Adam Powell (00:14.016)
Hello and welcome to Snyder's Return, a tabletop roleplay podcast. My guest today has taken us on TTRPG journeys from dark fantasy through a dark, alternate present to a dystopian future, leading us through the mirth and the mayhem that may befall us as we travel. He has made himself a bane of one type of creature, but has created so many more for us to encounter. It is an absolute pleasure to welcome Free League Publishing's game designer, Magnus Seter, to the show. Magnus Seter.

Magnus Seter to the show. Magnus, thank you for joining me today.

Magnus (00:46.51)
Thank you for asking me to join. It's a pleasure to be here.

Adam Powell (00:50.784)
So, Magnus, before we get into the meat of why I invited you on, and thank you so much for agreeing to chat with me today, how did you yourself get into tabletop role -playing games, please?

Magnus (01:03.758)
I started in 1982. I had always been a Star Wars fan, but I was a huge Star Wars fan and had sort of drifted into reading Tolkien and C .S. Lewis books. And then one Christmas, my good friend Thomas called me and said that he had received a Christmas gift with an amazing new game.

So we went I went over there and we played the first edition of what you English speaking people know as dragonbane What what we in Sweden know as Dracar och Dämoner? So that was the start with the the classic Swedish first edition box with a very chaotic set of rules very rough around the edges and very

very much in need of house ruling and everything like that. But it really caught me by the, I don't know what you say, but it really caught me and I became, well, obsessed with role playing games. So that was the start and we...

then drifted away from Dragonbane and played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons, the basic expert companion set. We never made it to master set, but still basic expert companion was several years. Then we moved on to AD &D, played Ravenloft and a lot of other stuff, and also Call of Cthulhu, which for a long, long time was my favorite game.

Adam Powell (02:37.504)
Hmm.

Adam Powell (02:52.448)
Okay.

Magnus (02:56.334)
It's, I don't know what really grabbed me with Cthulhu, but I think the contemporary style, of course, with the 1920s contemporary and also the horror element. And also it's more of a role -playing game than Dungeons & Dragons was, or at least that's how we played it.

Adam Powell (03:21.12)
Hmm.

Magnus (03:24.046)
I'm of the opinion that you can use any role -playing game to play role -playing games. So I don't think that it's impossible to play heavy role -play games with Dungeons & Dragons if you want to do that. And you have a group that is focused on that aspect of it. It's possible. But for us, it turned out that Call of Cthulhu was the game that brought out the role -playing in us. And then, of course,

Adam Powell (03:24.192)
Okay.

Adam Powell (03:42.944)
Hmm.

Magnus (03:53.422)
I encountered a game called Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, which combined fantasy and horror, and with the emphasis on roleplaying and this very British humour that we Scandinavians enjoy. So I played a lot of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. A lot of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

Adam Powell (04:12.8)
Thank you.

Magnus (04:20.302)
So that's sort of like the basics and then drifted into cyberpunk. And then in 89, I started writing games for publishing. I started writing for cyberpunk 2020. And then I did some mutant stuff, some dragon vein stuff. And I worked on the second edition of cult, but the biggest assignment up till...

Adam Powell (04:25.312)
Hmm.

Magnus (04:48.878)
Bitter Reach, which is also for Free League a couple of years ago, and the monster book now, the bestiary, was I co -wrote the Mutant Chronicles role -playing game.

Adam Powell (04:58.912)
Amazing. So not only have you wandered through, which I alluded to in the introduction, themes and many themes and genres, but different game mechanics, game styles, play styles. Fantastic. So rewinding a little bit further back, what was the instigator from going from role player?

and just enjoying the games as a product to becoming a creator and a writer. Where was that leap? What sort of inspired you to sort of step into that side of things?

Magnus (05:35.566)
That was also always a natural progression for me. I've always been a writer. I've enjoyed writing since I was little. Every time we had the, in school, we had sort of like every Friday, you got one hour where you could do what you wanted. And I wrote short Wild West stories, basically. And then I wrote some short.

to Star Wars stories and then I wrote other stuff just that no one has ever read. And I don't know. I was like eight, nine, 10. So it's what it is. But I always wanted to write. So when I started playing role playing games, it was natural for me to also start writing stuff for the role playing games, house rules to start with. And then I sort of like had a typewriter and I hammered out a cop.

Adam Powell (06:12.16)
Yeah.

Magnus (06:31.278)
basically a copy of Misty Isles which is in the Dragonbane Secret of the Dragon Emperor campaign for Free League. I basically copied that and copied that format and then I started writing for my friends and then I started writing for conventions. And me and my friend who is

Adam Powell (06:43.52)
Hmm.

Adam Powell (06:55.328)
Okay.

Magnus (07:00.43)
Don Alistrand, he's the layout artist for many of the free league games. We ran for several years, cyberpunk adventures at many of the biggest role -playing cons in Sweden. And we had the help of the game masters. So we regularly drew in about 30 games.

Adam Powell (07:21.024)
Hmm.

Magnus (07:28.078)
30, 30, 30 or 20 or 30 games each convention, which is big in Sweden. And of course, if we wanted to do that, I had to write adventures that people could use and that people could play and that that engaged the players in interesting scenarios and scenes. And I think that shaped me as well as a writer to sort of like aim for something immediate.

Adam Powell (07:32.96)
Hmm.

Adam Powell (07:56.992)
Hmm.

Magnus (07:57.006)
in everything I write, something that picks you up and says, oh, this is cool, this is fun, this is something I want to look further into, whether it be cult or cyberpunk or dragon bay or fancy role play or something like that.

