Adam Powell (00:01.932)
Hello and welcome to Snyder's Return, a tabletop roleplay podcast. My guest today wants to bring our attention to eldritch horrors of the past so we may understand its fallout on our present and future. How does Cthulhu affect our dreams and machines? What tactics must we employ to subdue this otherworldly force? From deep within the vaults of the Roman Empire, my guest today implores us to take up the Gladius, grab your 2d20 or d6 dice ball and overcome your fear, tell your truth and join the battle of Cahors.

It is an absolute pleasure to welcome Modiphius co -founder and game designer Chris Birch back to the show. Chris, thank you so much for joining me once again.

Chris Birch (00:39.918)
Thanks for having me.

Adam Powell (00:41.26)
It's an absolute pleasure. So Chris, for someone that's not heard our previous interview, would you mind giving us an abridged version of how you got into tabletop role playing games, please?

Chris Birch (00:49.934)
Well, I think I was about seven or eight and loved my Atari and my mum wanted to get me out of the house and my brother was 10 years older than me and had a girlfriend and they would go and play Dungeons and Dragons once a week. I had no idea what that was and she said, for goodness sake, get Chris out of the house, take him with you to play. And they were like, all right. So yeah, that night changed my life because I, well, my first character died.

straight away. We were playing in search, I think it's in search of the unknown B1, the first basic level adventure that's in the original box set. And there's a pit trap at the end of the first corridor. And they'd given me plate armor as a fighter. My character was called Brandon Carter. And I fell through the pit trap. They gave me a saving throw to avoid it, a saving throw to grab onto the edge.

at a saving throw to get my armour off in the lake below before I drowned and I failed all three. So then I immediately created another character called Son of Brandon Carter and carried on with them. But as a result, every video game character I create, every time I do a sample.

RPG character from one of our games, I've called them Brandon Carter in honour of that first glorious death. Or the sacrifice that got me into the role -playing game. I owe them a big debt of gratitude.

Adam Powell (02:24.716)
is amazing. And so from those those humble tragic beginnings, I guess, you sort of moved on and developed and co founded Mediphius, which is hugely successful publishing company for TTRPGs and board games and many other things. And you've developed your own system, which the game slash games we're going to talk about today uses one and sort of lives in

is within the world of the overarching game. So what was it like, before we go into Goholtz, what was it like developing the 2D20 system which underpins this role -playing game and many others which have been released on that framework?

Chris Birch (03:06.126)
Well, we started developing it for the Mutant Chronicles game, which is a kind of bit of a gonzo far future, big epic heroes doing big, big stuff. And originally it was going to be 5D20 because why not? And 5D20 would have let you do all this really fun stuff. But then, and we got Jay Little involved, his fantastic game designer who took...

Adam Powell (03:18.764)
Mm.

Chris Birch (03:35.822)
My ideas and there was Micheal Cross. He was working with me on it as well took our crazy Mental game ideas and Rewrote it into an actual sensible role -playing system that worked and So he helped us really kind of craft that first Version of it and you know, the mutant Chronicles 2d20 was quite crunchy Version of 2d20 and it's evolved a lot since and we've

Adam Powell (03:50.924)
Hmm.

Chris Birch (04:03.918)
Unlike a lot of companies where like, no, this is the system. It doesn't change until we do a new edition. We kind of reinvent it a bit like a car company. Like, you know, the, the engine inside of golf shares a lot of components with, with another VW car, but it can do lots of different things. So, you know, the core principle is you roll 2D20, 2D20, but lots of stuff can change around that. And we often have this, you know, this threat.

Adam Powell (04:20.364)
Mm.

Chris Birch (04:32.91)
or a doom pool, whatever we call it. We often have, I think, momentum, which is, you know, it's the whole idea that it's a narrative system. So the more successes you roll, the more stuff you can do. And it's part of the fun is in describing what you're going to do with those successes or this classic spends. But yeah, essentially we kind of reinvent it and it's it got crunchier for games like Conan and Infinity. It got lighter for games like

Adam Powell (04:49.932)
Hmm.

