of ideas for that and then I got Yeah. got the word that it wasn't going to happen [snorts] and had to move on to other things, but it was always kind of rattling in my head about how popular the game was. And I remember I had left Fancy Flight. It had been a few years and I was looking for something else to to do. Um, and I was thinking about a way to kind of improve on Forbidden Stars with the order system. And I was driving across country moving, big old moving truck, middle of the night, just trying to stay awake.
Uh, and I kind of thought, oh, what if I kind of deconstruct the stack uh of orders and create kind of a new way of doing that? And then I was like, well, that's something to do. That's like a start. So, I posted on BGG. It was almost like seven years ago now. Uh, just Forbidden Stars Redux. Anyone anyone think this is a good idea? And there was a lot of traction and I got hit up by a lot of publishers. And that thread now is like 2,000 posts been going on for seven years. So, a lot of people excited. It's quite been quite a journey for sure.
Yeah. 2,000 posts. I think that's about the all of double how many posts we have in our board game guild BGG guild site here at Rolling Dice and that includes all of the 370ome ones where we announced the show. So that's pretty impressive, dude.
Yeah,
it's amazing.
Um, so when you talked about deconstructing, let's pull that thread. So what do you mean by uh with the orders? Now that's the one thing Marty
and I really enjoyed about from Starcraft Forbidden Stars. talk talk to us a little bit about that.
Well, the hidden order mechanic has a long and proud lineage starting with diplomacy, which you know, you would write down your orders secretly and then everyone would enact them together and that's how you betray people and say you're going to do XYZ. Um, kind of the stage of of planning your orders and then uh acting out your orders. And Christian Peterson loves diplomacy. I actually played it with him when I was at Fantasy Flight. Um, uh, everyone ganged up on him though. Uh, and then he kind of took that when he did the Game of Thrones board game and then there where there's hidden orders that you play down in that. Uh, and then that was what kind of led to Forbidden or to Starcraft which was then implemented in Forbidden Stars. In Forbidden Stars, each sector has a place where you put down all your orders and you stack them up and kind of a first in uh last out mechanic cuz as you put your order down, other people can put on top of that and you can get kind of locked out. Um but there was kind of an issue with that in that like the way that it worked. You would couldn't look to see what your orders were. So sometimes you would forget the the first and last out was very brain burn. um and easy to kind of mess up. Um and the person that was to your left had this extra power again this against you and that they could just always get to place the last order um except on the turns where they were
first, right? So it's like in a four-player game, three out of four of those those rounds, they could just cap off all your plans and ruin everything. Um and I even though that was part of you know the the excitement sometimes I think it created more frustration than it created strategic elements. So it's like well how do I preserve the strategic elements by reducing that hurdle of learning and that frustration point and that kind of imbalance that you can have with that person to your left. So I decided that a way to do it would be to deconstruct the stack where you still have a you know you're still going placing orders down that affect different regions. So you're still saying I'm doing this order here but instead of one stack you have five different slots. One in the center of each region and one on each corner. And so the one in the center means that it has to go in that region. You have to when you activate that order on the next phase, it has to be in that region. But if you're in the corners, it means that when you activate that, you can choose to go in any of the regions that it touches. So there's either like more more prominence, like more power in the fact that you're in the center. Like you have dibs, you're going to go first there, but if you're in the corners, you have more flexibility to adapt your strategy. It also creates this nice
thing of of seeing as people spread out, as they put the orders, what they're planning, and how you can try to react and kind of curb their influence. And that's what they're called in in Old One's Origins is you have your your different influences that you're using to manipulate uh things on the board and do actions.
Is it still first in last out? Sort of those ones on the corners
in in a way in that if it's in the center, that center one needs to resolve first. So you're you can't go
you can't do the ones in the corners. You can't activate them into the ones with the center until that center one is gone. So you can still slow people down. You can still kind of block them up or control them. You can still make mistakes, but there's a bit more flexibility in correcting those mistakes and adapting tactically to what other players do. Um there's still bluffing. There's still that sort of strategic layer that makes Forbidden Stars great, but relieving some of that those frustration points.
Do you still stack in the center or is it just one person goes in the center?
You don't. Yeah, you don't stack. Uh you just resolve in the center. So, if you're in the center, it allows you to resolve first. There is a a rule that if you would like to go into a region and another player is still in the center, that's when you can uh when you're resolving, you can kind of take your turn to put it underneath there to kind of wait your turn. But there's no like as you're placing them down, you can't stack them up. Yeah, this would all be easier with a with a visual representation I can show you, but
Oh, oh, no, no, no. Not on this show. We don't do these visual people have to Yeah. You know, they're creative here. They're thinking
theater of the mind as we call it in uh Yeah,
we have faces for radio.
Yes. But so it's it's one of those things um where when I was reading about this I was like okay if I'm putting it on the corners here and the one in the center kind of messes up my plan I can still also go to the other region.
Yep.
So I'm not completely locked out. And also to me that really adds to I mean in Starcraft and Forbidden you know there was that bluffing mechanic. What's he going to do there? Same thing Is he going to go to this region or is he not going to go to this region? And I saw where the boards were like laid out in a I may this been prototype a 2x4 uh type setup um eight tiles.
