Adam Powell (00:33.173)
Hello and welcome to Snyder's Return, a tabletop roleplay podcast. My guest today joins me with their magic fully charged to bring us a new JRPG inspired game that uses a new game system, which itself sounds like it belongs as a JRPG finisher move or epic set piece. Here to inspire us to ensure that Everend will never end by heroically facing down demons and the void is at the gate game designer, TTRPG content creator and writer,

for several established companies, Danielle Lauzon. Danielle, welcome to the show.

D (01:05.398)
Ha! I thank you for having me.

Adam Powell (01:09.333)
It's an absolute pleasure. I'm quite excited to sort of dig into your works and the release that we're going to talk about. But before we get into all of that, Daniel, would you mind telling us how you got into tabletop role playing games, please?

D (01:25.942)
Man, the quick version is that I come from a family of gamers. My mom was a big, actually, video game nerd. And my, not my dad, but my mom, big video game nerd. And then my brothers played a lot of traditional D &D type games. They never let me play.

with them because I was too young and also the little sister so you know they get a little touchy about me trying to interrupt their boy time. But I did end up finding a group of individuals in high school and then again in college who played all sorts of games from Vampire the Masquerade to Dungeons and Dragons, Alternaty, all sorts of stuff. So that is...

my entrance into the tabletop RPG sphere.

Adam Powell (02:23.413)
So, having entered the sphere, what was your journey, and I respect this is different for everybody, to go from casual gamer as part of family of gamers, finding your own groups, to creating content for these games and writing and expanding into the fiction. What has that journey been like?

D (02:43.382)
So I've always enjoyed writing and done fiction writing for myself ever since I was a child and my at -the -time boyfriend now husband kind of knew that I I do that kind of thing and he followed some developers for CCP White Wolf at the time on a live journal.

at the time as I date myself very age -edly. And one of them had done an all call on LiveJournal looking for new authors in Mage the Awakening Project. And he was like, hey, you should apply for this because I know that you like writing fiction and you like these games and that at the time was my favorite game. So I wrote up a little sample and sent it in and they accepted me.

Adam Powell (03:42.645)
And so from that initial sort of step in with mage, do you sort of stay within the realms of White Wolf's sort of system or how did you expand and how has expanding changed your playing and content creative experiences? There we go, there's a question.

D (04:07.478)
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, that's an interesting question and one that is, you know, hard to answer because a lot has happened kind of organically over time. I did at first stay in kind of the sphere of White Wolf games for a long time, just because those were the people I knew. And anybody who's worked in the industry tells you that there's a lot of networking that has to happen to get you...

more and more and more jobs. And so the more you get, the more you're likely to get more, but you need to kind of network to know the people to ask and talk to. So a lot of the more traditional publishers are very familiar with White Wolf products and a lot of the freelancers in other spaces kind of got their start with White Wolf products at some point in time. So...

Some of that is networking of, I knew somebody that went on to work for say Green Rooney and then they said, hey, I have a project. I remember you were cool to work with. Do you want to work with me? Yes. Okay, cool. And in other cases, back in the days when you could go to conventions, there would be a lot of networking events where you would meet other individuals who are also freelancing or working with companies and stuff like that and kind of get to know them.

That was a great way to kind of break into, hey, I'm going to apply to work with you and you've met me before. So I'm not just a random submission that doesn't always get you a job, but it sometimes did. And honestly, my big break away from doing mostly World of Darkness products or Chronicles of Darkness products was when...

JWP did a crowd funder for seventh C second edition. They made over a million dollars. They weren't expecting that and they needed to hire some people to, to help them write all of the supplements that they promised. And I honestly think they went about that in a weird way by hiring full -time authors, but I was like, Hey, you know, full -time job writing sounds great. So I applied for it. And while I didn't.

D (06:30.07)
actually become a full -time writer for them, they hired me part -time as a developer. And I kind of got to know the people there who were different people that I had been working with and that kind of branched out my working network. And then I started through them to meet other people and then through those people to meet other people and that kind of opened up opportunities beyond the initial stuff. And so having worked on...

a bunch of different systems and a bunch of different for a bunch of different companies and how they do things and everything. I kind of was able to amalgamate my own personal best practices as far as writing style and formatting and development and communication and even all the way to like game design and game design principles. So again, it's really hard to say like,

How has any individual thing affected any of that? Because it's the constant learning process of every year I do this, I learn a new thing, every new game I read, I process it, and it influences me differently. And so my design philosophy from five years ago is different from my design philosophy from last year, which is maybe even different from my design philosophy today. So.