Chris Birch (05:01.774)
John Carter and Dishonored, Fallout and Acton Cthulhu is a sort of midway. And then Cowalls Cthulhu has followed the Acton Cthulhu version. Dune is a much lighter version that is much more about the kind of narrative play between big factions and power plays. And Dreams of Machines.

is a move on still where it kind of really does change up the mechanics. So yeah, we're not afraid to twist it in all sorts of weird ways to make it work. I don't like just label slapping, like, that will do, just, you know, change the names and it will be fine for whatever licensed game we're doing.

Adam Powell (05:48.972)
Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned some amazing IPs. Just grabbing a couple out there, Dishonored, Fallout, Dune, Star Trek we haven't touched on within that small. But that's, you know, there's so many, so many iconic IPs. So if someone wants to come and support you personally, but professionally through Modiphius and pick up one of these amazing games to immerse themselves in these role -playing worlds, as it were, where can they go?

Chris Birch (05:59.414)
Yeah. yeah. What was that?

Adam Powell (06:18.86)
Find you a Mediphius, please.

Chris Birch (06:20.334)
where it's modiphius .net is the easy one or you can find us at forward slash modiphius on all the usual social media Facebook X Twitter whatever you call it TikTok and Instagram and so on but yeah it's you know the website's a good way to delve into picking up some of the games there's some great homepages for there for the different games that will explain we've got a lot of great streams online

with people playing the different games so you can get a feel for what they're like. And our YouTube page, again, Modiphius, has a lot of how -to videos of how to play the different systems.

Adam Powell (07:02.06)
Amazing. I will make sure those links are down in the description below this podcast, as well as a link to your stuff on DriveThruRPG to make sure people can pick it up. Absolutely. So PDFs are really available through the Modiphius site. I have purchased a number of them myself. I seem to have collected your systems over the years, which is both a compliment and a detriment to my own wallet. But so you mentioned that Acton to Thulu, which is the World War II based.

Chris Birch (07:08.27)
Great. Well, yeah, it's another good home if you like your PDFs.

Adam Powell (07:30.54)
2D20 system dealing with eldritch horror in a time of great conflict but with this new system, sorry, new world, new setting, Kohorskathulu, you've rewound the clock significantly to take us to a new place and space in time. Would you mind telling us a bit more about Kohorskathulu and the world in which it exhibits before we break down into the mechanics?

Chris Birch (07:56.75)
Mm -hmm.

Chris Birch (08:00.686)
Well, that we have a huge plot line for what we call Against the Gods themselves, which is our kind of, it's nothing like the Marvel Universe, but if you had to compare it, it would be a nice comparison. But it's this big universe in which there's been a war between the Elder Gods and the Outer Gods, and they enrolled this ancient Hyperborean civilization in their war, which was a very advanced.

Adam Powell (08:13.516)
Hmm.

Chris Birch (08:27.374)
civilization that even us would think their tech is magic. They were that advanced. And of course, as these things go, it didn't end very well for either side. Well, the Outer Gods were defeated. The Hyperbrian civilization was in ruins. And Yogg -Sothoth was trapped in the Black Sun. And the survivors kind of retreated.

and the Elder Gods left and we've got this one character called Maren who is a hyperbrian, a high priestess who's like, well, look, we can't. Jog Sohoff is going to escape the Black Sun at some point. We've got to have a plan and no one has a plan. So she decides to stick around. And over the millennia, she raises up Atlantis, which fails for various reasons. And we see some of that in the Acton Cthulhu storyline when there's the characters go back in a gateway.

and then her next project is Rome. She wants to rise up a global civilization. But you've always got Nile Afatep screwing around in the background trying to corrupt humanity. And he's like a chess player, you know, against a, let's call it a little chess genius who is Maren. And he's won.