Adam Powell (08:11.232)
Yeah, I was going to ask, building on, and you've kind of answered it, but I feel I owe it to myself to finish the question. What were some of the challenges that you faced through your progress of becoming a game designer? You mentioned they're about making it sort of almost pick up and play and attractive to the game masters and the players. What else have you learned through your time as a game designer?

Magnus (08:40.558)
I've tried shedding the tropes, but also embracing what works, sort of subverting the tropes is a good thing. At first I was very, because I was young, I was around 20. I was really, I had grown up with all the popular culture and tried to emulate that.

And that was fine for the time because no one else had done anything different from that. But as I've grown as a game writer, I've sort of, at least I think I have sort of figured out how to relate to the tropes and not use the more problematic ones. Much of my early cyberpunk material is not really that good.

And it's really, it has a sexist vibe because that was the genre at the time. If you look at Blade Runner, for example, this is a huge influence on me, but it has a sort of bisogenistic streak. And that was a lot of the, at least the more accessible cyberpunk material also had that.

The guys were the heroes and the Japanese were the villains and women were mostly eye candy. Stuff like that I shed along the way. That was the younger me, but now I need to do stuff that is more interesting for other people.

Adam Powell (10:27.776)
Yeah, absolutely. So having sort of learned and sort of molded and changed, it sort of brings us up to where we are with Dragonbane at the moment. But before we move on to that, and I want to make sure we sort of spend a decent time, and I don't interrupt that too much, where can we find you? Where can we find Dragonbane? Where can we find all the things, Free League and sort of that whole thing?

You are associated with, in other words, you are associated with please.

Magnus (11:00.718)
Yeah, there, I'm not a huge social media person except for Facebook. So for Dragon Bane, you can most easily find me in the Dragon Bane Facebook group. I am also a member of the discord, the Dragon Bane discord channel, which is fabulous. It's a huge resource and Tobias and Matthias who are running it are doing a bang up job with that.

and I recommend everyone to join the Dragonbane Discord group. It's fabulous. I don't use Discord that often. I use it for some meetings and I forget to check in regularly. So if someone wants to get hold of me, Facebook is probably one of the best ways, unless you speak Swedish. Because if you speak Swedish, you can go to the site rollspel .nu.

R -O -L -L -S -P -E -L dot N -U, which is a discussion forum that I run together with a lot of other people, which is a role -playing forum that has been in different iterations and under different management, has been running since 1999. And there's an active group of people there. And since I sort of run it and I moderate it, I need to be there every day.

So Swedes, you can go to Rollspl .nu and everyone else, you can probably ask for me on the Facebook group for DragonBane. Or if you just want to ask someone at the Discord, they will always say, well, I'll give him a ring and I'll see what, if he can show up.

Adam Powell (12:42.432)
Fair enough. I will make sure there are links to that you've mentioned there as well as to Free League and the Free League's website and all those sort of good things so we can support the game, support people such as yourselves, the creators, and keep that good community feeling going. So now moving on to Dragonbane itself. Just as a snapshot for those that may have

may have seen it on DriveThruRPG, may have seen it on the Free League website or whichever social media platform it appears, Kickstarter or others. Very briefly, what is Dragon Bane as a TTRPG for someone coming into this hobby, please?

Magnus (13:31.886)
It's interesting for people not from Sweden because Dragonbane is what Dungeons and Dragons is for the rest of the world. In Sweden, Dragonbane has the place of Dungeons and Dragons. It is the role -playing game, it is the fantasy game, it is even the case that if you would translate...

Dungeons and Dragons in movies or books. And you would have someone that mentioned, well, he plays Dungeons and Dragons in Sweden. They would translate it to he plays Drakar och Demoner, which annoyed TSR immensely, of course. But so that's the baseline. It's the dominant role playing game in Sweden, which I find extremely interesting since the discussion around Dungeons and Dragons in the States often

sort of assumes that Dungeons and Dragons is the ideal role -playing game because it is the dominant role -playing game and thus it proves that it has the best rules and stuff like that. Whereas we in Sweden, we have another dominant role -playing game and the Germans and the Austrians, they had the Schwarzauge, which of course it was a Dungeons and Dragons clone.

But that was the biggest one. The Dungeons and Dragons isn't the biggest game everywhere in the world. And in Sweden, Dragonbane is the biggest game. And it's also different from Dungeons and Dragons in my opinion, since it's a very much intimate game. It's a smaller game. And I don't mean small as in it's got tiny, tiny books, but it's sort of like if you look at Dragonbane today, you get

Adam Powell (15:02.048)
No, that's all.

Magnus (15:26.574)
a valley, the Misty Vale to adventure in and there's like 14 adventures set in the Misty Vale. Of course people want more so there are more stuff coming from third parties of course. But it's at its core Dragonbane is much more I would say it's closer to the PCs. The world is much closer. It's...

Adam Powell (15:28.416)
Hmm.

Magnus (15:54.99)
There aren't any 20 level adventures running around. There aren't even 10th level adventures running around. There are adventures, but they are much more in tune with the world around them. And it's deadly, of course. It's more brutal than, for example, Dungeons and Dragons. At its roots, it is basic role playing from Chaosium. So it's...

It started out as a translation of Magic World and sort of evolved from that, sometimes parallel with the development of basic role -playing mechanics, but also in different other ways. Even though we were a huge market for role -playing games during the 80s, even for American English foreign game companies,

Adam Powell (16:37.088)
Hmm.