Adam Powell (07:57.557)
No, I can see how I've managed to ask maybe too, too broad a question. But you've answered it brilliantly. So I can't argue with that. So we've thank you so much for answering and sort of inspiring in some ways. And letting us get to know you. So now we've got to know you a little bit. How can we support you? Where can we find you on social media? Where can we find you on the internet? And how can we sort of.

D (08:03.414)
Yeah.

Adam Powell (08:25.365)
Continue to support you and everything you're associated with, please Daniel.

D (08:28.886)
Sure. I have a website that is sorely outdated and every time I do one of these interviews, I say that and I think to myself, I should go update it. So I stopped saying that and then I just don't have time to update it. So I do have a website, which is danielozon .com and it has a lot of the work that I've done and the companies that I've worked for listed on it. It also has a contact feature. So if you're interested in contacting me,

through that you can. It also has a link to my search page, like my search name on DriveThruRPG. And so if you go, you can see all the things that I've worked on that are published and on DriveThruRPG. And if you want to pick those things up, that's a great support. It also may have a link to like a coffee.

So if you just wanna throw me some dollars, that also works, but I don't expect anybody to do that.

Adam Powell (09:30.933)
All right. What about social media? That was your website. And I'll make sure this one.

D (09:34.39)
yeah, it also has links to all my social media. I have been social media weirdness ever since Twitter kind of got weird, whatever it did. I don't use it very much. I never used it very much. So it didn't really impact me, but a lot of the people that would like send me there for different things kind of filtered away to all sorts of different places. I do have a blue sky account. I do.

Adam Powell (09:43.829)
did it witness? Yeah.

D (10:00.47)
I also have a Tumblr account and I have a Facebook account and I have, I might have a Mastodon account, but I don't know anymore. I have a lot of socials. Most places that want to handle, I am at Pernius. Otherwise I do have an author page on Facebook that is Danielle Lozano author.

Adam Powell (10:22.133)
Well, I will make sure those links, as many as I can find, I may be able to confirm or not your master .account. We'll be down in a fair. I will just cut that one from the list of links. But however, of the links and the platforms you do use, such as your currently outdated website, there's a nice prod there for you.

D (10:30.454)
I don't ever look at it, so.

D (10:45.462)
Hehehehe

Adam Powell (10:46.613)
I will make sure those links are down in the description below. So please scroll down, follow those links as well as other links that we're going to mention through the course of this interview for you. Click them, follow them, support Danielle and the companies and the great works that you've been involved with. So please scroll down and follow those links. So before we get to at the gate, because it's quite a big topic and I want to make sure we spend a bit of time on it.

looking at a website, looking at some of the games you've worked on, what has led you to sort of spread across so many themes and genres, looking through some of the games that you've contributed to in one way or another, and I've left that intentionally broad. Afterlife Wandering Souls, fantastic game. Scion, completely different genre. They came from beneath the sea, again, something totally separate. What's it been like to sort of...

lean into all these different genres, themes and systems to sort of as a creator.

D (11:51.926)
You know, it's actually really nice because I, of course, I got my start in horror genre, but moving into different genres has been really kind of, I guess enhancing is a great way to put it because there is a different style of writing, there's a different mindset you need to be in, and there's a different kind of moods you need to evoke for...

a comedy game versus a fantasy game versus a urban fantasy game versus a horror game, superhero game, whatever you want to call it. And I have worked on pretty much every single one of those genres. And I think it helps me kind of stretch my limits and it helps me...

take a break from the other types of genres or whatever. So, you know, if you're constantly writing in one genre, you get kind of a voice for it and it becomes harder to break out of it. So I kind of like doing work in a bunch of different places so that I can kind of keep myself in a place where if somebody wants me to lend a credit to, you know, a project, like a friend or whatever, I can, without...

struggling too hard to find the right voice for it.

Adam Powell (13:15.285)
Alright, well, your voice has been heard and enjoyed by so many, including myself who own several of the games you've worked on, although I'm a compulsive buyer of fantastic games, so... Two of a kind, peas in a pod and all that sort of good stuff. So, having sort of worked through all of that, your new game, if it's fair to call it that, At the Gates...

D (13:29.27)
Same, guilty as charged.

Adam Powell (13:45.301)
What inspired its creation? What has it been like to create as a project? And just as a synopsis almost, what is at the gates, please?

D (13:58.038)
Yeah. So the original was a little embarrassing whenever, you know, somebody asks like, what was your inspiration? And I'm like, I just wanted to make a cool fantasy game, but I mean, that's okay. so I had been working on story path games for a very long time with Trinity Continuum and Scion, and I kind of immersed myself into the story path system and.

I, it occurred to me that we did not have a fantasy game for the story path system. And I thought, well, like, let's make a fantasy game. So, before I pitched that I had to come up with what kind of fantasy game would I like to see in a world dripping with fantasy game options. there's just so many fantasy game options out there. And a lot of them are.

