The RPG Dream Hustle (w/ Mad Jay Zero)

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On this episode, we're speaking to Jahmal Brown aka Mad Jay Zero. Jay is a podcaster, designer and rockstar GM. His podcast Diceology features interviews with folks from the RPG scene as well as fun recaps of his various games in Last Week in Gaming. As a game designer, he's contributed words to books like Pathfinder's magnificent Mwangi Expanse as well as designed his own games, Lifted Vol 1: Indomitable, a people with superpowers game primed by cortex. He also did some Pro GMing before it became cool when he kickstarted a West Marches campaign called Into the Mad Lands.

Show Notes:

01:05 - Introduction to Jay
04:13 - About the Diceology podcast (talking to Mike Pondsmith and Sarah Doombringer)
06:19 - Jay, on playing with kids
10:45 - Jay's 30+ session Twilight 2000 campaign
14:16 - GMing Practices
21:50 - Running West Marches
28:36 - Lifted Vol 1: Indomitable
37:43 - Infectious Enthusiasm: Legacy 2e: Life Among The Ruins
41:09 - Tyranny of Numbers: Kickstarter Advice
47:40 - RePlay: Jay shares story from Lifted/Champions Now about every table making corporate superhero teams

You can find a written transcript of the episode here.

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The Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter

Transcript

0:02

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Yes Indie'd podcast. Created by Mark Shepherd and run by me. Thomas Manwell. Today, we're talking to Jamal brown, AKA mad J zero. But before we go to the interview, I just want to start out by shouting out my incredible patrons. They're the ones who are making the show possible. Who are sponsoring it. I thought I could just make another joke this episode. But I couldn't think of a good enough one. So I'm gonna just replace that with sincerity. I know it's, it's kind of outrageous, but, uh, my sincere thanks to Nick Bate, Peter Eijk, Jesse Ableman, Carl Rigney, tentacle duck and Samantha Leigh. I'm going to shout out all my patrons over the course of the next few episodes. i just appreciate everybody who contributes and makes the show possible if you can swing by my patrion patrion.com/indie rpg And you know Help me keep doing the show and the newsletter. Okay, but enough about that, let's meet our guest. Jay is a podcaster, a designer and rockstar GM. His podcast, Diceology, features interviews with folks from the RPG scene and as well as, you know, fun recaps of his various games in a section called last week in gaming. As a designer he's contributed words to books like Pathfinder's awesome Mwangi Expanse as well as the designed his own games like lifted volume one indomitable. That's a game about people with superpowers, which is prime by cortex. I think one of the first third-party prime by cortex games that's out there right now. He also did pro GMing before it was cool when he kick-started a west marches campaign called Into the Mad Lands. With that intro out of the way, let's run tape.

Thomas: 1:43

Hi Jay. How are you doing this morning?

Jay: 1:44

I'm doing well. Thank you. That was, uh, that was awesome. Intro and bio. I love it. That was fantastic.

Thomas: 1:51

You know, I wanna get started by talking about this phrase you use. You know, you use it in the newsletter, you use it, you, you say, um, welcome to the Dream Hustle. So I, I wanna ask you about that. What's the, what's, what's your, what's your dream hustle? What, what's the. What's the thing you're doing here?

Jay: 2:06

So, my dream hustle is to do all the creative role playing game stuff that I would like to do, and it pays the bills, right? I think growing up where I'm from, uh, the American dream is you get into work that moves you, that you're passionate about, that you're excited about, and it's able to pay your bills, feed your family, keep your lights on, all that good stuff. That's the dream is that you're able to get both of those things at the same time. A lot of my family members are not engaged in their dream hustle, right? They've, they've gotta work a job. Usually they're indifferent or hate, right? And then that leaves very little time to pursue their dreams, right? So yeah, the dream hustle is, uh, running games for people. That's, that, that's what I love the most, especially new folks. Right? Especially when you see it click for them at the table.

Thomas: 3:02

You know, how, how's it going? How would you describe, how long have you been doing? What have you tried, uh, and what's working?

Jay: 3:09

So what's working is making your own stuff so lifted is I think the culmination of five or six years, uh, on this path. I think when you create a hard thing in the world and put it out there is gives folks something tangible to pick up and interact with. Right. I think the podcast is successful. I get a lot of folks listening to it. Uh, when I'm out in the world, a lot of folks are happy that I'm bringing on underrepresented people. Like there are a lot of game adjacent people I talk to, there are a lot of people of color and women that I talk to on the show, and they don't get a lot of representation in other podcasts, so I get a lot of conversation when I'm out in the world, so that feels good too, but certainly for sure creating products and I hate to say products, it makes me feel. But yeah, making something people can get their hands on and play and interact with. Right. I think that gets you traction. Uh, if we're looking at just numbers and outcomes, that seems to be big when I do that.