Magnus (16:54.062)
We have sort of like our own style when it comes to role playing games that is more grounded, that is more low fantasy and more sort of like rooted in the Norse mythology. When Americans play games where they talk about dragons and stuff like that, it's sort of like...

Adam Powell (17:01.312)
Hmm.

Magnus (17:23.566)
Maybe I'm insulting people here now, but that's sort of like a quiet mythology for them. Whereas for us, it's our mythology. So trolls is not what trolls are in Dunnoons Dragons. Trolls are the Jorn Bauer trolls with huge big noses and turn to stone when the sun comes out. And there are lots of different, let me say,

Adam Powell (17:31.456)
Hmm.

Magnus (17:52.91)
themes that are sort of like closer to us. We, of course, we didn't do most of us don't live the Arsa belief nowadays, but still it's not that long ago that we had the Vikings and the Thor and Odin and all the other gods in the Norse mythology and the local superstitions and everything. And that's sort of like

For Americans, for example, that's a more foreign concept. But for us, that was what we grew up with. It's sort of we knew about everything that was in the books because, well, that's a monster from our mythology or for something close to us. So Dragon Mate is, in my opinion, a game that is much closer to...

Adam Powell (18:33.056)
Yes.

Magnus (18:52.494)
us as players, basically. And it's not as glossy as Dánis Rengas can be. Of course, if you play Ravenloft, Dánis Rengas or Dark Sun, it might not be that glossy, but still Dragonbane is much more in this feel, it's much more akin to War of My Fancers roleplay, for example.

Adam Powell (18:53.728)
Okay, yeah, yeah, no.

Adam Powell (19:12.416)
I do love the sound about the way it looks, the artwork throughout the books, the beast area, which we'll get on to shortly. The GM screen, which is available via Freeleaguing and drive through as well as the sort of the core set that you can pick up, which has the rules and the adventures. Standees, which I love cardboard standees. They are easy to move around, easy to play with.

Magnus (19:37.006)
Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Adam Powell (19:39.424)
So there were so many fantastic things about this as a physical product, but we're here to sort of look into all the aspects and especially the ones that you've worked on. So from what has been released in sort of the core rules and the core set to now with this beastier for Dragonbane, what has been the most exciting part of expanding on the beasts that were available to the GMs to start with?

Magnus (20:05.806)
I think the most exciting part for me was to be asked, actually. I'm the only writer who's written for all three publishers of Dragonbane. So I was happy when I got to contribute my adventure Trollspire to the box. And that's a good example of what I mean by closer, more intimate setting in adventure.

Adam Powell (20:10.112)
Fair enough.

Magnus (20:35.534)
So if people are like, well, what does it mean? If you read Trollspire, you sort of like can get a drift of what I'm thinking there. But the most exciting thing about getting to work on the base theory was that it was such a monumental expansion back in the days. It was maybe the third, fourth book that was released for Dragonbane. And...

it was really an injection to every gaming group out there. We didn't because the basic Dragon Bane set has never had sort of like a monster book. So you got a handful of monsters in the rules and then we got the monster book. But the monster book has also never been as

Adam Powell (21:20.512)
Hmm.

Magnus (21:28.942)
as rich with monsters as for example, the Monster Manual for Dennis Rangas, AD &D, which maybe had like 100 monsters. It's always been sort of like focused on describing the monsters like 50, 60, 70, even back in the days. That was sort of like what we felt was needed. But, and that book was so influential that when Free League asked me if I wanted to help them with the...

Adam Powell (21:33.536)
Hmm.

Magnus (21:58.126)
be steered for this version of the game. I just couldn't say no. And I thought, well, this is going to be really, really a lot of fun. Mostly because I've sort of never been a monster person as a writer before. I've mostly written scenarios, but with Dragonbane, I started writing third party monsters that...

Adam Powell (22:14.144)
Okay.

Magnus (22:25.006)
that are published in the Swedish gaming magazine, Phoenix. That's actually why Free League is sort of like, oh, yeah, we can ask Magnus for help because he's written these monsters and that works. So he can probably help us with that. But I also felt that the format for the monsters in the Dragonbane game opens up creativity, for my creativity at least.

Uh, some, uh, and it's, it's difficult to pin down what it is, but it's, it's, it's a format that, that I feel is fun to work with and that, which sort of leaves a bit about our drier traditional writing in Sweden. Uh, we could have sort of like really dry, uh, writing. We are more, I'm not a huge expert on the Han.

But we hew closer to Han style of writing than we hew to the Danish dragon style of writing. It's much more what we call pig farming in Sweden. And it's not hero, zero to hero. It's sort of like zero to zero dot five. So.

Adam Powell (23:30.432)
Okay.

Adam Powell (23:44.256)
Yeah.

Magnus (23:45.742)
But the fun thing was that, yeah, I get to work with the beasts. And I then thought, OK, I've done some mistakes during my design life. And one of them was, for example, working with the second edition of Cult, where we, Target Games and me, sort of did some really major changes to the game.

to appease the criticism of course, we removed magic, we removed a lot of stuff that people took a front to and sort of gutted the game. So now that I wanted to write the monsters in the bestiary, I wanted to go back and pick up the old stuff and sort of

Adam Powell (24:23.008)
Hmm.

Magnus (24:43.086)
not pay homage, but still to use that as an inspiration, as a source, and update that to the new format, basically. So if you would look at the first Monster Book, it was released in 1984 or five or something like that. Many of the basic concepts there are in the new bestiary.

Adam Powell (24:50.496)
Okay.