Yeah, it depends on the number of players. But yeah.
Okay. So if you go into the middle of the tile the then you'll go but what if you four corners are touching? Do you get four regions that you could go into?
You have four different options you could do. Yeah. So, so the some spaces are more valuable than others, but
you when you place down an or influence marker, it has to be touching a region where you have figures or touching a region where you already have an influence marker touching. So, if you want to invade a neighboring region and you have no units there, you need to place one in the corner first. So, it's uh an influence marker in the corner first. So, it's touching where you want to go. And then you can then place in the center or place on the edges there to direct there, which gives the chance for someone to react or they see, oh, you're trying to get your influence into my region. I'm going to place in the center to recruit some extra guys or do a counter invasion or or do something in reaction to that. Um, so there is kind of this I I I I kind of think of it as like supply lines in a way of, you know, I need to connect uh I can't just jump out and surprise uh instantly, but there's a lot going on, especially in a four-player game, like you can't protect every everything. Um, and there's a whole system where instead of having it just be a clockwise turn order where players, you know, take turns being first player, there's a whole system with schemes, which is something you play at the start of each round, which gives you special abilities and stuff, but also determines the initiative of play. So, you have a hand of these schemes. You can only play each scheme
once per game, but if you really want to go first, you can play a really a low initiative scheme and get that jump on people that way. Um, but you know, you've got to plan that out. It's not just a set kind of thing. So, there's a lot more choice and power in the hands of the player than I think in Forbidden Stars where there's was more random elements or more deterministic elements that were kind of outside the player's hands. We dove in probably quicker than what I was ready to because a lot of Well, no, this is great. I think it's all exciting, but for the audience, it's like, dude, I've never played Starcraft or Forbidden Stars, and you're talking about this other game. So, well, let's catch up to um how you know the game that we're talking about now, uh Old Ones Origins is where you're implementing these new ideas. Yeah,
this is with Chaosium.
Yes. Can you first get us to the point to how you got hooked up with them and then like a 30,000 No, let's let's change that. It probably makes more sense about 30,000 foot level. What is What is this game? Is this a Euro? Is it a dudes on a map? You know, what are people trying to do in this game?
It is a war game. So yes, dudes on the map, but in it in it you are uh eldrich beings at the dawn of creation battling over, you know, a fledgling reality. So you are leaving your seals um down onto the board and trying to break your opponent's seals, thus weakening their grasp of this reality so that in the end it's made in your image. Because in the Cthulhu mythos, uh, all of all of creation, I mean, all of reality is the dream of Aithoth, the uh the blood the blind idiot god uh who is just asleep and dreaming everything. And should he awaken, we all cease to exist. And so the [snorts] outer gods, they are playing music and dancing for him so that he will stay asleep and they can all continue to exist. So, uh, this is kind of the beginning of that dream, and it can still be shaped and manipulated by these Eldrich beings that you represent. So, that's kind of the thematic element of it.
So, we're going from a a sci-fi settings of Starcraft and Forbidden Stars to more of this. So, how did you land on this theme and then hook up with Chaosium?
Well, it has been a journey. As I said, I posted back in 2019 my interest in doing a Forbidden Stars uh Redux and had several publishers reach out and I picked one and I worked with them for three years. We went through two different two or three different versions. Um my my dream IP that I really wanted was Stargate, but they didn't they weren't didn't seem interested in that unfortunately. But we went through a few and did a bunch of testing, but unfortunately the contract ran out and um they weren't interested in renewing it because of some some issues they were going through um with their with their stuff. So, I went and looked for a different publisher and found uh another one uh quickly and they were really gung-ho about finding a big like video game IP license um for a while. There was even talk about getting the Starcraft uh the Starcraft license again um kind of bring it full circle. So there's I made a Starcraft version uh of [snorts] of this game at one point. Um but uh they weren't able to really secure a big IP and I was like, "Hey, I'm a narrative designer, too. I can make my own IP." So they were like, "Okay, let's do that."
And I pretty much created uh my own IP from scratch. Did all the different factions uh backstory. had quotes on every card uh and had this whole prototype that I I play tested a bunch, but three years had passed and they hadn't really moved forward on any sort of production level. Like there was no art or anything like that. I'm like, "Hey, what's what's going on there?" Um and they kind of were dragging their feet. I'm like, "Hey, our contract's going to be ended." And then during this time, Chaosium reached out and was like, "Hey, do you have any games that you know, I like your stuff. Do you have any games you might want to publish with us?" And I'm like, "Well, I might have this game coming up. It might be free if you're interested." And they're like, "Yeah, we're definitely interested in that." And I'm like, "Well, if I go to you, will you be able to start right away?
Like, I don't want to I' I've just gone through two publishers, three years, like six years now. I people waiting on this and I feel bad with all these fans that have been waiting for this reimplementation. And I expected it to be 3 years, you know, 3 years after I I posted for it to come out. And now it's been [snorts] 6 years, I mean 8 years now. Uh, but Casium's like, "Yeah, let's pull the trigger. Let's do it." And they've been really great on helping with that. Like as soon as we signed a contract, uh, I was working with their dev team almost weekly, having meetings, play testing, developing things, um, starting on art and and miniatures and everything like that. So, um, now we've got really quite quickly a game ready to go, um, with Game Found in September.