I don't want to say clones of Dungeons and Dragons, but clearly deeply inspired by Tolkien and the elves and dwarves and orcs and goblins and all that kind of stuff. And I wanted something that moved away from that, that did not even look like that so that people would not fall into the kind of tropes that you fall into when you see elf or dwarf or whatever, even if I define them differently.

people would still kind of bring their own preconceived notions to them. So I needed to come up with something that was completely new and different, but still familiar because I don't want it to be without touchstones because people respond better when they have something that they've seen or already consumed that gives them context for what they're reading. So I spent some time kind of coming up with ideas for like, I guess, universal metaphysics for a world of fantasy world.

And pitch that to Rich, Rich was like, this sounds cool. I spent some time building out a setting Bible and defining kind of this world that is a high fantasy world. I, you know, when thinking of the process of like, how do you come up with a brand new game, a brand new concept? And in my opinion, this is, you know, not like.

D (16:20.822)
It's not a mandate. It's an opinion. That's not fact. But in my opinion, the first thing you have to say or think about when you're making a game is what are people doing in your game? What's the point of it? Right. so I wanted people to have epic adventures in which they were, embroiled in political struggles or exploration or things, but that they had.

Adam Powell (16:21.109)
It's your pick. Yeah. Yeah.

D (16:49.846)
a lot of meaning to what they were doing. And so I wanted there to be kind of this world, like major world conflict going on that people either had to just kind of work around or could maybe attempt to solve, but solving it could become from essentially come from many different avenues or directions or angles to get to that result, which would make replayability pretty high because you could solve this in so many different ways. You could play it again and again.

So I came up with this idea that there was a like a rift in the world where people didn't really understand the difference between planes of existence, but extra planar beings started coming through these gates essentially, and somebody was controlling them and using them against other people. The more that I wrote,

about this as the major conflict and how that would shape the world, how it would shape the group of people that started using it in the first place, how it would shape the people who were under threat of it. I realized very quickly that this was a thinly veiled analogy for a nuclear arms race. And so I started designing towards that as the metaphor.

And then the more I did that, the more I realized that this looked like a Final Fantasy game, complete with summons. And I did not set out to make a game that was inspired by Japanese video games. I set out to make an interesting fantasy world, but I think my own interaction and love of those games kind of had this subtle unconscious influence.

Adam Powell (18:22.805)
Nice.

D (18:47.158)
that once I started building it out, I was like, I see, I see what I've done. I might as well lean into it now at this point.

Adam Powell (18:52.789)
Absolutely. And you mentioned their touchstones, how people should have touchstones that help them relate to the material and can sort of build on the experience and immerse themselves in experience in an almost known fashion. What were some of your touchstones sort of putting at the gates together? You mentioned Final Fantasy there just a moment ago with some and to think about what other touchstones are special to you that you've tried to

D (19:08.502)
Yes.

D (19:16.182)
Yes.

Adam Powell (19:22.933)
now lean into with At the Gates through its creation.

D (19:27.254)
Yeah, I, while I was, you know, I looked for non -video game media because it's really, I think, unfair to tell somebody who wants to find a touchstone to a tabletop RPG, well, you need to play this video game that's gonna take you 70 hours to complete. Have fun. I mean, if you've already played it, that's a great touchstone, but if you haven't, then I needed...

Adam Powell (19:48.469)
oven.

D (19:54.102)
other touchstones. And I realized that a lot of things hit the touchstones. Of course, our fantasy grandfather, Mr. JRR Tolkien, or JRR, why did I say that? I don't know. JRR Tolkien. Anyway, so he has this, The Hobbit, not...

Lord of the Rings trilogy, but the Hobbit specifically, where, you know, Bilbo kind of gets wrapped up in this, you know, we need you to help us save this dwarven kingdom from a dragon. And he's just like, why do you need me? because hobbits are good at this thing. What? I'm like, I'm just a hobbit. I'm in my hobbit hole. I'm celebrating my birthday. I'm literally a nobody.

And then this wizard and his, you know, I don't remember now 12 dwarven warrior buddies come crashing into his house, sing a crazy song, and then drag him off onto this wild adventure. And that is the kind of story that happens in Japanese video games or a lot of RPGs in general.

where you're just kind of a nobody and then you get sucked into this kind of life -changing events. So that's a really good touchstone for this. And then some other touchstones that I kind of came up with when I thought about it hard enough are there's a ton of book series that kind of follow that similar, I don't want to say zero to hero because it's not necessarily zero.