in every civilization across the galaxy. But this one civilization is proving interesting. And so he lets her win from time to time. But his mistake is she's learning all his chess moves. And hopefully one day she'll get it right. But where we are is in ancient Rome. And Nile Athatap has worked through and another god, Mormo, a very dark,

sinister, corrupting influence of this sort of old, it's a quite dark fertility god that has Medusa as a symbol. And they've been corrupting some of the northern tribes, particularly one called Herjan's Horde, who is a descendant of Atlantis, and he's quite mad. And he's leading a very, very barbaric tribe against Rome. And he's partnered with the cult of Mormo who bring

Chris Birch (10:53.102)
lots of kind of mythos creatures to their aid. And in the role playing game, you're playing the kind of dark years leading up to the big battle, the big invasion, and the kind of sort of the foreboding and conspiracies that are taking place across the frontier. So you get to role play characters in the frontier towns. We have a town called Lorium, which is a bit like, I guess, Keep on the Borderlands, if you know that D &D module, is your classic sort of little frontier town.

Adam Powell (11:18.38)
Hmm.

Chris Birch (11:22.638)
that is far too far from any help and you really aren't relying on your own resources to protect the town and deal with all the mysteries around the town. So there's lots of really interesting opportunities for role playing whether you want to be. I think the great thing is people traveled a lot in those times. It was very diverse. So you'd have a merchant from Syria, you'd have...

Adam Powell (11:44.492)
Hmm.

Chris Birch (11:49.006)
you know, soldiers from Egypt, you'd have philosophers from Greece, people from all over Rome and Gaul and Britannia. So it's quite interesting how diverse characters were in towns. They weren't just a bunch of German, German locals and a bunch of Italians, you know, speaking Latin. So, so it's quite an interesting opportunity for quite diverse characters in role playing.

Adam Powell (12:08.588)
Hmm.

Adam Powell (12:16.14)
Yeah, absolutely. So if someone has become intrigued by your introduction to the role playing game, is there something they can they can use to sort of engage and get a feel for the system and get a feel for the world that you've described there?

Chris Birch (12:28.526)
Yeah, we've got a free quick start that you can download on the web store. So it's the cohorts. If you go to cohortscathooloo .com or go to our website and have a look at cohortscathooloo, you'll find there's a free PDF quick start you can download. It's also on drive through. So you can try the game with a short adventure. It's actually quite a big chunky adventure. It's almost like full adventure product. It's about 80 pages as a quick start, I think, in the end that we did.

So that's quite a full product to get a feel for the characters, the pre -gens that you've got and the types of adventures you can be playing. Nothing stopping you setting it. The first campaign is set in Germania, so Germany, in the dark forests, but you could equally be setting it in the streets of Rome or in the deserts of Egypt, wherever you like.

Adam Powell (13:05.068)
Yeah, I'm dead.

Adam Powell (13:10.764)
Hmm.

Adam Powell (13:18.932)
Hmm. It's a really good read, I have to say. As you say, just over 83 pages. There's a wealth of fun and interesting lore there. The adventure itself called Rude Awakening. Definitely want to check out and enjoy if the system has grabbed your attention. And it has mine. There's six pre -gens, which is always good to give a good spread of the available archetypes or characters that the characters have.

be utilized within the game. So the role playing game uses the 2D20 system. The effect dice. So 2D20 is how you sort of instigate your narrative play. But the effect dice, would you mind sort of describing how they work, please?

Chris Birch (14:02.318)
Mm.

Chris Birch (14:07.758)
Yeah, I mean, I guess you could call them like damage dice. The way effect dice is, and you can use normal D6s, you don't need our funny dice. A one and a two is one and two points of effect. And in most cases, that's damage. A three and a four means nothing. A five and a six typically is an effect and maybe, sorry, a special effect and maybe another point of damage. So.

What that means is it lets us do interesting things with weapons so that you can have varying amounts of damage with a weapon, but the potential to trigger a special effect. So, you know, we have all these unusual different melee weapons in the Roman era. So it might be something that can crush the armor, pierce the armor, trip you up and so on and so on. So it lets you do unusual things with that. We would also use it for what we see.

call our extended tasks, and you're looking to get a certain amount of effect to achieve this extended task. And actually, for example, in Star Trek and in other games like Dreams of Machines, in June, we don't use the effect dice. It is more about we use the number of successes. And so you're just simplifying it down, whereas...