So, [snorts] [sighs] fingers crossed on that one.
And the nice thing is you can't lose this IP.
Yeah. Yeah, that's uh, yeah, not going to get rug pulled by it. Um, I was worried like when they offered the IP, I'm like, this could work, but I don't want Earth. I don't want 1920s. I don't want any humans. Like, let's do something new and imaginative because there's so many Cthulhu games out there, but they kind of are this kind of very similar feel of I'm an investigator and bootleggers and uh ancient relics. And it's like I want I want Cthulhu before he falls into the sea, you know, when he's still buff and powerful, you know? I want a Hoster when he's still ruling over Carcosa before he's, you know, just a a shattered mad shell of what he once was. Um, you know, I want this different kind of setting and this different feel. And they were like, yeah, that's we're this cool of us. So that's why we have what we have.
So Sam, was there enough material for you to build this prefall in the ocean thing? I don't know a lot from the Cthulhu world. That's Marty.
So did you have to write some of your own? You talked about developing your own IP.
Well, there there is a of course a lot of material out there for the Cthulhu mythos and a fair amount of is in public domain. There are some that is not that's that is under license like some of the later writers that wrote under that like can't use their material uh directly. Um but Chaosium is like the mythos is so big. There's all these monsters outside of time. Like the stuff that you encounter in the mythos is just what is encountered by a few, you know, people on Earth during this this short period of time and, you know, the scraps and fragments from from ancient eras before then. So, Lovecraft always intended things to be bigger and all this stuff going on. And that's why he was very welcoming of other authors writing in his universe and and incorporating these these gods and all this sort of stuff. So I don't think he ever wanted it just to be here's the stuff I wrote. This is the only stuff that's canon. Like he was very flexible with that. And Chaosium is like yeah if you need to make up some stuff or change some things like that's that's all right because you know how many how many names do these gods have? how many creatures are out in the infinite universe dreamed up by Azithoth, you know, so there's plenty of flexibility there. Um, so as I say, lots lots of stuff to draw from.
Like most of the cards that I've created all come from specific quotes from Love's Craft's writing. like I really dove into those for inspiration um both with like names and flavor and mechanics um and all sorts of things cuz I want to stay as true to uh any IP that I work on as possible. But as long as there's some flexibility for for game mechanics and that sort of thing. uh which means that like this version did also see a lot of revision from the previous version that I had um with the the previous publisher that is more hard sci-fi that was in my own IP which is still you know is still there for one day. I hope I hope that I can find a publisher to make that that version but um with this version is is my priority right now. So I think there's a lot there. There's a lot of expansions that have already been, you know, started uh working on. So, you know, I'm happy to or I'll be excited for people to see everything that we have planned out for the campaign and beyond.
And uh Chaos, for those who don't know, has the Ka Cthulhu RPG. So, they have a plethora of information uh built in this universe. Were you able to uh leverage like they have a lot of established art and everything of how the different elder gods look like. Were you able to leverage some of that for this game?
We talked about it, but we decided that we wanted to kind of take our own approach and do all new art for this um rather than just draw from some of the other stuff. Um, like there's there is some great art in the Call of Cthulhu, but a lot of it is kind of earthbound as it were. Like it is kind of mixed. There's not a lot of cosmic stuff. Uh, cuz it's very, you know, Kthu is very earth ccentric. So, um, we decided to kind of just do it from our own and it allows us to have our own aesthetic and our own look and kind of a coherent art vision as it were. So,
and you had mentioned um so now now we can dive more into the game. So, you mentioned about these influence tokens that are placed on the board. And I'm looking at a picture of the board right now and y'all y'all can go out to like BG and look and you can also go to game found uh which is you can follow this uh project uh right now if you want to.
Uh so the board is made up of a bunch of square tiles which is familiar or feels like a Forbidden Stars because that was the same way Starcraft was like interlocking different weird shaped tiles. Yeah.
And uh so you talked about these influence tokens and you can clearly see on the board where they're going to go, the center of the corners and stuff. And what do those do? I mean, when you take you put one of those down, what are the different actions you're going to be able to take? And I think you said you can take you place two per person per round.
There's f you play five down per round.
Oh, okay. Okay.
Yeah. And the four different actions, four different influences are ascension, which is allows you to buy upgrades. There is conjuration, which allows you to summon uh units onto the board and build structures. There is uh domination which is gathering resources and also breaking uh seals which is how you win the game is by breaking your opponent's seals. And then there is wait did I do invasion and invasion is what allows you to move your guys around and start conflicts. So, four pretty basic kind of actions, but it's how you weave those in. Um, how you plan those, you know, how your plan unfolds and or doesn't unfold, uh, creates a lot of depth there.