There's always something in those people that make them special to begin with. It does follow a classic Western hero's journey to a certain extent, but it's not always a nobody, right? Especially in Japanese video games, it may be like one of your characters may be the princess of the kingdom. And that happens so many times in Final Fantasy, it happens in Chrono Trigger, it happens in...

Adam Powell (22:05.941)
Hmm.

Adam Powell (22:10.773)
Yeah.

D (22:14.262)
so many places that you're not a nothing, but you're just the person who has the right skill set or the right attitude to do the things that need to do to uncover whatever evil is lurking in the world and to solve whatever problem is threatening the very existence of everyone you know and love. And I really like that idea that you start out as a hero.

And maybe you're just a hometown hero or maybe you're a, you know, part of a small kingdom, or maybe you're even, you know, heir to the throne, but none of that is as important as the adventure that you go on.

Adam Powell (22:59.637)
Absolutely. And the adventure that you are hoping to send us on and one we should all be embracing is within Everin. So what can you tell us about the setting itself? You've mentioned sort of the air quotes, hero's journey to a certain extent, but what about the land, the setting, the...

the social political set up that we will thrive in and immerse ourselves in.

D (23:30.71)
So.

D (23:34.582)
There's a lot of this game that I created intentionally through design philosophy of, well, if you're going to create a group of nations or people in conflict, that odd numbers are better than even numbers. And so my idea was either five or seven nations. I went with seven because I felt like f***ing

Five was too few to make the world feel worldly enough. And I gave everyone a role within the world. I had the, you know, super wealthy nation that has had a life of ease up until recently. I had the resource starved nation that has always been viewed as...

kind of lesser by everyone else because they have had to scrap and fight to survive. We have the brand new nation, we have the nation under siege, we have the nation that is attacking the nation under siege, we have the nation that is isolationist, that is trying to stay out of everything, and then we have a nation on the brink of collapse that's just trying to stick together. So.

Adam Powell (24:32.565)
Thank you.

D (24:59.574)
I've just described all the nations kind of really briefly, but I had to flesh those out, right? And I wanted to give them realistic social, political, and cultural touchstones that came from areas of the world and climate and geography and all those things, right? So it was like, okay, if we're going to have an isolationist nation, they either need to be an island or in a mountain.

or cut off with a mountain. So, okay, we're gonna put this mountain, mountainous nation. They're gonna be all the way on the coast, on one coast, and they're gonna have a big mountain range kind of separating them from everybody else. And they're gonna be really tech heavy because if you're in a mountain range, you probably have natural resources of ore, which means that you have metal working, which means that you probably have decent technology. So they're pretty high tech.

Adam Powell (25:27.829)
you

D (25:57.366)
And that means that that demon magic is no bad. Everything is bad about it. That's Telpidium. And then we have a very rich nation. So, okay, well, they're essentially the breadbasket of the continent. They have never had to fight for food. They literally live on a giant plains land. They have had hunting and food aplenty. And because of that, they've been able to...

create this really socially advanced system. Because instead of scrabbling to live and scrabbling over territory, they've all just had so much that they could share with everybody. And so they've got this fully democratic society representative. Every single individual has a vote and that vote matters. It.

But then I think about what would that government look like? And it'd be like, that government would be slow as fuck to do anything. Sorry for cursing, but that government would be slow. It would get good things done, but it would take a long time to get them done. So how would they react to a neighbor who suddenly has nuclear arms? They would just be deadlocked. They would, what do we do? And everybody would have an opinion and nobody can agree. And so we're just like.

All right. So like, okay, that's how they would respond. But what is their, what is, what is their driving conflict? yeah. They're also, you know, how has this impacted them personally? Because we can have like, yeah, those guys have nuclear arms, but we're socially advanced enough that we don't care. They're not, you know, we'll just accept them with open arms, but instead we, we have been hurt by them. So it's Auridonia and they have a blight. All of their croplands are dying.

the whole reason that they were so wealthy. So this is terrible. And what do they do? Well, they panic. So that's Oridonia. And then all of the settings for each of the nations kind of follow that logic. So without going into literal detail about every single one of them, we have Caperonite to the north is in a tundra. They were

D (28:17.174)
know, kind of plains people that kind of got pushed further and further north. And then as the tundra kind of kept like, kind of encroaching, they started to try to move further and further south again, but then Auradonia had kind of taken all of that space. And so they had to fight for any territory that they got where they could have anything, hunting ground, food, anything like that. So of course, people who are

good at warfare become the leaders of that kind of a nation. So they're nomadic because they have to follow the food throughout the seasons. They are, you know, all these things that come with that kind of harsh living. Everybody views them as like essentially like warmongers, but they're like, we just need to do this to live. If you would just give us that land, it wouldn't be a problem.

