Tales of Ulos - First graphic novel for the universe of Ulos, and Gulpax's Secret

[Music] hi everyone it's Stella from people University I'm very excited today to have Maki with me hello Mark hello Stella and thanks for having me on your pleasure on the video thank you so much for coming over so Mark is from gov Studios now some of you may or may not know that I am part of gov Studios so yeah yes one of the three owners so yeah so we have he role play Adventures now we're going to talk about the new expansion that's coming up Gold packs is secret yeah and pretty exciting Kickstarter came back very very launching on the first of November yes and there's another reason why you're here well there is not just because you're excited about this campaign but because we are actually involved in bringing up bringing out the comic books comic books I should say graphic novels graphic novels that's right we have goth Studios have produced a role player themed graphic novel just expanding on some of the backstories of some of the major characters that you've grown to know and love when you've played the board game and the expansions for role play Adventures on The Well of ulos ah so what I'll do today I will Circle back to the comic little graphic novel but first i'm going to introduce you very special guest from Thunder Works games yes hi Keith how you going hey thanks for having me thank you for being here so Keith is from Thunder Works games and very excited to share what's in the expansion right yeah so obviously uh role player Adventures has has been out for a while people really been enjoying it and in in the background we've been Turning Away working on uh the the next expansion so gopex's secret is the name of the expansion it takes place uh it's kind of a prequel to the original game so it takes place actually 2 000 years before the events of uh the roleplay Adventures base game and uh and that is at the time of the Cartographer so if you're familiar with our series of games about uh you know making fantasy maps called cartographers a bunch of the the characters from those games are kind of part of the stories now the gopex's secret is a seven Adventure campaign uh you do require the base game to play but um it's got seven new story books and seven new maps and it's got all kinds of brand new cards you know new title cards new rare cards um new enemies to fight uh so it's a a really fun story and um you know we're excited to bring out kind of the next campaign for the series The the piece the that I'm most excited about so the kind of people say okay it's a new story that's cool but like what else is new so in the new expansion we're doing uh we're giving all the players uh professions so not only are you a Minotaur you know Barbarian uh that has all these great skills and stuff you can also uh as as you play through the game you will you'll have to pick a a profession so that might be something like a minor or a jewel crafter or an animal tamer and you get to have kind of and you'll get a special ability associated with that profession and you get all these cool kind of um uh kind of kind of a quest that's just for you opposed to kind of the group's quest uh so that's that's like the the the piece that I'm super excited about and and play testers have been really really loving that part of the new expansion that sounds so cool I'm just sharing with everyone as well go back go back to secret rulebook here yeah we're looking at the rule book it's a very small rule book because you know if you know how to play role player Adventures it's very easy to jump into the new expansion there's like very few small rules changes or adjustments um and you know as you know like role player Adventures is designed so that like the book is kind of telling you how to play as you play it a lot of the time so yeah yeah exactly right especially it's not a rule uh you know once you know how to play you're kind of you're in you know and so if you're familiar with the base game um jumping into the expansion is super easy excellent there's a new mechanic though Keith with the professions is that going to be hard for players to learn no so um that's going to be since there's you know we don't like to we like to avoid spoilers at all costs on these kind of projects so all that stuff and on how to use them um and what they are they're going to be on cars that you're going to reveal they're going to be in the storybook you know we often um we give you little tips on like you know hey if you're the blacksmith you might want to consider doing this during advancement or communicating with your team in this way to kind of maximize the use of your profession so not only we kind of give you cars that tell you what your abilities are but we also kind of give you some tips on how maybe to best use them uh in the game and there's also I'm just looking at the rulebook here that's resting as well right so in role player Adventures you know the game came out and you know over the first couple months we started to get some uh some feedback about um uh Gamers who really wanted to have a more have a harder challenge when they were playing the game so we released kind of a 2.0 version of the rules that um adjusted a few things uh adjusting resting changed um and then we added some more uh some things in regards to the difficulty level that it's called the legendary difficulty level and so those came out as kind of a 2.0 digital only rulebook um and so we with the new expansion we kind of Incorporated all those rules into the the goal packs rulebook so um you know so in case you missed the update or you know just won a printed version of those rules uh they're included in the Gold packs rule book right right so just in case if you're not too familiar with the base game I'll link our quick how to play video in the description so you can get yourself familiarized with how the base game