There was, uh, in the previous games, there was always one, uh, back then order that was like a special order, like a gold order, which was a little bit better version. Do you have that sort of concept here? There's actually two kind of splits off that. In Starcraft, you would upgrade your orders to be the golden orders, which would have a special capability when you activated them. In Forbidden Stars, we move those onto cards where we had the order upgrades that you would buy. And this has influence upgrades, which are actually double-sided cards uh for each order. So, there's one card for each influence, and they're double-sided. So, you have to choose which upgrade you are taking. for. So when you play again, you might try out a new different capability. And so there's eight different options uh two for each uh different influence. But each faction also has what is called an empowered uh empowered influence. And an empowered influence allows you to activate your avatar ability. So there is each faction. So you have like Cthulhu, but then there is avatar for Cthulhu, which gives you a set of of other cards that you add. So it gives you unique conflict cards, unique scheme cards, but also gives you a specific ability for your uh avatar. And you can wake up your avatar and put them on the board, and they all act, you know, as a very powerful unit.
In the base game, there's only one avatar per faction, but there'll be more avatars down the line. So, even if you're have your favorite faction, you'll be able to customize how you play that faction uh multiple times. So, it kind of stems from idea that I wanted to do with Forbidden Stars back in the day cuz uh Fantasy Flight had a print ondemand factory where we could just make our own cards and sell them. And we did a lot of little expansions that were packs of cards. They just had the the quality was different. So, it's like you have to be self-contained with these pack of cards. And I was thinking, well, if you have space marines, like in the in Forbidden Stars, they're ultramarines, but like why couldn't you get a pack of cards that are Space Wolves, which would then be like replace the combat deck, replace your event deck, but you would still use the same miniatures, but like hey, now I'm Space Wolves. So, I was always looking a way to add kind of this modular change that didn't require you to buy a whole new faction with all new plastic and everything, but still allow you to play like I really like Cthulhu. Now, there's different ways I can switch that up. So, that um uh that empowered ability is what allows you to activate your avatar ability or your faction ability is with that. So you can kind of choose when you want to do that um and kind of surprise people that way. And it's a different one thematically. It's a different one per faction. Like Cthulhu's empowered is evasion where Shub's empowered is conjuration and Hosters's empowered is
um domination and Yog's empowered is ascension. So they all have different asymmetry there as well. So, and maybe Marty, I apologize if I'm jumping because some of the things that I remember is the combat. Are we rolling dice here? What are we doing when we're invading? And I also the the tech trees. I I go back to the Starcraft and how you know I'm used to Starcraft tech trees. Speak to that if you don't mind.
Yeah. So, there's two kind of well, let's see. There's four different ways of upgrading uh various things. So the first is you can upgrade your units. Each unit has a special ability and if you buy the upgrade for that now that uh special ability is unlocked. Um one example of that is shub has their spawn which are these zero zero zero units with no stats or just a body on the ground but you get two of them whenever you summon one of them. You can imagine that you kind of run out of that plastic pretty fast. But if you get the upgrade, unending numbers, it says you can have any number of spawn, use the special spawn tokens instead. So you buy that upgrade and now you can just fill the board up with with with spawn. Truly unending numbers.
[snorts] Um, but each unit has their own special ability there. Uh then actually kind of inspired by Starcraft and the Starcraft version that I did of the Redux um is structure upgrades. So you know like how Starcraft had, you know, you have your different structures on your your board and you could upgrade those, you know, just like a real-time strategy game. So you can upgrade your structures. They're the same for every faction, but it's like I want to get a library, which helps me reduce the cost of upgrades, or I want to get a portal, which allows me to summon more units when I do conjuration, or the really fancy stuff like once you get your Acropolis, which is your big big building as opposed to an outpost, which are your small buildings. There's things like the palace, which allows you to always count one area in the region as as allied. So, even if someone's sitting and camping on a a victory point, you can go, "Nope, I I'm I got a big palace here. I'm gonna claim that as mine, no matter if you're there or not."
[snorts] Um, kind of thing. So, there's a lot of, you know, cool things you can do with that. Um, and then you have upgrading your influences, which I already talked about. And last of all, there's upgrading your conflict deck. So, there's your conflict deck are cards that you play during conflict. Uh you start the game with six cards in your deck. Uh one copy of each. Um there's five for your faction and then you get one starter card for your avatar. Then your upgrades. There's three tiers of upgrades. Uh there's two of two of each tier for your faction and then one for each tier for your avatar. So again, if you switch avatars, you would switch those off. And they kind of are one uh cards that focus on whatever your avatar's strategy is and what they're good at there. So when you buy an upgrade for your conflict deck, you pick a card, you buy the one copy of it, and then you just shuffle it into your deck.
So as you upgrade your deck, it kind of dilutes it a bit. So you got to be risky. There are a few effects that allow you to to trim your deck down a little bit. Um, but it's a different than Forbidden Stars, which just had the swapping out of stuff. But the swapping out,
okay,
I found uh didn't like was sometimes confusing for people or would take a while because people were trying to decide like what what they're going to do.
Starcraft uh battling is done with cards.
Yeah.
Forbidden Stars, you had cards and D6s. And now looking at the board here, I guess it's cards in D8s.