So then we have a coastal nation that is only a nation because there's a bunch of city states that they realized that they needed to like all these other people were making nations and they were like, well, we have our own rules and laws, but we're all kind of in a similar territory. So we're going to become a federation of city states and work a little similarly in the like governmental department to the states in the United States. So.

You know, every state kind of has their own rules and laws and all this kind of stuff. But then there's kind of this federation, structure that, that, but it's way looser than, than the U S it's, there aren't really federal laws. There's just a body made up of representatives of each of the city states that represents them outside of, the nation. And that is Solacha and Solacha's.

dealing with the Federation of Eves. The Federation of Eves is our new nation, newly formed within the past 10 years. Essentially they were not a nation. They were just a group, an island chain where people lived and then Salacha kind of started colonizing them. And they fought back and won independence. And now they must form a nation to be able to hold that independence. So they're struggling to kind of be recognized as a nation.

D (30:40.534)
and as a, you know, as a power in their own right. Then we have Enves. Enves is, they were doing great. They were a democracy. They were fine. And then their neighbors of Vitramaria flattened a mountain and started invading them. They had a natural border with this nation of a mountain. It would be really hard to invade. They thought they were safe. And then that mountain disappeared in an instant.

And now they are fighting a scrappy people who have lived in kind of a jungle that is full of magical weirdness already. And so they are used to their own weird jungles. A lot of inspiration for that comes from the way that the Aztecs interacted with the Spanish when the Spanish came into.

the Americas and started to try to colonize, well, try to successfully colonize South America. But they, at first they were like, you know, we're, we're working with these people. And then they were like, those people are colonizing us. We are going to fight back via guerrilla warfare and knowing our own jungles and knowing our own things. And, but instead of dying to all of the awful plagues that...

the nation that's invading them is bringing with them, they are fighting back successfully because this is a fantasy world and cool things can happen in fantasy worlds. And then vitrimeria, you know, what drives a nation to invade another nation that has got such a, like a strong natural border? It was like, okay, well, more of that resource. We have found such a powerful resource and we found it there and we need it. And so we need to invade that place.

Adam Powell (32:10.133)
Yeah.

Adam Powell (32:14.645)
Absolutely.

D (32:36.246)
and take the land so that we can get more of it. And I decided while I was doing this, I'm like, this is a pretty terrible act actually. So what kind of leadership does this thing? And I say, a tyrant, a dictator, someone that the people support because they have to, not because they want to, because there are people who...

absolutely support this person, but most of the populace is just kind of along for the ride because there's nothing that they can individually do. So I was writing this up in 2020. There was a lot going on in 2020 that allowed me to take a lot of inspiration from American politics while writing up Fitch and Marriott. So if you're...

familiar with American politics in 2020, you will see a lot, a lot of that reflected there. But there is, you know, there's a resistance movement on the inside that is working to save their nation. Because again, this is a fantasy world where those kinds of resistances can have a major impact quickly, as opposed to slowly over time. So those are our nations.

Adam Powell (33:39.413)
the

Adam Powell (34:03.253)
So within our nations, there are the populace, as you've mentioned and alluded to, our group, our party, for want of a better description, what roles can they fulfill within the world and how can they conduct themselves in that respect?

D (34:25.622)
So I wanted people, like I said earlier, I wanted people to kind of be from any walk of life. Players can play, you know, children of nobles, children of government officials, maybe government officials who have decided to set down diplomacy and pick up arms or things like that. And so they can be kind of anyone, but they are special in the fact that they, whatever,

sets them on their path is something that they alone can do. And maybe not they alone, but they are the ones who know the information. They are the ones who are there at the right place at the right time. They are the ones who are now embroiled in whatever the situation is that they're trying to solve.

So yeah, that is kind of a lackluster answer, but they could be anybody.

Adam Powell (35:18.997)
Fair enough. Leaning perhaps into the game mechanics side of stuff then. You mentioned earlier the story path system, some people may be unfamiliar. At the Gates takes this one step further with Story Path Ultra, which I think is a fantastic... It just sounds, as I sort of said in the intro, it sounds like it belongs in a JRPG.

D (35:31.446)
Mm -hmm. Sure.

D (35:38.422)
Yes.

D (35:45.75)
Yes.

Adam Powell (35:46.517)
it should be screamed at the top of the lungs and I will spare people by not doing that in a dramatic sense. But for those that are unfamiliar with Story Path or the new iteration Story Path Ultra, how does the system work and how does At the Gates use it to create these fantastic stories that you've alluded to?

