Speaker 1: Hello, thank you for joining us for this very exciting
Halloween special. We've got a great game that we are
all excited to play. It's called Eat the Reich. We've
got a special guest here to talk about it. We've
got Grant who is one of the creators of Eat
the Right, along with a bunch.
Speaker 2: Of Hello, I've joined you on your podcast. It is
I Grand how it's I'm going to go to this
voice the whole fucking time.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, all right, So I got a weird one
for you out of the gate. So this is a
game about vampires killing Nazis.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm not the whole time. I'm sorry for scared
you listener. I know it's Halloween. I wasn't a dracula.
It was just me. Sorry, So go ahead, Nazis.
Speaker 1: Do any get dang draculas around here? So? Uh so,
I want to talk to you about were wolves real quick?
Speaker 2: All right? Oh yeah? If so?
Speaker 1: If a spaceship filled with astronauts is on its way
to the moon one of the astronauts is a werewolf,
how does that work out? The wolf out in transit.
Speaker 2: I've got an even greater question for you, which I'm
going to counter Okay, keep that spaceship going all the
way to Jupiter. You've got seventeen moons around.
Speaker 1: Jupiter is jumped ahead?
Speaker 2: Is it the moon.
Speaker 1: Specific moon?
Speaker 2: How does it work? I think I think so. I think.
Speaker 1: You've skipped a question six in my seven part series
of questions about werewolves.
Speaker 2: I wonder what the other ones.
Speaker 1: We're not going to get to him anymore.
Speaker 2: They're gone. I think I think that it's much more
exciting to have it as like, yeah, you trigger somehow.
I think what I'd rather see is when you're that
close to the moon, it triggers latent like aanthropy. So
so guy doesn't know he's a were wolf going up,
he lands on the moon and sudden and then admittedly
he freezes the death and float off into space. So
maybe maybe it's you know, we can work, we can work,
but a werewolf and zero G.
Speaker 1: So, I mean that's part of it. Do you think
right here says do you think motter space suits could
accommodate a werewolf's transformation?
Speaker 2: Depends on your fiction.
Speaker 1: Oh, if you're this is in fiction, baby, this is
real life.
Speaker 2: Oh, dreadfully sorry. Absolutely, those things are hugely reinforced. Those
things are reinforced to combat the vacuum space and I
think I wear wolf absolutely, yeah, yeah, it it'd be
like a tube of toothpaste in there, just full as
an egg, all the way from top to bottom, full
of wolf.
Speaker 1: I love it. All these moons. Do you think the
wolf is attached to the wolfing? Pardon me, is attached
to a specific moon or is it any moon?
Speaker 2: Also? Right?
Speaker 1: Follow up, I don't know if you know this or not,
but Earth is going to have a second moon for
a very little bit coming up in a couple of
days here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess it was on the news,
and I don't look at the news.
Speaker 1: But yeah, what do we do? Moon party? That's it?
Speaker 2: Okay? Cool? Great?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think that means you run around
with your.
Speaker 2: Butt out congratulations baby moon. So while while it's tempted,
like my my instinctive response is like, no, there is
a special relationship between Luna and her children, but na, no,
it's all. It's just straight moonlight. That's all. That's all
that happens. Once you get bright enough moonlight, it kicks
to a certain degree. If you catch all seventeen moons
on Jupiter, it slightly end of Acura.
Speaker 1: You turned into the superwolf.
Speaker 2: Absolutely if it's just.
Speaker 1: Moonlight moonlight, you know, it's just sunlight that's reflected. Would
you be able to like trigger a were wolf with
like a like a pocket mirror if.
Speaker 2: You would have to be one made out of moon.
Speaker 1: Great answer, fantastic because at that.
Speaker 2: Point you could trigger it with sunlight.
Speaker 1: Thank you, you I the power of vested in me
by the State of Illinois. You are now granted the
title of Werewolf Masters. So yeah, you have to make
your own badge. Mom, it finally happened.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Also, what about space vampires?