And D8s. Yep. It is similar to the forbidden stars combat. I tried to streamline it a bit. Um, make it still impactful but not uh take as long like not as many steps but still have that strategic element of you roll the dice and then you've got to play with those numbers with cards and kind of manipulate how that works. So [snorts] there's also another twist in in Old One's Origins in that multiple people can be engaged in a conflict at the same time. [snorts]
Oh,
so you can exist on the same plan, same area as someone else without immediately having a conflict. Um there's actually a special ability that some units have that are they're subtle units which allow them to be conjured directly summoned directly into um enemy and conflicted areas. So you kind of have like your spies and your infiltrators that kind of just pop up. But you don't trigger a conflict unless someone does an invasion resolves an invasion token there. There's also special areas called nexus areas which if there's a conflict there um everyone all players can choose to be involved even if they don't have figures there because it's you know you're these big Eldrich gods you're throwing your your your powers and your your magic and your influence through it even if you don't have units there which creates some strategic elements of like well I really don't want you to win because you're going to get a token you're going to get a victory point out of this so I'm going to throw in on the side of this person a little there's some some politicking there about who who's going to be helping and a way to kind of shoehorn your your foot in because some people have cards that allow them to warp units into uh the conflict or summon units directly into the conflict. So you might not have been in that area but by the end of the conflict there you are. Um so
a lot of cool ways to influence that uh the outcome of those conflicts. Um, but you do, uh, start by rolling dice. Um, and then you have your hand of cards and then you'll end up playing two cards down, um, doing their conflict effect. And then there is a phase where you can cast spells. So, and you've got a spell on each of your cards and you get to spend your power um, either from the results you got on the dice or by exhausting your units to contribute to the the ma the spell, the ritual that's happening.
[snorts]
And then you cast those spells and then you resolve damage. And then if anyone's left over, uh, you add fractures to that area. And fractures are like reality is breaking apart because these gods are battling it out. And in future conflicts, at the start of future conflicts, everyone takes bonus damage equal to the amount of fractures that are there. So the more battles that happen in an area, the more dangerous that area becomes. So there's never like a static like oh nothing happened even in this. So even if you have a conflict where no one dies, you've just made that area much more dangerous for future conflicts and then people start really dying as the game escalates.
So you said you earn victory points. Is it a certain victory point threshold that must be met to win the game?
Yeah, and you actually have flexibility on how long you would like the game to last. There's a a short, medium, long, and epic game length. And that determine that's determined by or that determines how many victory points you need to win, but also determines how many schemes you end up playing with. So schemes are kind of divided up into your basic schemes, which are four basic schemes for each faction. And then from your avatar, you'll get two if you're playing the medium game, two two more if you're playing the long game, and then two epic schemes if you're playing the epic for a total of 10. So, since you can only use each scheme once, that's also a turn clock because once you've run out of schemes, game the the game then finishes and whoever has the most victory points wins.
So, there's a built-in clock, too. That's pretty cool. I like that. So, it's it's a chase for one thing, but if somebody's really slow, the the game's going to end anyway.
And and there is that the tie breaker is based on how many of your seals are still on the board. So, if there's a tiebreaker, if two players are tied for how many um how many are on the board or how many victory points they have, if and then they are tied with how many they have left on the board, seals that are left on the board, uh then Aiththoth wakes up and everyone loses. So, um, you don't want that to happen, but it actually gives an avenue for
instead of being a kingmaker, if you are behind, if you're losing and you don't think you can catch up, you can instead play a foil for a tie and make it so everyone loses rather than the kingmaking problem.
I actually like that. That's pretty cool and dramatic, too.
And actually, that's a way to consider yourself a winner. Well, I was planning for us all to lose, so I'm the winner. We're all when everyone's a loser, then you know who's really the winner. And I and I've completed my objective which was to wake up Asithop.
So is there any So are there any other uh changes that you'd like to bring to the forefront between Starcraft or Forbidden to where we are now that people might be interested in? And my followup to that is I know you were at Gen Con. I'm sure you had a lot of people come by and um demo. Um, yeah. I mean, I gave we didn't play actually any games, but I did explain kind of what the gist of it was and go over quite a few of the changes because a lot of people were fans of Forbidden Stars and they came and got their box or rule book signed and then, you know, asked about the game.
Nice. That's awesome.
I don't think there's a mechanic at all from Forbidden Stars that wasn't, you know, tweaked or changed or improved upon. That's why it's a it's a reimagining of Forbidden Stars. I wanted to feel like it, but I didn't want it to be the same game. This is not a reskin. This isn't just, you know, oh, we'll just slap this new IP onto this game. It is a different game, but I think it's a better game. Not that Forbidden Stars wasn't a great game, but it's, you know, learned lessons from it, uh, and be able to improve on things that were there and just refine other things. Um, so I hope that people still really enjoy the experience and can actually get a hold of it. I got a plane in the background, so let that go by. [snorts] Looking at the board, I see uh you have these uh basically cardboard pieces that uh segregate like a couple different boards, and I remember that from Forbidden Stars. You had these like zones, these cardboard uh I can't remember what they were.
Oh, you're talking about the warp storms.
Warp Storms.
Yeah, the warp storms. I remember that.