D (36:05.685)
Sure. Yeah. And to kind of bridge your previous question with like the answer to this is story path system, characters in story path system have paths and their paths are, if you're familiar with other types of character creation systems that are like life path systems where you pick a thing and then that thing kind of gives you some stuff and then you pick another thing and that thing gives you some stuff, paths are like that. So you pick...

a heritage and that's the nation that you came from and then you pick an upbringing and that's kind of the job, the walk of life that you come from. And then you pick a profession and that's kind of the specialized skills that you have, the training that you have that kind of make you a hero. And each of those give you some advantages, some skills, some attributes that help you kind of engage in the setting. Then...

you have, we have a couple of different system subsystems that work together to kind of create a feeling of epicness and high fantasy that you might not see in other fantasy style games. So the first one is we have arts and arts are special techniques that everybody has access to that they can use at any time always.

They're often combat related, but sometimes they're what we call question askers. So, you know, it's like a sensory thing. You can ask questions of the story guide and they have to answer them for you to give you information about what's going on. So I like those as kind of like an always you can do this thing kind of stuff. Like every scene I get to ask a question. Those are always great because it helps both guide the person running the game to tell.

the players what they want to know and also helps the players get the information that they need for the story. Then, you know, so there's that kind of stuff. There's combat things, there's movement things, there's, you know, the warrior has an ability that is an art that lets them challenge somebody. And if that person doesn't attack them, they don't get any bonuses for like...

D (38:22.998)
any attacks they take on other people. So it's a pretty, it's got a penalty for attacking someone else, that kind of thing. So everybody has access to these that are kind of your always available tactical things that you can do. And then everybody has access also to magic and magic is also always available. And magic is a bigger effect that usually requires some kind of like,

momentary activation. So even if it doesn't cost anything, most they don't cost anything. And they don't, very few of them require any kind of rolling to activate. It just happens. so you don't roll, it just happens and there's nothing to, to activate it. You, you know, a certain number of these things and the spells are like, how many of these things can you cast is predicated on what, like a cool down system, kind of like video games where.

certain things take longer to cool down than others. You know, you have spells that you can cast over and over and over again. You have spells that you can only cast once a scene, and then you have spells that you can only cast once a session. But because this is kind of a high fantasy, the chips are on the table, bad things are going down, but you are the heroes and you're going to persevere and you're going to overcome.

We have a system where you have a couple of points, energy points, and they are only used for summoning big scary demons, which are scene -changing entities when they show up, or refreshing one of your spells that is currently on cooldown. So something you could only use once seen or something you could only use once a session. So when you refresh those things, you're essentially like...

Adam Powell (40:06.253)
you

D (40:18.294)
kind of pulling this energy out of yourself and going like, yes, I know earlier today I used my giant like huge hit everything in the face spell, but I really need it again. And I kind of can pull this out in the last moment by spending this energy to do so. So the concept of like, go do a couple of combats and then go rest or, go do a couple of things and then need to rest.

that doesn't exist here because it's, you know, things move at the speed of plot, characters move at the speed of plot. If there's time in between that they have downtime, then that's a plot related thing, not a players need to refresh their abilities kind of thing.

Adam Powell (41:07.253)
Yeah.

So digging again, sticking with the game mechanics, how does and sort of tacking onto something you mentioned there, how does rolling work with respect to characters and you mentioned magic doesn't require rolling, but certain things, well, I guess in line with other games where there is an uncertainty, should we say, where rolling needs to happen, how does it work with the story path ultra system, please?

D (41:32.278)
Yes. Yeah.

D (41:36.918)
So it works the same. So if you're familiar with Story Path, but not Story Path Ultra, it's very similar. If you're not familiar with either of those, it is a dice pull system that uses D10s. You have an array of nine attributes and 16 skills. And when you say that you want your character to take an action,

you're either you or the the person running the game we call the story guide that person like the story guide will say, okay, this is the skill you're using to do that. I want to climb up the side of the mountain. Okay, well that takes athletics. I want to I want to convince this person to you know, to let us in. Okay, well that takes persuasion. Okay, so then you take however many

dots, those things are rated one to five, you take however many dots you have worth of D10s, and then you add it to an attribute and the attribute is usually based on how you're accomplishing that thing. So if you're, you know, scrambling up that, that cliffside quickly, you may use dexterity and athletics, along with your athletics. But if you're trying to convince somebody very, very sweetly, being kind of charming, you may use your presence with your persuasion.

But if you're trying to trick them or bribe them, maybe you'd use manipulation instead. Or if you were trying to flex and be like, I'm really strong here. And if you don't get out of my way, I may bash your head in. You may use your might for that. So the attribute is very dependent on how you're describing the action, which hopefully will encourage people to describe, well, I'm not just trying to persuade them. How are you trying to persuade them? What are you doing exactly? So we can form this dice pool.