Speaker 2: Have you read blind Site? I have not heard of
blind Listener, Listener, Listener listener. If the idea of space
vampires gets your your downstairs in a fizz, check out
check out blind Site. It's available for free online as
later c mail document, which is possibly the worst way
to read a novel, but it has It's the softest
hard sci fi I've ever read. I don't like hard
sci fi, but this so again again, this is nothing
to do about the game. It's still interesting. In this
they say that vampires have to be ten times smarter
than humans to hunt humans. Humans are ten times smarter
than cows or humans are ten times smarter than their prey,
so that we are stupid deep on average. Mate, I'm
sure there's some real dumb vampires out there, so vampires
have to be smarter than humans to hunt them. Therefore,
an awful lot of this smarter or this, this this
cognizance comes from. If I asked you to count the
apples on the table and there were three apples, you
wouldn't have to go one, two, three, You just see
three apples, No, there were three. For vampires can do
this with up to two hundred because they have this
incredible sort of cross referencing layer on their brain. However,
there's no such thing as a right angle in nature. Okay,
And if a vampire sees a right angle, it overloads
the cross referencing grid pattern they have in their having
their brain, which stuns them, which is why they cut
the crucifixes.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, And.
Speaker 2: Everything in this book, everything in the book is a
ridiculous explanation. It's like an overstuffed suitcase full of ideas
which all hang together. It's really really charming. However, yeah,
the officer in that is is a vampire. It's very
good I think I think space vampires are cool. I
think that like they don't need to breathe, like they
like their bodies will freeze out there. But they've got
much more play than your average soft human personally, aside
from the fact that it's quite tricky to come by
blood in space, I think they should be.
Speaker 1: Okay, I like all of this stuff. Tell us about
Eat the Rake.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, the reason I'm on the show, so
Eat the Reke is a has been described as smooth
brained one shot bait, and I'm not entirely against that
as a description. It is a big, dumb, loud, over
the top one shot game. It is. It's derived a
lot from again called Wushu, which was released back in nine,
which is an incredible system. Is the first game I
ever GMed, and it is that it has this wonderful,
free wheeling approach to narrative and player creativity which will
unfortunately ruin every other game for you for at least
three years. Is it's like every every other role if
you think of every other role playing game, it has
a character sheet with a list of Like I put this,
you can't do anything unless your character sheet says you
can gadget ye. For example. Let's say, for example, picklocks.
That was a rogue skill, and so no one else
could pick locks, and so the game says, no, you
can't pick locks unless you do this. Wishoe has none
of it has no nose in it. You're not building
up to anything you like. There's no rules for for
XP because you're already exciting enough when you start. And
so it is. It's the Cocaine of role playing games.
It's the pick and mix of role playing games. It
is as it's satisfying for about twenty minutes afterwards, and then
he needs some more. It's not a full meal. And
either Reiker is based on that system. It's basically a
complicated game of wishoe. And I was I really like
the way that we shoot. Could you could you could
have you could have like a character arc, you could
have a narrative, you could have Everything happened in about
an hour and a half to two hours of frantic play.
You get a lot of stuff out there. You get
to get a lot of screen time for all your characters.
And rather than hang about saying I think I think
I'm going to rent an apartment across from the objective
and look at it for two weeks. Now you go
in there and you do that, and it's fine, and
so eat the rape is based on that. Eat the
rape is I should I should also I should also
say what the what the pitch is? So I'll do
the voice. The year is nineteen forty three, Europe is
in flames. You what a vampire commando tasked with one mission? Goffin,
drop into occupied barras and drino all of Hitler's blood.
Speaker 1: Love it due. That's that's enough. If that doesn't, if
that doesn't get your attention, gets your interest, I don't
want to die to you.
Speaker 2: Well, and I will say it's a really it's a
great pitch for cons because because because if people aren't like,
if people aren't excited by that, but well, love this
is me. You have a good day and you can
move on and talk to someone else.
Speaker 1: You don't want to kill the Nazis, all right, I
don't want to talk to you, though. It's a great
way to weed out the weirdos or weed in the weirdos,
depending on Yeah.