works and then yeah this is the expansion and this is the actually the second expansion because the first expansion we got it right here as well right yeah so the first expansion as you're going to show is called nephras's judgment so the two expansions work very different the the one that you're holding not Francis judgment that one is incorporated into the base game when you start playing a campaign so either play a campaign with or without nephro's judgment um and it's kind of weaves uh stories into the core storyline of the what we call the blizzard wall campaign the base game um the new expansion gold Pack's secret is um you know it's it's Standalone so it doesn't it doesn't use uh nephras's secret um I'm sorry net Frost's judgment though if you have a nephron's judgment you'll get like a few little uh bonuses along the way um but if you don't have the nephras when I when you're playing through the gopax's secret campaign um but if you don't have it uh the nephrous Judgment campaign is not required to play Go packs um and we uh we've got some some backup options for folks who don't have enough for us but then go back you need the best game it's for the widest variety of experience when playing golf X it's nice to have both for sure yeah okay right are we continuing our characters on from the base game Keith you are not so um the characters from the base game they've kind of they've leveled up quite a bit they're super powerful now we're jumping back in time we're gonna have to build uh we're gonna have new characters so there's gonna be um I think there's 18 addition new pre-generated characters that you that you're gonna get in go packs a secret and you can use any of the pre-generated characters from the base game in gold price in secret or you can import like you can with the base game you can import any character from role player uh you know the next question that's that's my favorite part yeah yeah go ahead sorry interconnected the way the way you've connected all the board games together key so that we can use the characters that we've had so much fun creating in the original role player in role player Advantage Adventures is got to be my favorite part of the game and and so you can import those characters into the base game and now you can you can also import them into gold Pack's secret and use them on either campaign uh there's the you can't you can't kind of play one character through both uh without kind of resetting all their stats and stuff but um you know there's there's a big time difference in the in the period of time and then you know just mechanically um you know by the end of uh the base game campaign you know your character is really powerful really powerful to be able to kind of uh you just kind of reset to kind of have a good experience yeah that will be awesome uh so with all these what is going to be or what are these going to be available in this coming Kickstarter so base game will be available Asia yeah yeah so the campaign is for go Pack's a secret the new expansion but also for a reprint of the base game and for a reprint of the first expansion you know what the when when role player Adventures came out um we had received after we decided how many copies we were going to print we we received a lot more orders uh a little unexpectedly so when the when the game finally came out um you know we weren't able to uh distribute uh role player Adventures outside of the US so unless your local retailer had pledged on Kickstarter it was really hard to get a copy of the base game um outside of the US and the the first expansion we had so few copies left over by the time uh we had done finished fulfillment from the kickstarter that there really wasn't enough to get them even into retail in the U.S so um obviously there's a lot of people who would love to be able to play this game but have not been able to get a hold of it and kind of this Kickstarter is is a way to kind of get the funds together so that we can get the get the gamers the games they want and uh you know we can kind of continue to potentially get them out into retail as well so um role player Adventures is a is a very big box with a lot of bits and pieces so um you know it's it's it's a it's a challenging one to to manufacture and move around the world because it's you know the base game is like 17 pounds um so it's a very heavy game it's a very heavy guy yeah there's a lot of paper in that box for sure yeah I can see that so this is actually a copy of the production copy and a lot of paper just like put it on here here so this is just so much story that you get to play through in these Adventures um and that's one of the things that I love the most about what you've created with the world of allos that you're that your games are set in Keith is that you're creating this whole universe that the players get to know and love right I mean and it to accommodate all like the different story branches that a player could potentially go down um you know that that takes a lot of words to pull that off you know to make compelling stories that Branch based on player decisions and player choices um you know I when we were working on the project I did a quick word count near the end and like you know roleplay Adventures has over 440 000 words in it um which is I don't I'm not sure I think some people have like compared it to like looked at the Lord kind of Lord of the Rings and and like there's more words and role player Adventures than there is in The Lord of the Rings trilogy or something there's more words in role player Adventures than there is in Lord of the Rings I believe that's true I should double check but well well it's if it's Hobbit it's definitely I would totally agree because they just stretch out the movies into three different parts with like one little book anyways there's lots of rings Lord of the Rings is a lot bigger than the Hobbit and role player