Adam Powell (15:29.612)
Hmm.

Chris Birch (15:33.358)
With Keohuels Cthulhu, it's following the acting Cthulhu version where we do want that kind of a little bit more granularity in weapons and how they do stuff. And so that's why the effect dice are quite useful.

Adam Powell (15:46.828)
Absolutely. I have a couple of sets myself for the Acton Cthulhu system. So I know how and I've got the Fallout set. my God, I bought a lot of your stuff. Not the point. It's all high quality, really well made. Beautiful. It's not. Well, thank you for creating them, I guess is fair. So that's how the role playing game is set. The system it uses. And just to clarify, 2D20, it's not which which

Chris Birch (15:59.566)
Thanks.

Adam Powell (16:16.012)
Number is better for those interested to see which way they should be rolling on their respective D20s.

Chris Birch (16:24.206)
Sorry, could you say that again?

Adam Powell (16:25.964)
So with 2D20, it uses a number of D20s from two to five, as you mentioned. Which number are we looking for to get?

Chris Birch (16:33.422)
Yeah.

yeah, yeah, it's, I mean, it's a roll under system. So you are looking to roll low. So ones are great. You're looking to roll equal or under the target number. And the target number is built in different ways in our system. It might be one stat, it might be two stats added together. And then typically you might have, let's call it a focus or let's say a skill. And if you also roll under that number, which is obviously typically,

much smaller number like one two three then you get a bonus success so by rolling both two dice you can get between one two three four successes and the GM will be telling you well you this is you need two successes to achieve this task you're trying to shoot someone in the dark and it's raining it might be three successes you're trying to jump over a crevasse at the same time as trying to shoot someone.

So, and then if you get extra successes, you can spend that to do more damage, to do something more quietly, to do it quicker, maybe to hit another target. And then you can buy more dice because you think, wow, this is really hard task. And usually you can buy three extra dice, but at a cost. And usually that cost is giving the Games Master a resource, which ranges in names. It can be called doom, it could be called threat.

Adam Powell (17:41.004)
Hmm.

Chris Birch (18:05.006)
and what you're doing is saying to the GM by giving them that resource is I want to dial up the action. I want this scene, to go crazy. I want, you know, I want you to bring the pain. I want, I want some more excitement in this scene. So it's very, it's a very good feedback mechanic where you get to do more stuff. You get to be more heroic in the scene, but you're also saying to the GM, I want to be more heroic. I want to be more heroic. Give me something to be more heroic with. So they get to use those.

those points, that resource to power the enemy's special abilities, to bring in reinforcements, to change the environment, the temple starts collapsing around you. So it's a great sort of feedback loop.

Adam Powell (18:49.356)
All right, well, thank you very much for that explanation. So within the same world, but currently now on Kickstarter, is Cahors Cthulhu Tactics. So how does tactics shift the narrative and how does it differ mechanically, please?

Chris Birch (19:10.446)
So, well, it's set around the same storyline as Cohors Cthulhu, and it plays in three different scales. So you can either play a skirmish scale, which is the small scale skirmishes that were taking place kind of roughly around the area of the role playing game. You can play what we call maybe a war band scale. So that the smaller battles that led up to the big invasion or were happening during the invasion. And then there's the big battles.

what you'd call in war games, a kind of rank and flank scale, where you might have units of, say, up to eight legionaries marching around the table in formations, and you have a much bigger scale of battle, bigger monsters, and so on. And the game is a solo co -op, what we call an adventure war game. An adventure war game's...

are this kind of genre that we're encouraging people to think of. It's a game where the story is more important than the battle. It might be more fun to lose the game. So very much so in Chaos Cthulhu. The objective might be to destroy some places of power, some ancient ruins generating magic. But there might be a character that you could find in the woods somewhere who could join your group.

could give you some story points. And actually, you're more interested in getting the story points because you get to unlock something about your past that might give you an extra ability. And you don't really care about the destroying the ruins. You're going to get some dinarii for killing monster units along the way. But actually, there's nothing wrong in not completing the objective. Well, there will be a cost to it. So the game can you start as a little ragtag.