Thomas: 4:13

I mean, I definitely want to talk about Lifted, but let's start with the podcast. You've been doing the podcast for a while now. What's some highlights that jump out at you about over the years, maybe a certain favorite episodes and guests that you know, stand out. Yeah. It would be

Jay: 4:28

easy to say my most favorite guest episode would be Mike Pondsmith, and that would be true. Right? But I think above Mike Pondsmith, the most moving one for me was talking with Sara Doombringer of, uh, Magpie Games and I believe Blue Beard's Bride, right? Yeah. There is, uh, velvet Glove is a game uh, I played with her online and we've talked a little bit about that on the, on the podcast too. She brought some epiphanies to me that I hadn't thought about, about horror, about, uh, teenage girls. About being pregnant and a game designer and moving in that space. Right. Wow. And we talk a lot, a lot about those things. And it changed how I interact going forward with my daughter, with my partner at the time. Not that I was some caveman, but I had some insight right, that I didn't have before and, and I carried that with me. I was just at PAX and I had the first all female gaming table that I've ever ran, right? There were five women at the table and me, and that shouldn't be a thing, but it is. And that was fantastic. And it was a learning experience, right? Uh, I, I for sure fumbled and fell down, but they gave me space, uh, to do that and I learned some stuff. So I would say, uh, the little boy, me for sure, Mike Pondsmith, right? But the most emotional moving one, uh, for me was interviewing and talking with Sarah Doombringer. She talks

Thomas: 6:05

a little bit about that stuff on her Twitter. I think she refers to her kid as Doom Lord. Yes. The doom, Lord, Jay: which is better. I'm like, man, I wish I would've thought of that from my kid. I know you do have like a short AP on your podcast with your kid. Like do you, do you game with uh, them

Jay: 6:26

a lot? I do. Since they were little, like maybe even three or four, because I knew in my head I had a big plan, right? These were my new home brew, right? gamers, right? And so we started with some easy games, like I. Oh, I can't remember what it's called, but it's a counting game for kids. Right. And both of them. I have a daughter and a son. Actually I have two daughters and a son. Uh, but we started with small counting games. Uh, we move on to easy games. We're still counting, but it's more about. The social contract at the table. Right. And then family night was like, family game night was Friday night or Saturday night, and we'd pull out as they were getting older, we'd pull out big board games, uh, the usual stuff like Candyland, Samya. But we quickly moved on to things like, uh, Oh, I'm bad now. Uh, there's a train game that's big and I can't remember the name of it right now. Is it, is it Ticket to Ride? Yes. Ticket to Ride. Yes. Uh, so we played that. We've add on expansions to that. That's kind of like the family favorite. We'd play Fury of Dracula cuz that's my favorite. Uh, I would play Dracula. Everyone else would play the Hunters. We'd play stuff like., I think it's Toto, uh, which is kind of a relaxed, easy kind of paced game. And then as they got older, they got to pick a game to play and the rest of us would have to play the game they picked. My son had it the worst. Uh, sometimes he would want to tap out it not play at all. And I'm like, that might be cool normally. But the contract is, this is board game night for us. And you'll get a turn to play a game. And we know you're gonna want to play road rally. Right? And mom doesn't really want to play a game where we're riding around killing people in cars. But she will, she's gonna play that game cuz you picked that game. Right. And tonight, you know, she wants to play this other game and so as a family, right, we're gonna sit down and we'll play that. And so, uh, it's fun and games, but I'm also teaching things along the way. He got in the role playing games early though. And, uh, his first game was traveler. That wasn't to thumb my nose at d and d. Uh, that was to again, Right. I pick a game, but I also like his math skills. His counting skills weren't great at the time, and so traveler, he's rolling those two D six s, he's adding 'em together. He's gotta add a stat, right? And we would do that, right? He thinks we're having fun and we're playing a game. Me. I'm like, no, we're, we're getting some math practice in, right. This is what we're doing. It's funny you mentioned that we just started Cyborg and that will go on the podcast. We've got two episodes in, I gotta edit them. And that's a game he picked out. We were in the game store and I had the pdf, I had read through it. I wasn't sure that I had an adult table to bring it to, to, to play, and he picked up the book in the store and, uh, it blew his mind. He was super, super excited about it. And this is a kid who's usually indifferent about most things. And I'm like, I guess we're playing this game. Yeah. Cuz

Thomas: 9:25

Cyborg has that kind of like awesome visual aesthetic, right? Like it just jumps off the It does. Was it, was it that

Jay: 9:31

kind of graphic? That's exactly what it was. I'm a cranky old guy. Right. So I can appreciate what they're doing there, but it hurts me. Right. But I appreciate what's happening there and I appreciate the mechanics that are inside. So this is no. A bad or a negative thing. Right? It pushes me over the edge how stark and and bold the design aesthetic is. But he was loving it, right? He was all in right, like a duck to water. And so as the parent I'm like, cool. Cause you don't choose a whole lot of things., I'm getting on your bus, right? We're gonna play this game. And, uh,

Thomas: 10:05

you're, you're, you're vibing with it? You're, you're enjoying the game?

Jay: 10:07

I am. Uh, it's, it has that BX feel, and I've fallen in love with the minimalist, I don't wanna call it minimalist. I wanna say nuanced, right? I wanna say it has a handful of stats, but the plays. as nuanced as you want it to be. Right. And I like that. So we've played, we've did a session Zero. Uh, he's playing kind of a, uh, bio-engineered character who can do some hacking and, uh, we're kind of walking around the remnants of, uh, earth. Most of the folks live in or orbitals at this point in time. And we're kind of walking around feeling out the setting right. I know

Thomas: 10:45

another game you're playing, which you know, I've super enjoyed following your stories around. This is your Big Twilight 2000 campaign. Wow. Yeah.