Adventures is a lot bigger than Lord of the Rings yeah yeah for sure So speaking about a lot heavier for sure thinking about words and books and papers show you very exciting project here as part of a role play Adventures which is the graphic novel Mac yeah it's part of the kickstarter campaign we have goth Studios have worked with thunder Works to create a role player Tales of allos graphic novel this is a prototype by the way this is a prototype copy that we are looking at but this is uh four different stories said in the world of Wars expanding on some of the characters that are featured in the board games uh characters like commander zalek and uh tog the ogre that we meet in the start of role player adventures and really gives the player the opportunity to expand their um how deep they're immersed in yes very immersive you can see sellers flicking through some pages yeah um again this is prototype it's not fully share this is just the the image that is not ready yeah so like like I'm a sucker for an origin story right I love origin stories and that's a lot of this book uh is about that so it's like taking a look at the characters that we've touched on in the games you know obviously there's a lot of characters in real player Adventures um and there's a lot of very interesting ones but we don't have a lot of space and time to really dig into those characters uh to a lot because right we got to keep the player story uh moving forward and the players are the the heroes um but you know it's fun in that first story that you were showing about uh came on and pitlin like you run into those characters in you know in dragons in the of the sunken city and you know after that Adventure I think you can run and came on you can run in the game on one more time but like you know they're kind of moved on and the players are moving forward to the next adventure and and this is a fun that story is a fun one where we get to learn more about those characters and find out you know how they got their ship and you know more about the relationship with each other and the the kind of the hardships hardships that they've encountered that kind of made them you know close friends and and Captain and and and first made or whatever so you know there's there's four stories um and the the big one at the end is about talk who uh is is a big featured character at the end of the first Adventure from the base game um and it's just it's just fun to we've had a lot of fun exploring you know what could have happened before we met him you know when he's standing in uh trying to smash that chest open like how did he get there right he refers to it Loosely but in the comic you're going to find out a lot more detail about like how he got to that moment in time and it's it's really fun and it was fun to kind of work with uh the Gus Studios team and uh figure out where you know kind of go backwards in time and figure out like uh you know how he could potentially have gotten there and stuff so um you know I love World building you know working on these games is all about we've been adding you know even building this World by adding games to it and adding kind of especially with the role player Adventure stuff adding lots of narrative and the comic books is a really cool piece of that you know they're um which just more lower that we're kind of deepening this world and and deepening kind of our knowledge of these characters and they just become kind of more and more interesting and and just uh just gets me more excited to learn about them even more so yeah yeah it's been a fun project for sure it's compassing the photographers role player and role play Adventures so this is all the world of allos in this book all the origin stories all the characters bringing bringing them all to life in this story it really complements the amazing decisions that you're faced with when you're playing through role player Adventures I mean the players are constantly being faced with these decision trees you know do we go this way or this way do we what side are we going to take who who are you going to work with and who are you going to work against and you know the riders in the board game have done this great job at developing these characters so that so that you as a player feel emotionally invested in the decisions that you're making but this graphic novel is going to flesh out their backstories so that you are even more emotionally dis invested in these decisions and really hopefully you know can really feel the moral imperatives for something behind the decisions that you're making I mean that's one of the things you were going for in the game right right right right so and you know in the game you know we don't have a lot of time right we've got we've tried to keep each entry you know to around 100 Words and we we need to communicate a lot of stuff and a little bit of mountain time uh because we got to keep these games moving and then the the the grapple novel we can take our time a little bit more and I did want to mention that even if you aren't you haven't played a role player Adventures before uh and are not familiar with these characters the books are still a really good read um and uh it's not like it's a requirement to really uh have played the game to read the comics but it's the it's a nice kind of companion piece to the to the game yeah yeah no I totally agree the writers have done an amazing job and the artists this is a genuinely quality graphic novel and story on its own but I do love I did really enjoy working with you guys to set this these stories in the world of allos you seem to have Big Dreams for the world of a loss where uh where can you see that Universe going oh a succession okay I mean I can't reveal all my secrets Mark but uh oh uh I mean where where does where does let's go like obviously if the if people are you know if gopexed as well and people are continuing to enjoy