Magnus (25:12.11)
And I feel that me as an older gamer, I think I'm sort of like perfect for doing that. So much of the, I was there, I played the game and I know what people liked and I know that people like that kind of thing in Sweden at least. For English speaking people, the first monster book from last century isn't that interesting, but for us it is. And I felt that, well.

Adam Powell (25:22.848)
Hmm.

Adam Powell (25:31.04)
Okay.

Magnus (25:42.862)
I can update that and I can sort of like try to make them more interesting and immediate and more playable than they were back in the days.

Adam Powell (25:53.472)
All right, so the the bestiary that's that's or the the dragonbane bestiary is I'll just give a couple of statistics almost. It's one hundred and fifty six pages from cover to cover. Has wonderful artwork throughout is broken into effectively nine sections, which breaks down the monsters to separate out for ease of use by the GM in that respect. But what I love and sort of had a look through.

sort of doing the research for this and one of the things I like about Dragonbane is that there is a roll table for the monsters or beasts to strike and they always attack in that respect or it always succeeds and that's one of the mechanics I love about this game it's been mentioned by by other TTRPG folk as well. So from a design perspective and from a thematic perspective what has been the most

engaging or interesting entry into the beast theory for you to create mechanically and which has been the most interesting for you thematically.

Magnus (27:05.102)
It's a difficult question. When Free League contacted me, they said that, well, we need someone who can write some monsters for us. And I said, yes, of course, I can help. Yeah, can you write 60? And I said, sure, I'll do 60. But writing 60 dragonbane monsters in two, two and a half months sort of muddles everything up.

It's sometimes difficult for me to remember. I was like, what was that? What happened then? What was I thinking then? But I do remember that what really struck me as the mechanical part of building a monster that I enjoyed the most was the monster attacks that you alluded to earlier. Because if you look at a dragon bane monster today, it's made up of

Adam Powell (27:34.72)
Of course. Of course.

Magnus (28:01.486)
three sections. It's the description and it's the stats and the abilities and then there are the monster attacks. And since the monster attacks are auto hit, as you said, you really have to think about how that will change the encounter, basically.

And try to make it so that the attacks do change the encounter as well. So that it's not a static hit and miss hit and miss hit and miss, which plagued the earlier versions of the game where you had sort of like attacks and they would miss and they were hit and it would miss and they would hit. Now it's more like, okay, it's a monster. It hits. Okay. What does that mean? Well, it means that you can shape the encounter and you have.

the, you have for most monsters there, there's six monster attacks for smaller monsters, three or four or something. I did, I did write a swarm of rats. Someone asked for a swarm of rats at the face on the Facebook group. And I wrote that. And I think I only had three attacks or something like that. But most of them have six attacks and sitting down, trying to think, okay, how can I make this interesting? How can I make this fun? And how can I, I,

and make this not just a run -of -the -mill attack, which is difficult since you write 60 monsters, you write six attacks for each, that's 660, 360 attacks, monster attacks. Not every monster attack will be unique, unfortunately, but that's the name of the game, so to speak. So that was interesting. But the most interesting monster...

Adam Powell (29:40.416)
Hmm.

Adam Powell (29:45.472)
Yeah.

Adam Powell (29:49.6)
Absolutely.

Magnus (29:55.79)
thematically, I think, are the undead. Well, the sort of like not the larger undead, but the major undead, like a vampire or monsters like that, because it's, there's, I feel there's some sort of freedom when, when...

Adam Powell (29:56.672)
Okay.

Magnus (30:18.446)
inventing the attacks for the undead. You can sort of like gaze from the crypt and you can sort of give them fanciful names and that's one thing that Free League did after they develop, when they've got my material and develop it further. I think they also added a lot of flares to the attacks, monster attacks, when it comes to names for example and effects and stuff like that. But undead are really...

to me that they are the most interesting. I did write a lich for another, for the Windheim Kickstarter that is being published now. And that was also a lot of fun. It's like, okay, I can create an attack, which is called, it's full of stars. And then I can just be evocative with the language and just say that, well,

Adam Powell (31:13.824)
Hmm.

Magnus (31:16.398)
you look into it's the lich's eyes and it's full of stars. You are pulled into the space and emptiness of the void and blah blah blah. And it's also of course a popular cultural reference which is perfect. It's sort of like a fun reference in the name and there's a cool effect and it sort of like makes the monster memorable I think.

Adam Powell (31:45.088)
Absolutely. I've pulled up the white from the Dragonbane bestiary. And so there's, for those that haven't seen the bestiary or looked through the Dragonbane core rule book and seen the way the monster laid out, there's a wonderful quotation from a character that gives a sometimes haunting description of what these monsters are. A bit of the lore. Go on, please. Please.

Magnus (32:08.334)
I must say that I didn't write those. That's Matthias, I think that's Matthias from Free League who added those, the quotations. Glory to those who deserve it.

Adam Powell (32:23.424)
But there's quotations, there's a bit of law, there's how to use them in random encounters. Each one comes with an adventure seed, which I think is really, really useful. But for the white, we have, what was the word? Crippling cold. The white grabs an unfortunate victim who feels the chill of death spread through their body. If you just read that to a player and they're feeling it in character, that just evokes, and then it goes into the mechanical stuff and sort of.

Magnus (32:51.31)
Yeah.

Adam Powell (32:52.128)
keeps the game moving. But these, as you mentioned, these types of descriptions allow the GM to play with the encounter and create that narrative with the group. And please.