Speaker 2: So that's the thing that this is a game of
ultra violence. This is this is quite a weird game
in terms of like expressly the characters that are there
to perform hideous violence and cannibalism technically or Nazis, and
the game offers you, like, I don't offer any support
for that in the game, aside from the fact that
it's the most straightforward way through and you can murder everything.
And apparently, like what I've seen is a lot of
groups like by the time you tick towards the end
of the campaign, they start getting bored of the ultra
violence and they're like, oh, oh, we'll try something else.
And it's this I think, I think there's something quite good.
There's something quite fun about that, because initially you have this,
you have this power fantasy where your first reaction is like, right,
it's absolutely violence. I'm going to kick a car through
a wall and then have my mate drive the car
down a ramp and the blows up in Hitler's there
and he's like no. But in this you have that
absolute power. You do all the murdering, and you're like, oh, well,
what else can I do? And you just sort of
start fucking about at the end. It's tremendous thing. It's
a straightforward D six poor system. It's again drawing in
from Wushu. It has an unusual way of doing a
narrative authority, which is that the GM is basically basically
there is a celebrator of the players and a loose director,
but everyone else is really in charge of every single
beat to beat. So the example I give is not
so in any of the most role playing games. You say,
I'd like to pick the lock. Okay, cool, role to
pick the lock? Okay, cool, But you're seventeen. Great, okay,
all right, I opened the door, tell me what's behind
the door. In this, it's like I pick the lock.
No wait, sorry, I kicked the lock off its hindes.
It kills three men a charge inside the room where
there are two chandeliers, each more beautiful than the last,
and you can just set up whatever you like. The
dice there to provide a pacing mechanic. But it's this,
it's this sort of free celebration where the characters are
given almost godlike powers, and from that players are able
to create something exciting, which is fast burn. It's like
we like, we've got all the characters baked in, we
have the adventure baked in, and it is a very
specific experience. It is not an open ended thing like
the most role playing games, where you make your character
in the GM makes the story. The path of the
narrative is collaborative, like the path of the narrative is
predetermined in this it's the individual beats and the icing
or what particular fruit you're putting in the cake, which
is up to you.
Speaker 1: How did you decide to make that kind of product
rather than just another role playing game system?
Speaker 2: Well, okay, it was a joke I wrote. I wrote
I was on a plane and I wrote, eat the rich?
Are you a bad enough dude to drink all of
the Fura's blood? I thought, that's quite funny, that's pretty good.
That could maybe be the back page for a one
page game, and I sort of did a little bit
of writing about it. Maybe it's gonna be the front
page of a one page game. This mis maybe a
twenty page, thirty page book I could put out along
the lines of Orborg Okborg was a sort of zeny
thing which I wrote with Rollin Kunns a few years ago.
It is Markborg or merck Berg, the sorry merck Borg.
Speaker 1: I don't know, no one knows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even the sweet the sort of gutterpunk Swedish fantasy
grim role playing name. We took them off it and
made it about space Hawks.
Speaker 1: Gets a lot of play on this channel too, so.
Speaker 2: Have a look at Org. I've heard it described as
if merk Borg is mad, Max Ockborg is dodgeums Okborg
is bumper Cars. It's like it's like playing on easy mode.
So you're just sort of like tumb You're tumbling around
it very hard to kill. The apocalypse is coming and
everyone's really excited about the apocalypse. They're trying to make
it come faster. Okay, anyway, sorry, I got distracted. That
was I thought. I thought we could do something similar
to that. I dropped Will Kirk beat an email the artist.
I dropped will an email. I was like, it's like,
do you want to do this. We're gonna kock it
up on Kickstarter. You might get like, I don't know,
ten grand or something. I'll give you half the profits.
What do you want to do? So like like, yeah, cool,
that that sounds good. Ten grounds a pretty good deal
for illustrating a book in this day and age. It
got it really got out of hand, and I can
I can attribute I can attribute that to I'm gonna
say ninety five percent to Will's art. Will Will has
done He's done such a cracking job on this. He's
been a joy to work with. He's been so enthusiastic,
he's been so like like he did. He did every
single page, every single spread is unique. There's like little jokes.