Adam Powell (20:54.028)
Hmm.

Chris Birch (20:57.998)
group of legionaries and heroes that have survived an ambush. And then you gradually build up and you can stay at that skirmish level or kind of grow to the war band and then rank and flank level as your force grows. Or you can focus all the growth into your heroes by more heroes and have a very sort of hero led group. You know, maybe there's a group of you that want to have a hero each. So it's very flexible as a game and it's a procedurally generating campaign. So each mission is generated from several layers.

It might be a rescue mission, a killer, killer capture. It might be defense attack and so on. And then there's other layers on top. Is it a patrol or skirmish or an assault, a defense? Is there someone to kill, capture, rescue? Do you need to find something? Do you need to destroy some ruins? Do you need to investigate the ruins, investigate something else that's going on? There's all these layers.

Adam Powell (21:52.492)
Hmm.

Chris Birch (21:56.782)
and the main objectives and little side objectives that give you different rewards. And as a result, every campaign is going to be different because you're going to be procedurally generating these as you go. Your choices that you make on your hero's journey, these various like, do you choose to discover who your ancestor was? Do you choose to discover what your tactics are? Do you choose to discover what your hero's reputation is or why you fight like say for love, honor, glory or power?

that's choices that you can make by spending story points that unlock really interesting options and abilities, but they come at a cost and that affects the campaign as well. So you're very much in control of how the campaign flows. You're very much in control of the speed of the campaign. You're not being forced to rush through and give up fun choices. Like for example, we have some really great side quests.

Adam Powell (22:51.372)
Hmm.

Chris Birch (22:54.926)
For example, the Germanic side quest is a three -part side quest to gain a big Germanic hero who's a character called Aldegard in our storyline. And that will give you access to Germanic tribal units, which are a bit more flexible in the forest, but they don't have the kind of close order training of the Romans. But that will be a great addition to your forces. And then we have another one, which we're about to unlock the Migo. So the Migo side quests, they're scripted.

missions that you can play through at any time, interrupt the main campaign and you play through the story and so the MeeGo side quest will put you up against MeeGo, no surprise, and a sort of a story set around some mines, of course they're always mining for Earth resources, but there's an interesting twist in the tale is that if you complete that you will gain a very temporary

Adam Powell (23:36.94)
Thanks for watching.

Chris Birch (23:54.286)
so that you can call on with Amigo at any time. They are usually enemies in the game, but you can at any time call on Amigo Unit to join you, to join your scenario and work alongside you to complete the objective once. That's it. So there's some interesting kind of enemy of my enemy moments in the game. You can unlock other really interesting...

Adam Powell (23:59.116)
Hmm.

Adam Powell (24:08.972)
Yeah.

Chris Birch (24:20.654)
characters, so like our Marenne character I mentioned earlier, who's like our kind of Gandalf, this sort of immortal character who's got some very powerful ancient technology that feels like magic. And if you play the Hyperbrian side quest, you can unlock her as an ally that you can call on for your missions. But she's also going to unlock what we call Hyperbrian augmentations, which are these like little kind of disks of nanotech that give you

Adam Powell (24:23.788)
Hmm.

Chris Birch (24:50.318)
temporary power boosts and also the ability to become void forged. And void forged is, if you think that Perseus and Theseus would have been void forged characters in Greek times, you know, when she was around then, you can get this sense that these lift you up beyond the normal level of heroes. But again, there's a cost to that. If you become void forged and gain these extra powers, the outer gods will definitely notice you.

Adam Powell (25:00.652)
Hmm.

Chris Birch (25:19.63)
And we have these wonderful big avatars of the Outer Gods, these big crazy models, which are the sort of physical manifestation of the Outer Gods thought processes turned in your direction. So they send a kind of minion or a fragment of their mind to hunt you down. So we've got the star spawner Cthulhu, who's been rotting on the sea floor for millennia, that is drags itself out the ocean to come and hunt you.