Magnus (33:04.75)
Yeah, one attack that I really, really like. I can't remember if I wrote it or if someone else wrote it. But it's the...

the living tree, what's that named in English?

Adam Powell (33:21.824)
the tree tree

Magnus (33:24.334)
The triant, exactly. I think it has a monster attack which a flock of birds flies into the scene and chaos erupts. That kind of thing. I love it. I love it. And I'm not sure if I wrote it or if Free League did. If it's in the core book, then Free League wrote it.

Adam Powell (33:46.432)
Aha.

Adam Powell (33:51.392)
It's a bestiary treekin, death from above, a swarm of small birds swoops down on opponents within 10 meters and they all suffer damage. Again, if you want the mechanical side of stuff, please pick up the bestiary for Dragonbane. It's phenomenal. The artwork is fantastic as well.

Magnus (33:54.798)
Ah, tweaking, yes. Yes, that's from above. Yep.

Magnus (34:13.966)
It is, it is. I've never met the illustrator, actually. But he lives in the same city as I do.

Adam Powell (34:20.416)
There you go. It's a small world, just not quite small enough. So with all of these things in place, what are you... You've worked on a number of different projects and games and things you mentioned, and we'll circle back to that in a moment. But are you working on anything beyond what you've mentioned just then for Dragonbane? Is there more in the pipeline for you coming?

Magnus (34:24.846)
Yeah, it is. It is.

Magnus (34:50.318)
I did write a scenario that was used at the GothCon, which is the Gothenburg gaming convention, where we did the official free league dragon bane thing there this year, the bane of the alder tree. And we are looking into how to develop that further. But that's a short thing. I'm writing a...

Adam Powell (35:17.632)
Okay.

Magnus (35:21.198)
I'm writing at the moment a book about the Swedish role -playing history for the American market that takes up most of my time. So I'm not involved in any big role -playing projects at the moment, except for a Kickstarter, which is a third party Kickstarter to adapt the lone wolf world to Dragonbane. But that will only be in Swedish.

Adam Powell (35:46.368)
Oh, okay.

Magnus (35:49.998)
due to licensing agreements. But that's sort of like a thing I'm helping with, being the rules person and the monster person.

Adam Powell (35:51.456)
Of course, yeah.

Adam Powell (36:02.176)
Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned writing. And one of the games you mentioned, Cult, is very, very different from Dragonbane. What was it like to not only shift systems, but completely shift tone almost while they are both down to Earth? Cult is very much Earth above and Earth below and covers from very...

Magnus (36:28.942)
Ha ha ha.

Adam Powell (36:31.36)
adult and mature themes which it handles superbly well.

Magnus (36:32.942)
Oh yeah, it does, it does. I've been thinking about that myself, that there's some sort of paradox there, is that when I write for Dragon Bay and I try to evoke fairy tale themes, one project that is on the back burner is a conversion of an old Dragon Bay adventure, which is called Secrets of the Winter Woods, which is sort of like a fairy tale about a...

spring being trapped in a valley which turns it into eternal winter and it's a lot of lots of fairy tale things in there. That's Trollspire as well and some other dragonbane material I've done is very much folklore fairy tale material but the cult material I've worked on are more Hellraiser.

more visceral, gore.

Magnus (37:39.854)
filled adventures. We were talking about his last hope. No, not his last hope. Gallery of Souls. Gallery of Souls. And that was I remember one of my friends who's never friend and the first time we met, he's like, OK, so who are you? I'm Magnus, I work in Colts. Oh, OK. Hang on. Didn't you write the Gallery of Souls? Yeah. Wow. I always wondered what you looked like, because who could write

Adam Powell (37:46.304)
souls yes

Magnus (38:07.95)
the scene in the bathroom with a guy with a pencil stuck in his eye. And that was like, sort of like, okay, so you're the guy who wrote all that and you're totally not that kind of person. No one is that kind of person who would do that kind of thing. But there are two sides to me, three if you count the cyberpunk material I've done. But I think that it's...

horror has always fascinated me and I am terrified of horror, I'm terrified of horror movies and I like to explore that part of me as well. Whereas the fantasy I write...

I don't really feel that that is the place for that kind of horror when games like Call of Cthulhu and cult exists. It's not a very big shift in my head if I would start writing a horror scenario. I wouldn't have to go through a fasting and cleansing of the mind for 30 days before I could write horror because there are two totally different

things basically. There are two.

two mindsets that can exist next to each other basically because it's more like my horror stuff is more shock and horror and for effect than my fantasy stuff which is also maybe why the why Gallows Souls is sort of like it's been

Magnus (39:59.502)
Well, it's been described as a good introduction to what cult is and it was written originally as an introduction to cult. And that was also His Lost Hope that I mentioned, which is another cult adventure that I did, which I'm very, very happy with. That was actually the introductionary scenario in the second cult edition. And I wanted it to be very immediate, very, very in people's face. And...

Adam Powell (40:06.56)
Okay.

Magnus (40:29.934)
Maybe that overdid it a bit. My cult stuff is not sort of like, well, something is strange and gradually you discover something that is strange. It's like, here it is in your face, deal with it. More an action movie than a horror movie, actually.

Adam Powell (40:34.784)
Okay.

Adam Powell (40:46.56)
Yes.

Adam Powell (40:53.44)
Yeah, I mean, that's fair. It's very much... It's less about the influence from behind the scenes and more about, as you say, it's there, it's happened, it's happening. It's coming for you, especially in respect to Lost Gallery of Souls. Yes.