He's hidden all around the place. He's put so much
working And I sort of fucked about with a Google
doc and then and then like he laid it out.
He did all of the stuff he did. He did.
He did a lot of the clever stuff with the game. Yeah,
he did the like, yeah, it's incredible. He did. He
did the clever stuff with the game, which looks beautiful.
I wrote a game which I think convinces you it's
dumb and is actually a little bit smart inasmuch as
it's it's very empowering for new gms. It's very empowering
for players. He want to have a spot of story
game but they don't want to think about relationships, but
they want to be creative. It's beer and pretzels in
that way. And I think that there's there's something quite
clever about that, which I mean, we've got best adventure
for it, and so so obviously, that's sorry. I said,
we've got Best Adventure. We have a large enough audience
that we want an amy.
Speaker 1: By my research, it looks like you had a couple.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Will got Will got best cover, best interior art,
and half of my Best Adventure award, and I got
half of his Best ADVENTURER. And we'll go with that.
Speaker 1: Oh man, it's it is. It is gorgeous. I picked
it up at gen Con, and so did basically everybody
else that's involved in this channel picked up a copy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's bright pink, and it's thirty dollars, incredibly easy
to bow. It's so profitable. I kind of wish I
wasn't giving Will half of the money. But but but
he's but you know what, you know what, he did
a lot more work than me.
Speaker 1: It's generous of him to give you half.
Speaker 2: I don't want to, I said that, Jake, I don't
want to come across as bitter. Will has been an
absolute joy to work with, and I'm so happy to
give him half the money. Like he is, and like
also it means that so Will didn't have the experience
to run a kickstarter himself. He'd done one Kickstarter, it
hadn't gone terribly well, and so he was nervous about
doing another one. And we do kickstars all the all
the time. That's what that's that's kind of what we're
good at is kickstarting books without a Brandon Sanderson attached.
And so we were able to combine his his incredible
work with our infrastructure and the game, which means that
you can take this and then have fun with it
and you know it's inspiring and have some fun with
your friends. To mean that we got I think we're
at three hundred and fifty grand by the end of
its huge amount of money, like for for quite quite
a low price point of this as far. It's very
industri as industry term. Sorry, we it was really good.
It was exciting, it was artistic. We got we got
quite a lot of kickback against it from both sides
of the fence, in that the right were worried that
it was too woke.
Speaker 1: Things like anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's good. It's got extensive safety tools and we
had seven sensitivity readers because I don't know whether they
clocked this. I'm right in the game, but in Nazis
and so, and like the GM has to role play
Nazis and so, like Hey, are you going to be
snafe about this? We had James Minnesota's wrote a bunch
of extra stuff which we put in the book, which
I'm really thankful for. But we had a bunch of
sensitivity readers and they were and they were great, and
only one of them asked not to be credited, which
it was our expert on front, so good fone. So
they asked not to be credited, but also said, hey,
there's not much wrong with the book. Your phone publish it,
just don't just don't put my name on it, which
which which I respect. I'd like to think that you know,
there's there's there's there's something to be said for that
we had. We had a bunch of safety tools and
so a lot of the right will you put politics
in my God, damn, I feel you're talking down on me, boy,
which I had I had no time for. And then
the extreme left were much angrier.
Speaker 1: YEA promoting silence.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it's weird that we that this is controversial,
but we promote physical violence against Nazis and you should
be violent against fascists. But we've had people get in
touch and be like, actually, I want a refund because
I don't agree with that. It's yeah, and and it's
been accused of being like what's the words, a resistance
theme park or something, so that it's a space you
can play in to get cart but doesn't actually change anything.
You know, we accept that, we're not. It's not it's
not fucking practice, it's it's a it's it's a big
dumb game. I shouldn't write a game but World War two.
I think some of the some of my detractors feel
I shouldn't be writing games at all. And you know, like, honestly,
I can respect it. I've done enough. I've written enough games.