Adam Powell (25:23.116)
Hmm.

Chris Birch (25:49.038)
and we just revealed the avatar of Jörg Sothofen and whilst he's trapped in the Black Sun he's able to manifest this sort of eyeball surrounded by tentacles on the battlefield that is very hard to attack and each of them is a giant dangerous puzzle that you're going to have to prepare to face on the battlefield.

Adam Powell (25:55.852)
Hmm.

Chris Birch (26:18.222)
So we're having a lot of fun with that.

Adam Powell (26:20.812)
It sounds a lot of fun. And to someone like myself that has been taken in by this allure of setting out on this solo slash cooperative sort of war game adventure, where can we go to find examples of it? Is there an accessible set of rules that can introduce us into the system? Or?

Chris Birch (26:36.718)
Yeah.

Chris Birch (26:47.502)
Yeah. Once again, we've got a, we've done a quick start that we typically do for role playing games for the war game. So there's a, there's the cohorts Cthulhu tactics prologue PDF that you can download at cohorts tactics .com or go to the medifius .net website or drive through.

RPG .com and you can download the Cohorsed Cthulhu prologue there in PDF and that is effectively the very basic core rules and there's a couple of scenarios that will teach you the rules and then you've got a third scenario that lets you kind of test them out and see how the various units interact and a sample of the kind of monsters and the AI system how it works. So you can try that and of course if you like it or just simply go to Cohorsed Cthulhu Tactics on Kickstarter now.

There's a link on that page to download the PDF. There's also a couple of audio clips from some of the characters talking. We've got Valerio Morici, who's the actor who plays Metllus in Barbarians, the TV show set around the Tudberg massacre in the first century AD. He did a voiceover for the RPG for us. And we've got another...

one from Maren who does an appeal to the heroes. There's lots of great background storyline there to absorb. The prologue has a couple of page couple of spreads of kind of graphic novel style art to kind of introduce a storyline to give you a feel for what the game is going to be about as well.

Adam Powell (28:24.844)
Amazing. Also on the kickstart page there is a couple of YouTube videos sort of working through the scenarios.

Chris Birch (28:29.006)
There is, yeah. We've got more playthroughs. I'm actually photographing a playthrough today and writing it up for an update. There's a couple of playthroughs there from some fans. We've got a big official playthrough that we recorded at the Sarisa Studios a couple of weeks back. It's just being edited at the moment. And there's more coming.

Adam Powell (28:47.436)
Excellent, excellent. Definitely stuff that I will be checking out. So you mentioned that this can go from sort of the small skirmish to warband to sort of full. Is that sort of coming out in one sort of big hefty bundle or are we able to sort of delineate ourselves between the size of games? How versatile is it to the individual player slash small co -op?

Chris Birch (29:10.638)
It's actually, yeah, it is actually very versatile because the it's really down to you and your collection. I mean, it's very easy to pick up Roman soldiers online. There's lots of companies like Victrix and Warlord that make boxes of plastic Roman soldiers that you can pick up. We've also got our own little heroic band of Roman soldiers. I kind of wanted a, let's call it like a, you know, imagine a D and D style party Roman soldiers who've just survived an ambush and they look a bit desperate and scared and you know, that one guy's holding two swords and.

We've got some female legionaries in there as well because it is slightly fantastic and we want to give characters the option, you know, the more diverse options. We've got some Salmation archers who were very well known in the ancient world as being, you know, they're like Legolas on acid. They really could shoot incredibly like three arrows at a time and hit oranges flying high in the air whilst riding backwards. But yeah, there's lots of great historical forces you can pick up. So for the...

The pledges on Kickstarter, we've got a simple pledge, which is enough models to play the prologue and probably have a stab at the skirmish scale. Think of each set of monsters, of miniatures as a little mini expansion that gives you more variety for the types of creatures that might appear. And each of them is a little puzzle as well, because they all do things a bit differently, and you'll have to kind of react differently to them. We've then got the legate, legion legate pledge.