Magnus (41:08.59)
Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, the Kairath when it comes to it. And I feel that them being very short as well, not very short, but fairly short, basically, means that I can be very much more direct when it comes to the effects and everything, because you don't have time if you would have a campaign like Black Madonna, which is an entire campaign, you can be more subtle and sort of build things up. Whereas the shorter stuff, I feel.

myself, they have to be really visceral and really, really effectful. Whereas when I write for Dragon Bay, I write more slow and much more.

nice. I expect people to be heroes, that the players to be heroes. I hope they are heroes anyway. And I try to give them plenty of opportunities to role play and solve things not by fighting, but by talking or just exploring things. And they wake up in the morning and the dew in the grass and the sun is up.

things like that. If it would be cold, they would wake up in the morning and there would be blood in the grass and the sun wouldn't rise and then everything would be horrible.

Adam Powell (42:32.768)
Yes, yes, they are very, very different experiences. And I am a fan of each of your work in both, for sure. So you've written for a number of systems. You've played a number of different systems. Are there any systems that you haven't played yet that you would like to play? You mentioned you've got a lot of work and other things to distract you, but you are still, I imagine, a gamer at heart.

Magnus (42:39.854)
Oh, good.

Magnus (43:01.422)
We play every second week with one group and then I have another group that meets intermittently in a gaming cellar basement in the old town of Stockholm. And we play Frostgrave in the basement. We play mostly miniature focused games like Frostgrave and 40K and also Dungeons and Dragons 4, which is a very good game even though it isn't really what...

Dungeons and Dragons was to us. I think it's a really, really good game still, so we play it. But then the every other week is together with a group of friends where we have five game masters. So we sort of rotate the game mastering. And we've been playing Alien, we've been playing Vezen. Now we're playing Mausritter. And we've tried...

Adam Powell (43:48.992)
Okay.

Magnus (44:00.238)
different games. So it's old school essentials as well, going back to the old school Dungeons and Dragons feel. And that way I get to try the games that interest me. Someone will probably run it or I might run it. Basically, I did. We switched formats basically because I did run Forbidden Lands campaign for four, five years or something like that.

Adam Powell (44:01.216)
Yeah.

Adam Powell (44:17.632)
Yeah.

Adam Powell (44:28.96)
Oh wow.

Magnus (44:29.87)
And during the COVID, we had that sort of like a break, but still it's like a lot of time. So now we're saying that one game, six, eight, 10 sessions max, and then we try something different. And I've been thinking, okay, what would I want to try? And I don't really know. At the moment, we have said we don't want to play free league games.

Adam Powell (44:59.552)
Because you played a number of them I just just rolling those titles off

Magnus (45:00.302)
because we, I played a number of them. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, it's like in the group is Don Alstrand who works on all the books for Free League basically, and me who occasionally works for Free League and Christian Salén who wrote Cyborg. And then you have some other people who are really talented who are also designers. So sometimes we get really sort of like tired of.

of ourselves. We want to try something else, something someone else has done. But it's mostly smaller things like Mausritter and Merckborg hacks and stuff like that that interests me the most. But yeah, Dragonbane being released here and really released something within me as well when it comes to writing. I've written

Adam Powell (45:33.856)
Yeah, of course.

Magnus (45:57.742)
five or six articles for Phoenix over the year. And I contributed to the Dragonbane Bestiary. And I'm writing some of the stuff. So Dragonbane is the focus now, which means that we don't actually play it that much because we're so tied up with it anyway. So I'm not really sure what interests me. I know that there are some U of C games, of course, that are interested.

Adam Powell (46:17.152)
Yes.

Magnus (46:27.246)
interesting but then it's a years zero game again i'm i'm thoroughly though looking forward to if it ever comes out uh is it called black flag the pirate game but with uh with the year zero engine uh i think that's uh i heard an interview with the with the guy who's behind that years and years ago and i really look forward to that but it seems stuck in development hell

Adam Powell (46:42.048)
Yes.

Adam Powell (46:55.072)
Oh dear.

Magnus (46:55.246)
But until then, I sort of have to make do with one of the most fabulous games I've picked up over the last year. And that is Pirateborg, which is the epitome of small, close to the edge, close to the hilt is what I mean, immediate.

Adam Powell (47:06.336)
Mmm.

Magnus (47:23.118)
and in your face gaming. And it's also got horror. So it's sort of like, and I love Pirates, I love Warren Frenzel, I love Colt, Cthulhu. It's got everything in one small package. So that's something that I would like to run. And I would also like to try to write something for it as a third party thing. Because it really hits all the right notes for me.

Adam Powell (47:51.584)
Absolutely. I don't have a bookshelf because I'm moving everything around, but I have that ready to go on the bookshelf. I've enjoyed reading that and managed to interview the creator, I guess, the designer. Yeah, Duke Stratton.

Magnus (48:05.902)
Luke? Yeah. I must give a shout out to Luke. And I can't remember his brother, but I ordered the on the last day of the campaign, kickstart campaign, I think it was I ordered it and they were like, yeah, great. Now you'll have it next week. And it didn't turn up and it didn't turn up and it didn't turn up. And that was sort of like the Games Quest debacle that was a couple of years ago where they

Adam Powell (48:20.576)
Hmm.

Adam Powell (48:33.824)
Aha, yes.

Magnus (48:35.278)
Games Quest didn't ship anything at all. And finally, I think Luke just said, well, screw it. I've taken back your order from Games Quest and I'm shipping it to you from the States. And they shipped everything to me from the States. Great customer service, great guys and fun to listen to as well.