You have something is that you have something like that here because it looks like it.
These are riffs in time and space. Uh they they do serve a similar purpose as being a wall or a barrier that does move around um from turn to turn. Um you have more a little bit more control over that in the fact that it's determined by what scheme you play at the start. So in Forbidden Stars it was kind of based on your events which were more random about what events happened. Um, but the event system kind of became the scheme system which you have a lot more control over and planning your strategy. Um, and then moving the storms around or the rifts around. The rifts also have a additional mechanic that after you move your rift, you have to add a new seal to the board touching one of the two regions that the rift is on. So, as play continues, you actually put out more potential victory points for your opponents.
um and thus escalate the game so there's more options. So there's instead of like in Forbidden Stars where there becomes less and less options to get points, there becomes more options to get points as the game progresses and you are competing with other players over the juiciest, easiest to get ones. Because in Forbidden Stars, you're just going around and collecting your tokens. And often you get to a player that's like, "Well, this person's one point away from winning and I'm the only one. sitting on the one token they need and now I have to play defense while everyone else can just, you know, go after their victory points and I'm kind of stuck with this duty. And this kind of opens that up a bit more where there's a lot more options about what to go after and uh but you're competing with other players over those tokens. But you want to protect your own tokens because that is the tiebreaker. Um, and so there's kind of a trade-off of like how much do you protect, how much do you go on offensive, but it does does slant more in the offensive because we don't really want turtling to be a a super viable strategy. It's like it's more like a tactical choice of like I'm going to defend in these particular circumstances, but not I'm always going to play the the super defensive turtler and not advance the game at all because that just kind of gets less exciting for everyone else. But there's still factions that are more more defensive than others for sure. And there's many ways where you can kind of play defensively, but you always need to be
hustling to try to get the victory points of your own and and make stuff happen. So,
and while you're battling, you're creating fractures, creating more damage, making him more challenging. Very nice.
That's a good change because I remember situations where you're right. Great. You guys can go collect all your tokens, but I got to defend over here because we don't want this guy to win. So, I think that that is a really brilliant change. You going back to the combat. Um,
do you find that this combat is more fluid here than in Forbidden Stars? cuz I also remember a situation in Forbidden Stars where if you weren't involved in the combat, you were just kind of watching them go through their their thing.
Yeah. I mean, I always liked watching the combat happen and and and some people do, but it it it could get a little long. It really depended also like on the player because there is a lot of options and things to think about and you know, you don't know what your opponent's going to do. So, there's a lot of you know, could get kind of brain burning here. But, um, so there's less rounds in Forbidden Stars. There's three rounds, three cards you play down and you resolve damage between each round here. You only resolve damage once and there's two cards. Um, so that does speed up things a little bit. Uh, there's less there's one less decision point there, but it's still plenty of strategy and chance to change what's happening. Um, there also is the fact that multiple players can be involved in the conflict, especially with those nexus areas. So you have less combats that are taking a while that only two people are involved in. You have more of them that everyone gets to be involved in. And um because my goal was to reduce the feeling of long cuz when you're in a game, you know, it's going to be this big robust game. It doesn't matter if something actually takes a long time so much. Usually with these sort of things, it's you just don't want it feeling like it takes a long time. You don't want to have those long down times. So that was my main goal was just to cut down on those feeling of downtimes. Another mechanic that I have to help with that is surrendering. That if you are attacked and you have one unit, you can just surrender, remove your figure from
the board and get one resource of your choice and the other person comes in with no conflict. So it it makes it so that those really like, oh, we know what's going to happen here because you've come in with like five big units and I have one like starter guy and then you [snorts] have to play it all out for like no effect. It just goes, hey, you can look at that and go, well, that's that's what's going to happen. I'm just removing my guy and we're going to avoid that whole thing. So that also helps cut down on uh time and and things dragging out a bit.
Let's get down to some nitty-gritty about the game itself. How many people does it play? And you said there were different var lengths of game. What can the lengths of game be?
It's two to four players though we are having someone look into some solo options. I say that in like a short game. It's [snorts] maybe like 45 minutes per person. Uh media games like an hour per person. Uh long game like an hour and a half. But like maybe two hours per person for the epic game.
Tony's eyes are getting big. It's like, oh my gosh,
8 hours. Wow.
What? Two hours per person.
Two hours per person. Four people. You know, math is hard. Eight.
Yeah.
Wow. That's huge.
But I mean, that's like Forbidden Stars could sometimes take that long. Um,
yeah, for Starcraft for sure could.
Yeah. But here you have the choice. It's like, do we have an evening? Let's play, you know, a medium game. Do we have the whole day? we can play that epic game and it's kind of putting in the hands of the players rather than it being oh let's like forbidden stars sometimes it's like oh someone grabbed those victory points quick like oh that took two hours and sometimes yeah you're stuck there for all eight you know the whole eight rounds and it's it gets uh you're like I did not I did not sign up for this
I know that feeling
so yeah I it's it's funny so I haven't played Forbidden Stars in many many many years and and hearing you talk about it it brings back all these great experiences I had with that game because it is it is a war game so it is a lot of player interaction but is also extremely tactical and there's a lot of strategy of putting down uh these influences now and I now that I see the board and what you're talking about putting them in the in the five corners and stuff I I really like that because yes you're 100% correct there were times when somebody just capped your stack and it's like
yeah just sat on it the whole turn and you're Yeah.