Adam Powell (30:28.428)
you

Chris Birch (30:39.086)
which is pretty much enough models to play the Skirmish scale and the Warband scale. You've got enough models to kind of enjoy that. And then you've got the Avatar of the Outer Gods pledge, which has everything. And so you've got more than enough to play, you know, lots and lots of hero characters or a mix of heroes and soldiers. You've got plenty of Roman soldiers and archers.

or if you want it a bit more force balanced. We can't provide every option, of course. Some people might want to have 50 Roman soldiers on the table, but it's going to give you enough. It's going to give you at least one of every set of the creatures and multiples of some of the hordes, what we call hordes, where there might be a large number of figures. So it gives you a really good selection. And then you can choose any models that you want as add -ons. And if you just want to go in and grab some...

Adam Powell (31:24.876)
Hmm.

Chris Birch (31:35.214)
models because you're not interested in the rules, you can just pick up the £1 pledge and choose any of the add -ons that you like. Or of course you can just get the PDF if you've got, we've all got plenty of monster figures and probably Roman figures as well if you're into your history of historical gaming. So you can just pick up the PDF and use whatever you've got.

Adam Powell (31:57.74)
All right, well, it sounds a lot of fun and, you know, I backed it to immerse myself, hopefully cooperatively, but definitely so within the world of Cahors Cthulhu and, you know, enjoy everything that sort of comes in and around that. So I will make sure that as I said before, there's a link to the Kickstarter and the website and all that sort of good stuff down in the description below. So please go down, follow those links. So that is...

where we are with respect to so the kickstarter's got a day of recording over 55 000 pounds raised over 450 backers 24 days to run as of day of recording which is the sixth of june nearly wandered into strange space and time there so there's a bit of time to run from when this is episode will be released so follow those links and back close

What's coming next for Modiphius? So Corsica Thule is, is now, when, when does the RPG books get released? Actually importantly for my own selfish needs.

Chris Birch (33:01.102)
Mmm.

Chris Birch (33:05.71)
was just finishing off the Germania campaign book. So that will be coming shortly as well as the novel, that was funded. So I think that's, due end of this month. And of course we're giving back as plenty of time to review the PDFs, to help catch any errors as much as possible. So, I'd say a little bit later in the summer, we're hoping to ship them. I know all the miniatures are in production or just finished production, so we're making good progress.

Adam Powell (33:22.156)
Hmm.

Chris Birch (33:35.858)
And then what's next? Well, obviously we've been talking about Discworld that's coming up as a role -playing game. It doesn't use the 2D20 system. We're developing a kind of new, very light touch game system for it. It's a very different feel, a lot more narrative. I can't really say much more yet because I don't know. They're still developing it. But yeah, really looking forward to that.

Adam Powell (33:57.004)
That's fair enough.

Chris Birch (34:04.142)
because it's such a wonderful world to play in.

Adam Powell (34:09.42)
anything any any future releases for Acton Thulu or any of the IPs fallout is obviously it's massive.

Chris Birch (34:16.494)
Yeah, Fallout just keeps rolling. It's a giant machine. So we've got like, you know, lots more miniatures. We've got big Fallout 76 theme this year. So there's some kind of big monster hunting in Fallout 76 coming. Obviously Fallout Factions, which is the new versus kind of more tournament feel game set in Nuka World between the different gangs. It's all hard plastic model kits. And there's a big starter set coming in July that's got all the terrain for Nuka World and, you know, everything you need to play.

I think it's about 80 pounds. So it's a good little package and there's like 20 models in there, like two sets of multiple kits. And then that's going to get more releases through the year as well. And it shares the same model range with the Fallout Wastes and Warfare range. So it's all the same scale. We've not created a new scale or a new range of miniatures. It draws on the same minis. So if you've been investing in Fallout Wastes and Warfare, you've got plenty of minis that you're going to be able to use in factions as well to give you different ways to play.

And we've got Mass Effect Board Game coming later in the summer. That's going to go on pre -order late summer. And there's a core box and a number of bits to go with it. Other things without saying too much, but for collectors, there's going to be a really awesome big bundle of stuff. But the base game is very affordable. It's not a huge box of 100 miniatures. It's got seven, six, six miniatures in it.