Adam Powell (48:50.56)
Absolutely. Yeah. Fun to listen to, fun to get to know. And as you mentioned, Pirate Boy is a great setting. But not to detract from, so you mentioned, we've been discussing Dragon Bane and about being the heroes and lower level heroes or ground level heroes and solving things, not necessarily through violence. If you want to be less scrupulous, unscrupulous, without scruples, you can pick up

Magnus (49:01.614)
Oh yes.

Magnus (49:19.694)
Oh yes, yes.

Adam Powell (49:20.544)
Forbidden Lands, which you've also written for, and just go out there and be the worst of the worst mercenary. Yeah.

Magnus (49:28.494)
Yeah, that's sort of that's one way of playing the game. That's fairly common. But the fun thing there is that is that I wrote the Bitter Reach or Bitter Reach is the name of the book that the name of the book is. And it's.

It's much more of a horror setting than what I do write for Dragonbane. It's an un -forbidding setting where you basically die if you just go out in the snow and just don't take precautions. It's really harsh and I've tried to sort of not get inspired by the...

by the beautiful snowy vistas of the Northern Sweden, but instead by the thing, the terror, the TV series and stuff like that. So that's sort of like, and I've also tried to sort of hint at...

Cthulhuian influences as well that are sort of in the background of that setting. So it's a lot harsher than anything I've ever done fantasy -wise.

Adam Powell (50:53.728)
just I pulled up the available from from the Frillig store. You can pick up the the GM things and there's like the maps of nightfall and bleakness keep which which definitely lives up to the name. So yeah sorry I sort of cut you off there a little bit. I apologize.

Magnus (50:57.902)
Yeah.

Magnus (51:03.598)
Oh yes.

Magnus (51:08.046)
Mm -hmm.

Magnus (51:12.238)
Yeah, I just love the cover as well. If there's one thing that Free League does that really draws me in when it comes to all their games. I don't work on all their games. I just work on Dragonbane and I did work on Forbidden Lands. But the artwork draws me in. The artwork is fabulous. And for Bitter Reach, Alvaro Tapia who did the cover and the interior illustrations did the bang up job. And also Joanne Ege -Kels who's illustrated the Dragonbane.

stuff. He's an old acquaintance of mine and he sort of did the Vassen thing, which is his own property basically. The Vassen thing is something that freely licensed his books about the Nordic Vassen and did a game out of that written by Nils Hintze, which is one of our star writers here in Sweden. Really good writer. He did a Walking Dead game as well.

But the artwork is always so good. The choreographer did the Kickstarter in the house. Really, really, really nice. And sometimes, still it's really nice, but it also has a sort of like quality to it that is different from, for example, Dungeons & Dragons has very good art, but it's from very many artists. So there's sort of like not...

not a style to it. Dragonbane is a very clear style. It has a very clear style to it. And also Coriolis and Alien and everything has a style. Their art direction is impeccable.

Adam Powell (52:56.224)
I 100 % agree. You know, when you see a book, one, it's really because of the quality and two, just which you can identify just by the colors used or the brushstrokes, which game you could take the names off the titles off and you can identify which book belongs in which gaming series. And it's so fantastic. They carry that through, as you say, the consistency and the support to the artist.

Magnus (53:09.71)
Yep.

Adam Powell (53:25.888)
the artists, nearly used a completely wrong word there. So.

Magnus (53:30.478)
That's also why it's so much fun working for Free League. The process of working differs of course for every writer. I'm not privy to how other writers work. But for me it's more of a question of I do my stuff. Thomas sort of directs me and says well we want this. Okay I'll do some...

preliminary writing, is that something you like? Oh, yeah, sure. More of this. And let's check in in two months. And then I just with the Dragon Bay and Bestiary, I sat there for two months just sending monsters. Oh, here's a new monster. Here's a new monster. Here's a new monster. Here's a new monster. Okay, are you done? Yes, I'm done now. Okay, great. And then they sat down and developed my texts, which is something that I find works very well.

because it means that I'm not the sole voice of the best jury. I don't see many interviews with Matthias, some I do, but freely are more sort of like not as prone to just blabber on about what they do like I do.

So it's very important for me to just say that it's always working with the Free League is always a very rewarding task and it's also teamwork. I did the first draft of everything, then Thomas, Matthias and Andreas developed that into what is now the best year. So it's important for me that people

Don't think of me as well. I Magnus wrote the best theory. No, I was one of the writers of the best tree. Yeah, I wrote a lot of it, but that has since been developed and into a higher level. And that's something that I feel that some new writers, for example, sort of like forget or don't really realize that that is the case often that what they send in is not.

Magnus (55:59.214)
actually often what is published, someone else develops it further. And if you don't like that, it can be quite hard to work with ball -playing game development. If you want to work with the publishers, if you want to do it yourself, just do it. And it can be fantastic. For example, there are so many good stuff, so many good things.

Adam Powell (56:17.312)
course.

Magnus (56:28.366)
that comes out for Mörkborg from one person shops. And that's a great thing about the creativity that is sort of like rampant in the community. Mörkborg has exploded and Dragonbane has a lot of stuff like that. And I feel that that's also a very good way to cut your teeth on developing stuff. It's like, do your own stuff. Ask someone to...

Adam Powell (56:30.144)
Hmm.

Adam Powell (56:41.568)
Yeah.

Magnus (56:57.742)
draw it if you can't draw it yourself. Put it down in the PDF. You can do that from Microsoft Word if you really, really have to. But if you can use a layout program, it'll look a lot nicer. Then just put it out for people to look at. But if you write for a publisher, be prepared to work in a team of people. And that is always also the artist.