it we're gonna do more stuff you know so um we've got you know blizzard wall campaign at a certain time period we're jumping back 2 000 years to do um gold Pack's a secret and then but there's a big chunk of time between those things so um there's there's at least one Great War that happens because brizer wall kind of starts at the end of the the great Wars kind of stopped is is kind of concluded and you're kind of dealing with the aftermath of where that is and then go packs the secret hat is like right before the big war so there is this this cool time period that we could do some more work on um but I also you know we've got these um in the world of in the base game you end up visiting other you know planer verses other planes so um if you get to near the end of the campaign you end up going uh to a frill which is the the plane of knowledge I mean we've got uh but there's there's more than one right um in the big finale you get to go to six different planes for a short period of time and so I would love to continue to explore the kind of the other planes that we've started developing and really flush those out but also take the take the characters that we know and love and and kind of you know explore their stories even further so I'm not sure exactly where we're gonna go but you know assuming that people are interested in the gopex campaign I I can't see why we wouldn't do another one you know yeah I actually up my bed I have not mentioned one game because it's not already out there it was just the campaign just finished all those I reckon that is a really great economic game I think right it's it's different than the rest of the games but like me and Taryn and our friend Henry who did the solo play through really thoroughly enjoy that and being sneaky and being just cunning to each other and just trying to outsmart and you know it's like a stock market game it's yeah it's awesome for the the just the ulos games like the role player Universe games like I like that each one has its own mechanical space right so you've got cartographers as your map drawing game you know role players your dice manipulation game donovoulos is your economic game and role player Adventures is your narrative story driven game um and so you know you'll there will be more games coming in this universe that we've started building that's more hints so the different planes that kids gonna explore explore magnet as he said and then different mechanics or different games so that's like let's let's dig out some more what else kids tell us all the secrets yeah yeah I am horrible keeping secrets so that's that works for me but um yeah so like you know what are the next games in the role player you know yes Pantheon of games so like I'll tell you what it's not going to be a rolling right it's not going to be a story driven game it's not going to be anything that we've done before it'll be something else right you know lock up is a blind bidding game and with a little like a little bit of a work replacement blind bidding game and but what is the next thing going to be it's it's not going to be any of those things it's going to be something totally different right so but I promise you it won't be a role player themed party game okay I promise you that all right all right so no social deduction as well or is [Music] always well personally I hope that there is going to be some sort of iteration on cartographers because that has got to be one of the best games that has ever been made and I need more yeah I mean we're going to keep kind of deepening the cartographer's line um you know we've got cartographers cartographers Heroes we've got six map packs and there's more stuff on the way which I can't talk about yet but um yeah people continue to love cartographers and we're we're really jazzed to keep working on it so um yeah you can expect more cartographer stuff in the future it's good to hear yes it is there's not a lot of Studios out there that have managed to produce so many hit games in such a variety of genres I'm certainly excited to see what you guys can come up with Nick some people have kind of started I guess the probably the closest is the the Red Raven games guys where they've got uh games that are connected thematically that are you know disparate in terms of mechanical but it's not something that a lot of people do but that's the way that we've decided to do it and we've been having a good time so uh and it seems to be working so yeah we're gonna kind of keep keep going down that path that's like it's like perfect now Mark that we've got the role player Comics uh bubble graphic novel we're super excited about the graphic novel this has been a really fun project to work on um we've got a great creative team that have really worked really hard to expand some of these storylines and build upon these amazing characters that were created in for the board game uh and I as a player wanted to know so much more about now I can now I can and this is part of it that's better right I I think it's also worth noting that the the writers of role-play Adventures right I'm I'm not a writer right so I so the writers of the role player Adventures are primarily uh James and Peter Ryan who are who are brothers um and they were involved in the comic book as well in terms of giving the the writers out of from the Guff Studio team kind of feedback on what they were doing and we were giving them feedback when we were getting to Art but like oh no this character you know has a staff we should make sure that they have that or kind of either visual things to maintain um to maintain consistency with the games or you know personality consistencies making sure that you know you know zalek would say that yes that makes sense or or not you know and kind of have those discussions so you know James and Peter have been involved with the the comic book project as well um just to kind of make make