Speaker 1: Take a break, take a break, go on vacation.
Speaker 2: But a lot more people liked it than didn't. It's
been wonderful to see this game spread like wildfire, and
to see so many people say, oh, I've never run
a role playing game before, or I haven't played a
role playing game since high school. But all the and
like they're so excited. It's got all the less character
sheets and everything's done for them. It's I'm just gonna
get my friends over and we're gonna dress up like
a vampires maybe, and we're gonna we're gonna have like're
gonna have a bottle of wine each and we're gonna
dick about and it'll be fun and it's it's enabled that.
So I'm proud of that.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, I am very much looking forward to playing
this one. I got two more, okay and fire away.
Here's the tough one. This is the hard hitting question.
At what point do a person's words cross the line
from freedom of speech to make them an acceptable target
for actionable justice?
Speaker 2: The hell?
Speaker 1: At what point? Like, at what point does someone does
someone say something and then you go, yeah, now it's
time to punch you in the mouth.
Speaker 2: I don't know, man, I like, that's such a tricky question,
such a tricky question freedom context. I think that like
it is it is. I think that we should be
I don't know, I'm not really a violent guy. You
haven't met any Nazis. That's that's nice. Yes, nice, Yeah,
it's true. That's true. Hey, you know what, you know what,
I probably have somewhere somewhere, you know, in my and
I've known some people with some pretty reprehensible views in
my time. I don't know. Like, so we do have
a calibration of evil checklist in the book. We have
we have because because something which James wrote for us,
which is right, here are the absolute unfigurable things which
no one in this game will do, whether whether they're
baddies or goodies or what have you. And this is
just stuff which we are not okay with telling stories about,
and we don't want you to tell stories about it
that we're not into it or that sorry, this game
isn't about that that way. And then the next one
is it's like things which baddies will do but not goodies,
and then things which goodies will do, but and then
and so it goes all the way and like things
which goodies have to do. So it's like you've gotta
drink blood. You have to drink natzie blood in this game.
And that's okay. Well, our unfigivable scenes, it's like none
of them are fun and none of none of them
are like topics for a podcast, so I might move on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fine. Okay, there's a tricky question with the
tricky answer. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like to think I dodged it very well.
Speaker 1: I applaud you.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: And then let's see what is your favorite vampire movie?
Speaker 2: Some motherfuckers. I was trying to ice, skate up a hill.
Speaker 1: Oh, Blade Classic Blades, Love.
Speaker 2: Blade Blade one, not the others. I think the.
Speaker 1: Second one's got some parts. The third ones exists, the.
Speaker 2: Second one, the second one is it's running on Mortal
Kombat four. It looks like hammers. Yeah, yeah, okay, but
the first Blade film slick as fuck, tremendous, really love it,
stylistic christ Yeah, absolutely right, right, And that's that's one
of that's one of the one of the scenes you
can have in an action film. And and also the
action bit isn't the exciting bit. It's the reveal. They're like, hey,
do you want to see how many umpires? The rare? Yeah, tremendous,
very exciting, big fun of Blade. Oh it must be
a second Vampire film.
Speaker 1: I like, that's the only one. Uh oh, And then
I got one more I line I said there were two,
there's three. Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. I'm gonna keep
you here all day. With the success of ether Reich
and The Weeds, formaated were basically the whole thing, everything
you need for the one shot right in one place.
Do you think that there will be more like a
series like this, more Vampire Commandos kind of stuff?
Speaker 2: I want to do other games using the engine. Okay,
so the base game. What this was also inspired by,
aside from Wisha, was the game I wrote back in
twenty and thirteen I think called Havoc Brigade. You can
download off our website. It's PDF only, you print it,
and it is that you play a group of six
pre generated or commandos having to do a stealth mission
into into a sorry listener I did. I did think
quotes yeah a finger quotes into the imperial town of Friboog.
And it's Borhammer based, but you play six orcs and
again you're very powerful, but you can't fly everyone, and
so it's it's about sort of applying pressure and moving
through the city and that sort of thing. But it's this,
it's it's much more of a free form fuck about.