Jay: 10:55

How many sessions is it exactly? Right now we're at like 33, and I always put a caveat in there because this game came out of the Gauntlets Open Gaming weekend. I think they run that quarterly, right? And maybe three years ago I ran it as a one. Right. And then I ran it the following year as the one shot and the same guy showed up, right? And they're like, can we just continue from the game before? And I missed that. I had to cancel that game. And I said, I will owe you a game. Let's schedule right off of the the event and I'll pay you back that game. So we did that and they were like, can we play again next? And I'm like, okay, let's, let's, you know, let's play like four sessions. Like let's do that. Right? I'm in. And so we got to like session three or four and I have that review. So what are we doing? Are we gonna wrap this up? Can we play another two or three sessions? Right? And here we are, 33 sessions later, right? Still playing. We've got kind of a holiday break cuz. Everyone's doing different things for the holidays, but we'll be getting back on board this weekend and it blows my mind that this game, I think it's the people, right? I don't think it's all the game. I think it's the combination, the chemistry of the folks. This is probably the second longest running game I've ever had in my life. And,

Thomas: 12:12

and I know you had this, this moment kind of in the middle of that campaign. I know you've served in the military. I know there was stuff going on in the world and you had that kind of talk with your players where you were like, is this the game we want to play? Are we gonna have fun with this? Right. And it seems to have worked out like you seemed to have been able to talk as a group about you know what you want to do in the game and you know, was, was that, was that difficult? How did that resolve at the table?

Jay: 12:37

I paying attention to the news, I have opinions and I think we all do. I have opinions about what was happening in Ukraine and I had some ideas about what would I do if I was dictator and that kind of stuff. But I also see other people's opinions. and uh, Facebook, Twitter, talking with other gamers, and I could see in the Twilight 2000 Discord a lot of folks backing away from the game because they had feelings and opinions, and so I thought I'd better bring this up. And we should talk about, it should get out ahead of it before it becomes a thing, or we're implying some things that we should probably talk about. And I brought it up and we talk through it. And I, I often tell folks, especially people in the game store, when they're picking up the game and they're talking about it, they have different misconceptions about what they're going to get. And I tell them for sure, Twilight 2000 is a sandbox survival. It's not a war game. It's not Rambo, right? It's not an action game. It's a sandbox survival game, right? Think walking dead without the zombies, right? That's what you have, and so you get drama out of that. Our games have been about a lot of drama with the wartime aesthetic in the background and in in the details. When we got down to that, we decided we were all adult enough to Oh, responsible enough to continue playing and talk about how we felt about the world at that time. We usually play for about three hours and that's, that session I think was probably a half a session, an hour and a half, cuz we probably spent about an hour or so talking through stuff, talking about the world, and that was good too.

Thomas: 14:16

I think that's one of the things I most appreciate about the newsletter and stuff like that. And you know, when you recap your gaming, when you get into this kind of, These kind of insights into the messy parts of the gaming. Some, sometimes we don't get to see this, right? You, you mentioned this already, I think the talk where you sit down with players and you go, what's our plan here? Do we wanna end next week? We could, or do we want to go four more?. And now when I do that with my table, like I'm thinking about what you said and how you did, cuz I'm like, oh, I, we are doing the talk. I'm telling them we could do this, we could wrap up now we could go six sessions. What are your expectations? So is that a technique you've developed through experience where you, you know, did you always kind of do that?

Jay: 14:58

It was a solution to a problem, right? I think we play games and they fade away. Right. We don't, and I'd like to have some endings. Some type of a wrap up, right? I'd rather do a bunch of arcs in the same campaign than seven games, and then everyone disappears, right? So when I sat down to think about that or think that through and looking at what other folks do, we will say, Hey, well the gauntlet does this right? I'm gonna run this game for three sessions. I'm gonna run this game for five sessions. And different folks get together, they play and then it's done. It disbands. I'm like, I could do that with my home games. I could say, Hey, let's try this game out. Let's try it out for three sessions, see what we got. Right. And then like I said, somewhere around the second or third session I'll say, what do you think? Right. Do we just wrap this up in three, like we said. Or, uh, do we keep going? And if we keep going, I need a, how long, I wanna say most games. I think the GM kind of has an ability to steer toward an ending and wrap things up. And so if I know we're gonna wrap up in another three, then I won't add new threads or new events to the game. I'll start to try to make opportunities so we. Wrap up some of the threads we already have going or some of the arcs we already have going. But if we're gonna play longer, then I stay Rules is written and I let everything run. And that's fun too. But my hope is we get to an ending that we all have agreed upon and then the game wraps and it closes, and then I don't have this loose thread in my head. These fictional characters aren't in stasis out there, uh, just hanging out. Right. And that's satisfying to me to get to an end. Yeah. I,

Thomas: 16:37

we have played one campaign together, which never got that ending because of scheduling. I think it just kind of like, you know, we, we couldn't nail that, that finale down just because of our calendars. Right. But I think that was a really cool campaign. We were playing Legacy Second Edition, and I think one really kind of interesting thing about it was that you had really proactive players. Like people were just doing stuff. And I remember one moment, I think you pointed out either to us or. Or on the podcast or you were like, okay, my job is to kind of sit back and just, and just react to this. Like, is that a rare thing? Is that your normal style? Like what, what, what kind of games are you used to playing? I know, you know, I know trad games tend to be like heavy prep, tend to be like the GM is the proactive one and the players are