sure we're authentic to what what you you know and love of these characters and and has a certain level of consistency across all the product bucks yeah yeah for sure so what sort of like campaign or what sort of thing yeah so obviously there's gonna be a pledge level that's just the um the new expansion and then the um I'm gonna pull it up just so I'd make sure he's bringing it up I'm not lying but I think the next pledge is just the new stuff so the new expansion the comic book and then the graphic novel The Graphic novel yeah I always always call it and then I guess Keith you've got to have it all in right there's yeah role player Adventures has basically been sold out from for months and months now uh there's got to be a bunch of people that need the base game yeah so there's just the new just the expansion the new expansion and then there's the new expansion plus the graphic novel um and then there's uh the base game and the new expansion so that's if you're really interested in Gold packs but you don't have role player uh this it doesn't have enough for us so it only has the second experience in the base game uh there's a level for that um and then there's a level with both both expansions and so and we always do um we have a retailer pleasure level like we always do the only retailers that have basically had role players of Ventures available to sell other retailers that back to the original Kickstarter campaign yeah yeah that's true so um besides besides a few reach uh some retailers in the US uh to to have been to have carried role-player adventures in their store they would have had the kickstarter from us so um you know we we expect a lot of uh retailer support on this project um and then um you know also we do a pledge manager like like any good Kickstarter in which people can mix and match and add things to their pledge so you know if if you you know want an extra comic book to give to a friend for a gift or something or whatever um you can always add those uh uh after the campaign as well so um and you know sometimes we also offer additional kind of Thunder Works products so if you are new to a role player um you know you can add the base game of role player to your pledge in addition to the other role play Adventure stuff that we've got going so lots of flexibility there for people you know uh Stella's kind of showing off some of the new adventures Adventure that's right yeah so this first one the festival's heroes that's storybook one um and this is the intro for all the characters so we're gonna set the stage we are at um Wildwood which is this um city and they're having this big celebration and you come in and you get to pick your profession like we talked before and and then you know disaster strikes as you can see on the cover uh The Immortal Knight who is kind of like a protector of the realm to some degree and um the the title Immortal Knight kind of passes from person to person uh like the Green Lantern or you know the dread pirate Robert Fitz's bride or something and so the the person who currently is the immortal Knight is her name is Embry and her horse gets attacked by this werewolf in the middle of this crowd and it's chaos and uh they're trying to hold kind of tryouts for the heroes Guild and they say hey you guys want to be a member of the heroes Guild go track down that werewolf so you are on the hunt for a werewolf in in the town uh right off the gate right out of the gate um you get to go investigate um there's a local Festival going on because it's a big celebration um and go to yeah the other the first map um and you can see here this is the city uh Wildwood and there is there's a this house of a larkis on the right on the right side there's there's kind of a makeshift hospital that's been raised there because of the werewolf attacks and there's a festival in the upper left-hand Corner that you can visit um and as you as you play through this uh new places are going to show up you're going to find out new information um and then hopefully by the end you'll be able to track down the werewolf and and kind of dispense whatever Justice that you feel is appropriate right so there's lots of decision making happening um and the core Tenon of role player Adventures is the game is listening right so you you can deal with problems you can approach things many different many different ways you can approach things many different ways and then uh the game is going to remember and the the results the things happening in the next Adventures the next times you interact with those characters uh they're gonna behave differently based on what you did um so that's the first one and then the other the second event we're showing a little bit as well which is called Servants of azima so this takes place in the the new um there's a new gnomish Queen and she is uh starting to build the capital city of savic and um the there's a basically a a God the god dragon that created the world uh which you learn about more in the donovulo's title but she's buried underneath underneath the sacred ground and um there's there's these members of this religious organization uh who worship this character uh this this this Creator Dragon uh you know they have a bit of a immortality to them as you can see by the image there so um you the the gnomish queen sends you on a mission and then you also meet gopex for the first time um and she's got her own plans that she's telling you about and if you if you flip to the uh to the map you can see some of the the cool Easter eggs that we've kind of uh done in this one the first one the next one that's the one next one the next one yes so and in the bottom right hand corner of this map there's the tree Treetop Village that's a very looking that's very different looking Tree Top Village to in role play Adventures base game yeah uh so this tree yeah this this map should look familiar because it's just the third