It was very important in either right that all the
characters be a little bit sexy or a little bit
sort of a handsome or interesting or cool looking. One
of the character, well, some people are in some people
are into Flyn Will's Will's got Will's got a good
hand one of the characters. One of the characters in
ha It Brigade is six goblins. When you hear you
find additional goblins. It's it's much dorkier, it's much grimier,
it's much more slapstick. I'd really like to sort of
give better proper go and re release that in some
way using the Havoc Engine. I'm already seeing people using
Havoc Engine games like for their own games, as well
as one on Kickstart soon about Goblin Trash Princess Princesses.
But as far as Vampire Commanders goes, no, I've told
the story. Really, We've got some idea. We don't normally
do much. We're not hugely into much, but this has
a big audience and Will's really good at drawing, and
so we're interested in other things we can make which
other people to give us money, basically because once they've
bought Eat the Riich, there's not much else they can buy.
So we've got the patches which you can put in
a jacket. Where we're looking at like next year, we're
looking at getting We've got like a dice set which
we're interested in releasing, so Will's done that custom custom
art on all the dice. We've got a bomber jacket
which we're interested in doing. So if we can work
that out and fight it's it's pretty cool and it's
got a coffin stamps down down the aim. But finally,
what I'm really excited about is we're looking at doing
six minutures for it, so one for each one for
each vampire. Put the designs and stuff, and we need
to get them all sort of sorted out. But broadly
this has been really cool. People have been really resonated
with it. We want to be able to create cool
things for it and then get more money from that
so we can carry on making other stuff. But in
terms of games, I don't I'm not especially I don't
think we're going to see and eat the writer too.
I really want to get a story of the Order
of Nuns who supplied blood for the Coffins. Okay, we
had like there's like a couple of throwaway lines about them,
but then I wrote them up more so we'll could
do some fluff and the idea that like these these
are nuns who are run by an immortal, undying vampire
and they do gun running an espionage and they're just
like they're like seventies cool, like like like like eurospy nuns.
So like there's definitely fun things to explore. There's definitely
fun things to do, but I am wary of just
doing oh and here's some more characters, and here's that,
because because we threw everything we had into that first one.
And I'd much rather one, let will collaborate with someone
who would make a more traditional game, which might have
a broader appeal without a great cell. And two, I
want to keep collaborating with other artists. I want to
keep like the model of having one writer and one artist.
I want to open up more people to write, one writer,
one artist, mashing them together and seeing what come out,
and it'll be about seventy eighty pages long, and so
making like like mad making effectively art books with a
role playing game in them. And that's cool, it's it's cool.
It's not as profitable as making another big book or
you know, a Fifth Head product. Although that that ship's
sailing in it, that ship, that ship's going across the
water to welth Land. Who knows what's going to happen
to that? Yeah, that's yeah, be like Fourth Head all
over again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but.
Speaker 2: So so yeah, I mean I want to do more
effectively things which are approached with like the same level
of playing them as a zine. So this is a
one shot, This is a short form things is part
of something bigger. This is weird and strange and experimentally
but which have the same which had really lovely production values,
and they last a long time, and they're pretty to
touch and so pretty to touch, pretty to look out,
lovely to touch, pretty to touch, and and and keep making,
keep making those books for perverts. Basically, there we go.
Speaker 1: Man, I look forward to all of it, and I
wish you the best of luck with everything. It's all
been great so far, and I am excited to look
into Orkburg and have a brigade. I think if I
bring those to the guys on this channel, I think, uh,
I'm not. I'm just gonna show it to them. They'll
be like, yes, I'm in awesome.
Speaker 2: Send them then I need a new everything, send them the.
Speaker 1: Biling Oh man, Well, thank you again so much for
being here for this, and I'm really looking forward to
playing this and uh, hopefully you know whatever comes out
next man Hollows or you know anything else like that.
If we got a chance to run it, I'll try
to bug you again, get you back in here.