Jay: 17:24

reactive. Right? So for Legacy Two, life Among the Ruins, uh, second Edition has been a challenge for me because in the book it talks about your role as the GM is to be reactive, to be ready to present reactions to whatever the players proactively do. Now, if they come to a standstill and they're all looking at you like all apocalypse world games, that's a hard move, right? It's time for me to write, present something. Uh, but that's still a reaction, right? I love the game because I don't have to. There's prep, but there's no push prep, right? I don't have to push you in a direction or anything. Uh, the more proactive the players are, the better the game is going to be. I think then I'm looking at corralling or getting folks to collaborate more so I don't have. Players all going individual ways, right? We have to, uh, get to some consensus, what we're doing in this session, most games. I think I want to kind of run that way. I, I love it when players are proactive cuz then I could say, I don't have a plot, right? There's no rails. We're going. where you take your characters because I wanna see where you're going. Right? I'm excited. We have rules and mechanics to adjudicate things, but the story is this thing we'll have once, you know, we've played for three, three and a half hours, four hours, and we're done today, right? Then we have a plot in the story and we're looking back at it. I don't want to come to the table and I know what it is already. I don't like those games.

Thomas: 18:54

I remember this moment in the game really well. I don't know, I dunno if you remember it, but it was really kind of like, it was my favorite moment in the game, I think. I had this character and I think somebody else rolled a seven to nine. And we needed, we needed a complication and, and you turned to me and you were like, what if your character got stuck here? What if this is it for them? Maybe you die here. And I was like, thank you for this gift. Because I would not have thought, I would not have thought of that. And I was like, this is, you know, grade-A GMing where you, like you turned to me and you were like, wouldn't be cool if your character died at this moment I was like, It would be cool.

Jay: 19:33

I remember that. That was fantastic. Um, your character and the, trying to remember the other playbook. Alan Reese's.

Thomas: 19:42

Um, yes. Eldritch Servants. Yes. Something

Jay: 19:44

like that. Those two families back and forth through that whole campaign was fantastic, right? Even though we've shifted generations and I think you've shifted two characters, there's still friction between the two of them. I think what I like most about the P B T A style games is when you hit those misses, those sixes or less. It gives you permission as the gm, even though Alan rolled that Miss, I could move the ramifications, the consequences. To another player if the fiction warranted it. And in that case, you guys were all in this pocket library and, uh, things were kind of going downhill. And, uh, because those two families already had friction, I was thinking, man, how, how horrible would it be if he who brought everyone in here leaves a man behind? Right? And that person, he leaves behind is your character from that family that there's already friction, right? And so with your permission, your consent, that's why I asked. First we went down that path, right? We went to go explore that. I love that. P B T A explicitly gives you that permission to move those consequences around the table. They don't have to happen where the happened. I

Thomas: 20:59

don't think there's a book that can teach you that move, but, uh, it was, it was a really cool thing that you did. And like you said, the fact that you threw it to me, you were like, Hey, here's an idea I have. With your consent, we can make something happen here. And I jumped on it and if somebody hadn't jumped on it, it would still have been a cool moment at the table. Right. Because we could have all had this thought, oh man, that, that's a good idea. We can still kind of enjoy it. Right, right. You know, circling back to something we were talking about, players being proactive. I know you are a big fan of the West marches style of thing, which is all about player proactivity, all about not having a plot. Was Into the Midlands, your Kickstarter, west Marches campaign. Was that the first one you ran? Because I know since then you've talked about sci-fi, west marches, you've talked about maybe I, I've heard some chatter about like a superhero , like west marches, like in a city. So yeah, yeah, you know what draws you to best marches and. Tell me about Into The Mad Lands. Sure.

Jay: 21:57

Uh, I've done smaller Open Table West marches in the past. Uh, I think into the Mad Lands was. I think Kickstarter had a promotion at the time and I thought, oh, I want to jump on that. It may have been like the sell 100 promotion or something. And I thought I could do tickets to a West Marches style game. And then I get a bunch of folks in there that I don't know and we could play. And I thought, you know, at best I might have, you know, 10 to 20 players and that's cool. I'll learn something. Cuz I wanted the experience of playing West marches at a larger scale. Um, I don't know that I've ever had more than 10 players prior to that, that had 40 plus players, which is fun. So if you've got proactive players, I think West Marches is that on steroids because you will have multiple story arcs happening, uh, organically, right as folks go out and explore things. Right. I would put that down as a success. That was great. I've got tons and tons of stories just from that campaign, right? My thought is, I could do that again. Uh, it was all fantasy. I used Forbidden Lands and I used old school Essentials, bx d and d. My thought was the. BX would be like an easy touchstone entry point for folks, and Forbidden Lands would satisfy my indie people. But it turned out Forbidden Lands was the casual game and BX was played on hard mode by most people. I want to do it again, but I want a different premise. And I'm looking at sci-fi and I'm trying to figure out what's a sci-fi premise? Cause I think that's important. You have to, uh, focus on the exploration, right? That's what drives everything. A superhero, west Marches game would be fantastic. But again, I don't know what the premise is there. How do you drive that? Right? Why would a bunch of superpower beings get together in random groups and what are they going out to go do? Right? I don't know what that premise