So those attributes are also rated one to five. You also pull a number of dice equal to your dots in your attribute. So it's skill plus attribute. You roll those and then every eight or above that you get is a hit. Every 10 is two hits. You count out how many hits you have. You compare it to a difficulty, usually one. So as long as you have at least one hit, you've succeeded in doing the thing you wanted to do.

D (43:57.142)
And then every other hit that you have can be used to spend on what we call tricks and tricks are extra things on your action. And you don't need to, but they're fun ways to say, okay, well, I intimidated this person or I persuaded this person to get out of the way and I made them love me.

Adam Powell (44:17.621)
D (44:18.838)
at the same time because I rolled so well. Or I didn't make them love me. They're super neutral to me still, but I made them also let my friend in. Or I made them reveal a secret they wouldn't normally reveal. Or any of these things you could do with a trick.

Adam Powell (44:29.941)
Hmm.

Adam Powell (44:35.637)
Yeah.

Adam Powell (44:40.501)
All right, well, I have had good personal fun with the story path system with They Came from Beneath the Sea. So I know how variable and flexible this system is and how much fun you can have and how adaptable players can be with it and making it really good. And I'm excited to see how Story Path Ultra and At the Gate sort of, I was going to say pushes the envelope, but that's...

D (44:40.502)
Ruh!

Adam Powell (45:05.717)
wasn't the expression I was going for but pushes the game and the system forward and onwards. So with respect to At the Gates, where is it now? What can we do to support it? What can we do to get it? When can we sort of enjoy it for ourselves at our own gaming tables?

D (45:25.142)
So right now it's on BackerKit and I'm so sorry. I did a thing. Okay. Right now it's on BackerKit and it is in its, I don't know, it's in the middle. It's in the messy middle. We've funded, we've hit several stretch goals. We have a couple of both monetary stretch goals and backer number stretch goals.

Adam Powell (45:30.517)
That's okay.

D (45:54.326)
that we are working towards right now. And a lot of those stretch goals either unlock new content that we're going to put into a companion supplement. So the first supplement for this book will be a companion. We may have some stretch goals in the future if we hit the monetary goals that will add an adventure book, which will have some scenarios. And I think I also wanted like a jumpstart, which will help people get started in it. We haven't hit those yet, but we...

We'll probably get there closer to the end. There's, aggregates or kickstarters, any crowdfunding campaign is always like really high at the beginning, really high at the end, and then just kind of middling in the middle. Super normal. But if you hop in now, then you're sure to check it out because we are releasing the manuscript weekly in chunks. So we've had three manuscript releases so far.

another one on, every Tuesday we get another one campaign ends on June 6th. So June 4th will be our last, drop and that will be like the antagonists and the demons. so far we have the setting chapters, character creation, the story path, ultra system, and the story guiding chapter. Next week is the, the, the powers chapter where all the arts and, and.

and spells live, which I'm sure people are really kind of chomping at the bit to read. So, so yeah, you can support us on PackerKit. If you are uncertain, you can always pledge for $5 and you'll get immediate access to what manuscripts we have already released. If you would like to see it kind of more on a like really high level, we have an Ashcan version available on DriveThruRPG right now.

It's $5 also. You can pick it up and it's got kind of everything you need to play a really short scenario, including pre -generated characters and a short scenario in the back.

Adam Powell (48:04.693)
Well, I will make sure there are links to that down in the description below and so as of time of recording, what are we the third? Third week of May there are 15 days left which sort of time to what? So if you are listening to this after that date Just go and buy it. Just just go and pick it out drive through RPG friendly local game store if you can find it there well coming in

say mid -June are there other opportunities to see this and other sort of games presented?

D (48:39.99)
Yeah, so Onyx Path always does an online convention, which means that anybody can attend. Money not necessary. We do a bunch of panels and actual plays, and then we also on stream via both Onyx Path Twitch channel and also some partner Twitch channels. So I think we have Queenscourt Gaming, we have Rolling Nomads, we have...

at least one other and I can't remember right now. It's a bunch. So they will be running actual plays of games. There is an At the Gates game that is scheduled for Saturday at 430 Eastern. And I don't remember which streaming partner it's going to be on because the fact that I remembered that much is phenomenal. But there's a schedule on the Onyx Path website so you can go find it there.

Adam Powell (49:30.613)
sure that we announcements is.

D (49:40.214)
So that is, sorry, let me tell you the dates. It starts on June 14th and runs to the 16th. So the weekend of Father's Day.

Adam Powell (49:40.373)
And yeah, sorry, go on.