Yeah. Which is really boring, too. So, I think this is going to be a sweet change. I I can't wait to see how that plays.
Many times now with both play testers and kind of explaining the game and talking with people, I've had people who are big fans of Ridden Stars and they're like, "Better not touch that order system. That's my favorite thing." And then I explain, you know, the new system and they're like, "Yeah, this is better. We like this."
So, I I don't think I've had one person that's like played it that that liked the that like was a fan of Forbidden Stars that went I prefer the old system. So, I think it's a big win and it's the one of the first things I kind of thought of and the thing that I really haven't changed through all the different uh versions. So, it's definitely the kind of the foundation of this whole reimagining. The game's pretty much done. There'll still of course be some refinement and there's all the production that needs to go, but I mean like as you see from the examples like we have the minis, we're we're finishing up the art. So the it shouldn't be like this huge drawn out process once the campaign is finished to get that into players hands. So I hope to do it as quickly as possible. Um so we're looking at um hopefully 2027 release. um third fourth quarter. So,
okay. So, so about a year out basically.
It's a big it's a big game and there's always always issues with production and then you know you got to put on a boat and wait all that time. But, um it's it's going to be I mean, yeah, you have some of these campaigns where they pretty much fund the development of the game and like, "Oh, look at this stuff." And then they're like, "Yeah, we actually redesigned the whole thing." So, four years later, you you show up, a mystery box shows up at your doorstep and you're like, "What's this?" And that's if you're lucky and actually comes out.
Um, is there going to be a deluxe version, a base version? Do you know what's going to be in the
Oh, I mean I I'm only uh an adviser of the campaign about like all that marketing stuff and of course working on the game and all the expansion stuff, but I'll leave that for Chaosium to to uh to reveal in the course of the campaign. I don't want to step on any toes there about all that. But you can expect if you've ever done a a crowdfunding campaign with a big minis game, you know how it kind of unfolds and what [snorts] to kind of expect there. So,
well, I know I know that I'm going to want to be all in on this because I mean, this is kind of like full this is kind of like full circle for me. Like I said, Starcraft is one of the first games I played
and before I die to wrap it up with a similar type game, you know, almost well, it will be it'll be 20 years after Starcraft that this looks like to be uh released. And so that would put a nice little bow on this type of mechanism that started out with Cory Kitia. Then you picked it up with Forbidden Stars and it continued progressing it from there.
Yeah. I mean I um I played Starcraft way back in the day like uh and played a lot of Fantasy Flight games and would check their website every day for whatever you know new game might get released. And so it was kind of a dream come true to work there for for the few years that I did. So, and that kind of launched my career and led uh led to this game. So, which is kind of my Yeah, definitely nine years in the works now almost through all the different versions.
I was going to say for your production, I mean, you've been in development for a while, so that's fair to say we're done. So, let's now get this thing in the hands of the game players who have been doing this thread forever.
Yeah. And I mean, yeah. Uh, I would like to make some money off of all this work, too.
Uh, and and
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours like put into this. Yeah.
Mhm. Yeah,
you did. Absolutely.
So, I do have a quick question. When I'm on your BG's things, so another thing we didn't mention is when Marty and I also got this podcast started, one of our favorite games of all time, FFG, was Android Network. And according to your list, you designed two expansions. Um, I was I helped with that. Yeah. I uh was involved in creating quite a few cards um for some of the different sets. Um and I'm good friends with the designer uh Lucas Litzinger. Um actually I went and played uh Magic with him last weekend because he's now in Seattle. So he he's working on Lurana after he left there. So
um yeah, I did a bunch of play testing, a lot of work. I my mom is in the game. Uh her her name is in there cuz I I when I first started working at Fantasy Flight, I played Netrunner for the first time. It had just come out and I'm like, "This is a great game." And Lucas's like, "Yeah, there's this slush file where if you have ideas, just like anyone could put ideas in there." And I didn't have anything to do. I just started working there. I didn't really know anyone. And I remember like staying late after that day and I wrote like a hundred different cards in there with like placeholder names that were just like family member, you know, first middle names and uh some of those got grabbed and he didn't bother changing the name. So
that's awesome. That's awesome.
Yeah. So they're they're in there. Yeah. I I was a big fan of NBN so I I created a lot of NBN cards that ended up getting implemented.
Oh,
okay.
Oh, yeah. Here we go.
Oh, there you go. He's got MBN coffee mug, y'all.
Yeah, MBN coffee mug. There was a whole a whole set of these that got made back then, and I was able to snag one of them. So, this is my one of my my pride and joys there.