Thomas: 23:57

is. So with this sci-fi one, what have you kind of

Jay: 24:00

come up with? So I've got two things. I've got one where, You have a crew of folks, um, maybe they're revisiting a ruined earth, right? For supplies, for resources, or maybe they found a new place that's in ruins and they're discovering mysteries and things like that there, right? I read recently, I think it's Pole, p o h l, Frederick, the HII Saga, and I love the premise there. There's some mechanical difficulties, but the premise there. And I think he wrote this in the fifties, earth had colonized the moon and Venus, and I think on Venus, some unfortunate soul, found an alien ship that was millions of years old, right. Accidentally activated it. And it took him out to the edge of our solar system, well beyond Pluto, out where we have those extra solar planets. And it took them to an asteroid that had been converted into kind of a hub. Where there were about a thousand of these ships. Fast forward corporations have gone out there and they're trying to figure out who made these, where did these ships go? Why are they here? They've got engineers trying to figure things out. What Paul Beakley calls the killer app is there are three types of ships, right? One that holds one person, one that holds three people, and one that'll hold five people. There's mechanical pieces in the ship. We don't know how to interpret it so these engineers have sent out a bunch of ships. Some of them have come back, some of them have not. And with that data, they're trying to figure out, okay, these are routes and this is how you configure different routes, and this is what we think they mean. And so they pay people to go on these routes and they pay people bonuses to go on new routes and try new things. You make less if you return to an old route. Most of all, they're just, they're paying premiums for new resources that they can send back to earth, new routes that we haven't discovered that we can go to and come back from, things like that. Right. And I thought that's that's perfect. Right? The character we follow, he kind of won a lottery and he spent it to get there. Right. Once you're on the station, there's kind of a per diem that you're paying per day because you're there, right? So you need to get in a ship and go out and do something, cuz you gotta pay that or they will ship you back to earth, right? There's some families that bring their whole family up, right? Knowing they're gonna lose some folks, but they're hoping somebody strikes it big. So they can take that back home and take care of the rest of their family and live well. And there's all kinds of drama just in that first book. And I thought, this could work. This could work. That sounds great.

Thomas: 26:50

Are you, are you, are you thinking of a system yet?

Jay: 26:53

I'm probably gonna go back to the bx. Well, right. My thought is the apocalypse world two D six, uh, mechanic is perfect. Right. And we can slot that into the osr. Modifiers, the plus one to plus three modifiers. Right. And you get a nice curve when we're making tests. And my thought is when we're making tests under situations that. D six s are probably perfect, right? You do two D six, add your modifier. We're good to go. What I want to do now is I noticed fifth Edition is undergoing a, a big version change, but I don't know that BX d and d, osc, I don't know if that's had any big revisions. We still use a D 20 in most cases, right? Saving throws and stuff like that. So I am right now deconstructing, taking apart, uh, the things that work. Modern mechanics do we have that can replace some of the older ones and how do I speed up combat scenarios? Right? And there's a whole bunch of stuff out there, but I'm playing around with some things, have something that I like that is all D six s, but I'm like, Is it bad if I get rid of the D 20? Is that a bad thing? I have a Plan B where I use a pool of D 20 s, right, to resolve the whole combat. And again, I'm like, is that cumbersome? Is that clunky? So I really need to get it to the table. It's helpful. I'm a software engineer, so a lot of this stuff I've simulated in software and played through the numbers and looking at results, but what I don't know is how does it actually play at the. With people and so I want to do that. Nice. Let's

Thomas: 28:36

talk a little bit about about Lifted. I know that it started out as a setting for champions now, I believe, and now you've got with Volume One Indomitable, you've got a system behind it. What's the premise of Lifted? What keeps kind of drawing you back to that

Jay: 28:52

idea? It's the X-Men. It's always the X-Men in my head, right? Growing up, my first cousin, uh, I think he's got like three or four years on me. Thomas introduced me to the X-Men comics and I was hooked, right? I took it for face value is what it was. Here, these mutants, right? And they're born this way. I never made any analogies to, uh, me being a person of color. Me being nerdy, right? I had to go to a separate school away from my neighborhood. My thought there was here are some folks with some challenges and they're pushing through and, uh, they're making a family and, uh, I want some of that, right? Uh, so it's always, it's always been that way, uh, internally for me. So I think it's got a wider, broader appeal than just an analog for civil rights. Uh, or anything like that, right? I fell off of the X-Men comics as an adult. Going forward, the stories just didn't resonate with me anymore. And that might be cuz I'm getting older, right? And they're writing for a younger audience and I get that. I still wanted to love it, but not always. It did, it just wasn't working out. So for me, lifted is what does the X-men look like in, in modern times if it wasn't written in the, I think late sixties, early seven. Again, if I'm, if I'm the dictator, what path would I take? Right? And my thought is it's not, you're born this way. Right? It's everyday people. And that's what I love about most about superhero stories is everyday folks. And now I've got this extraordinary power, but I still gotta. Pay my bills, right? I still need my lights to be on. And if I got kids, they still gotta go to school. What does that look like? Right? And what's it look like if my neighbor across the street, he's got superpowers too and we don't get along. Right? What does that look like? Right? What's happening there? And I like those stories more so than some big evil entity from some other dimension shows up. Those are fun. Uh, but I think the everyday stories. I've got this big thing, but I still got mundane issues that I've gotta tackle too. Um, and I think that's where Lifted fits in at the X-Men had a bunch of different books. So you had your everyday living type stuff, right? But you also had government conspiracy stuff. You've got high-tech bad guys trying to take you apart and disassemble you to figure out how you work. You've got hit groups, right? Uh, I know we don't want politics in our games, but you got hit groups. You've got these mut. Are they gonna replace us? Right? What are we gonna do about that? Right? I feel like if there was some species of humanity that was better than homo sapiens, if we couldn't figure out how to work things out with Homo Superior, right? For lack of a better word. We'd have a lot of those same frictions. How does technology mess up all those things or can it help those things? I'm cynical. I feel like, again, as a software engineer, our technology has gotten far out and away from our social thinking and certainly our legal systems, and I don't know, how do we really back in to make it work for us? I, I don't feel like it's working for us. I think we're, we're getting drugged by it is what it feels. and, and we don't wanna let go So I bring a lot of that into, uh, this premise of. Everyday regular folks getting these superpowers. You know, I think there's this