Adam Powell (49:52.405)
Well, I will make sure, again, a link to the Onyx Path website is down so you can follow. Again, if you're listening to this post, that event, I'm sure it will be available on Video On Demand, YouTube, and all those sorts of great places. So go and check that out as well. I'm sure there are other exciting things there to engage with as well. So Daniel, we've covered a range of topics in our talk.

D (50:04.502)
yeah, absolutely YouTube, yeah.

D (50:20.566)
Yes.

Adam Powell (50:22.229)
limited time together should we say, your introduction to GT RPGs, your creative process and a few of the games we've worked on, At the Gates, its content, its game mechanics and all that sort of stuff. Is there anything that we haven't discussed at this point you would like to bring up now at this sort of towards the tail end of the interview?

D (50:46.518)
Well, I mean, I have several other projects in the works. At the Gates is my pitched project, but I was a freelancer first and I will probably be a freelancer still on. And so if you are following anything about Curseborn, there will be a big announcement about it and what it is. And there will also be an actual play.

that we will be streaming during Onyx PathCon. So you can check that out. So I've been running character creation for characters that people are gonna be playing with our streaming partners. The old ways podcast, rolling nomads, fiendish foundation, dork tales, and Queens court gaming. All five of them have made individual characters.

from the Curseborn world and we will be doing an actual play which will be streamed, well, it won't be live, it'll be pre -recorded but then streamed during the Onyx PathCon. So if you're interested, have been following any of that, you can check that out at Onyx PathCon. And then the other thing I work on which has nothing to do with Onyx Path is I have been working very diligently on converting Gloomhaven, the board game, to the Gloomhaven RPG.

And it is in what I would like to call its final stages. The last part of a project is always like the last 80 % takes so much time, but we are there or the last 20 % takes like 80 % of your time. Yeah. It's yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. We're in that last 20 % now though. We're getting it to editing and the editor is working and you know, we're doing all that. We're also running play tests of it.

Adam Powell (54:58.453)
I know what you're trying to get there.

D (55:13.43)
I'll be at UKGE at the very beginning of June running at the Suffolk Fair booth. So if you're wandering around and you want to come and check it out, I'll be probably doing like around hour long demos. And then I will, there a big group of people at Origins. Those tables might all be sold out, but you can always come to the booth and talk about it.

Adam Powell (55:19.765)
Mm.

Adam Powell (55:30.037)
wow.

D (55:43.158)
We'll also be running some games at Gen Con for people. Those may also all be sold out. I think it's been kind of popular. Strange that. Only one of the most popular board games.

Adam Powell (55:53.973)
strange that

Adam Powell (56:00.085)
Well, that begs a question from me, to be honest. We've had the Dark Souls RPG, and we've had various other IPs turned into TTRPGs. A fantastic one is The Witcher, The Art of Zorin, and so on and so forth. With respect to Gloomhaven, may I ask which sort of game system it uses as its foundation?

D (56:24.598)
well, it's using its own system. So if you're familiar with playing Gloomhaven, it, we essentially adapted the board games system into a more RPG friendly format. which took a lot of work.

Adam Powell (56:28.373)
that's exciting.

D (56:44.502)
because essentially we took a very like thinky tactical combat game and turned it into a less thinky, slightly tactical, not focused on combat RPG.

Adam Powell (56:55.861)
see.

Adam Powell (57:00.501)
I am excited to see how that turns out. So I'm looking forward to that one. So yeah, having sort of touched on it, is there anything else you would like to bring up following those fantastic points?

D (57:18.806)
I do not.

Adam Powell (57:20.757)
All right, well, before we go then, can you or would you kindly like to remind everybody where they can find your good self on the internet and social media, please?

D (57:30.646)
Sure, you can find me online as at Impernius, pretty much on most socials. You can find me on my website, danielozon .com. And if you're on the Onyx Path Discord, I hang out there sometimes as myself, as Daniel.

Adam Powell (57:49.013)
enough. Daniel, I'd like to get, I'd love, I will rephrase that into a sentence. I would love, love to get you back on the show in the future to discuss Gloomhaven to discuss, Curseborn to discuss any future project you're involved with. It's been such a treat and a fantastic place to have you on the show. and take a bit of your, your afternoon, a bit of your time away from, just, just, just take, taking some of your time.

D (58:16.502)
Yeah.

Adam Powell (58:16.789)
So I'd love to get you back on the show if you'd be willing to join me again in the future.

D (58:20.982)
Sure, yeah, absolutely.

Adam Powell (58:23.861)
Thank you so much for spending some time with me today. Thank you so much for letting us know all about At the Gates. And thank you once again for chatting with me today.

D (58:32.118)
Of course, thank you.

Snyder’s Return

Interview - Danielle Lauzon - Game Designer - At the Gates TTRPG

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