In this case, I had all the art before I started writing, which is not very common. But normally the artist is also part of the team. And I think that shows in the free lead material is that everything is a work of team with a common goal and strong creative vision and also strong creative integrity and strong.

Adam Powell (57:30.4)
Hmm.

Adam Powell (57:39.2)
Hmm.

Magnus (57:52.558)
design integrity because normally, normally, but if there's a flashy game out, you would think, well, it's a flashy game, but what's the mechanics like in a free league game? You say, wow, this looks great. And since it's free league, I know it's a good game.

Adam Powell (58:08.832)
Mm. Yeah. Yeah. 100%.

Magnus (58:10.734)
Some stuff could be better, some stuff doesn't appeal to me, but it is always a good game.

Adam Powell (58:18.4)
Absolutely. Yeah. So Magnus, we've covered a great many things. And thankfully so. You've been very forthcoming and very honest and very insightful with your answers to the various questions and topics we've touched on. Is there anything at this point in the interview that we haven't covered yet you want to cover just before we close?

Magnus (58:20.526)
And it looks great.

Magnus (58:43.47)
Well, we did touch on the inclusivity thing. And I think that one thing that I've sort of sat down a couple of years ago and thought to myself, well, what can I do to, I didn't sit down and think, how can I do, what can I do to help the community be more inclusive? I just sat down and thought.

Okay, what can I do that will make people enjoy role playing games more? And for me, it's a question of trying to help people step away from the negativity, step away from Twitter drama. And I sort of think that those of us who have played a long, long time can help new gamers.

by simply listening to them, listen to their stories about their PCs. We've been there ourselves talking about our PCs until people fled, but we can help new gamers by listening to them, by taking them seriously, by not throwing our experience in their faces saying, well, I know, I've done everything. Just tell them that sounds interesting, that sounds cool, and also...

I think that it's important for us as a community to become more outspoken when it comes to what we think is good. What's, you did something good, I like this instead of I hate this. And if we could move away from the, I hate this type of conversation, which is very proliferative, it's very common.

Adam Powell (01:00:25.6)
Hmm.

Adam Powell (01:00:39.488)
Yes.

Magnus (01:00:40.526)
Because it draws draws people you get engaged and you're wrong. No, you're wrong. No, you're wrong. Everyone's wrong and everyone hates each other. That's not the community that I know when people say, well, the role playing community is so toxic. I don't. The Twitter community is toxic to a large degree, but there are groups within Twitter as well who are not. And the the

Adam Powell (01:00:51.552)
you

Magnus (01:01:08.142)
face -to -face gaming that I play, the gamers I meet, because I meet a lot of gamers, are friendly and creative and compassionate and also passionate about their games. And if we could just elevate that to being what we think about the hobby instead of thinking about it as well, everyone is angry at each other. No, some people are angry at each other.

but they're mostly just screaming into the void. The rest of us are over here playing games with each other.

Adam Powell (01:01:45.76)
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, that's, uh, insight again, insightful and inspiring, aspirational. So thank you so much for writing that here in here at the end. Uh, would you like to remind everybody where they can find you, dragon Bane and all the things you're associated with, please?

Magnus (01:02:03.982)
For DragonBane material, you should always start with the Free League website, freelig .se, I think. There you can buy the game, of course. But then you should sign up to the DragonBane Discord group, which is a fabulous resource. Then you go to Facebook. In the DragonBane Facebook group is where you can find me, where I post...

small snippets of stuff I think are interesting or fun and where I try to just give advice and then just remind everyone that...

We have everyone been a newcomer. I would like the, and I think it is the Dragonbane Facebook group is a place where people come in and say, well, this might be a stupid question. And what they get for an answer is there are no stupid questions. And if you're interested in Dragonbane and haven't decided to start yet, you could just join the Facebook group, ask questions.

and people will treat you as a fellow human being and you can get your answers however basic they are for those who are already in the group. So Facebook is a good place. And if you speak Swedish, read Swedish basically, you can go to Rolspel .nu and join the forums there. You can write in English there as well and we will answer and then of course, but it's a mainly Swedish discussion forum.

We've got over a million posts, actually. Wow. So we're actually classified as a mega forum or something like that. Yeah.

Adam Powell (01:03:50.112)
I don't know.

Adam Powell (01:03:56.928)
Yeah. Wow. Well, thank you, Magnus. I will make sure there are links down in the descriptions below. So please go down and support Magnus, support DragonBane, support Free League, third party publishers, friendly local game stores and all those sorts of good things. And just be good in the community. But yes, go ahead and follow those links and support everything that we've mentioned during this interview. Magnus, it's been an absolute pleasure having on the show to discuss DragonBane cult.

Magnus (01:04:03.278)
Cool.

Adam Powell (01:04:26.464)
and all the other topics we've covered during the course of the interview. I'd love to get you back on the show in the future if you'd be willing to come back and join me, of course.

Magnus (01:04:36.974)
I would most certainly do. And I think that in a year or so we will have my book about the Swedish role -playing game history to speak about. And I think that would be interesting for people to hear about. And I certainly hope that I get an opportunity to return and talk about other Dragonbane stuff that I've done in the future.

Adam Powell (01:04:58.624)
Absolutely. Well, I look forward to our future interviews. Thank you, Magnus, so much for joining me today.

Magnus (01:05:05.166)
Thank you.

Snyder’s Return

Interview - Magnus Seter - Free League Publishing - Dragonbane Bestiary

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