Thomas: 32:30

credible theory that, that Facebook kind of destroyed, like American democracy. I mean, but people are still on it. They're like, I can't, I can't, I can't stop sharing pictures of, of what I ate for breakfast

Jay: 32:46

And what cracks me up is the, the folks that, and I have family members that are here that believe it's their right to have face. And I'm like, no, Facebook is a company. They're a business and there's a end user license agreement. Most software, most web platforms, they have it. I'm sure you clicked on it and signed it, but, but maybe you didn't look at it. You just clicked the box and you jumped in there. Everything they're doing, you said is cool. And you can leave at any time, right? You can leave and go someplace else. And like I said, I've got family members that are, well then I can't talk to mom if I do.. I'm like, how did you talk to mom before Facebook? You will find a different way. You'll find another path, but no. Yeah, we grip online our technologies and I don't think that's bad by itself. I just feel like. We're being drugged by it cuz we're behind thinking about the consequences and ramifications of it. And uh, sorry, bring some of that into the lifted setting. Uh, what does that look like on 11? So we've

Thomas: 33:43

got the setting, we've got the system, but this is just, this is just volume one. You've got, you've got volume one written right, right there. So, so I'm, I'm, I'm guessing we're going places. Where, where are we going?

Jay: 33:56

I do, I have some ideas. Right. One. At the beginning it's layered, right? We got Guardians of the Galaxy and it said Volume one, and we assume we're gonna need two more, right? Cuz that's how we do movies, right? Star Wars, when it first rolled out, it was episode four, right? And then you asked the question, what about am I, did I miss one through three? So there's a little bit of that, but also if I had my druthers Lifted Vault one was a zine for champions now. Volume one is a Cortex system. If I have my way, I would port Lifted it into a BX type system, right? That game should play different than cortex and Cortex will play different than champions. I think the big premise is the same, but I think, uh, I'm that guy. Systems matter. I think you'll get a different experience with bx right, than you do with Cortex. Right. And I will keep going two systems that make sense. And, and

Thomas: 34:57

what about the setting? Are you done with the setting or is there more stuff that you wanna

Jay: 35:01

do with it? There's more stuff. So I think right out of the gate what I wanna be able to do is, I feel like, so you're fighting this, this unique settings, and then they're branded settings. I feel like when we get branded settings like Marvel, we are trying to emulate either the movies or the fictional space. Here's how you, here's how it should play in a comic book or physics. Right? Here's how, uh, the physics might work of a thing, but we don't do that for fantasy stuff, right? D&D isn't emulating anything other than here's some adventurers. There's a nasty dungeon over there. Go do your thing. I want my superhero game lifted to be that way. I want it to be playable in and of its own self. It's not trying to emulate comic book play. It is trying to emulate, uh, superhero stories, right? Uh, that, that we play. But I'm not trying to get the physics right. I'm not trying to have all the answers. For example, there's no origin about where these powers are coming from, right? I give you in world data that folks have collected about how folks are manifesting these things. And some of the conditions they get manifested under, but that's fictional stuff. You can decide like Apocalypse World, what is the psychic maelstrom? My thought later on is maybe there's a blog post or maybe there's a supplement that says, here's some origin options, right? You can explore and play around and add to your game. I think I'd want to do that with aliens. There's no core aliens in the game. There's talk about alien stuff, right? But maybe there's another thing later on down the road. People can slot these in if they want that, right? It's not core, it's your game. Once you get it home, your setting, uh, if you decide I want some aliens in this setting, you can grab this other thing, slot it in there, and you're off and running. So my hope is to make it modular and not add everything all in there at one shot in one time. If it doesn't grow any further, if I get a everyday people with extraordinary power. Game on the table that people like to play. I would be happy, I would call that success. I'm good with that. You've got