It's designed that you can play a mission in 40 minutes. You could probably play the whole campaign in a long night or an afternoon and then play it again because there's lots and lots of missions you can play in different sequences. There's different endings, of course. So that's, you know, we wanted to do something that was very concise and affordable for everyone. You know, not everyone can afford the huge collections of games. So I think hopefully people are going to like this.

Adam Powell (36:09.5)
Yeah.

Adam Powell (36:14.508)
I'm sure I'm sure they will. There is much love for Mass Effect out there. Star Trek Adventures, second edition.

Chris Birch (36:18.222)
Yeah, that makes sense.

Chris Birch (36:24.846)
Yeah, that's coming in August. So we hope the first copies will be at Gen Con. So if you're going to be at the Gen Con show, come along, you might be able to get a copy if you're lucky. Be, I think, a limited number of every day. And that's obviously a new edition, but backwards compatible with the old books. So you don't just if you're a big collector of them, you don't suddenly have a massive pile of books that are going to get replaced. The plan is to do new books with new content.

not just to do another version of what you've got. But obviously we'll be gradually updating and adding in new content. There's a lot of stuff that we didn't have access to when we did the first edition. It's a lot more readable this time. We had this great idea to do the Elkar's page design, which looked beautiful, but not everyone can read it well. So we've definitely improved the readability and it's a lot more concise rules. We've managed to fit a lot more rules into this book.

especially to do with, say, Starships. And it does away with the effect ice, so now you're only using the D20s.

Adam Powell (37:34.412)
Well, that is something also that piques my interest. So I will have to refinance something. But that's not a big problem. And again, very much to your credit that you're sort of working through these processes and continually evolving the games that are coming out and bringing us so many fantastic IPs that I feel compelled to pick them all up, which is, again, my problem. So Chris.

Chris Birch (38:00.366)
Yeah.

Adam Powell (38:04.076)
We've covered quite a lot. Is there anything that we haven't covered so far that you want to sort of pick up?

Chris Birch (38:09.87)
there's always more. I think that's probably a good, good, good selection.

Adam Powell (38:11.756)
There's the...

Adam Powell (38:16.744)
All right. Well, so could you please for, I think this is the third time, remind everybody where they can find your good self or Modiphius and everything Modiphius associated with, please.

Chris Birch (38:26.166)
Yeah. You, if you forward slash Modiphius pretty much anywhere in the social pages, obviously for Facebook, we're on, TikTok and Instagram and YouTube is a great place for videos. And then, for the web store, it's Modiphius .net. If you're outside North America, Modiphius .us, if you're shopping in America, which has local shipping and,

Yeah, that's that's where to find us.

Adam Powell (38:58.476)
All right, well, I will make sure all the links are down in the description below this podcast. So please scroll down, follow those links, including the Kickstarter for Cajon's Cthulhu Tactics, something I backed myself, as I say, a time recording 24 days. So probably just over a week or so left when this episode is released. So please scroll down. Support, not only the role playing side, there's board games, there's so much going on on the Modiphius site that it's mind boggling, to be fair.

the amount of content you provide. So thank you very much for that. I'd love to get you back on the show when some of the future releases we've mentioned sort of come to fruition are unavailable or in the closing stages of their development and all that sort of good stuff. The Discworld one certainly pricked my ears up if you'd be willing to come back and join me again in the future, Chris. All right, well, thank you so much for taking some time out of your busy day. Clearly.

Chris Birch (39:28.238)
Thank you.

Thank you.

Chris Birch (39:44.526)
Yes, huh.

Chris Birch (39:50.51)
Yeah, for sure.

Adam Powell (39:57.036)
There's a lot going on at Modiphius, so I don't want to hold you up any longer. So thank you so much for joining me today.

Chris Birch (39:59.598)
That's okay.

No problem. Thanks a lot.

Snyder’s Return

Interview - Chris Birch - COHORS Cthulhu TTRPG/Skirmish Game

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