map is the same location but this is two thousand years earlier but you can see here Treetop Village is a cartographer's card so that's a location that you've drawn um in cartographers and now you get to visit there um and on the left hand side the Temple of ulos is there and the temp of ulos exists in the base game in the same area but if you look at it the the 2000 years later it's actually a quite bigger building you know these things have evolved in this this graveyard is is the same graveyard that has understoody in it um in adventure three of the base game so um there's a million of these little connections and I love connections with Easter eggs they're like I don't know I guess such joy out of them but it is you there's all these little connections that you don't need to know about but if you're paying attention there's all these kind of like references to other things and other games um and they're really fun to find yeah and and we put a lot of them in there for you to find for sure that's awesome it's like it's very thoughtful thing as well to do for you know especially like for fans of oh yeah this this and this like watching Marvel movies exactly and I love that stuff so it's it's fun um and so like you know there's the bridge across the river the bridge is still there two thousand years later and when you play the base game as well and stuff so um yeah there's lots of tiny little details that we we uh you know we just put in there for people to find and you know I think it just makes the world feel more real like it feels like it has some kind of like real history and there's evidence of the passing of time and there's um you know there's even on that first map you're in the middle of the city where you start the game there's a cartographer's Heroes card that basically is that place where these bright yellow flowers are um there's a cartographer's Heroes card where it's Wildwood I forget what the name of it is but it has those big flowers in it and stuff so right so the next step would probably be Keith approaching Disney to sell the rights of well off I've been waiting for Steven Spielberg to call yeah yeah just do it you know you never know look at me that it certainly appears that you're heading down that path that you are creating a genuine world that that you know fans of the board games uh seem to be loving and enjoying playing mapping and learning stories about right yeah the whole lot and it's thing else that we want to share by the way I think we've talked about the expansion we talk about the maps we talk about the some of the adventures talk about the graphic novel The Graphic no right uh gold pack Secrets Kickstarter campaign new stories new mechanics and uh a fantastic graphic novel made by goth Studios when does it launch Keith so Kickstarter is November 1st through the 18th you know and the plan is to develop deliver these things um to backers by October of next year so you know these are complex projects um and it takes time to get these things done and you know when it comes to Kickstarter projects you know I don't want to be those guys that are a year later on their project I mean we always deliver you know pretty much on time or a little bit early and we like to maintain that make sure and uh we've got uh we're very transparent in our communication for for Kickstarter projects and then been doing this for a long time so um yeah October 2023 is the delivery date um and the kickstarter is November 1st through the 18th of 2022.

[Music] is that a page whether it's already live or not I'll put the link in the description and where can people find you okay yeah so I I'm pretty easy to get a hold of I'm I'm mainly on Facebook and Twitter but uh uh and you so you can find me either at you know searching for thunderwestgames.com or thunderous games or you can also reach me at our website at www.thunderworksgames.com we're on Twitter at Thunderbirds gum without the es it's Sunrise games without the es because I ran out of characters I know I was like every time I try to tag you like oh yeah okay um and then you know we're on Instagram as well I'm not as not as active there um so primarily Facebook and and Twitter and the Thunder Works page but um you know or you can always email if you ever questioned about anything um you can always email info at thunderwestgames.com that's kind of our help desk ticket system and you know Thunder versus a small company so that means it's either me or or one of the one or two other people that that look at that sometimes so most customer service requests that come through info at thunderricksgames.com are kind of my responsibility to take care of so um yeah I'm very easy to get a hold of um and I'm I think I'm known for being pretty responsive too so yeah I think so too I think that's where uh all the questions can go in regards to role play adventures and new expansion um while Mark is from Gusty juice you can just access your stuff she does everywhere golf Studios is everywhere [Laughter] very cool I'm managed to grab that those names thanks for coming on yeah thanks for coming over yeah sharing information about googleplexes Secrets Mark also for sharing informations about um the role player graphic novel I finally say it right graphic novel well you know comic book graphic novel I used to collect comic books when I was little like a DC the Marvel that's like I always say comic books comics and and I've got those in there anyway it's a collection of comics put together in one graphic novel so much guys for coming over but useful um and if you have any questions even you can just write in the comments sections below and I'll be happy to answer those and apart from that thank you for watching like And subscribe it's Mark Sage not very well like And subscribe I was gonna say that but thank you for taking the words out of my mouth so that's it thanks everyone bye thanks for watching