Thomas: 37:11

this runway, you've got these ideas, but you've also defined the scope of what you can do right now, and you, and you've done that. And that's, that's quite cool. So you, you don't end up just building castles in the air. Right. Like you, you finished something today. That's cool. Yeah. Okay, so I've got an eye on the time, so I want to get to this section where I, I have you know, three questions that I'm asking everybody that I talk to. I think it'll be interesting to see, to see how different people respond to the same stuff and just compare that. My first question is, what's a game that you've had a lot of fun with and you want to recommend to this audience? Like, give us some infectious enthusiasm.. Jay: I think without, uh, it's legacy life among the ruins without a doubt. I certainly am a big burning wheel fan. I love Twilight 2000; Champions now is a lot of fun, but I keep coming back to legacy life among the ruins. I'm running a 12 session, uh, campaign on the gauntlet currently. Uh, and that's to just to get a deeper experience of play with it, right? They're parts I still struggle with, but overall there's so much joy, so much drama so much. Uh, oh man. I don't, uh, there's, there's so much play experience that I haven't gotten yet. I don't feel like I knew I got my money's worth, but I don't feel like I drank the whole cup yet. Right. Also, I want to - Ars Magica is a game I have in my head, and if it never gets rebuilt or redone or revisited, I would do it using Legacy, uh, second edition as the, the framework underneath. And I talk about that too, but I love it. I love how the families are built and interact. I like the Flay family play level. I like that you can easily drop down and play the characters in that family, and they do different things. You can have a session where it's just one family. Representatives from that family played by other characters. Do a session, right? They can do quick characters. Uh, they can play members of your family. I think we've done that. Yeah, I like that. You've got different modes of play there. They can have their own separate families, but then they can consolidate for a session and play under one family new characters. Those characters can become NPCs later on. They can be picked back up and played again as PCs later, and that's fun. Right? That's a direction you could probably play whole games at the family level, right. Whole games at the, at the character level. As the ages turn, you get to see time move forward, you change the map, which changes the setting. Everyone's adding inputs to that. Uh, and then your job as the, as the facilitator is to take all those different things, pattern match 'em, that's what our brain does. And come up with a new situation that's happening there and let everybody poke and prod and, and, and press on that. No. So I love it. And, and again, it's the Apocalypse World system under. I don't know that you get any easier hacking mechanics than that. So this, this next iteration that I'm running, we're just using the Coral Rule book. We're focusing in on one of the heavier families, the titans. Uh, cuz if you have the titans, you get what essentially are kaiju into the game. So we're kind of building the whole game around that one family. There were other families but the focal point are the, are the Titan Family Playbook. So I don't see me putting that game down anytime soon. I love running it. I love playing it. Yeah. I had so much fun playing legacy as well. How did you pick who was going to be the order of the Titan? Was that something you just threw out almost? Like, who wants to volunteer? This is what that kind of entails,

Jay: 40:57

right? No, I did, I, I made it voluntary and I, and I threw it out there and the players talked it through and one player said, I'm in. I wanna, I wanna do that one, I'm gonna pick that one up. And then we just played the rest of the game rules as.

Thomas: 41:09

So next question. The problem I see is that, um, when you come into the scene, you know, you, you try to do your thing and there's just a lack of hard numbers. Something you can kind of lean on and you can be like, okay, like these are the numbers I'm getting. Like, you know, is that good? Is that bad? Like, and there's a lot of, there's a lot of. So I just wanted to kind of ask you, you know, are there some actual numbers you can share about your work that might help some new folks in the scene get an idea of, of what it's

Jay: 41:42

like? Sure. I'm looking at Kickstarter, cuz that gave me the, I made that way harder than it needed to be, right For me. So lemme start with, I have a, I'm a software engineer. I have a software company that I own. I've had it since 2006. That was not my life's. 2006, the recession happened. You've gotta make some choices. And then here I am, 17 years later, I own this software company. In that you learned a bunch of stuff, right? How to pay for projects, how thi how much things cost, uh, how much time costs, what you're going to be in for when you hire engineering contractors, help desk folks, uh, all that stuff. We're not huge, but I have enough experience now that that. Does its thing day to day without much hands on from me. So everything I say next comes from that experience. Kickstarter, when I first did my first Kickstarter, and it was by Easter's Light, it was a zine and that was me. Small scale testing bite off enough that if I fall flat on my face right, maybe I just scratch my skin, uh, maybe some scars, a little bit of bruising. I don't break anything. So that would be my first advice is to do. And then look at as much as you can, your hard costs. What I'm getting to is I see a lot of funding numbers that are small or low, and I've talked to other indie folks that have been successful in Kickstarter. And some of them will put low numbers out there, and they're doing that for different reasons. I felt like, and I still feel like I can't put this funds at $5,000 when I know it's going to cost me 12. I also will, as much as I can figure out what am I paying for to make this happen. I've got three of these projects under my belt. So I know when I go with Smart Press about what that cost is for the book. But then if I'm going to hire art, I have an art budget and I think I've been between three and 5,000 paying for art, and I will also. Artists that I've worked with have always undercharged because I have this budget in my head, I've already spent that money. I'll give them the money, uh, even when they undercharge for what I'm asking them to do. And I get there because as a software developer, I've worked with some graphic artists and I'm like, I've got graphic artists that aren't making the art. I'm asking you to, they're doing UI stuff and they charge more than.. So I, I can't pay you what you're asking me cuz that's too low, right? So I'm gonna give you that and here's bonus. The per word count makes me cranky. Uh, when you're paying writers, that hurts my head, right? Maybe it's unpopular, it hurts my head. I, it doesn't matter if it's 5 cents a word. 10 cents word, 15th cents a word. So what I typically will do is I have a page count. I know what that page count is. I have an idea, like an outline, generally what's in the book and what I'm contracting out. And I may say, I have this piece about this character. I need 800 words, right? And I'm gonna pay X amount of dollars for, cuz this is what it, what I feel like it's worth to me. Here's what I'm willing to pay for the 800 words, right? And I use all that to set my funding. If I get more than that, then I certainly will pay the writers more than that, or I'll add more material in, and a lot of those writers will pick up the extra assignments and, and then everybody's happy. And that's just zine stuff. Cortex is, uh, a lifted volume one is my first big book, but I've, I've used pretty much the same process. That's another thing, get a CPA or a tax person for sure, before your money comes in. Do it. You'll love yourself later. And yeah, like I said, I think my first couple of projects, I made it way complicated and uh, and it shouldn't have been since I had the software company. I know how to figure out what a thing costs. My problem was, I think I was trying to do the make a million dollars on Kickstarter. Path. Right? And you either have a track record for that or it is really lightning in the bottle. Uh, the rest of us, we've gotta put some work in. And I think that means paying attention to your numbers. Yeah, that would be my advice is, is, is uh, figure out what your cost is and use that as your funding goal. Just gimme

Thomas: 46:02

a sense. How big is the jump from Vault one to to volume one?