As it should be. That was such an amazing game. And so, now that uh this guy is hopefully going to be put to to bed for you, uh what's next? Is it just working on expansions for this or you got other games you're working on? I have another game that I'm working on with a publisher called uh um Seely Unsealy Dreamw Weavers, which you are fa creatures manipulating the dreams of mortals for power and influence. Um which is just this a card drafting uh type game. And I have hopefully some more expansions for Lawyer Up uh that will come out down the line with Rockmaner Games. I have another game with Rockmaner Games that's a city deconstruction game um where you are building a a colony together while it is being attacked by by aliens and being destroyed at the same time. you've got to like uh balance that, defend your parts while you watch your your friends parts get destroyed by by attackers. Um and then I have, you know, the previous iteration uh the more hard sci sci-fi version of um the reimagining from stars that is in my own IP that I would like to find a publisher for one day. And I also have I don't know like 10 15 full prototypes made that are that I've tried to market around and plenty of more fledgling ideas. So there's a
lot a lot that I would love to uh to get made. But making board games is a long and arduous pro uh process.
All right. If people want to find you or talk with you anything, are you on social media anywhere or
not too much anymore? social media is a little bit of a cancer. So, uh, but I am on board gamegeeek. I'm active with the threads. There is a, uh, if you go to the forbidden stars thread or or the old ones origins, there is a link to a discord where we're doing play testing still for Old Ones Origins. So, happy to have people join that. when the when the game found campaign launches. This isn't 100% for sure, but I would like to give access to a tabletop simulator version of any backer for the game so they can play it um you know digitally beforehand um and continue to get feedback, right? cuz it's you got this big asymmetrical uh game and I always like interacting with play testers and getting their feedback and you know I'm I'm just one person and though I think the game is is pretty well balanced and I've played it uh close to 200 times now uh with a bunch of different people there's always more feedback to give and to get. So
yeah, I mean we've seen this, you know, where test after test after test, but somebody somewhere figures out that one little
thing that never showed up. Not that the designers intended it. It's just wow, how did how did that happen? So excellent.
Yeah, I remember working on I I I've always loved interacting with play testers and working with them uh from for Fantasy Flight Times. We had forums there and I was would always interact with all my play testers quite a bit. I I think I had the most po most po posts of anyone in Fantasy Flight on the on our play test forums. Um, and there was one group of play testers that were they were both one of them was like a math professor. There was the Italian couple and one was a math professor and it was for Elder Sign and they're like, "We've never lost a game of Elder Sign." And I'm like, "Okay, well, like I'll try to give some difficulty here and and challenge you." And then they send me a list of all the mathematical probabilities of every single adventure card in in the expansion about like what your probability of succeeding is based on like what items you have like this whole spreadsheet. And I'm like thank you. This is quite valuable like and you know caught a few outliers and stuff but they were like yeah actually it's pretty you know besides these outliers it's pretty well balanced. And I'm like yeah I don't [snorts] I I'm more I I mean I design a lot through through feel. Like I definitely do like a a basis of of math and like you know figuring out different probabilities and of course um you know how many resources each thing belongs to or what the stat levels are and all that sort of stuff. But with these big asymmetrical games with a wide variety of effect, you can't just rely on the math. Um, you've got to like kind
of feel it out from there. And and sometimes things are mathemat mathematically balanced, but they don't feel good. And you got to change it based on that, right? Like it's like this. Yeah, this is balanced, but statistically, but it does not feel good for the the person you're playing against or the person you're not playing against. And so, you still got to play that. But it was nice to have people who have a different skill set uh at an advanced level contribute and make the game better.
So this is Ka Cthulhu old ones origins y'all. We're going to have a link to the campaign uh somewhere in the show notes. So just go and find it there. Right now there's over 12,000 people following this. So a lot of people are interested in this. In fact, if you follow right now and you back, you'll get a free gift. you got this really cool miniature uh that you'll get. So, at least go give a follow to have a chance to uh get that miniature.
It's to it's to uh creatures battling it out. There'll be like two different plastic colors and it's to mark where a conflict's happening. So, if like a lot of units are in an area, you can like remove those units to kind of line them up as you do the conflict, but you can put that marker there to say that's where the fight's happening.
Oh, it's it's not even for looks. It actually has a purpose in that.
It actually has a purpose. Sam, thank you so much. Uh, I cannot wait to to get into this game. I'm now kind of antsy. I want to pull Forbidden Stars off the shelf and kind of replay it to get that feel for it again. The changes you've made sound great. And uh, I know I think this is going to be really successful. If the Tony said the number of people who was responded to that one thread has any interest in this and then this is going to be this is going to be a big deal. So
yeah, thank you so much for having me. It was great talking and going through the process.
So, Marty, you want to go for take number four or we
No, no, I think we're good. I think we're good. I think we're an hour in. As long as everything audio-wise came out at the end, I think we're going to be all right.
And if uh yeah, if you go over and there's some stuff that's that's off, I'm fine doing uh some pickups. So,
well, listen, use a professional word doing pickups. Bring them back into the studio for pickup lines. That's nice.
Nice.
Wow. Okay. Well, of no fractures in the space continuum where we were good for a while as a nar narrow designer and creative director and stuff. So, I did like uh voice lines and did like voice line directing and stuff like that. So, I've done I done some of the audio audio things.
Awesome. All right. Well, Sam, thank you once again. Y Thank you.