Jay: 46:07

Uh, so Vault One is a zine. Uh, it's 44 pages. I did two prints there. One is the standard Kickstarter fanzine thing, and then there was expanded copy, which I moved to Perfect Binding and added, I think it's like 50 pages. Uh, and full color, right, volume one. We'll weigh in close to 200 pages and hard cover, so I will not do the layout there. I brought in Nathan PTA to do the layout there. Yeah, it's a lot more content in it I've got to cover. I think it's got two cities. Uh, campaign cities in there, some g Ming advice for superhero games, not, uh, broad G Ming advice. Of course, all the characters what to do with lifted, I think the work to do the zines, uh, six to eight months and we scheduled out a year and a half to deliver lifted volume. So I think the process is the same. There's just more of it, right? There are more pages to do. There's more art to do. I think the layout work is probably the same, but Nathan's more suited to do it than I am, uh, at this scale. And then I'm likely to outsource the shipping, right? I ship personally the other books. I will probably have a fulfillment house, do the shipping for these.

Thomas: 47:31

an interesting learning just by itself. That the question of like what stuff you outsource once you hit like a certain scale. Okay, so last question. This is kind of like a. share a gaming story section. You know, I, I love, I love gaming stories. I know you sh you shared a bunch on your podcast and stuff, so what's, what's a story that you can share with us either that happened at your table or you know, with the game you designed or something like that?

Jay: 47:57

Sure. Uh, and this is a curious one, and it is about lifted. It was while I was running Champions now for Lifted vol. One, I think I played over 20 sessions. Of champions now with folks, and we would do session zero and we'd probably play anywhere from one to three games. Again, in my head always is the X-Men, right? Uh, that's what fundamentally, uh, lifted is right? Uh, with all the serial numbers followed off, uh, and some modern adaptations. We're playing better than humans, right, with mundane problems. But what I was finding is, uh, no, there were no. Analogs in any of the sessions that I've played with these folks. Again, these are players coming together and I'm not saying here's who you are. We're making characters from the ground up and while we're together from the ground up, I just assume., we'd get something like a X-Force team or Charles Xavier's, X-men or, or maybe even, uh, not necessarily the brotherhood of evil mutants, but a kind of anti-hero or even vigilante group of heroes, right? I didn't get any of that. Every single. Put together were corporate teams, right? They were corporate backed S teams. Every single one. These are in isolation, right? These folks are not talking to each other. Every single one of these had corporate masters, and I'm like, what is, and this was. Early in the pandemic years at the beginning, at the start of the pandemic. I shouldn't say in the pandemic years. Uh, but at the start, during the, the shutdowns and things like that. And I bring that up cuz I'm like, I wonder if that's in our consciousness at the time. Right. I would have the safety talk. Right. We talk about the X card, open door policy, stuff like that. Lines and veils, and then I brought up, right. You know, we are in the middle of a pandemic. Do we want to include that in the game? It doesn't have to be a focal point, but it's a thing folks are living through. Or do we, like a lot of comics, we are sideways to real time. So there may be realtime events that are happening, but we don't cover them in the game. Right? They don't show up in the comic. And a lot of folks said they didn't want to deal with the pandemic in the game, and I'm like, cool, I get that. We don't have to do that. But their organizations that they put. We're pretty much disaster preparedness organizations for, uh, almost pandemics, right? A lot of them were kind of like c d, C organizations, right? Uh, they may have been alien agents, right? Other stuff coming in, messing with us. Not necessarily biological things, but these other agencies were stand-ins for that. Uh, but every single team was a corporate. A sponsored team and I talked to Paul Beakley from the Indie Game Reading Club about this, and he asked, and we went through the materials I handed out, is there something in there? Right. I couldn't find anything, so I don't know. I don't know what that

Thomas: 50:57

is. So does corporate backed mean? They were like, oh, we're, you know, this is a, this is a Ferrari sponsored superhero team. Or do you mean like, they were like,

Jay: 51:08

we're the un, not even that. They were like Elon Musk funded The Avengers, right. Elon Musk, . It was stuff like that. Right. Most of them were teams. Eventually turned against their employer. Right. Ah, okay. There were some teams that they were all in because they were doing a good thing their employer were, was doing a good thing, but none of them were nation sponsored teams or federal level teams. These are all private companies. That is

Thomas: 51:37

interesting. That is so fascinating that that organically immersed in this moment in time, . Wow. Alright, Jay. The classic ending of the podcast question. If people wanna find you on the internet, where? Where do you wanna send them? Give us some links.

Jay: 51:52

Sure. I am easily found on Twitter until they burn it down at Mad J. Zero. All letters, right. I will be there till the end, or you can find me on CK at play Fearless dot. dot com. Yeah. Uh, you can find me either of those two places. Okay. And,

Thomas: 52:10

uh, thanks so much, Jay. This was such a great time. I will leave you listeners with this quote that Jay has on every one of his newsletters. It says, if there is an adventure you wanna play, but it hasn't been written yet, you must write it. And Jay writes, Tony Morrison, game master.

Jay: 52:29

True story thank you for doing this. Thank

Thomas: 52:34

you. Thank.